The Lie of 1652. Patric Tariq Mellet
more reasons why the persistent usage of the term ‘Khoisan’ by some linguists must be confronted. The first reason, as we have seen, relates to the roles of Schultze and Bleek in the racial framing and race classification systems in South Africa and how the term is rooted in ‘racism’.
The second issue is one that has been frequently raised by the San peoples in rejecting the term ‘Khoisan’. They argue that prefixing of San with Khoe plays into theories and practices of assimilating ‘Khoisan’ as one people, with San subjugated under Khoe. This is stated unequivocally in the only book to date written by a collective of San people, Voices of the San58. The 17 authors were supported by the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa and Namibia (WIMSA), which has a governing board made up of 12 representatives of San communities from Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Angola, led by Colin Tsima (chairperson), Kagisano Molapsi (vice-chairperson) and Billies Pamo (secretary), as well as the Kuru Family of Organisations in Botswana. The book puts it as follows: ‘The term Khoesan (or Khoesaan) has not been used as the San object to being grouped together with the presently more powerful pastoralist KhoeKhoen for academic and linguistic reasons.’ The stand-alone term ‘San’, pronounced ‘Saahn’, was first adopted by San representatives in Namibia and then reiterated at successive WIMSA AGMs since 1997 as the least derogatory term in meaning and history.59
A third reason for not using the term ‘Khoisan’ and similar versions is that during the period 1716 to 1880, as covered by Adhikari,60 Penn,61 Szalay,62 Ross63 and other researchers, information presented among other notes on genocide against the San shows that collaborator Khoe who had survived conquest by the Dutch made up 60 per cent of the cavalry militia of the Dutch-led General Commando, and at other times had their own independent retaliatory commandos made up of 100 per cent Khoe militia that were effectively mobile killing squads. Some Khoe were forcibly conscripted into the commandos, but most were not. In fact, Khoe who refused to be conscripted into commandos formed well-known resister bands under the leadership of David Stuurman in the Eastern Cape or joined Orlam groups in the northwest Kai !Gariep district. Among the aberrations there were practices such as the taking of San women and girls as concubines by Khoe militia.
The Orlam Khoe groups, Korana and Griqua who formed commandos totally independent of colonial rule to attack the San also have a well-recorded history of persecution, gratuitous violence, atrocities and extermination of various San peoples.64 This is also noted by the authors of the Voices of the San.65 In coming to grips with this period, it is important to point out that, while on the one side there were the collaborator Khoe who acted with great brutality against the San (also against Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and resister Khoe), on the other side were the resister Khoe who often made common cause with the San and fiercely resisted the European onslaught against the San. Likewise, the resister Khoe made common cause with the Xhosa. Inversely, independent collaborator Khoe supported the British and Boers against the Xhosa and resister Khoe. Among the resisters there were also small bands of Khoe refugees who temporarily became part of San communities.
This division of collaborators and resisters continued well beyond 1880 right through to the apartheid era and into post-apartheid South Africa. It is important for us in purging the pain of the past, and for healing, to acknowledge the greatest imposition of colonialism on Africans – the transfer of a culture of violence and aberration of a kind previously unknown to the San and Khoe into the behaviours of significant sectors of our forebears.
I will never forget how, on a visit to one of the largest slave-trading sites in Ghana, Cape Coast Castle, the guide started the sacred tour of the dungeons by asking us to take note that their society at Cape Coast ask the enslaved ancestors and their descendants for forgiveness for the role of African forebears in collaborating in the slave trade. It was a form of institutionalised cleansing ceremony before talking about the painful slavery experience and passing through the dungeons where the spirits of the enslaved forebears are visited by descendants.
I believe that it is a fundamental part of our own healing to do the same. There is no sector of our African society in South Africa that was absolutely free of collaboration with colonialism and apartheid. Even today we can see neocolonial collaboration in oppression in many forms within our contemporary society.
An erroneous and dominant prefixing of ‘San’ with ‘Khoe’ is a painful reminder to the San of being hunted down by various Khoe formations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It also conjures up memories of Schultze and Bofinger cutting up dead bodies and experimenting on terrified Nama forebears. The San formations have often pointed out this contradiction, and it is time for the sake of our own healing that we acknowledge and cleanse ourselves of all wrongs of the past.
The well-documented assertion of Khoe conflict with the San in the above-mentioned period should not be airbrushed out of history as an inconvenient truth propagated by neocolonial revisions of history. I raise it here as being an integral part of critical examination of the use of terminology and linguistic analysis. This theme of distinguishing two different traditions among the Khoe, of collaboration on the one side and resistance on the other, will be elaborated on in the chapter on wars of resistance.
Foundation peoples
In the sections that follow we will look at what can be regarded as the three ‘foundation peoples’ in the peopling of southern Africa and what would later become South Africa. Over the period 100–1850 CE almost every new social group, community or state society that emerged with a distinct identity in South Africa would involve some ancestry of the original San people, Khoe people and Kalanga people. Whether today one sees oneself as Venda, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Griqua, ‘Coloured’, Hessequa, Tswana, Pedi, Camissa, Swati, Korana, Nama, Ndebele, Shangaan, Tsonga or any of the other modern-day social formations or ethnicities, one can be sure that one has some San, Khoe or Kalanga ancestors.
The San foundation people
In the peopling of southern Africa over the past 3 000 years we can identify three families of ‘foundation peoples’. The first were those whom we collectively call the San peoples. The second were the proto-Khoe peoples from whom emerged the Khoe south of the Kai !Gariep, among others across southern Africa. The Khoe herder-pastoralist culture was probably the most influential culture across southern Africa in the foundations of the peopling of the region. The third influence was those cultures that archaeologists such as Huffman66 and others refer to as Ziwa-Zhizo-Kalanga peoples.
As we have seen earlier in this chapter, the San emerged over the past 10 000 years in the region through descendency from a long line of Homo sapiens ancestors and the progression to Homo sapiens sapiens. Today there are about 20 diverse San communities that still survive in six Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Back in time there would have been possibly a few hundred micro-groups of Homo sapiens who evolved into social formations or communities that would broadly fall under the umbrella term that ethnographers and anthropologists first labelled as San. Each of these societies had their own names, as do the surviving groups today.
According to WIMSA67 and to James Suzman68 on behalf of the Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia, which was commissioned by the European Union (EU) to complete a Regional Assessment of the Status of the San in Southern Africa, the San communities across the six countries are made up of the following peoples and their subclans: !Xun; !Kung; Hai||om; Ju||hoansi; X’ao||’aesi; Naro; N|u; ǂKhomani; Khwe; ||Xegwi; !Xõó; |Gui; Khute; ǂHõã; Tsila; |Gana; Deti; Tshua; Tyua; ||Anikhwe; and Bugakhwe.
There were other historic communities who had been wiped out by genocide in South Africa, such as the |Xam, |Xun, Ga !ne and others.69 Descendants of these groups have largely been assimilated into rural Khoe communities, but among some older people in a few communities they will still proudly recall their San ancestors – the |Xam. The San in South Africa are said to number about 4 700 according to the study by Robert Hitchcock70 in 1996, and 4 350 according to the EU study coordinated by James Suzman.71 Those surviving San communities in South Africa are the !Xun, Khwe, N|u, ǂKhomani (!Kung) and ||Xegwi. Across the six countries the San number about 100 000.72 The Hitchcock73 study of 1996 puts the total regional figure at 107 071 while the EU assessment coordinated by James Suzman74 puts the figure at 88 025.
According to a study by De Jongh,75 apart from the San who are represented in WIMSA, there