[Vision2020] We Are All Bushmen and Women

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Good Morning Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  I have a few more to write in my series on my August trip to Southern Africa.

The full version with pictures can be read at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/Bushmen.htm

WE ARE ALL BUSHMEN AND WOMEN

In August of this year I was very close to the area where scientists have determined is the origin of all humankind.  As reported in the May 22 issue of the journal Science, genetic markers on the Y-chromosome indicate that our migration out of Africa began on the Atlantic coastal border of Namibia and Angola.  I was just 250 miles southeast enjoying the amazing wildlife of Etosha National Park.  

About 90,000 of our most ancient ancestors are still living in Southern Africa, and some of them are employees in the safari camps I visited. Physically distinct from other Africans with their lighter skin and "East Asian" eyes, they are properly called the San people (sometimes KhoiSan to include the Khoi tribe), but the early Dutch settlers gave them the pejorative name “bushmen.”

Most likely forced to move because of drought, ancestors of the San began their migration 65,000 years ago. Genetic evidence taken from indigenous peoples in Africa and Asia by the Genographic Project traces a route up the coast of East Africa, over the Red Sea to the Arabia Peninsula through the Middle East down into India, and finally over to Indonesia and Australia.  Described as "beachcomers" by Stephen Oppenheimer, these people thrived and multiplied in mild temperatures and an abundance of food, especially from the sea.

San rock art, which I saw in Namibia at Twyfelfontein, and from the Drakensberg Caves in South Africa that I viewed on the web, compares favorably to the famous Paleolithic paintings in Southern France.  For my tastes, however, nothing can beat the sheer imaginative power of the first Australians, whose art I saw at Kakadu National Park near Darwin in 1995.  This art work goes back tens of thousands of years and all of these ancient peoples are genetically linked.

As the San moved out of Southwest Africa towards the east coast, they took with them not only a sophisticated microlithic tool kit but also shell beads, the oldest (dated at 77,000 years) such ornaments in the current archeological record. One scientist has speculated that trade in these beads, plus the San policy of sharing meat, was a plus in their survival during their long journey to Asia.

For thousands of years the San roamed all over Southern Africa as expert hunter-gatherers.  Gradually, however, they were, over the last 1,500 years, pushed into the Kalahari Desert by Bantu pastoralists who thought that the San were less than human because they did not herd cattle.  
Persecution of the San by the Bantus of Botswana continues.  

In 1997 the government decreed that all the San had to leave their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The government claims their presence there is inconsistent with principles of reserve management, but critics say that the removal is primarily because diamonds have been discovered there. 

Most of the San (a few of refused to move) have been resettled and given livestock and seed to grow crops.  Clinics and schools have also been provided. As with all indigenous people removed by force, the San have fared very poorly in the last 12 years.  Alcoholism, tuberculosis, and HIV, unknown to them in the wilderness, have ravaged the their vulnerable communities.

In 2006 these San won a court victory recognizing their right to return to their ancestral land, but the government of Botswana has done everything to prevent them from doing so. As he sees his elders dying prematurely in the resettlement camps, San spokesman Roy Sesana declares that "they are our hospital, they are our clinics, they are our doctors.  The land itself that we've been holding is our mother.  So if you separate us from that mother, what is going to happen to us."	 

Even in the desert wilderness San life is not all that rosy.  The Kalahari Meerkat Project reports that about 50 percent of their children die before they are 15, and 20 percent die in their first year.  Life expectancy is estimated between 40 and 50 years.  Only 10 percent survive past the age of 60.

As with all indigenous peoples facing integration into contemporary society, a fine balance between preserving language and culture and benefiting from modern medicine and education must be attained.