The Lie of 1652. Patric Tariq Mellet
inform us about some of the first new events in the second millennium. Mlambo and Parsons155 explain how pottery and ceramics found at various sites show us how social history unfolds and can be tracked. A site just beyond Phalaborwa that has been identified as Icon culture dates back to 1250 CE. Three new Moloko pottery cultures followed Icon from 1500 CE: the Letsibogo culture of the North-Sotho peoples; the Olifantspoort culture of the early Rolong Tswana led by Morolong and South Sotho people in Gauteng and the southern North West Province; and the Madikwe culture of the southern Tswana people in the North West Province. Further to the west, the Eiland culture of the Kgalagari people unfolded from 1300 CE in the eastern Kalahari. With the Rolong, Phofu, Kwena, Kgatla and other clans, a useful tool in tracking their social history would be by taking oral tradition and totem cultures on board in one’s explorations.
Mlambo and Parsons156 note that ‘Tswana’ was a self-identification term used by these clans in recognising each other to be related and explains that Tswana chiefs and headmen married their first cousins as ‘great wives’, thereby keeping big cattle herds in the family. They also married non-Tswana women as junior wives, producing daughters whose marriages sealed alliances with subject headmen who paid cattle as bride-wealth. The cattle were ‘loaned’ back to the subject headmen as long as they were loyal. Tswana rulers brought non-Tswana subjects together as multi-cultural subordinate ‘wards’ within villages.
The Ntsoanatsatsi culture (meaning rising sun/origins/ancestral font) emerged from 1450 CE, giving birth to the Fokeng people.157 This was a mix of Kalanga/Mambo/Rozvi-influenced Nguni speakers from across the Drakensberg who came together with Khoe, San and South Sotho people with Kalanga origins. The hybrid building styles of these people influenced many different social groups in South Africa, and this symbolic built environment offers clues to the micro social history of these peoples. Tlokwa clans among the Tswana and South Sotho can be traced to the intermarriage of the Fokeng with Kgatla Tswana.
Further westwards, crossing over the Drakensberg from the east, long before the Mfecane there were the people of Musi and of Langa who laid the foundations of the early Ndebele. In the course of time and a complex history, the Ndebele would split into three different societies: two in South Africa and one in Zimbabwe that was founded by Mzilakazi, rebel leader of the Khumalos. One Ndebele state in South Africa remained close to the Zulu and the other was closer to the Sotho-Tswana peoples.
The Soutpansberg territory was occupied by a mixture of people associated with the Icon pottery culture and the Ngona Shona-speaking people who settled among them. The Tavashena pottery culture in the Soutpansberg from 1450 CE can be attributed to the infusions of other Shona migrants fleeing conflict in the Rozvi-dominated Zimbabwe arena. In time the Singo people in this region established the Venda kingdom after 1690.
There were several other cultures such as the Malapati Gumanye, Klingbeil, Maguga, Eiland, Diamant, Baratani, Kgalagari and Toutswe cultures, all of which denote pottery, ceramics, building and language cultures. They also have roots in San, Khoe and Kalanga, as well as the old Urewe – Nkope and Kwale – cultures and the Kalundu culture.
These few broad strokes of history highlighting the cultures and peoples of the western regions of South Africa only present the tip of an iceberg of complex history and heritage. Further scholarly work will show just how much these cultures cross-fertilised all other cultures in South Africa. My intention here has simply been to introduce this multifaceted past. Circular migratory drifts over long periods of time interconnected all southern African societies, leaving nobody untouched.
As the Khoe pastoralists and other agro-pastoralists moved into territories already occupied for thousands of years by different San peoples, rock paintings of the San are one of the means for gauging what occurred in those times. The interpretations indicate that at times there was peaceful coexistence and at other times there were troubles. The San were sometimes incorporated into the new formations and at other times found themselves on the margins, always having to give way to the more powerful. At the Kai !Gariep (or Orange River) territory, the Sotho ancestors, the Xhosa ancestors, the Khoe and the River San such as the different Gai, !Eis and Koa communities coexisted in different locations along the river in early times (500-800 CE). This was not to last.158 Some communities drifted apart and moved further into the Cape. They took a range of cultural influences with them and then crafted their own unique identities and cultures too.
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The following chapters will look at some of the most pertinent struggles involving the Cape indigenous African communities – the |Xam (Cape San), the various Khoe communities, and Xhosa communities. The Cape Khoe were those who first clashed with interlopers in defence of their land and livelihood rights, initially with early European travellers who infringed on their rights and then with the Dutch colonial settlement. The |Xam put the highest premium on their culture of ‘total freedom’ and made the ultimate stand of ‘freedom or death’ in their defence against the genocide committed against them. These are among the most important points to be exposed in the approach of this narrative challenging the lie of 1652. All of what will be explored is part of the legacy of trauma that descendants wrestle with today.
Yvette Abrahams159 puts it clearly and succinctly when describing generationally transmitted trauma in our society today as having three causes:
… the original violence of the dysjuncture [sic]; the memory-triggered trauma of that violence; without healing tools, we develop dysfunctional responses to dysjunctures. Although they add to our problems, dysfunctional responses work. We did, we do, survive. It is not enough for a revolution. Colonialism happened. Dysjunctures remain … There are times when survival itself becomes resistance. In the face of loss so complete, and so total, life itself becomes an act of resistance.
This chapter has not attempted to present a definitive history of 1000 BCE to 1652 but rather draws on my reading of many different social science contributions, with many competing views, to present perspectives on a range of themes. All these themes together frame a different approach to the colonial and apartheid version of the peopling of southern Africa.
The intention of these discussions and perspectives is not to present a new ‘authentic’ version of history, but rather to disrupt the dominant colonial paradigm of thinking about southern Africa and to promote exploration of the past that can build consciousness leading to reclaiming a trajectory of rising above adversity through acts of resistance. There are so many fascinating, well-researched new publications and literally thousands of unpublished works that are now easily available to the public through the internet. The bottom line is that the overwhelming evidence shows that South Africa was not an uninhabited land, was not a region of the world without civilisations, and was not subject to a mass invasion of an alien race that can be equated with the European invasion of 1652 and its colonisation of the region as is presented by ‘firstism’ claims.
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