South Africa's settler-colonial past is widely acknowledged. And yet, commonplace understandings of the post-apartheid era and a focus on the end of segregation make an appraisal of settler colonialism in present-day South Africa difficult and controversial. Nonetheless, we argue that an understanding of South Africa's "settler-colonial present" is urgent and needed. We suggest that settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination survives apartheid. In particular, we focus on the recent revival and political mobilisation of indigenous Khoisan identity and cultural heritage to show that settler colonialism and apartheid should be understood as distinct yet overlapping modes of domination. A settler-colonial mode of governance aiming at "the elimination of the native" in two interrelated domains, dispossession and transfer, characterises past and present South Africa. An understanding of this continuity offers opportunities for an original interpretation of both Khoisan revivalism and contemporary South African society.

Article

The Afrocentric method is derived from the Afrocentric paradigm which deals with the question of African identity from the perspective of African people as centred, located, oriented, and grounded. The Afrocentric philosophy is based on the principles of inclusivity, cultural specificity, critical awareness, committedness and political awareness. The Nama Stap is the Namas’ entertainment form used as a social, cultural and educational tool by the Nama-Khoisan people. The purpose of this paper is to [re]claim the Nama Stap as a dance of identity, culture and indigenous knowledge by showing ways in which an Afrocentric-ubuntu-based research approach can be used to research indigenous culture. Data were collected through oral history, field notes and stories. A case is argued for using the Nama Stap as Khoisan cultural heritage tool to promote nation building.

Article

"Of Ruins and Revival" is a chapter in the "Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s)". This chapter deals with the reclaiming of the Khoisan religion and identity post-Apartheid. The author critical reflects and discusses the Khoisan protest of 22 September 2015. It explores the theme of public symbols of indigenous heritage being seem as public means of humilation and the right of the Khoisan community to determine for themselves how their heritage is included into the mainstream society.

Chapter

The term Khoisan, alternatively spelled “Khoesan,” is used by contemporary linguists as a convenient blanket term for the non-Bantu and non-Cushitic click-using languages of Africa and does not imply the existence of any familial relationships between the member groups. Some scholars include two isolate click languages of Tanzania, namely, Hadza and Sandawe, within the scope of a so-called “Macro-Khoisan,” although there is little evidence to suggest that these two languages are related even to each other, let alone to any of the southern African languages. This chapter begins by setting out the shifting speaker numbers and distributions of the diverse and often trans-nationally located Khoisan languages of southern Africa, as far as these have been reliably estimated for the present day on the basis of population surveys, and as far as they can be reasonably projected for the relatively recent, largely colonial period on the basis of historical records. The discussion then draws on comparative linguistic evidence (in both a narrow and wider sense) to assess various popular beliefs concerning the older, undocumented past of the Khoisan languages, which are often romantically imagined to be the last vestiges of some primordial African substrate – and the possibility of an alternative scenario is briefly sketched. The chapter concludes with a few brief notes on the uncertain future of these highly endangered African languages in an era of conflicting economic, political, and social-cultural demands.

Chapter

Recent years have seen a rise of KhoeSan revivalism in South Africa as identity politics in the country reach fever pitch. Using Stuart Hall's notion of articulation and his conceptualisation of cultural identity as either essentialist or reproductive, we explore revivalist articulations as they relate to language and culture. Specifically, we focus on attempts by those who claim KhoeSan descent to revive KhoeSan languages, and on the reclamation of Afrikaans as a language immersed in KhoeSan history. Central to the concept of articulation is that of ensemble, cultural forms that can be coupled and uncoupled in multiple ways, albeit constrained by their moment in history. We argue that ensembles offer a richness to revivalist vocalisations that, while at times controversial, merit embracing.

Article

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.

Book

This article forms part of the Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on the subject of Khoisan Languages and Linguistics held on July 11–13, 2011 at Riezlern/Kleinwalsertal. This paper describes the ǂHoan linguistic forms used while hunting, and for talking about hunting. Spoken language is avoided during hunting, but a set of conventionalised gestures is used. Thus, both oral and manual lexical forms are presented here. In addition to providing new data on ǂHoan, the authors hope to show how the use of a Kalahari-specific lexical elicitation guide can be an important aid in short-term fieldwork. Due to constraints of space and time, this paper does not discuss vocabulary related to plants and the gathering of plant and animal foods; the distinction between hunting and gathering implied here is an artificial one.

Conference Proceedings

In this article we provide a discussion of present-day Khoisan activism in Cape Town, South Africa. The main actors in this movement are people whose heritage is complex: their history can be traced back to the early days of the colonial settlement, reflecting the interactions and cohabitation of the indigenous Khoisan, slaves and the European settlers. Currently, their main languages are English and Afrikaans; yet, efforts are also made by activists to learn Khoekhoegwab. In discussing the Khoisan resurgence we draw on a wide range of sources. The data include: in-depth interviews with language activists; video and audio recordings of ceremonies and other cultural events; discussions and performance of language and identity on blogs and tweets; newspapers; linguistic landscapes; and, finally, artistic performances (with particular focus on the hiphop opera Afrikaaps). We argue that Khoisan activism expresses a deep-seated desire for an identity – linguistic, political and cultural – that is both historically rooted and meaningfully created in the present. Khoisan activism is not only a political program but also an aesthetic-artistic as well as heteroglossic performance, and as such allows for new ways of conceptualizing language revitalization.

Article

Contents: A tribute to Anthony T. Traill / Tim Couzens ; Introduction ; Some puzzles in !X⯥o kinship terminology / Alan Barnard ; What we seem to know about the Lexicon of early cape Dutch Pidgin (and always were afraid to question) / Hans den Besten ; Language development and community development in a San community / Megan Biesele ; The !X⯥o-English-Setswana trilingual dictionary in preparation: an experience / Andy Chebanne ; Doing what (you think) is right in the field: problematizing the documentation of endangered languages / G. Tucker Childs ; Odour terminology in !X⯥o / Didier Demolin, Anthony Traill, Gilles Sicard & Jean-Marie Hombert ; Tonal patterns in Khwe verb conjugation / Edward D. Elderkin ; African languages in the African century: extinction or revival? Patterns, trends and strategies / Rosalie Finlayson & Sarah Slabbert ; Phonological regularities of consonant systems in genetic lineages of Khoisan / Tom G赬dermann ; From 17th century Cape Khoekhoe to 20th century !Gora and Namibian Khoekhoe / Wilfrid H.G. Haacke ; Gender assignment rules in Jul'hoan and !X⯥o / Henry Honken ; Verb-final Glottalisation, tone and passivity in Tangale / Hermann Jungraithmayr ; Evidentials in !Xun / Christa K诮ig ; Naming mathematical concepts in Rumanyo, a Bantu language of Northern Namibia / Wilhelm J.G. M诨lig ; Khoisan phonotactics: a case study from Glui / Hirosi Nakagawa ; The Phoneme inventory of Taa (West !Xoon dialect ) / Christfried Naumann ; A comparison of kinship terminologies of West Kalahari Khoe: Haba, Tshila, Glui, Gllana, and Naro / Hitomi Ono ; Interpreting Hadza data / Bonny Sands -- Reflections on J.H. Wilhelm's "Hukwe" wordlist / Rainer Vossen ; Evidence for a multi-lingual community in the Tsodilo Hills, Botswana (ca. CE 700-900) / Edwin N. Wilmsen ; Anthony Traill (1939-2007): list of publications.

Book

This chapter is found within Lone Tree - Scholarship in the Service of the Koon: Essays in memory of Anthony T. Traill.

Chapter

Current political negotiations in South Africa which explore the possibility of pre-1913 land claims and the recognition of Khoisan traditional authorities have spurred the growth of the “Khoisan revival”: the phenomenon of people identifying as Khoisan and asserting indigenous rights. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cape Town in 2014 and 2015, this paper discusses the motivations and strategies of several Khoisan activists. After outlining the political context of the Khoisan revival, I show how activists make claims and demands through the use of popular imagery and a global indigenous rights discourse. While producing valuable insights, this “strategic essentialist” approach inadequately addresses motivations for claiming land. Based on a discussion of several case studies, I argue that claiming land functions not so much as a means of procuring physical or economic spaces, but as a way for activists to express grievances regarding coloured identity, history and healing. This symbolic interpretation prompts the reconceptualisation of land claims within the restitution paradigm and policy negotiations.

Article

Conference Proceedings

This paper examines academic debates about the nomenclature of the San in light of recent ethnographic data. Academic debates centre around two aspects: the apparent complicity of the term ''bushman'' in construing the San as lower on the hierarchy of race and class; and the construction of the San as being in close contact with animals and nature. Academics have sought to resolve this dilemma of complicity by adopting self-referential terms, which would allow them to overcome the effacement of cultural and linguistic variation. Critically, the paper argues that this turn to self-referential terms is problematic in the case of the Khomani San of the southern Kalahari because the San themselves claim ''bushman'' as their identity. The analysis suggests that the Khomani San claim this name for themselves in a context of developmental needs. Thus, Khomani San chose the name ''Bushman'' for themselves because it can be commoditised.

Article

In this article I examine the performance of Magnet Theatre's Tears Become Rain and also make reference to several other performances by the same company. My major thrust is to evaluate Magnet Theatre's Clanwilliam Art Project against its set objectives, using Tears Become Rain as a starting point. Tears Become Rain was a single performance of one of the stories of //Kabbo. Every year the creative collective comprising Magnet Theatre, and the University of Cape's Departments of Fine Art and Archaeology chooses a narrative from one of the 2000 notebooks containing 13,000 pages of oral stories transcribed by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. These oral narratives are verbatim accounts of the San ex-prisoner, //Kabbo, and a small number of informants who temporarily lived with the writers in Cape Town between 1870 and 1884. This creative collective has been working with close to 700 learners of Clanwilliam aged between five and 18 for eight days each year to produce a performance that gets to be watched by the broader Clanwilliam community including parents, friends and family. One of the objectives of the creative collective is to attempt to reclaim the heritage of the /Xam by reconnecting story and landscape by putting that heritage to work in the Clanwilliam community. It is this performance of the past, its curation and archiving in the present that I want to problematize in this article. I argue that the archive is both a repository filled with random survivals of the past and also a closet that erases or closes out other knowledges. I problematize the notion of preservation of heritage seeing that the San in their nineteenth-century phenotype have completely disappeared in Clanwilliam together with their language and repertoire of embodied acts

Article

The present paper concentrates on placenames that are regarded as originating in European or African languages, but are in fact of Bushman or San origin. From their placenames a great deal can be deduced about the identity of the San, and the things that make their placenames unique, e.g. the click sounds and various other aspects of their language. Some San words that are used as components of placenames reflect their environment, describing natural features and the character of their surroundings, and referring to animals and plants so essential to their survival, to the cosmetic and aesthetic use of natural pigments, and perhaps even to their deity. Many of these things have been recorded by anthropologists, linguists, Khoisanologists and others. But from a study of the vast corpus of placenames, many new facts may emerge, and above all, the original San placenames may be reconstructed by reversing the processes of adaptation, and recognised as the original indigenous toponyms of South Africa. This paper forms Chapter 21 in the Book Indigenous and Minority Placenames.

Chapter

This paper investigates the genetic affiliation of the three northernmost dialects of Namibian Khoekhoegowab, viz. ǂAakhoe, Haiǁom and Sesfontein Damara, on the strength of serial verb formation. The paper proceeds from Güldemann’s hypothesis that these and other lects developed through Khoekhoeisation by ‘Nama’. The claim that Khoe-Kwadi languages do not employ verb serialisation is refuted by data from Khoekhoe as well as from Kalahari Khoe, and it is shown that ǂAakhoe in particular employs a juncture a in serialisation in ways similar to those of Naro and Gǀui. The use of this juncture is argued to be strong evidence of a close genetic link of ǂAakhoe (and, to a lesser extent Haiǁom) to West Kalahari Khoe. The evidence is offered in support of my hypothesis that the Damara (with the ǂAakhoe and Haiǁom) already became Khoe speakers before they encountered the Nama.

Article

Theorists of the origins of language seem to assume that the only function of language is communication. Or that everything that language is and does can be explained as if it were simply an advanced form of communication. In fact, though, virtually all languages are far more complex than they need to be for one-to-one communication. This paper attempts to answer the question as to why that should be. It argues that the answer lies in the evolution of narrative, that is, story-telling, legend, and myth, as culturally important means of expression. It demonstrates that the evolution of narrative, and especially of myth, requires linguistic complexity, and in particular, recursion. It further argues that language coevolved with mythology in symbolic frameworks which extended, to the limits of cognition, the capacity for verbal expression.The focus is on just one sentence, which describes a habitually continuous action, within an interrogative sentence, within an imperative sentence, within another imperative sentence, within an indicative sentence, within a /Xam myth or fable in which animals act as people, but in culturally meaningful and stylized form

Chapter

This paper presents a synopsis of the linguistic and migratory 'prehistory' of the Damara, the Negroid speakers of Khoekhoegowab. This is then compared to Richard Elphick's hypothesis concerning the Khoesaan cradle in Botswana; to existing archeological data; and to Christopher Ehret's hypothesis about proto-Kwadi migration into south-western Angola. It is concluded that Richard Elphick's hypothesis about the migrations of Negroid Khoe speakers into Namibia and south-westen Angola, the proto-Kwadi alias proto-Damara, appears to be basically correct.

Article

Government Publication

Unavailable

CD with Booklet

This volume has its roots in a seminar on Khoisan syntax taught by Chris Collins. The paper in section I (Syntax), several of which grew out of this seminar, apply recent syntactic theories to topics in Khoisan. In section II (Phonology and Phonetics), we present two studies: one dealing with click accompaniments, with other reduplicative templates and syllable weight. Section III (Historical and Contact Issues) examines the influence of Khoisan languages on the development of Afrikaans. This section also details historical and genetic ties between various sub-groups with Khoisan. Although much controversy surrounds the spelling of "Khoisan/Khoesan", we do not pretent to resolve this confllict here. Instead, we leave the choice to the author. The title of the volume follows the prevailing American convention. In all cases within this volume, Khoisan and Khoesan are taken to have the same referent.

Book

Book

Recordings have been selected from a collection of 75 rpm vinyl records owned by the Department of Linguistics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Many of the originals were made in the Phonetics Laboratory of the University in 1936 when a group of Khomani and Auni Bushmen visited Johannesburg for the Empire Exhibition. They consist of spoken pieces, musical performances and the imitation of leopards, dogs, baboons and galloping horses.

CD with Booklet

Khoisanistics, the study of Khoisan peoples, their cultures and languages, has had a special status within the field of scientific African studies in general from its beginnings in the 17th century until today. Compared to the improvements made within the other African language phyla and the culture of its speakers, knowledge on Khoisan is still considerably small when it comes to their languages, historical backgrounds, and present status. There is an urgent need for recording data on these cultures. This is clear from the fact that of the presumably 200 Khoisan languages that might have existed some 100 years ago only about 20 to 35 are still spoken today, many of which again are moribund. The fact that the estimates vary considerably is another indication for the unsatisfying overall situation within Khoisan. This situation is disastrous, among other reasons because a language spoken in any part of the world is worth recording since it is a reflection of the human mind. The study of a language can tell us more about the way people conceptualize their environment, about their traditions and their history than any collection of oral or written traditions. Up to now all efforts to prove that the term Khoisan languages can be justified on the basis of the claim of a genetic relationship must be considered a failure or at least highly hypothetical. Another – though very different – major deficit in the research on Khoisan has been the fact that the few experts working on Khoisan have been doing their research more or less independently from each other. This has certainly caused the present situation where there is no sufficient academic exchange of experience. Such an exchange would not only lead to a better overall view on the alleged language family as a whole, but could also provide valuable information on the genetic relationship of the languages and their origin.

Book

Heretofore, the classification of Khoisan languages has been oriented toward genetically defined units, the results of which still remain un-satisfactory. In this paper, an alternative approach will be pursued, whereby the Kalahari Basin as the distributional centre of the languages spoken in this area (including Non-Khoisan languages) is surveyed with regard to basic typological features. These and the methodology to analyze them are basically taken from Johanna Nichols’ work on areal typology.

Book

The Khoisan are a cluster of southern African peoples, including the famous Bushmen or San 'hunters', the Khoekhoe 'herders' (in the past called 'Hottentots'), and the Damara, also a herding people. Most Khoisan live in the Kalahari desert and surrounding areas of Botswana and Namibia. In spite of differences in their way of life, the various groups have much in common, and this book explores these similarities and the influence of environment and history on aspects of Khoisan culture. This is the first book on the Khoisan as a whole since the publication in 1930 of The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa, by Isaac Schapera, doyen of southern African studies.

Book

Two volumes

Book

This article/chapter can be found in "Festschrift Meinhof". A more accurate discription is not available currently.

Article

The centuries-old southern African dance form called rieldans (reel dance), or simply riel (reel), is believed to have emerged from Khoe-San dances. It is characterised by its distinctive footwork, animal mimicry, and courtship displays. In the post-apartheid, postcolonial South African context, the riel has emerged as symbol of indigeneity through largescale public performance of Khoe-San heritage. Despite colonial influences, it represents an historical link to the Khoe-San people for its performers who are, for the most part, persons of mixed descent who were classified as 'coloured’ under colonialism and apartheid. Due to a recent riel revival, which emerged from the alignment of Khoe-San and Afrikaans identity negotiations following democracy, the riel has attracted a fair amount of informal attention both locally and internationally over the last decade. However, it remains largely unexplored in performance scholarship. This study investigates riel music of the Northern and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa. The research is qualitative in nature with data collection through participant-observation, semi-structured interviews (including feedback interviews), archival and literature-based research, and organology. A brief history of the riel is presented through a synthesis of documentary evidence and oral history gleaned from fieldwork. This includes an investigation into the history of the ramkie - an instrument that is strongly associated with the riel. By drawing on emic interpretations of riel music in conjunction with Muller’s and Impey’s ideas about 'music as archive’, this study explores how riel music is an oral/aural archive of indigenous knowledge, memory and experience. Findings indicate that contemporary practice links the riel to pre-colonial Khoe-San practices from which it may have derived. An examination of the ramkie’s history reveals that it emerged from material and cultural exchanges in the Indian Ocean that link southern Africa to a vast trade network in pre-colonial and colonial times. Moreover, the instrument provides a glimpse into gender issues that influence riel music making. Like the dance that it accompanies, riel music exhibits characteristics that are indicative of its Khoe-San influence. An analysis of the liedjies (songs) shows that they deal mostly with themes of romance, place, and death and suffering, and that the music is a powerful platform for the expression of interpersonal concerns that provide a glimpse into the lived experiences of working-class coloured communities in the rural Cape.

Theses & Dissertations

Khoisan languages are spoken by tiny and remote-dwelling communities of Botswana, the members of which are characterised by socio-economic hardships and illiteracy in their own languages and in general. Historically and socially, these people emerged from a life of hunting and gathering, and, in that lifestyle mode, they were easily subdued and exploited by other language communities for cheap and serf labour. Colonialism found them in this social state, and post-colonialism has left them in the same state. As poor and marginalised subalterns, they have not had any means to advocate for their language and culture, and are currently assimilated into other peoples’ languages and cultures. Consequently, the remaining languages of these communities, spoken in remote areas by poor people, are threatened with extinction because they remain under-developed, under-documented, and are at best still at the stage of documentation by anthropologists and linguists. As illiterate people, the speakers of these Khoisan languages have no survival strategies for their languages in this ever-evolving, modern world. With their poverty and sociolinguistic marginalisation, they are devoid of any means of promoting their languages. This discussion focuses on the pitiful situation of the Khoisan languages of Botswana. Botswana’s language-use policy will be critically examined and characterised as one factor in the marginalisation and disempowerment of minority groups, both of which lead to the languages’ endangerment and death.

Article

Th paper examines a corpus of some 1 130 Xri concepts collected by Jan Snyman (UNISA) in the early 1970s. This collection is by far the largest corpus of vocabulary of self-declared "Griekwa" speakers available, and is unlikely to be surpassed infuture, as the language is moribund. 1096 concepts of this Xri corpus are compared dialectometrically to the equivalents in Namibian Khoekhoegowab (Khoekhoe, formerly “Nama/Damara”).

Journal article

Click consonants are one of the hallmarks of “Khoisan” languages of southern Africa. They are also found in some Bantu languages, where they are usually assumed to have been copied from Khoisan languages. We review the southern African Bantu languages with clicks and discuss in what way they may have obtained these unusual consonants. We draw on both linguistic data and genetic results to gain insights into the sociocultural processes that may have played a role in the prehistoric contact. Our results show that the copying of clicks accompanied large-scale inmarriage of Khoisan women into Bantu-speaking communities and took place in situations where the Khoisan communities may have had relatively high prestige. In the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier region, these events must have occurred at an early stage of the Bantu immigration, possibly because small groups of food producers entering a new territory were dependent on the autochthonous communities for local knowledge.

Article

The Khoisan’s /ʹkɔısɑ:n/ approach to culture is a holistic one. Over thousands of years they have cultivated an integrated life-style, undergirded by socio-religious values. In a sense it is therefore artificial to discuss separate cultural issues as if they are silos in the life of this indigenous nation. However, the erosion of their cultural heritage occurred systematically during protracted colonial and neo-colonial eras which allows for a focused approach. Some cultural strands survived the colonial onslaught while others became extinct. In modern times effforts have been made and still are being made, to restore, preserve and promote their heritage. The following five areas will be dealt with here: land, identity, leadership structures, languages and religion. These are all inter-related. Other relevant issues, such as their indigenous knowledge system and legislation protecting their intellectual property, are too complex to be included here. In this chapter we will look at the current state of these 5 foci, their historical context and the possibilities to preserve them for future generations.

Article

In this article, I firstly trace Van der Kemp’s link to the British anti-slavery network. Secondly, and following my exposition of Van der Kemp’s anti-slavery advocacy (cf. Smit 2016), I argue that the position and treatment of the Khoi should be seen as similar to that of slaves during the first half of the eighteenth century at the Cape. This provides credence to Van der Kemp’s (and Philip’s) vehement criticism of both government and frontier settler farmers for their treatment of the Khoi. Finally, I provide a link of Van der Kemp’s civil rights activism, to that of the British anti-slave trade network and its discourse on civil rights in Britain at the time. (In this article I do not deal with the significance of Van der Kemp’s post-conversionist views and publications, vis-à-vis his ‘enlightenment’ views and scholarship dating from the pre- and post-deist phases of his life.)

Article

The Khoisan people from Southern Africa maintained ancient lifestyles as hunter-gatherers or pastoralists up to modern times, though little else is known about their early history. Here we infer early demographic histories of modern humans using whole-genome sequences of five Khoisan individuals and one Bantu speaker. Comparison with a 420 K SNP data set from worldwide individuals demonstrates that two of the Khoisan genomes from the Ju/’hoansi population contain exclusive Khoisan ancestry. Coalescent analysis shows that the Khoisan and their ancestors have been the largest populations since their split with the non-Khoisan population ~100–150 kyr ago. In contrast, the ancestors of the non-Khoisan groups, including Bantu-speakers and non-Africans, experienced population declines after the split and lost more than half of their genetic diversity. Paleoclimate records indicate that the precipitation in southern Africa increased ~80–100 kyr ago while west-central Africa became drier. We hypothesize that these climate differences might be related to the divergent-ancient histories among human populations.

Article

This thesis focusses on some of the revival processes of the Korana identity linked to indigeneity as opposed to traditional leadership as espoused by the Bill on traditional leadership. It concludes that Chapter 12, of the Constitution of South Africa of 1996, which recognise the role of traditional leaders in society is being challenged by the re-entering of groups like the Korana and others claiming recognition on their status as indigenous people.

Theses & Dissertations

I propose that the notions of segment and phoneme be enriched to allow some concurrent clustering, even in classical theories. My main application is the Khoisan language !Xóõ, where treating clicks as phonemes concurrent with phonemic accompaniments allows the inventory size to be radically reduced, so solving the problems of many unsupported contrasts. I show also how phonological processes of !Xóõ can be described more elegantly in this setting, with support from metalinguistic evidence and production-task experiments. I describe a new allophony in !Xóõ. I go on to discuss other applications, some rather speculative, of the concept of concurrent phoneme. The article also provides a comprehensive review of the segmental phonetics and phonology of !Xóõ, together with previous analyses.

Article

This doctoral thesis presents a description of Sandawe, a Khoisan language spoken by approximately 60 000 speakers in Dodoma Region, Tanzania. The study presents an analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language, as well as a sample of four texts. The data for this dissertation were gathered by the author during fieldwork in the area where the language is spoken. The language has a rich phonology, with sets of lateral fricatives and affricates, ejectives, and fifteen clicks. The nominal domain is characterized by the absence of regular number marking. The verbal domain, on the other hand, shows various ways of number marking, which can express participant plurality and pluractionality. The study further provides a comprehensive description of the morphology and semantics of verbal derivation, such as iterative, factitive, causative and middle stems, and verbal case markers that introduce an additional pronominal object. Sandawe has various types of clitics, notably subject/modality markers and mediative clitics, which have a variable position in the clause. A grammar of Sandawe is of relevance to specialists in Khoisan studies as well as to general linguists and typologists interested in number marking, verbal derivation, and clitics.

Theses & Dissertations

In 1864 Wilhelm Bleek published a collection of Khoi narratives titled Reynard the Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Fables and Tales. This paper critically examines this foundational event in South African literary history, arguing that it entailed a Victorian circumscription of the Khoisan imagination, containing its libidinal and transgressive energies within the generic limits of the naïve European children’s folktale. Bleek’s theories of language and race are examined as providing the context for his editorial approach to Khoi narratives in which the original ‘nakedness’ was written out. The extent of Bleek’s censorship of indigenous orature becomes visible when comparing his ‘fables’ to a largely unknown corpus of Khoi tales, collected by the German ethnographer Leonhard Schultze during the Nama genocide in the early 20th century. The paper compares these collections of oral narratives, and suggests that this has implications for the way the famous Bleek and Lloyd /Xam archive was subsequently constituted in the 1870s. Wilhelm Bleek’s interventions in civilizing the Khoisan imagination marks a move away from a potentially Rabelaisian trajectory in South African literature through which the Khoisan could be represented and represent themselves. In admitting a sanitized indigenous orature into the colonial literary order, it is argued that Bleek helped to create a restrictive cultural politics in South Africa from which the country is yet to emerge fully.

Article

The Khoisan people are one of the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa. Botswana has the greatest diversity of these autochthonous communities. As ethnic minorities, they are characterized in the main by small numbers, aboriginality, and necessitousness compared to other ethnic communities who readily engage modern socioeconomic dynamics of the country. They are generally marginalized and their ethnic and social identity is completely eclipsed because in Botswana they are lumped together in cultural and language development with the main society and this has only exacerbated their plight as they are reeling under assimilation and marginalization. This situation has the effect of ethno-linguistic endangerment as they lose their individual ethnic and linguistic identities. Their agitations for ethno-linguistic preservation rights have been put in the lime-light by Human Rights NGOs. This paper examines the condition of these people within the current monolithic cultural framework, which has the effect of annihilating the Khoisan. It argues that handling the Khoisan issues within a multicultural discourse framework would be the most palpable way to cater for their continued existence as indigenous communities. It is through their languages, their preserved ethnicity, and within a framework of multicultural discourses that they can best communicate their identity through their culture.

Article

This paper focuses on the imagery of state and nation in post-apartheid South Africa, and more specifically on the use of ‘Bushmen’ or ‘San’ in the symbolic reconstruction of national unity through South Africa’s new motto and Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms is based on a redrawing of a figure from rock art, while the motto !Ke e: /xarra //ke (officially translated ‘Diverse people unite’) comes from the extinct /Xam language once spoken in the Northern Cape. The choice of the figure and of the language of the motto were deliberate, and explicitly evoke the idea of Bushman as ancestral man and original South African, while the meaning of the motto (much criticized in contemporary South Africa) is shown here to be much richer than previously known.

Article

The study demonstrates for the first time the probable genetic unity of the KHOE, JU and UJ -T AA groups of southern African Khoesan, by means of the first full-scale application of a conventional comparative approach. It is shown in the first stage that there are repeated cross-SAK resemblances in the morphology of those verbs most frequently enlisted for grammatical purposes in the context of multi-verb constructions; and that these languages furthermore display multiple similarities 'horizontally' across their specifier systems. where the resemblances are often also visible 'vertically', i.e. down the lists of possible exponents. These structural affinities are sufficiently thoroughgoing to warrant a working surmise that the SAK languages might be genetically related. In the second stage, cross-SAK comparative material from various sources is presented in the form of arrays. The tabulations reveal a range of repeating alternations involving the basic positional click types, with some associated patternings of the possible click 'accompaniments'. The fact that the alternations are iterated and do not necessarily involve identities makes it more likely, when combined with the weight of the structural evidence, that the items in the comparative series are inherited than borrowed. Reference:

Theses & Dissertations

In this paper I draw on my findings and those of historical and recent Khoisan ethnography to attempt to explain how these southern African ‘Khoi’ and San peoples relate to wind and how the environmental phenomenon has informed their epistemology and ontology. I begin by fleshing out the knowledge and experience of wind among these past and recent hunter-gatherers and, pointing to continuity in wind relationships and the ideas that stem from them, I go on to demonstrate how wind weaves into Khoisan understandings of the body and illness. Despite extensive interest in Bushman healing, anthropologists have overwhelmingly concentrated on the ‘trance’ healing dance. My findings suggest this partiality has obscured the wider healing context in which the dance operates. Exploring the wider context, including massage, ‘medicinal cuts’, and witchcraft, reveals that the ‘potency’ conceived as central to the healing dance is, in certain contexts, equivalent to overlapping ideas of wind, arrows, and smell. Examination of the ethnography reveals that a number of the associations I make between wind and potency have been partially recognized in specific Khoisan contexts but, because comparative studies of Khoisan are difficult and unpopular, these similarities have gone largely unnoticed.

Article

The thesis explores the relationship of contemporary Namibian Khoisan healing practice and ideas, to a history of Khoisan healing from an indeterminable pre-colonial past to the present. My focus is one principally of ideas and understanding as opposed to practice, because of a perceived need to highlight, and to some extent attempt to redress, a very partial historical and contemporary literature on Khoisan healing.

Theses & Dissertations

This article explores Khoisan representation in museums exhibits.

Article

This thesis investigates the tonal system of Khoekhoegowab or Khoekhoe, a Central Khoesaan language spoken in Namibia, and formerly known as Nama/Damara. The data for the research, particularly on lexical tonology, is drawn from a lexicographic project which was instituted by the author in 1981. Observations are based on a total perusal of the near-complete database by means of computer. Chapter 2, following on an introductory chapter, presents an instrumental analysis of the surface tone of radicals, on the grounds of which a four-tone system previously established by the author is refined and defended against other systems. Arguments are presented in favour of a register system as opposed to a contour system, i.e. that a tonal melody consists of a sequence of two level tonemes. In addition to the six major citation melodies and their sandhi versions, some residual melodies are identified, which are due to former depressor segments. An underlying feature system is then established, which is able to account for the existence of subsidiary melodies and some perturbational behaviour, showing that these are due to tonogenesis typologically akin to that of South-East Asian languages. Chapter 3 deals with the formation of compound words and derivations in the realm of lexical tonology. The occurrence of the different perturbational processes is investigated, which, next to regular sandhi changes i.a. involve flip-flop rules as known from Chinese. Unlike the neighbouring Bantu languages, Khoekhoe uses paradigmatic displacement of melodies in cyclic application, rather than syntagmatic feature-changing rules. Chapter 4 presents an overview of the post-lexical tonology with regard to the major syntactic structures. It is demonstrated that Khoekhoe corroborates a universal, namely that tonal domains coincide with syntactic domains that commence with a double left bracket (( in a bracketed representation of an IC structure. In Khoekhoe the leftmost constituent receives the citation melody, while subsequent constituents receive the sandhi melody. Khoekhoe tonology has semantic as well as syntactic and derivational functions.

Theses & Dissertations

This essay will examine some of the early religious, political, and economic 'uses' made of mission Christianity by the descendants of the old Khoikhoi communities of the Cape, and those who came to be associated with them, ultimately subsumed under the rubric 'coloured'. Essentially, I want to know why some people converted, why others found mission stations a useful base even if they did not themselves convert, and how Christianity interacted with older beliefs.

Article

This book deals with those two groups of natives in South Africa who have suffered most at the hands of the European settlers: the Bushmen and the Hottentots. The first part describes the country, history and physical characteristics of the Khoisan, the generic name used for the Bushmen and the Hottentots. The main part is devoted to a description of the respective cultures of the Bushmen and the Hottentots, including their social organization, social habits and customs, economic and political life, religion and magic, and art and knowledge. The final part is an analysis of the Khoisan languages.

Book

An ethnography of the Khoikhoi people, their language and religous beliefs. At the time, the author through this and his other work contributed to the "westerners" understanding of the Khoi and San people.

Book

In 1873, J.M. Orpen obtained the services of a San guide named Qing. As they travelled through the Maluti mountains, Orpen copied rock paintings and Qing explained what they meant. This article Orpen's recounting of this experience.

Article