Compiled by the University of Botswana which houses a unique collection of contemporary published and unpublished written material on the indigenous minority of Southern Africa. The aim was to make this literature available in one collection, and thus promote research on, with, and by, this minority. The volume lists over a thousand bibliographic entries covering the social sciences, languages and history, as well as publications from national and regional San organisations. Short abstracts of each entry are linked to a list of keywords and authors.
The San (hunter- gatherers) and Khoe (herders) of southern Africa were dispossessed of their land before, during and after the European colonial period, which started in 1652. They were often enslaved and forbidden from practicing their culture and speaking their languages. In South Africa, under apartheid, after 1948, they were reclassified as “Coloured” which further undermined Khoe and San culture, forcing them to reconfigure and realign their identities and loyalties. Southern Africa is no longer under colonial or apartheid rule; the San and Khoe, however, continue in the struggle to maintain the remnants of their languages and cultures, and are marginalised by the dominant peoples of the region. The San in particular, continue to command very extensive research attention from a variety of disciplines, from anthropology and linguistics to genetics. They are, however, usually studied as static historical objects but they are not merely peoples of the past, as is often assumed; they are very much alive in contemporary society with cultural and language needs. This book brings together studies from a range of disciplines to examine what it means to be Indigenous Khoe and San in contemporary southern Africa. It considers the current constraints on Khoe and San identity, language and culture, constantly negotiating an indeterminate social positioning where they are treated as the inconvenient indigenous. Usually studied as original anthropos, but out of their time, this book shifts attention from the past to the present, and how the San have negotiated language, literacy and identity for coping in the period of modernity. It reveals that Afrikaans is indeed an African language, incubated not only by Cape Malay slaves working in the kitchens of the early Dutch settlers, but also by the Khoe and San who interacted with sailors from passing ships plying the West coast of southern Africa from the 14th century. The book re- examines the idea of literacy, its relationship to language, and how these shape identity. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.
A study of the influence of environment on culture and social organization among the Khoisan, a cluster of southern African peoples, comprised of the Bushmen or San "hunters," the Khoekhoe "herders", and the Damara, (also herders).
J.D. Lewis-Williams, one of the leading South African archaeologists and ethnographers, uses ethnographic, archival, and archaeological lines of research to understand San-Bushman mythological stories. From this, he establishes a more nuanced theory of the role of myths in cultures worldwide.
Chapter 1. The linguistic classification of Kora. 1.1 Divisions and distributions of the Khoisan languages - a general overview - 1.2. General characteristics of the JU and TUU families - 1.3. General characteristics of the KHOE family. 1.3.1. The Kalahari and Khoekhoe branches of the KHOE - 13.2. The Khoekhoe branches of the KHOE - 1.4. Hypotheses concerning relationships between languages of the KHOE family and various other languages of Africa. 1.4.1. Mooted relations between the KHOE languages and languages of northern or eastern Africa - 1.4.2. Relations between the KHOE languages and other Khoisan languages - 1.4.3. Relations between the KHOE languages and local languages of the BANTU family - 1.4.4. Relations between the KHOE languages and varieties of Afrikaans. Chapter 2. Sources of the Cape Khoekhoe and Kora records: vocabularies, language data and texts. 2.1 Records of the Cape Khoekhoe: from the period prior to and after Dutch settlement (17th to late 18th centuries) - 2.2 Records of the Kora. 2.2.1. From the end of the Dutch period - 2.2.2. From the early period of British colonization in the first half of the 19th century - 2.2.3. From the later part of the 19th century - 2.2.4. From the 20th century - 2.2.5. Kora speakers in the 21st century. Chapter 3. The sounds of Kora. 3.1. Vowels and diphthongs. 3.1.1. Vowels - 3.1.2. Diphthongs - 3.2. The ordinary (or egressive) consonants of Kora. 3.2.1. Stops - 3.2.2. Nasals - 3.2.3. Fricatives - 3.2.4. Affricates - 3.2.5. Approximants - 3.2.6. Trill - 3.3. The clicks, or ingressive consonants of Kora. 3.3.1. The four basic (or 'radical') clicks of the Kora, identified by place - 3.3.2. The accompaniments of the Kora clicks - 3.4. The Kora system of tone melodies. 3.4.1. The citation melodies of Kora - 3.4.2. The two classes of alternative tone melodies used in particular contexts - 3.4.3. The theory of tonogenesis in Khoekhoe. Chapter 4. The structures of Kora. 4.1. The noun phrase. 4.1.1. Nominal expressions - 4.1.2. Qualifying expressions - 4.2. The adpositional phrase - 4.3. The verb phrase. 4.3.1. Verbs - 4.3.2. Adverbs - 4.4 The Kora sentence, part 1. 4.4.1. Action verbs in Kora, and the expression of tense, aspect and mood - 4.4.2. Process verbs - 4.4.3. Non-verbal predictions in Kora - 4.5. The Kora sentence, part 2. 4.5.1. Negatives - 4.5.2. Interrogatives - 4.5.3. Commands and polite requests - 4.5.4. Coordination - 4.5.5. Discourse connectives - 4.5.6. Phrasal adjectives, phrasal nominals, and phrasal adverbs - 4.6. Miscellaneous. Chapter 5. The heritage texts of the Korana people. 5.1. Collective and personal histories, and private commentaries - 5.2. Social and economic histories, and accounts of crafts and manufactures in earlier times - 5.3. Oratory, lyrics and folktales (or language-based arts). 5.3.1. The praise - 5.3.2. The funeral lament - 5.3.3. Lyrics - 5.3.4. Word games - 5.3.5. Animal stories. Chapter 6. A Kora-English dictionary, with Kora-English index - Kora-English - English-Kora index - Specialist list 1: Names of the Korana clans - Specialist list 2. Korana names 2: Korana names for animals, birds and smaller creatures - Specialist list 3: Korana names for plants and plant products.
In 1998 David Kruiper, the leader of the ‡Khomani San who today live in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, lamented, “We have been made into nothing.” His comment applies equally to the fate of all the hunter-gatherer societies of the Cape Colony who were destroyed by the impact of European colonialism. Until relatively recently, the extermination of the Cape San peoples has been treated as little more than a footnote to South African narratives of colonial conquest. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Dutch-speaking pastoralists who infiltrated the Cape interior dispossessed its aboriginal inhabitants. In response to indigenous resistance, colonists formed mounted militia units known as commandos with the express purpose of destroying San bands. This ensured the virtual extinction of the Cape San peoples. In The Anatomy of a South African Genocide, Mohamed Adhikari examines the history of the San and persuasively presents the annihilation of Cape San society as genocide.
The Ju/’hoan San, or Ju/’hoansi, of Namibia and Botswana are perhaps the most fully described indigenous people in all of anthropology. This is the story of how this group of former hunter-gatherers, speaking an exotic click language, formed a grassroots movement that led them to become a dynamic part of the new nation that grew from the ashes of apartheid South West Africa. While coverage of this group in the writings of Richard Lee, Lorna Marshall, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, and films by John Marshall includes extensive information on their traditional ways of life, this book continues the story as it has unfolded since 1990. Peopled with accounts of and from contemporary Ju>/’hoan people, the book gives newly-literate Ju/’hoansi the chance to address the world with their own voices. In doing so, the images and myths of the Ju/’hoan and other San (previously called “Bushmen”) as either noble savages or helpless victims are discredited. This important book demonstrates the responsiveness of current anthropological advocacy to the aspirations of one of the best-known indigenous societies.
In this book, eminent scholars explore the term 'Bushmen' and the relationships that gave rise to it, from the perspectives of anthropology, archaeology, comparative religion, literary studies, art history and musicology. Topics as diverse as trophy heads and museums, to the destruction of the Cape San, and appraisals of 19th-century photographic practices are examined.
This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of the indigenous people of the Western Cape. The past is vividly brought to life through the stories and photos, and information about heritage sites is included
The Cape Town Book presents a fresh picture of the Mother City, one that brings together all its stories. From geology and beaches to forced removals and hip-hop, Nechama Brodie, author of the best-selling The Joburg Book, has delved deeply into the hidden past of Cape Town to emerge with a lucid and compelling account of South Africa’s fi rst city, its landscape and its people. The book’s 14 chapters trace the origins and expansion of Cape Town – from the City Bowl to the southern and coastal suburbs, the vast expanse of the Cape Flats and the sprawling northern areas. Offering a nuanced, yet balanced, perspective on Cape Town, the book includes familiar attractions like Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch and the Company’s Garden, while also giving a voice to marginalised communities in areas such as Athlone, Langa, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha. Many of the images in the book have never been published before, and are drawn from the archives of museums, universities and public institutions. This beautifully illustrated, information-rich book is the defi nitive portrait of the wind-blown, contradictory city at the southern tip of Africa that more than three million people call home
