tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/san-19212/articles
San – The Conversation
2024-02-12T14:14:08Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221767
2024-02-12T14:14:08Z
2024-02-12T14:14:08Z
The San people of southern Africa: where ethics codes for researching indigenous people could fail them
<p>There is a long and often complicated history of researchers studying Indigenous people. In 1999, the education scholar Linda Tuhiwai-Smith, in her book <a href="https://www.google.nl/books/edition/Decolonizing_Methodologies/Nad7afStdr8C?hl=en&gbpv=0">Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples</a>, emphasised the colonial character of much research. She warned that it</p>
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<p>brings with it a new wave of exploration, discovery, exploitation and appropriation.</p>
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<p>Well into the <a href="https://www.google.nl/books/edition/Anthropology_and_the_Bushman/bUUHEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0;%20https://www.google.nl/books/edition/The_Bushman_Myth/BPZKDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0;%20https://www.google.nl/books/edition/Ethnologists_in_Camouflage/qGhezwEACAAJ?hl=nl">20th century</a>, researchers depicted groups like the Indigenous San of southern Africa in a racist fashion, fixating on their physical characteristics and writing of their “savage” or “primitive” state. </p>
<p>Historically, many researchers did not care about their study participants’ consent or agency, or how they could benefit from the research, for instance through improving their position in society. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-im-righting-the-wrongs-of-my-early-research-and-sharing-my-scientific-data-with-local-communities-191713">Why I'm righting the wrongs of my early research and sharing my scientific data with local communities </a>
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<p>This has gradually shifted over the past 50 years. Global organisations such as the Ethical Research Partnership <a href="https://trust-project.eu/">TRUST</a>, the <a href="https://americananthro.org/about/policies/statement-on-ethics/">American Anthropological Association</a> and most, if not all, credible academic institutions, have created ethical rules and guidelines to protect vulnerable populations from exploitation and promote their role in research.</p>
<p>But, as I and a group of fellow ethnographers, together with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/San">San people</a> from all over southern Africa, show in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02101-0">a recent paper</a>, such ethical guidelines have flaws. </p>
<p>Today there are <a href="https://peabody.harvard.edu/video-traces-and-tracks-journeys-san#:%7E:text=But%20just%20to%20give%20you,%2C%20Botswana%2C%20and%20South%20Africa.">about 130,000 San people</a> in Angola, Botswana, <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6096/">Namibia</a>, South Africa and Zimbabwe. They were historically nomadic hunter gatherers; in the past century or so their lives have become more settled, based on agriculture and wage labour.</p>
<p>The pitfalls we identified in the guidelines manifest mainly in three ways: by oppressing vulnerable groups; by being ambiguous about potential benefits to the participants; and by being difficult to follow in practice.</p>
<h2>Three issues</h2>
<p>There are several reasons why ethical conduct in scientific research is so important. Ethical rules are there to prevent what’s known as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01423-6">“ethics dumping”</a>, in which unethical research practices are used in lower-income countries that would not normally be allowed elsewhere. They also guard against <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01423-6">“helicopter research”</a>, when scientists from high-income countries conduct their research without involving local scientists or communities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/african-ubuntu-can-deepen-how-research-is-done-190076">African ubuntu can deepen how research is done</a>
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<p>In 2017 a <a href="https://trust-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/San-Code-of-RESEARCH-Ethics-Booklet-final.pdf">code of conduct</a> was created by academics and San leaders working with and for the South African San Institute, the South African San Council and TRUST. The <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02101-0">paper</a> discussed in this article, as well as <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/hgr.2023.4">one other</a>, analysed problems with this code and similar instruments, and individual contracts unique to a particular piece of research.</p>
<p>These were:</p>
<p><strong>1. Oppression of opinions:</strong> Authorities (often NGOs) sometimes want to push their agenda by keeping unwelcome ideas out of the research. In South Africa, a colleague of mine encountered dubious gatekeepers who claimed to represent the community she hoped to study and who wanted to dictate whom she could interview.</p>
<p>An instrument intended to promote ethical research was used to exclude particular people, or their ideas. </p>
<p><strong>2. An over-emphasis on immediate benefits:</strong> Most codes of conduct and contracts include a clause that research must be “beneficial”. This ignores the essence of what most scientific research is: fundamental and not applied. Fundamental knowledge is not immediately practical but it is crucial to make research potentially beneficial. </p>
<p>I have worked on <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3197/np.2019.230104">research</a> about a land claim by the San in northern Namibia. Knowledge similar to the sort reflected in my research <a href="https://doi.org/10.3366/ajicl.2020.0339">has helped San groups</a> in other parts of southern Africa <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BieseleJu/1000">regain or retain land</a>. Will my research do the same? I have no idea, because that takes time – the research doesn’t instantly benefit the participants.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-steps-every-researcher-should-take-to-ensure-participants-are-not-harmed-and-are-fully-heard-191430">Five steps every researcher should take to ensure participants are not harmed and are fully heard</a>
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<p>A focus on benefits also ignores different interests and perceptions within communities. A benefit for some may be detrimental to others. For instance, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280233612_Local_impacts_of_community-based_tourism_in_southern_Africa">research</a> can support wildlife management and the creation of tourism jobs for some. But these activities may constrain other livelihoods in the same community. In a <a href="https://journals.lww.com/coas/fulltext/2017/15020/ju__hoansi_lodging_in_a_namibian_conservancy_.2.aspx">Namibian case study</a>, some San complained about restrictions on hunting, small-scale farming, or keeping livestock. </p>
<p><strong>3. Practical limitations:</strong> In southern Africa it is often unclear in advance whom you need to contact to discuss and sign something, and what the legal status of codes and contracts is. In our experiences, e-mails often go unanswered. Many local San do not even know – or, in some cases, care – that these instruments exist. For most, researchers’ needs and aims are not a priority in their ordinary lives. </p>
<p>In such cases research codes and contracts mainly legitimise the researchers’ and gatekeepers’ role in research, but not necessarily that of the people being studied. </p>
<p>This is not an exhaustive list of potential issues. Others include the imposition of a red tape culture, illiteracy among participants and a lack of clear consequences if researchers behave unethically even after signing a contract.</p>
<h2>Paper is no panacea</h2>
<p>We are not opposed to instruments that can empower research participants, but they are not a panacea. Researchers need to scrutinise such codes’ inherent and complex challenges. They also need to put collaboration at the heart of their work.</p>
<p>Examples of such scrutiny and collaboration already exist. Some San groups, such as the <a href="https://anadjeh.wordpress.com/">||Ana-Djeh San Trust</a>, have created initiatives to increase their participation in research, including community training to raise awareness about research. In such cases they like to collaborate with researchers they trust, normally because they have been in contact with them for many years already. Such trust is at the heart of good collaborations and is, we would argue, much more important than paper agreements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221767/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stasja Koot does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There are several reasons why ethical conduct in scientific research is so important.
Stasja Koot, Assistant Professor, Wageningen University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211604
2023-08-31T14:09:55Z
2023-08-31T14:09:55Z
How our ancestors viewed the sky: new film explores both indigenous and modern cosmology
<p>Something remarkable is happening in a remote part of South Africa’s Northern Cape province, in a semi-desert area called the Karoo. In the past 15 years 64 radio receiving dishes have appeared on the landscape. These constitute the <a href="https://www.sarao.ac.za/gallery/meerkat/">MeerKAT telescope</a>, a precursor to the <a href="https://www.skao.int/en/about-us/skao">Square Kilometre Array Observatory</a> (SKAO), which will – when it is completed and fully functional in 2030 – be the world’s largest radio telescope.</p>
<p>The SKAO will receive signals emanating from the dark regions between the stars and galaxies. This data, studied by <a href="https://www.skao.int/en/resources/what-radio-astronomy">radio astronomers</a>, has the capacity to inform us about dark matter and could change our conception of the universe irrevocably.</p>
<p>In his new, award-winning documentary, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2g7eGjWGCk">!Aitsa</a>, filmmaker Dane Dodds explores the intellectual background and science of the SKAO alongside indigenous conceptions of the cosmos held by ancient <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/">ǀXam San people</a> and their Afrikaans-speaking descendants living in the Karoo today. As the film’s advisor I saw my task as bringing into focus the hidden assumptions that must be recognised in any encounter between knowledge, traditions and cosmology.</p>
<p>!Aitsa (a South African exclamation of praise or surprise) explores the SKAO’s approach to understanding the universe through big data made comprehensible by the techniques of empirical science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and instrumentation. The film also examines <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08949468.2023.2168962?journalCode=gvan20">Karoo star-lore</a> as it is shared and spread by an interwoven tapestry of oral traditions. Conventional ideas about the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2018.1447374">nature of science</a> are challenged and the dominant structures of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2020.1850626">knowledge creation</a> are questioned as a result.</p>
<p>To the ǀXam and San people, being in the world as a person includes “the sky’s things” – an understanding of and deep connection with the cosmos. In an age progressively dominated by digital and automated knowledge it was important that the film hold space for this notion.</p>
<h2>Inflected with star-lore</h2>
<p>Through <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dBUudaAAAAAJ&hl=en">my own research</a> in the fields of archaeoacoustics, rock art and oral tradition I have come to understand that there is a profound multiplicity of connections within the ǀXam knowledge tradition. In a ǀXam conception of the universe there is no alienating distance between inner and outer, person, stars and space. That’s because their cultural understanding of reciprocities encourages ecological and cosmic connection. </p>
<p>!Aitsa strives to express astronomy as a lived-body experience. One person interviewed in the film says:</p>
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<p>When I look up into the sky and look at how my star is positioned, and look up at the star’s direction, I know which way to walk.</p>
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<p>Another describes the Milky Way as being “right at the centre of a person’s spirituality.”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z2g7eGjWGCk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for !Aitsa.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Animism and animation</h2>
<p>The instruments of modern science deliver facts, innovation and technical advancement. But all this comes with societal entanglements and colonial dynamics, a part of the <a href="https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se00.htm">intellectual history</a> of scientific endeavour that assumes authority and stands aloof from the kinds of sensory perceptions and lived experience that are central to ǀXam San cosmology.</p>
<p>!Aitsa investigates a modern pre-disposition that considers <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/200061">animistic knowledge</a> and reasoning as inherently flawed. Animism is the notion that any living thing has a distinct spiritual essence. It’s a mistake to dismiss ǀXam cultural expression as a mythology that is intrinsically animistic and therefore quaint.</p>
<p>The ǀXam and San people are known as “<a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/People_of_the_Eland.html?id=D_wwAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">the people of the eland</a>” and so, to illustrate the way their beliefs animate “things”, an eland antelope is a key character in !Aitsa. The animal’s presence compels the viewer to consider the importance of relationship and relatedness. </p>
<h2>Soundscapes</h2>
<p>Sound plays a crucial role in the film, and was another opportunity to showcase an element of |Xam San culture. The soundtrack (you can hear a preview <a href="https://soundcloud.com/s_i_l_v_a_n/aitsa-film-ost-preview">here</a>) draws on composer Simon Kohler’s musical creativity and the archaeoacoustic research I have done on lithophones, otherwise known as gong rocks, which produce sounds not dissimilar to that of a bell when it is struck.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-music-of-an-ancient-rock-painting-was-brought-to-life-185475">How the music of an ancient rock painting was brought to life</a>
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<p>Sound is the most ephemeral and transitory of presences but in the film the gong rock sound is a thread linking voices and images, past and present. Collecting the sound required two trips into the Karoo. There we recorded a variety of rock sounds – deep bass-vibrations through to light metallic tinkles. We brought these recordings back into the Cape Town sound studio where the sound was “composed” to create the soundtrack that viewers will hear throughout the film.</p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.aitsafilm.com/">!Aitsa</a> had its world premiere at <a href="https://cphdox.dk/film/aitsa/">CPH:DOX</a> in Denmark in 2023, with sold out screenings and <a href="https://mubi.com/en/lists/cph-dox-2023-best-to-worst">rave reviews</a>. The film won the Grand Prize at Estonia’s <a href="https://www.chaplin.ee/">Pärnu International Film Festival</a> and was voted Best of the Fest at the Encounters Film Festival in Cape Town. !Aitsa is selected to screen in Canada at <a href="https://planetinfocus.org/">planetinfocus</a> and in October 2023 at the <a href="https://psff.cz/">Prague Science Film Fest</a> and is up for selection at the <a href="https://www.idfa.nl/en">idfa Festival</a> in the Netherlands in November.</p>
<p>In 2024 !Aitsa will go on a road trip, visiting remote places in the Karoo where the film will be screened to audiences who do not have the means for or access to cinemas. </p>
<p>We also hope to take the film to Australia so that the Wajarri Yamaji Aboriginal people can see, listen and connect with their counterparts in the Karoo. This is an important connection because the Wajarri Yamaji live in the Murchison region in Western Australia where the low-frequency component of the SKAO is <a href="https://www.skao.int/en/partners/skao-members/133/australia">currently under construction</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Rusch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
To the ǀXam and San people, being in the world as a person includes “the sky’s things” - an understanding of and deep connection with the cosmos.
Neil Rusch, Research Associate, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207551
2023-07-13T15:25:19Z
2023-07-13T15:25:19Z
San and Khoe skeletons: how a South African university sought to restore dignity and redress the past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536517/original/file-20230710-23-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C144%2C2326%2C2008&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A facial reconstruction of one of the Sutherland Nine, a woman named Saartje.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reconstruction by Dr Kathryn Smith/Professor Caroline Wilkinson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been nearly 100 years since the skeletonised remains of nine people were removed from their graves on a farm near the town of Sutherland in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. They were donated to the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) anatomy department by Carel Gert Coetzee, who had unearthed them and was a medical student at the university.</p>
<p>The remains belonged to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoisan">San and Khoekhoe people</a>, two groups indigenous to South Africa. Their families were not consulted about the removal and donation. </p>
<p>This, sadly, was not unusual for the time. Anatomy departments and museums around the world <a href="http://www.northern-cape.gov.za/index.php/component/content/article?id=769:reburial-of-mr-and-mrs-klaas-and-trooi-pienaar">collected</a> human skeletal remains during the colonial era and into the first half of the 20th century. They were displayed in museums or studied for scientific purposes, often with <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-and-race-in-south-africa-lessons-from-old-bones-in-boxes-179774">a racial lens</a> depicting indigenous people as primitive and inferior. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-and-race-in-south-africa-lessons-from-old-bones-in-boxes-179774">Science and race in South Africa: lessons from 'old bones in boxes'</a>
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<p>I am an associate professor in what is today the Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology. In 2017, after encouragement by other museums and universities in South Africa, I completed an archival record review with the aim to identify remains that had been unethically obtained. That was when I came across the Sutherland collection; and immediately realised that, as UCT, we had a moral and ethical duty to return them to their community. </p>
<p>A public participation advisor Doreen Februarie was appointed to approach the community. Myself and UCT’s senior leadership represented by DVC Professor Loretta Feris thought they would merely request the return of the remains for reburial. They did – but first, the descendent families asked the university to study the remains with a view to learning more about their ancestors’ lives. </p>
<p>We recently <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284785">presented</a> those research results in a single, large, multi-authored publication. </p>
<p>We traced historical records, conducted archaeological field work, analysed the physical remains and conducted biomolecular analyses. Facial reconstructions were completed for eight of the nine people – now known as the Sutherland Nine. </p>
<p>The Sutherland example may set a global precedent for a process of restitution and restorative justice in combination with community-driven science. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197607695.013.29?">My hope</a> is that more curators and custodians of human skeletal remains elsewhere in the world will attempt to redress some of the wrongs of the past.</p>
<h2>Beginning the process</h2>
<p>To ensure that we reached the right people in Sutherland, a public participation advisor was chosen to lead a process with the community. By then, I had studied the archival records related to the donation; these revealed names and two surnames. The community elected those carrying the same surnames as their representatives.</p>
<p>People were shocked and dismayed at the situation. But they also wanted to know who the nine had been and how their remains came to be at the university. </p>
<p>Our answers were limited. When I realised in 2017 that they had been unethically obtained, the department placed a moratorium on studying them. The community requested that this be lifted: they wanted the remains studied to understand the people and the situation. Once this was done they wanted the remains returned so the nine could be reburied properly. </p>
<p>As our research unfolded, we decided to present the results in a single publication. The more common approach would have been to publish several individual papers, focusing on the science. We decided instead to tell the story of the Nine with science as the background. </p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-scholars-have-created-global-guidelines-for-ancient-dna-research-169284">Why scholars have created global guidelines for ancient DNA research</a>
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<p>We obtained informed consent from the community at every step of the process. The family members wrote in their own words what research they wanted and why, along with their restrictions on data use. For instance, they didn’t want any photos of the actual bones to be published – only digital renderings could be used. They also asked that the DNA sequences obtained from each of the Nine be kept private after scientific verification through peer review. And if anyone wants to conduct future research they must approach the families to begin a new process. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Members of the descendent community viewing the facial reconstructions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je’nine May</span></span>
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<p>The families of the nine were also asked whether they wanted to be listed as authors in the eventual publications. Collectively, they chose formal acknowledgement in lieu of authorship. </p>
<h2>Hard lives</h2>
<p>It is impossible to summarise all our research findings here. Overall, though, we found that life was physically hard and violent for the Sutherland Nine. One died as recently as 1913; the remaining seven died in the 1870s or 1880s. </p>
<p>When the late professor of anatomy MR Drennan took delivery of the remains in the 1920s, he also noted what little the donor knew about the people’s lives. Most adults were identified by first names (Cornelius, Klaas, Saartje, Jannetje, Voetje, Totje). For two, surnames were also specified – Cornelius Abraham and Klaas Stuurman. </p>
<p>The descendent families have collaborated with the National San Council to rename the unnamed individuals.</p>
<p>The younger boy child (four to six years of age) has been named G!ae, from the N/uu language; it translates to “springbok” – an animal symbolising the San’s pride in their culture and future prosperity. The older girl child (six to eight years of age) has been named Saa, which translates to “eland”, a sacred and spiritual animal in San culture. </p>
<p>The ninth individual did not live at the same time as the others. He was an unnamed adult said by the donor to have been buried 40 years earlier near Sutherland, although the precise burial location was unrecorded. <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284785">We used</a> radiocarbon dating to show that he actually died about 700 years ago.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that this individual was directly related to the other eight, but his remains came to the institution from the same donor. He has been named Igue We, meaning “blessing”, to symbolise acceptance and blessing by San ancestors for his reburial. </p>
<h2>Painful legacy</h2>
<p>The principal message of this collaborative approach is how community-driven research can benefit processes of restitution when grappling with painful legacy collections. </p>
<p>The reburial of the remains in Sutherland is likely to take place later this year, though no date has yet been set.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Gibbon receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa and for this research also from National Geographic.</span></em></p>
Hopefully more curators and custodians of repositories of human skeletal remains will attempt to redress some of the wrongs of the past.
Victoria Gibbon, Associate Professor in Biological Anthropology, Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202395
2023-06-21T14:57:56Z
2023-06-21T14:57:56Z
Unicorns in southern Africa: the fascinating story behind one-horned creatures in rock art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535542/original/file-20230704-21-a05eoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Images of one-horned rain-animals have been found in the northern parts of the Eastern Cape province.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy David M. Witelson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One-horned creatures are found in myths <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/land/unicorns-west-and-east">around the world</a>. Although unicorns in different cultures have little to do with one another, they have multiple associations in European thought.</p>
<p>For example, the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder <a href="https://mythicalcreatures.edwardworthlibrary.ie/unicorns/">wrote about unicorns</a> in the first century AD. The unicorn features in both <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467642">medieval Christian</a> and <a href="https://www.theclanbuchanan.com/folklore">Celtic</a> beliefs, and is <a href="https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/the-unicorn-scotlands-national-animal#:%7E:text=With%20its%20white%20horse%2Dlike,strength%20of%20their%20healing%20power">Scotland’s national animal</a>. The unicorn’s prominence in European culture spread across the globe with colonisation. </p>
<p>In southern Africa, colonial European ideas encountered older indigenous beliefs about one-horned creatures. I’ve highlighted this in a recent research <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/revisiting-the-south-african-unicorn-rock-art-natural-history-and-colonial-misunderstandings-of-indigenous-realities/5875B2016D8EB1C598C95B21D720F862">article</a> about some of the region’s rock art.</p>
<h2>Unicorns in Africa?</h2>
<p>In the age of natural science, unicorns were gradually dismissed as mythical rather than biological creatures. But some thought that real animals with single horns might yet exist in the “unexplored wilds” of Africa.</p>
<p>A famous search for such evidence was carried out by the English traveller, writer and politician <a href="https://ulverstoncouncil.org.uk/education/sir-john-barrow-1764-1848/">Sir John Barrow (1764-1848)</a>. He’d heard rumours about “unicorns” from the colonists and local people he encountered on his southern African travels. </p>
<p>One of those rumours was that unicorns were depicted in the rock paintings made by the indigenous <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/San">San (Bushman)</a> inhabitants of the region. Barrow searched unsuccessfully for them. Then, in mountains in what’s now the Eastern Cape province, he found and copied an image of a unicorn (Figure 1).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white drawing of the head and neck of a horse-like creature with a mane and one long pointed horn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532936/original/file-20230620-26-qlotji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1. Barrow’s unicorn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">After the image published by Barrow</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But many were sceptical of his claims. His published copy resembles a European engraving rather than a San rock painting. More generally, critics have argued that rock paintings of unicorns were probably inspired by side-on views of <a href="https://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_oryx.html">gemsbok or South African oryxes</a> – antelope with long, straight horns – or by <a href="https://www.helpingrhinos.org/5-species-of-rhino/">rhinos</a> (which might have one horn in India, but have two in southern Africa).</p>
<p>My research concludes that these criticisms don’t take into account several factors that have since come to light. My paper provides further support for the <a href="https://www.magzter.com/stories/Animals-and-Pets/Farmers-Weekly/The-Search-For-The-South-African-Unicorn">claims</a> that some San rock paintings do indeed depict one-horned creatures.</p>
<h2>Multiple rock art depictions</h2>
<p>Early documented rock paintings of one-horned creatures are known from <a href="http://www.sarada.co.za/#/library/stow/images/IZI-GWS-01-25D">19th</a> and <a href="http://www.sarada.co.za/#/library/tongue/images/IZI-HT-01-71HC">20th</a> century copies by British geologist <a href="https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=2746">George Stow</a> and South African teacher <a href="https://www.aluka.org/heritage/partner/XSTTONGUE">M. Helen Tongue</a>.</p>
<p>I draw attention to additional examples of rock paintings of one-horned creatures (Figures 2 and 3). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rock art painting showing buck and fish." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532953/original/file-20230620-5458-5u3n7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2. A pair of spotted one-horned animals surrounded by fish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David M. Witelson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Collectively, these show that rock paintings of one-horned creatures can’t be dismissed as naturalistic profile views of two-horned creatures, one horn covering the other.</p>
<h2>Rain-animals</h2>
<p>The second way in which my research engages with early criticisms is to draw attention to previously overlooked indigenous beliefs concerning one-horned beings.</p>
<p>The evidence suggests that the “unicorns” in indigenous mythical beliefs and rock art are actually animal-like forms of rain, known as rain-animals.</p>
<p>Tongue’s colleague and co-worker, <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/researchers.html">Dorothea Bleek</a>, compared Stow’s and Tongue’s copies and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Bushman_Paintings_Copied_by_M_Helen_Tong.html?id=9HPVxAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">suggested</a> in 1909 that rock paintings of one-horned antelope were probably kinds of rain-animals, which she knew from <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/">|Xam San (Bushman) myths</a>.</p>
<p>Rain-animals feature prominently in <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/492703532">San ritual, myth and art</a>. They take many forms, ranging from <a href="http://www.sarada.co.za/#/library/rain/images/RARI-RSA-FLO3-1R">four-legged creatures</a> to <a href="http://www.sarada.co.za/#/library/serpent/images/RARI-RSA-WAD1-2R">serpents</a>. They were ritually captured and slaughtered by San rainmakers to cause rain to fall in specific places. <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924029904830">Many |Xam myths</a> tell of the dangerous male rain, sometimes personified as the “Rain”, who turned pubescent girls and their families into frogs when the girls did not correctly observe their initiation taboos.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white drawing of a buck with one horn, behind it three other buck heads emerge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532954/original/file-20230620-25-yb22k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 3. Digital drawing of original rock painting near the town of Dordrecht.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David M. Witelson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among other details, my paper highlights a fascinating and previously missed reference to a one-horned water creature. In one of the variants of a <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/stories/748/index.html">story</a> told by <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/xam.html">|Han≠kass’o or Klein Jantje</a> – a |Xam man who was an expert storyteller – a “water child” or juvenile rain-animal is said to have a single horn. The story was written down in phonetic script (to record the sounds of the San langauge) by <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/researchers.html">Lucy Lloyd</a> (Bleek’s aunt) and translated into English.</p>
<p>The girl in |Han≠kass’o’s story breaks the rules of her ritual puberty seclusion by going to a pond and catching (like fish) the children of the rain, which she cooks and eats. After a few times she struggles to catch another one: unlike the others, this last creature is <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/books/BC_151_A2_1_092/A2_1_92_07513.html">“a grown-up water”</a>.</p>
<p>We know what made it recognisably grown-up: unlike the others, it had a single horn that <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/books/BC_151_A2_1_092/A2_1_92_07513.html">poked out of the water</a>. We have, therefore, the actual |Xam San words (which translate as “horned rain-child”) used to describe this kind of rain-animal, which we find in the rock paintings in and around the Eastern Cape.</p>
<h2>An intersection of beliefs</h2>
<p>In the colonial period, indigenous people were exposed to European images of unicorns on crests, badges and buttons and through tales. In one of the <a href="https://archive.org/details/southafricacentu00barnuoft/page/76/mode/2up?q=unicorn">recorded instances</a>, indigenous people at the Cape saw the British royal coat of arms and commented on the unicorn in it. They recognised it as their “god”, but this description, translated into English from an unknown indigenous idiom, probably refers to the creature’s mythical nature rather than a genuine god-like status. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Buck with horns that point forward depicted in a rock painting with blue bodies and white spots." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532973/original/file-20230620-23-fy3zbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 4. Rain-animals with horns that point up or curve forward at a site near Indwe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David M. Witelson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Foreign unicorn images may have gradually influenced local ones. Some rock paintings of one-horned creatures – dated by associated human figures in European dress to the colonial period – show horns pointing upward or forward (Figure 4) like the European unicorn, rather than backwards like antelopes, such as the eland (Figure 5), on which many rock paintings of one-horned rain-animals are modelled.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A buck lying in the grass, its horns pointed up[wards and back." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532972/original/file-20230620-27-3f4pm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 5. The horns of the common eland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pxfuel</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One-horned animals depicted in rock art are not mere rhinos nor antelope, nor are they the creatures of European myth.</p>
<p>Indigenous beliefs help us to explain that the uncanny resemblance between European unicorns and South African “unicorns” was pure chance. The mixing of foreign beliefs with local ones in colonial South Africa has hidden the independent, indigenous creature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David M. Witelson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand's Rock Art Research Institute (RARI). He receives funding from RARI and the University's Faculty of Science. </span></em></p>
Some explorers believed they had found unicorns depicted on rocks. The truth behind the paintings is far more interesting.
David M. Witelson, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198812
2023-02-22T15:32:01Z
2023-02-22T15:32:01Z
Rock art as African history: what religious images say about identity, survival and change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510268/original/file-20230215-15-yt0qm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After colonial contact, indigenous Africans acquired horses and guns, and raided settlers as a means of resistance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Sam Challis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To “read” the history of times before writing, scholars have traditionally used excavated evidence. Remains like dwellings, burials and pots can reveal a lot about how people lived long ago. In southern Africa, there is another archive to “read” too: rock art. Rock art is primarily a record of spiritual beliefs – but also reflects the events that these beliefs made sense of.</p>
<p>Hunter-gatherers in the region, ancestors of today’s San or BaTwa, made rock art for thousands of years before African herders and farmers arrived from the north 2,000 years ago and European colonists followed by sea 350 years ago.</p>
<p>As a result of these contacts between groups of people, ethnic and economic boundaries became increasingly blurred. Rock art changed too, in technique and subject matter.</p>
<p>Rock art tells a tale of people meeting, negotiating, fighting, trading with and marrying one another. The tale is told not in simple narrative, but in spiritual beliefs. Our recent <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/722260">paper in Current Anthropology</a> outlines the nature, scale and effects of contact between people in southern Africa, and the ways in which indigenous people produced images that engaged with change. It shows that contact and colonisation, in time, created a “disconnect” with the past that can be understood by looking at changes in rock art. </p>
<p>The disconnect apparent in the rock art reflects the disconnect in indigenous society more generally. It reveals the mixing and changing – and survival – of different people’s beliefs about the universe. It charts southern African history and, although it is “written” in terms of spiritual beliefs, it is the only record that shows what happened from the San perspective.</p>
<p>It often shows the struggle to resist subjugation, and it depicts beliefs about the forces that could be summoned to resist.</p>
<h2>Shifts in rock art</h2>
<p>What the San painted or engraved on rock was their vision of what happened in a trance state. The artists entered this trance state in order to establish <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/12/1099">connections with animals and spirits in the landscape</a>, to influence their movements, and to derive the power to make rain and heal the sick. </p>
<p>Rock art was never unchanging, but new traditions and styles appeared when African farmers arrived in southern Africa from about 2,000 years ago, and when pastoralism was later introduced. Further changes came with the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134215">arrival of Khoe-speakers about 1,000 years ago</a>. These Khoe-speaking herders were themselves descended from earlier mixing between hunter-gatherers and east African pastoralists.</p>
<p>Changes appeared in the rock art’s content – for example the animals and materials portrayed – and in the artistic techniques used.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two images of antelope painted on rock surface" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eland antelope, painted (probably) before and after contact between San and other groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Sam Challis</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eland antelope (the one with the most spiritual power for the San) were once lovingly drafted and shaded. Later they appeared in bright, chalky and vivid colours, rendered in a posterlike and blocky fashion. The drop in pigment quality was likely due to the breakdown of trade networks brought about by marginalisation, then <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262547793_The_forgotten_killing_fields_San_genocide_and_Louis_Anthing's_mission_to_Bushmanland_1862-1863">slaughter</a>, of indigenous people, but still they called on the power of the eland to help them. </p>
<p>We see pictures of cattle and sheep appearing in rock art, and finger-painted and engraved patterns associated with girls’ initiation, common to pastoralist and hunter-gatherer societies. The images show that people’s identity (ethnicity) and the way they survived (economy) weren’t divided into clear groups. Hunters were not necessarily all San, and all San were not necessarily hunters. The blurring of boundaries between groups increased with time. </p>
<p>As time went on, all these people became subject to extermination policy, slavery and marginalisation. But rather than being passive receptors of change, they used their religion, comprising multicultural beliefs, to survive. This can be seen in the rock art they created.</p>
<h2>Spiritual concepts of water</h2>
<p>Conceptions of the rain, in the form of images of water bulls and water snakes, are particularly useful for examining cross-cultural influences. </p>
<p>For African farmers, snakes were associated with water. Hunter-gatherers and herders with whom they came into contact acknowledged this because they, too, already had beliefs about water and the animal entities embodied by it. </p>
<p>People from different language groups may have gathered together for girls’ initiation ceremonies at sites where the great water snake emerged. At these locations, this spiritual creature’s body, the <a href="http://www.driekopseiland.itgo.com/">undulating rock</a>, is covered with markings to appeal to it – the markings that also appear on the initiates’ tattoos, face paint, clothing and bags. </p>
<p>The control of water, to make rain for pasture and crops, was traded (bartered for cattle) between groups, very likely for centuries. Rock art images of water snakes, water bulls and domestic cattle intertwine and superimpose one another; sometimes water snakes have cattle horns. Often, water bulls or water snakes were depicted being killed to make their blood – the rain – fall. </p>
<p>Water was also extremely important to those wishing to combat the encroaching colonists. By this time the people of southern Africa, regardless of background, held many <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280623580_Binding_beliefs_the_creolisation_process_in_a_%27Bushman%27_raider_group_in_nineteenth-century_southern_Africa">beliefs in common</a>. The people or entities that lived underwater could be called upon to influence situations: torrential rain to wash away the tracks of stolen animals, for example. </p>
<h2>Raiding and escape</h2>
<p>By the time colonists arrived, hunter-gatherers had sheep, and <a href="https://dsae.co.za/entry/sintu/e06478">isiNtu-speakers</a> (African farmers) had adopted aspects of hunter-gatherer beliefs, and vice versa. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painted image of human with some animal features" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Xhosa warrior painted in the Windvogelberg mountains of the Eastern Cape, possibly as a ‘commission’ including war medicine obtained from the San.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Brent Sinclair-Thomson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>San were increasingly marginalised from well-watered pasture suitable for domestic herds of African herders and farmers. Some became herders themselves, some mixed with farmers and some became raiders. Then, with the expansion of settler farms in the 18th century (which they also raided) they were <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance-165107">decimated, hunted and enslaved</a>.</p>
<p>In the rock art, baboons became a symbol of protective power to enable raiders to escape unharmed. The root of a powerful medicine, <em>so-|oa</em> or <em>mabophe</em> – closely associated with baboons – enabled stock thieves to pass unnoticed, and “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15740773.2017.1487122">turned bullets to water</a>”. We see this in the paintings of people taking on the power and features of baboons, appearing alongside horses and cattle.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance-165107">South Africa's bandit slaves and the rock art of resistance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Horses, the magical vehicles of violence, passage and escape, were kept and cared for by their new owners – the raider groups. They painted themselves in scenes before, during and after raids, not as a diary entry but as part of the [<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Challis/publication/280623828_Re-tribe_and_resist_the_ethnogenesis_of_a_creolised_raiding_band_in_response_to_colonisation/links/5efb0cf6299bf18816f37af0/Re-tribe-and-resist-the-ethnogenesis-of-a-creolised-raiding-band-in-response-to-colonisation.pdf">ritual</a>] of ensuring the outcome was favourable and the memory made positive. </p>
<p>We can now see changes in rock art, from “traditional” animals like rhebok and eland, to those showing rain bulls being killed, rain snakes captured, people with shields and spears, or riding horses alongside baboons, <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/722260">in a new light</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Challis receives funding from the South African NRF African Origins Platform and is a member of the Bradshaw Foundation Rock Art Network</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Sinclair-Thomson received funding for this research from the South African National Research Foundation African Origins Platform. </span></em></p>
Changes in southern African rock art reflect the mixing of groups of people after they came into contact with each other.
Sam Challis, Senior Researcher, University of the Witwatersrand
Brent Sinclair-Thomson, Support staff, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199192
2023-02-09T13:57:47Z
2023-02-09T13:57:47Z
500-year-old horn container discovered in South Africa sheds light on pre-colonial Khoisan medicines
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508067/original/file-20230203-4002-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Both the Khoi and the San believed in a mythical animal, resembling a cow, whose horns were thought to have medicinal attributes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2020, a chance discovery near the small South African hamlet of Misgund in the Eastern Cape unearthed an unusual parcel – a gift to science. The parcel turned out to be a 500-year-old cow horn, capped with a leather lid and carefully wrapped in grass and the leafy scales of a <a href="https://pza.sanbi.org/boophone-disticha">Bushman poison bulb</a> (<em>Boophane disticha</em>). Inside the horn were the solidified remnants of a once-liquid substance.</p>
<p>Thanks to chemical analyses, we now know that the horn was a medicine container. It is the earliest known object of its kind from anywhere in southern Africa and offers the first insights into pre-colonial medicines in this part of the world.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I conducted <a href="https://sajs.co.za/article/view/13011">chemical analyses of the contents</a>. We identified several secondary plant metabolites, the most abundant of which were mono-methyl inositol and lupeol. Both of these compounds, and indeed all of those identified, have known medicinal properties.</p>
<p>This remarkable find is the oldest example in southern Africa, of which we are aware, of two or more plant ingredients being purposefully combined into a container to form a medicinal recipe. Several museums in South Africa house examples of medicine horns collected during the 19th and 20th centuries – but none has ever been found in an archaeological context. </p>
<h2>Various plant uses</h2>
<p>The medicine container was found in a painted rock shelter. A radio carbon date of the horn container places the parcel at around AD 1461-1630. Although the rock shelter contains several San paintings, we do not know if they are the same age as the horn container. At this time the area was occupied by both San hunter-gatherers and Khoi pastoralists; both believed in a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889185?origin=crossref">mythical animal</a>, resembling a domestic cow, whose horns were considered to have medicinal attributes. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508065/original/file-20230203-26-7qjkit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The site location.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Google Earth</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People have exploited the pharmacological properties of plants for at least the last 200,000 years. The descendants of these communities still live in Southern Africa today. During the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Mesolithic">Middle Stone Age</a> (which started about 300,000 years ago and ended between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago), people burnt certain aromatic leaves to <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abc7239">fumigate their sleeping areas</a>. Plant extracts also seem to have been the main component of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440312005511?via%3Dihub">glues and adhesives</a> and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1204213109">hunting poisons</a> around this time.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/were-closer-to-learning-when-humans-first-daubed-arrows-with-poison-75566">We're closer to learning when humans first daubed arrows with poison</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But not much is known about traditional medicines from the pre-colonial era of southern Africa. What information there is derives mainly from early traveller accounts and modern ethnographic studies. The horn offered us a chance to learn a little more about traditional knowledge of medicine and pharmacology during this early period. </p>
<p>The descendants of these communities still live in southern Africa today.</p>
<h2>Medical and spiritual applications</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=153&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=153&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508334/original/file-20230206-15-urxszt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The contents of the parcel were slowly revealed as it was unwrapped.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The main compounds present in the container, mono-methyl inositol and lupeol, are still found today in a variety of known medicinal plants in the Eastern Cape. They have a wide range of recorded medicinal applications, including the control of blood sugar and cholesterol levels, and treatment of fevers, inflammation and urinary tract infections. They can also be applied topically to treat infections – rubbing ointment into cuts in the skin is one of the ways the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abs/medicine-dance-of-the-kung-bushmen1/E4066082D71D58305B0725A4297F4F4D">San</a> are known to have administered certain medicines.</p>
<p>Both mono-methyl inositol and lupeol are pharmacologically safe compounds. This means that they can be ingested without the risk of overdose. Both compounds stimulate the production of dopamine in the brain; mono-methyl inositol is used to <a href="https://journals.lww.com/psychopharmacology/Abstract/2001/06000/Double_Blind,_Controlled,_Crossover_Trial_of.14.aspx">treat anxiety</a>, and plants containing lupeol are used as <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/medicinal-poisonous-plants-southern-eastern-africa/">aphrodisiacs</a>.</p>
<p>For the Khoi and San people, not all medicines were meant to treat physiological illnesses. Healers were specialised individuals whose task was to treat both physical and spiritual ailments. Indeed, one of the principal functions of traditional medicine, both in the past and today, is to treat <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40462576">supernatural bewitchment</a>. Medicine and culture remain intimately entwined and <a href="https://www.africabib.org/rec.php?RID=183047389">traditional medicine</a>, which is highly adaptive, continues to play an important role in much of Africa as a primary health service.</p>
<h2>A treasured possession</h2>
<p>We cannot know exactly what the medicine stored in the horn was used for, how it was administered or who precisely used it. But it was clearly a treasured possession, judging by the way it was carefully wrapped and deposited in the rock shelter. Its owner evidently intended to retrieve it but never returned. </p>
<p>The absence of any evidence of long-term occupation of the shelter means that the medicine horn is an isolated, chance discovery. Nevertheless, this is a find that sheds new light on traditional medicines used in the Eastern Cape 500 years ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Bradfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The medicine container was found in a painted rock shelter. A radio carbon date of the horn container places it at around AD 1461-1630.
Justin Bradfield, Associate professor, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173452
2022-01-09T08:25:12Z
2022-01-09T08:25:12Z
Why reconciliation agreement between Germany and Namibia has hit the buffers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436649/original/file-20211209-140267-1xc68ny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An aerial view of members of the Herero and Nama communities taking part in the Reparation Walk in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christian Ender/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In mid-2015 the German Foreign Ministry <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/herero-and-nama-genocide">admitted</a> that the war the country had waged against the local communities of the Ovaherero and Nama (and the Damara and San) between 1904 and 1908 in German South West Africa (now Namibia) was a genocide. </p>
<p>Since then bilateral negotiations with the Namibian government <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2020.1750823">have taken place</a> to find ways to come to terms with this horrific chapter of the shared colonial past. The declared aim was to seek reconciliation. </p>
<p>In mid-May 2021 the special envoys of Germany and Namibia initialled a <a href="https://u9t7p8p4.stackpathcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/deutsche-afrika-stiftung-joint-declaration-by-the-federal-republic-of-germany-and-the-republic-of-namibia.pdf">joint declaration</a>. While ratification by the foreign ministers was anticipated within weeks, this remains a pending affair. </p>
<p>Considering the declaration’s flaws, this should not come as a surprise.</p>
<p>The declaration <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/germany-agrees-to-pay-namibia-11bn-over-historical-herero-nama-genocide">avoided</a> far-reaching precedence. The genocide was recognised in moral and political, but not legal terms. As a result, reparations were not acknowledged as a consequence of the admission. It has therefore <a href="https://theconversation.com/namibian-genocide-why-germanys-bid-to-make-amends-isnt-enough-161820">been widely criticised</a>.</p>
<p>For the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights it is a <a href="https://www.ecchr.eu/en/press-release/germany-namibia-declaration/">“lost opportunity”</a>, since it failed to meet the standards of codified international law norms. </p>
<p>That the “reconciliation agreement” will be published as a mere joint declaration speaks volumes. It reflects the fact that reconciliation between the people of the two countries – but also within Namibia – is further away than before. But one cannot admit to the degree of atrocities committed with their far reaching demographic, material and traumatic consequences for the descendants of the survivors without seeking direct reconciliation with these. </p>
<h2>What’s gone wrong</h2>
<p>The preceding negotiation process disregarded international participation rights based both in treaties and customary international law. Critics bemoaned, among other things, the fact that both governments were <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/news/4538-reconciliation-between-germany-and-namibia-towards-reparation-of-the-first-genocide-of-the-20th-century.html">“seeking forgiveness without listening to descendants”</a> and with no reference to the return of land to the dispossessed as part of restitutive justice.</p>
<p>The declaration avoids the term “reparations”. It allocates a total amount of 1.05 billion Euro (US$1.18 billion) over a period of 30 years for development projects to Namibian regions with the descendants of the genocide victims. About the same amount as German development cooperation has spent in the 30 years since Namibia’s Independence.</p>
<p>Another 50 million Euro (US$56 million) “will be dedicated to the projects on reconciliation, remembrance, research and education” over the same period. </p>
<p>This is a pittance. Nevertheless the declaration stresses that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>these amounts … settle all financial aspects of the issues relating to the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For many, such meagre material recognition adds <a href="https://www.theafricancourier.de/news/africa/insulting-critics-reject-german-namibian-agreement-on-herero-genocide/">insult to injury</a>.</p>
<p>The main agencies of the descendants, political opposition parties and leading members of the governing South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO)
did not waste any time to manifest their disagreement. The opening debate in the National Assembly in early June ended in turmoil. In an unprecedented form of protest, hundreds of demonstrators joined by MPs stormed the fenced in area outside Parliament to voice their frustration over the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/8/betrayal-namibian-opposition-lawmakers-slam-germany-genocide-deal">“betrayal”</a>.</p>
<p>For them the motto is: “Nothing about us without us.” </p>
<p>This reflects <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html">article 18</a> in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People which has been signed by both countries. It states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters
which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Due to the pandemic-related lockdown, the parliamentary debate was postponed. Opening in late September 2021, it lasted until the end of the parliamentary sessions on 1 December. </p>
<p>Numerous speakers from all parties expressed concerns, criticism and rejections regarding the shortcomings. In a entirely new form of unity, they were condemning the declaration as insufficient.</p>
<p>MacHenry Venaani, leader of the official opposition Popular Democratic Movement, <a href="https://www.observer24.com.na/venaani-proposes-re-negotiation-of-genocide-deal">lambasted</a> the agreed forms of compensation for the crimes committed as, “A flagrant display of arrogance by the German government.”</p>
<p>Bernadus Swartbooi, leader of the Landless People’s Movement, the second
biggest opposition party, concluded with reference to the exclusion of the Ovaherero and Nama in the negotiations as the most affected indigenous communities “that this nation-state does not belong to all”. </p>
<p>SWAPO MPs voiced their frustration too. Minister Tom Alweendo
<a href="https://neweralive.na/posts/parliament-in-session-1">was concerned</a> about the
growing divisions along ethnic lines as well as the government and opposition parties: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am troubled by how the conversation has gone thus far. It is now so apparent that the debate has become so divisive. We call each other names. We refer to each other as puppets and sell-outs … I am afraid that should we continue with this path, then the legacy left by the divide and rule philosophy will continue to flourish.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The parliamentary debate closed without any decision taken. Government <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2021/1202/Germany-admits-to-genocide-in-Namibia.-Should-reparations-follow">announced</a> that taking into consideration the contributions, it would seek further negotiations with the German side.</p>
<h2>No end in sight</h2>
<p>Once an improved agreement was ratified, MPs were reassured that it <a href="https://neweralive.na/posts/govt-poised-to-conclude-genocide-issue-kapofi">would be submitted</a> to the Namibian Parliament for acceptance.</p>
<p>In October the German special envoy Ruprecht Polenz <a href="https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/ausland/ruprecht-polenz-ueber-das-versoehnungsabkommen-nach-dem-voelkermord-an-den-nama-und-herero-a-57c8c649-6a5d-415c-9044-3c5a2973ce07?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc">confirmed in an interview</a>
that the declaration would not be renegotiated. </p>
<p>However, the new German government in office since early December stresses in its coalition agreement <a href="https://www.tagesspiegel.de/downloads/27829944/1/koalitionsvertrag-ampel-2021-2025.pdf">the commitment</a> to pursue reconciliation with Namibia as an “indispensable task”. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen if a foreign minister from the Green Party will be willing and able to find a way out of the impasse.</p>
<p>Finally, even if renegotiations would be a viable option, the major challenge lies in the inclusion of the communities in Namibia and the diaspora who continue to be most affected by the violent past. It points to the limitations of government-to-government negotiations as long as they don’t adequately recognise those who mainly bear the trauma and consequences of the genocide.</p>
<p>According to the joint declaration:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Germany apologises and bows before the descendants of the victims … The
Namibian Government and people accept Germany’s apology and believe that it
paves the way to a lasting mutual understanding and the consolidation of a special relationship between the two nations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Without the descendants of the genocide survivors substantially involved and willing to reconcile, this remains as patronising and paternalistic as colonialism was. It underlines the continued asymmetries. There is a long way to reconciliation.</p>
<p>The question the late Jewish historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi once posed in <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/david-singer-4/zakhor-jewish-history-and-jewish-memory-by-yosef-hayim-yerushalmi/">his book</a> Zakhor – Jewish History and Jewish Memory remains valid also for this case:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is it possible that the antonym of ‘forgetting’ is not ‘remembering,’ but justice?</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173452/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber joined in 1974 SWAPO as the anti colonial movement in Namibia and is a member since then.</span></em></p>
The problem is that communities who continue to be most affected by the violent past have not been involved in negotiations.
Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165485
2021-08-29T07:47:25Z
2021-08-29T07:47:25Z
The first-ever dictionary of South Africa’s Kaaps language has launched - why it matters
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416938/original/file-20210819-25-1n0krmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Graffiti artist Falko Starr finishes a mural in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>It’s been in existence since the 1500s but the Kaaps language, synonymous with Cape Town in South Africa, has never had a dictionary until now. <a href="http://dwkaaps.co.za">The Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps</a> has been <a href="https://www.uwc.ac.za/news-and-announcements/news/the-first-trilingual-dictionary-of-kaaps-launched">launched</a> by a collective of academic and community stakeholders – the <a href="https://www.uwc.ac.za/study/all-areas-of-study/centres/centre-for-multilingualism-and-diversities-research/overview">Centre</a> for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape along with the hip hop-driven community NGO <a href="https://www.facebook.com/HealTheHoodZA/">Heal the Hood Project</a>. The dictionary – in Kaaps, English and Afrikaans – holds the promise of being a powerful democratic resource. Adam Haupt, director of the Centre for Film & Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, is involved in the project and tells us more.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>What is Kaaps and who uses the language?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.litnet.co.za/kaaps-is-the-future-of-afrikaans/">Kaaps</a> or Afrikaaps is a language created in settler colonial South Africa, developed by the 1500s. It took shape as a language during encounters between indigenous African (Khoi and San), South-East Asian, Dutch, Portuguese and English people. It could be argued that Kaaps predates the emergence of an early form of Kaaps-Hollands (the South African variety of Dutch that would help shape Afrikaans). Traders and sailors would have passed through this region well before formal colonisation commenced. Also consider migration and movement on the African continent itself. Every intercultural engagement would have created an opportunity for linguistic exchange and the negotiation of new meaning. </p>
<p>Today, Kaaps is most commonly used by largely working class speakers on the Cape Flats, an area in Cape Town where many disenfranchised people were forcibly moved by the apartheid government. It’s used across all online and offline contexts of socialisation, learning, commerce, politics and religion. And, because of language contact and the temporary and seasonal migration of speakers from the Western Cape, it is written and spoken across South Africa and beyond its borders. </p>
<p>It is important to acknowledge the agency of people from the global South in developing Kaaps – for example, the language was first taught in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/madrasah">madrassahs</a> (Islamic schools) and was written in Arabic script. This acknowledgement is imperative especially because Afrikaner nationalists appropriated Kaaps in later years. </p>
<p>For a great discussion of Kaaps and explanation of examples of words and phrases from this language, listen to <a href="https://www.capetalk.co.za/podcasts/613/the-morning-review-with-lester-kiewit-podcast/536517/first-trilingual-dictionary-in-kaaps-to-be-published">this conversation</a> between academic Quentin Williams and journalist Lester Kiewit.</p>
<h2>How did the dictionary come about?</h2>
<p>The dictionary project, which is still in its launch phase, is the result of ongoing collaborative work between a few key people. You might say it’s one outcome of our interest in <a href="https://www.uwc.ac.za/news-and-announcements/news/neva-again-quentin-williams-on-hip-hop-activism-and-academia-324">hip hop art, activism and education</a>. We are drawn to hip hop’s desire to validate black modes of speech. In a sense, this is what a dictionary will do for Kaaps.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/quentin-williams-392453">Quentin Williams</a>, a sociolinguist, leads the project. Emile Jansen, Tanswell Jansen and Shaquile Southgate serve on the editorial board on behalf of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/HealTheHoodZA/">Heal the Hood</a> Project, which is an NGO that employs hip hop education in youth development initiatives. Emile also worked with hip hop and theatre practitioners on a production called <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpBHcR1_tU">Afrikaaps</a></em>, which affirmed Kaaps and narrated some of its history. Anthropologist <a href="https://anthro.ucla.edu/person/h-samy-alim/">H. Samy Alim</a> is the founding director of the <a href="https://ed.stanford.edu/spotlight/center-race-ethnicity-and-language-launches-new-website">Center</a> for Race, Ethnicity and Language at Stanford University and has assisted in funding the dictionary, with the Western Cape’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An album cover with the title 'Afrikaaps', an illustration of assorted cool looking young people with a mountain in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418052/original/file-20210826-15-1dmerfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CD art from the musical Afrikaaps.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Afrikaaps/Dylan Valley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We’re in the process of training the core editorial board in the scientific area of lexicography, translation and transcription. This includes the archiving of the initial, structured corpus for the dictionary. We will write down definitions and determine meanings of old and new Kaaps words. This process will be subjected to a rigorous review and editing and stylistic process of the Kaaps words we will enter in the dictionary. The entries will include their history of origin, use and uptake. There will also be a translation from standard Afrikaans and English. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SVpBHcR1_tU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Who will use the dictionary?</h2>
<p>It will be a resource for its speakers and valuable to educators, students and researchers. It will impact the ways in which institutions, as loci of power, engage speakers of Kaaps. It would also be useful to journalists, publishers and editors keen to learn more about how to engage Kaaps speakers.</p>
<p>A Kaaps dictionary will validate it as a language in its own right. And it will validate the identities of the people who speak it. It will also assist in making visible the diverse cultural, linguistic, geographical and historical tributaries that contributed to the evolution of this language. </p>
<h2>Kaaps was relegated to a slang status of Afrikaans?</h2>
<p>Acknowledgement of Kaaps is imperative especially because Afrikaner nationalists appropriated Kaaps in order to create the dominant version of the language in the form of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Afrikaans-language">Afrikaans</a>. A ‘<em>suiwer</em>’ or ‘pure’ version, claiming a strong Dutch influence, Afrikaans was formally recognised as an official language of South Africa in 1925. This was part of the efforts to construct <a href="https://theconversation.com/afrikaner-identity-in-post-apartheid-south-africa-remains-stuck-in-whiteness-87471">white Afrikaner identity</a>, which shaped <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> based on a belief in white supremacy. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/afrikaner-identity-in-post-apartheid-south-africa-remains-stuck-in-whiteness-87471">Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa remains stuck in whiteness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For example, think about the Kaaps tradition of <em>koesiesters</em> – fried dough confectionery – which was appropriated (taken without acknowledgement) and the treats were named <em>koeksisters</em> by white Afrikaners. They were claimed as a white Afrikaner tradition. The appropriation of Kaaps reveals a great deal about the extent to which race is socially and politically constructed. As I have said <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/static">elsewhere</a>, cultural appropriation is both an expression of unequal relations of power and is enabled by them.</p>
<p>When people think about Kaaps, they often think about it as ‘mixed’ or ‘impure’ (‘<em>onsuiwer</em>’). This relates to the ways in which they think about ‘racial’ identity. They often think about coloured identity as ‘mixed’, which implies that black and white identities are ‘pure’ and bounded; that they only become ‘mixed’ in ‘inter-racial’ sexual encounters. This mode of thinking is biologically essentialist. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-cape-towns-gayle-has-endured-and-been-adopted-by-straight-people-117336">How Cape Town's "Gayle" has endured -- and been adopted by straight people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Of course, geneticists now know that there is not sufficient genetic variation between the ‘races’ to justify biologically essentialist understandings. Enter cultural racism to reinforce the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-unpack-the-word-race-and-find-new-language-138379">concept of ‘race’</a>. It polices culture and insists on standard language varieties by denigrating often black modes of speech as ‘slang’ or marginal dialects.</p>
<h2>Can a dictionary help overturn stereotypes?</h2>
<p>Visibility and the politics of representation are key challenges for speakers of Kaaps – be it in the media, which has done a great job of lampooning and stereotyping speakers of Kaaps – or in these speakers’ engagement with governmental and educational institutions. If Kaaps is not recognised as a bona fide language, you will continue to see classroom scenarios where schoolkids are told explicitly that the way in which they speak is not ‘respectable’ and will not guarantee them success in their pursuit of careers. </p>
<p>This dictionary project, much like ones for other South African languages like isiXhosa, isiZulu or Sesotho, can be a great democratic resource for developing understanding in a country that continues to be racially divided and unequal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Haupt receives funding from UCT's University Research Committee and the National Research Foundation. He is affiliated with the University of Cape Town, Association for Cultural Studies, Global Hip Hop Studies Journal. Haupt is Professor and Director of the Centre for Film & Media Studies at UCT.</span></em></p>
It’s been in existence since the 1500s but the Kaaps language, synonymous with Cape Town, has never had a dictionary until now.
Adam Haupt, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/158887
2021-04-15T15:11:06Z
2021-04-15T15:11:06Z
Southern African hunters may have used symbolism in choosing bones to craft arrows
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395001/original/file-20210414-15-1oqdgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The San associated elands with rain, and the power to influence game during a hunt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Henk Bogaard/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Animals have long played an important <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26301860?seq=1">symbolic role</a> in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/089279302786992766">human societies</a>. They feature prominently in myths and folklore throughout the world. In some cases animals are used metaphorically: they express clan identity and are used to illustrate concepts of leadership, healing and protection.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249296">newly published study</a>, scholars in South Africa and the United Kingdom – myself among them – have discovered a possible link between the animal bones people used to make tools, like arrowheads, and the symbolic importance that people attached to those animals in the past.</p>
<p>The study focused on what is today the Tugela River catchment area of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Here, about 1,200 years ago, immigrant Nguni farmers came into contact with Bushman hunter-gatherers. Ethno-historical records show that animals played <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/21822">an important role</a> in both cultural groups as symbols and metaphors to express ideas. Early interactions between these two groups, as happened in our study area, resulted in the dynamic exchange and assimilation of ideas and symbols.</p>
<p>We wanted to know whether the symbolic importance of certain animals translated into the technological domain at this time and place. That is, whether people were selecting the bones of specific animals and not others to use as raw material for their tools. And, if so, we wanted to know which animals they were selecting. </p>
<p>In several other parts of the world, such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47299-x">Canada</a> and Russia, people used the bones of animals that were important within their respective cultures to make tools. Nothing like this has been documented in southern Africa and we wanted to find out whether this was because this practice was not followed in the region or whether it was simply undocumented. </p>
<p>To find out, we used a method known as <a href="https://www.spectroscopyeurope.com/article/zooms-collagen-barcode-and-fingerprints">ZooMS</a>. This analyses the collagen proteins found in animal bones. Collagen proteins are unique to different groups of animals. So, we could “fingerprint” samples from modern animals and then recognise them in archaeological samples of unknown origin.</p>
<p>The study found that there was selective targeting of animals for tool manufacture at some sites, with a narrowing of the range of selected species after about AD 1,000. Certain groups of antelopes appear to have been deliberately avoided. This suggests bones weren’t used just because they happened to be available. We hypothesise that distinctive animal behaviours, such as that of the rhebok, were appropriated by people to serve as metaphors through which to understand human society. And we believe this symbolism was expressed through people’s tools as a means of harnessing the “power” of the animal. </p>
<h2>Animal symbolism</h2>
<p>The Bushmen (or San) <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02561751.1933.9676328">believed</a> that animals such as the eland, rhebok and hartebeest possessed supernatural powers. These could be harnessed by shamans during certain ceremonies to bring about rain or influence the movement of game. In some cases, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2800744?origin=crossref&seq=1">items of clothing</a> made from these animals would be worn during healing and rain-making ceremonies. </p>
<p>Animals were also frequently depicted in San rock art. A <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/6163">clear emphasis</a> was placed on those species believed to be particularly powerful, such as eland, rhebok and roan.</p>
<p>Among the Nguni, spirits of the ancestors were <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277300306_Hirst_M_Cook_J_and_Kahn_M_1996_Shades_Witches_and_Somatisation_in_the_Narratives_of_Illness_and_Disorder_among_the_Cape_Nguni_in_the_Eastern_Cape_South_Africa_Curare_192_255-282">commonly ascribed</a> the behavioural traits of certain wild animals, among them elephants, rhinoceros, lions and baboons. </p>
<p>Forty-three species are known to have been divinatory animals among the Nguni: some of these species’ bones regularly formed part of diviners’ kits because they were believed to confer those animals’ “powers” to the diviners. </p>
<h2>The archaeology of KwaZulu-Natal</h2>
<p>The Tugela River catchment area was <a href="https://www.sahumanities.org/index.php/sah/article/view/198">first occupied</a> by hunter-gatherers from about 7,000 years ago. Once farming communities began settling the area in the fifth century AD, hunter-gatherers started moving out of the mountainous areas to live nearer the farmer settlements. There, they benefited from trade in pottery and agricultural produce in exchange for wild animal skins and services rendered. </p>
<p>When farmers and hunter-gatherers came into contact, they <a href="https://sahumanities.org/index.php/sah/article/view/225">adopted</a> parts of each other’s material culture as well certain words and concepts linked to divinatory animals. The Nguni regarded the Bushmen as spiritual mediators, able to intercede with the supernatural world to bring about rain and other boons. </p>
<p>Even the caves the Bushmen occupied were seen by the Nguni as places of power. On the other hand, the new domestic animals introduced by the Nguni farmers were quickly assimilated into hunter-gatherer cosmology. They replaced eland and other antelopes as a favoured rock art motif. </p>
<h2>Technology for answers</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Using technology to analyse which animals’ bones were used in hunting tools, the researchers were able to draw several conclusions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr Justin Bradfield</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We extracted small amounts of collagen from 84 bone arrowheads excavated from 11 archaeological sites spanning a 6,000-year period in the Tugela River catchment region. We then identified the taxonomic tribe of animal represented in the bone arrowheads.</p>
<p>Antelope species belonging to the <em>Alcelaphini</em> tribe (including hartebeest, wildebeest and bontebok) were the most abundantly represented source of bone arrowheads. Certain species of antelopes, including impala, gazelle, springbok and duiker, were not represented in any of the bone arrowheads. This is despite the fact that these species are abundantly represented in the unmodified food waste at the sites: they account for 66% of the meat consumed. </p>
<p>We also found that at some sites bone points were made from animals – including giraffe and buffalo – that were not represented at all in the unmodified fauna food waste. </p>
<p>This suggests deliberate targeting and avoidance of certain species. We think those animals that were deliberately targeted to make tools represent animals that people considered culturally or symbolically important. Our findings also suggest that the range of species targeted by hunter-gatherers to make their tools narrowed after farmers moved into the area.</p>
<p>We ruled out mechanical properties (that the bones used for tool manufacture were mechanically the best suited to their role as arrowheads) and trade as the reasons for the pattern of raw material selection we identified. </p>
<p>Symbolic significance emerged as the most likely reason for certain animal bones being used in tools to the exclusion of other, readily available animals. For instance rhebok, hartebeest and eland were all well represented in our sample; each is a symbolically important animal in 19th century Bushman folklore. These animals were associated with rain, and the power to influence game during a hunt. So, it’s possible their bones would be used in hunting tools, to imbue the tools with powers to aid in the hunt.</p>
<p>Future research will aim to test our hypothesis by analysing larger numbers of bone tools from the region.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Bradfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In several other parts of the world, people used the bones of animals that were important within their respective cultures to make tools.
Justin Bradfield, Associate professor, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157177
2021-03-31T13:28:26Z
2021-03-31T13:28:26Z
An ancient San rock art mural in South Africa reveals new meaning
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of the ceiling paintings of the San people in the Drakensberg, South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy © Stephen Townley Bassett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The indigenous <a href="https://www.kalaharipeoples.org/the-san">San</a> communities of southern Africa were originally hunting and gathering peoples. One of the greatest testaments to San history is the rock art found throughout the subcontinent.</p>
<p>The oldest rock art in southern Africa is around <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/jaa/8/2/article-p185_3.xml">30,000 years old</a> and is found on painted stone slabs from the <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/art-music/rock-art/apollo-11-plaque">Apollo 11</a> rock shelter in Namibia. Where our study took place – the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/985/">Maloti-Drakensberg</a> mountain massif of South Africa and Lesotho – rock paintings were made from about <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/earliest-directly-dated-rock-paintings-from-southern-africa-new-ams-radiocarbon-dates/B071E61BE2B9640E5B9A430E1464F980">3,000 years ago</a> right into the 1800s.</p>
<p>For decades, people thought that one guess about the art’s meaning was as good as another. However, this ignored the San themselves.</p>
<p>We can deepen our understanding if we try to view rock art in terms of San shamanistic beliefs and experiences. Advances in ethnography (literature produced by anthropologists who work with San people) help convey San worldview to rock art researchers.</p>
<p>By locating new sites – thousands are still to be found – and revisiting known ones in the light of developing insights, we can go much further than guessing. </p>
<h2>New insights from old images</h2>
<p>We <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1868757">re-investigated</a> such a site in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg mountains. It was first described in the 1950s and is recorded as RSA CHI1. At first glance, the ceiling panel seems a confusing collection of paintings of antelopes and human figures, some of which are painted on top of others, in shades of earthy reds, yellow ochres and white.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The RSA CHI1 Rock shelter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391743/original/file-20210325-21-1fdoksc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The RSA CHI1 rock shelter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rock Art Reseach Institute and www.sarada.co.za</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2009 and working under challenging circumstances, South African artist and author <a href="https://www.stb-rockart.co.za/">Stephen Townley Bassett</a> produced a documentary copy of the ceiling panel. It shows the art’s beauty and mystery. </p>
<p>When we looked at his copy, we found that the significance of some images on the site’s ceiling panel had been missed by other researchers. This allowed us to examine the meaning of these images more closely.</p>
<p>Importantly, our realisation was not a technological or methodological advance. Instead, it was a conceptual development that occurred by turning our attention to a well-known site and viewing it again in the light of everything we have learned so far about San rock art. </p>
<p>Our re-investigation allowed us to arrive at a new understanding of specific elements of San belief.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390094/original/file-20210317-21-povuk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of the ceiling painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy © Stephen Townley Bassett</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Deeply religious art</h2>
<p>Two sources of San ethnography are especially important in rock art research and our understanding of the ceiling panel. In the 1870s, the German linguist Wilhelm Bleek and his co-worker and sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd interviewed a series of |Xam San people, some of whom had been brought from the Northern Cape to Cape Town as convicts. </p>
<p>Remarkably, <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/">Bleek and Lloyd</a> recorded over 12,000 pages of texts in the |Xam language, which is no longer spoken, and transliterated most of it line-by-line into English. Much of this material remains relevant to our understanding of the art. </p>
<p>More recently, in the twentieth century, a number of anthropologists worked with San groups in Namibia and Botswana with a focus on a range of topics from hunting and gathering to folklore and childcare. The <a href="https://www.kalaharipeoples.org/resources">Kalahari ethnography</a> compliments the Bleek and Lloyd archive.</p>
<p>We know from the ethnography that the San believe in a universe with spiritual realms above and below the level on which people live. Decades of research has shown that the rock art is deeply religious and situated conceptually in the same multilevel universe.</p>
<h2>Re-reading the ceiling</h2>
<p>In San rock art, the <a href="https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/eland">eland</a> is a connecting element. It is the most commonly depicted antelope in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg paintings. It features in several San rituals and was believed to be the creature with the most <em>!gi:</em> – the |Xam word for the invisible essence that lies at the heart of San belief and ritual. </p>
<p>At RSA CHI1, there are many depictions of eland, but we focused on the one with its head sharply raised. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391746/original/file-20210325-13-4y1zly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of the eland with the raised head.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Townley Bassett</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Depictions of this posture, though not common, recur in other sites. The eland’s raised head suggests that it is smelling something, most probably rain. Both smell and rain are supernaturally powerful in San thought. </p>
<p>The unique feature in this paintings is, however, the way in which a line runs up from an area of rough rock, breaking at the eland’s front legs, and then on to another area of rough rock. The painter, or painters, must have depicted the eland first and then added the line to develop the significance of its raised head. We argue that both the raised head and the line emphasise contact with the spirit realm, though in different ways.</p>
<p>The way in which the painted line emerges from and continues into areas of rough rock is comparable to the way in which numerous San images were painted to give the impression that they are entering and leaving the rock face via cracks, steps and other inequalities. But what lay behind the rock face?</p>
<h2>Behind the rock face</h2>
<p>We have noted already that the San universe is divided into different realms. Contact between these often interacting realms is sometimes depicted in the art by long lines that link images or sometimes appear to pass through the rock face. San shamans or medicine people (called <em>!gi:ten</em> in |Xam) move along or climb these ‘threads of light’ as they journey between realms to heal the sick, make rain and perform other tasks. The |Xam called these out-of-body journeys <em>|xãũ</em>. They obtained the power needed to accomplish them by summoning potency from strong things, such as the eland.</p>
<p>The inter-realm nature of the line is further evidenced by the three creatures depicted moving along it. The two moving upward are quadrupeds or four-legged animals: one is non-specifc and one has a tail and human arms. These images may depict the sort of bodily changes that <em>!gi:ten</em> say they experience during out-of-body journeys.</p>
<p>The faint white creature moving down the line was for us the climax of our work. It is clearly birdlike (<em>!gi:ten</em> often speak of flying). But closer inspection revealed that, though faint, it has a rhebok antelope head with two straight black horns, a black nose and mouth.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rhebok therianthrope." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391747/original/file-20210325-23-1cgkzj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph of the rhebok-headed image moving down the line.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rock Art Reseach Institute and www.sarada.co.za</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also has two ‘wings’ emanating from its shoulders. In short, it is a hybrid form – part bird and part buck. In addition, it has two white lines coming out of the back of its neck. It was from this spot that <em>!gi:ten</em> expelled the sickness that they drew out of the bodies of sick people.</p>
<p>For many people, the detail and the complexity of the images at this site come as a surprise. Yet they are typical. San rock art ranks among the best in the world if we consider its beauty, its intricacy and the rich sources of explanation on which we can draw.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David M. Witelson is a PhD student at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. He has a bursary with the Rock Art Research Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lewis-Williams has received funding from a NRF A-grade grant. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Challis hold an NRF African Origins Platform Grant as well as a joint Wits/Edinburgh University seed fund. He is a member of the Bradshaw Foundation Rock Art Network and the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pearce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The team from Wits University returned to a well-known ceiling panel in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains, armed with new knowledge about the beliefs of the San people who made the paintings.
David M. Witelson, PhD candidate, University of the Witwatersrand
David Lewis-Williams, Emeritus professor, University of the Witwatersrand
David Pearce, Associate professor, University of the Witwatersrand
Sam Challis, Senior research scientist, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128577
2019-12-18T13:10:46Z
2019-12-18T13:10:46Z
The tiny ostrich eggshell beads that tell the story of Africa’s past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307400/original/file-20191217-58292-6l90wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A beader in Botswana strings ostrich eggshell beads</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pixabay.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You can tell a lot about a person by the things they wear, and this has likely been true throughout human history. The earliest kind of decoration was probably <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-use-of-ochre-tells-us-about-the-capabilities-of-our-african-ancestry-47081">ochre</a>, which we know humans have used for at least 200,000 years. </p>
<p>By 75,000 years ago, people begin <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-excavated-beads-tell-us-about-the-when-and-where-of-human-evolution-53695">wearing beads.</a> Since that time, ornaments and other symbols have been central to the way we express our identities and signal our relationships. In fact, this is probably one of the things that <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-bling-makes-us-human-101094">makes us human</a>.</p>
<p>Ornament production really took off about 50,000 years ago, when we see the earliest standardised jewellery in the form of small disc beads made from ostrich eggshells. In Africa, ostrich eggshell beads are one of the most common type of archaeological artifacts, particularly from sites dated to the last 10,000 years. They are also found in smaller numbers throughout Asia where 12,000-year-old ostrich eggshell beads have been <a href="https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/10/worlds-smallest-palaeolithic-ornamental.html?fbclid=IwAR0JZL97TeIl_-ZIsmNB0sJD6bgseeTrsYLO2XqxkzlvAZtl8HgiiRRVyVI#KV25UwPyxRyqGEKQ.97">discovered in China</a>.</p>
<p>Since ostrich eggshell bead jewellery is still <a href="http://www.gamtkwa.org.za/2013/12/naniqua-jewellery-project/">produced today</a>, this is one of the longest running cultural traditions in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306831/original/file-20191213-85412-1qior99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beaders in Botswana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pixabay.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what can these beads tell us about the ancient peoples who made and wore them?</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225143">recently published paper</a>, we analysed 1,200 ostrich eggshell beads from 22 sites in southern Africa and eight sites in eastern Africa. Although beads are found at many African archaeological sites, they tend to be overlooked in research. Many of the bead measurements for this study were taken from decades-old, unstudied collections and are being reported for the first time. We believe that this research demonstrates the importance of studying existing museum collections and approaching old questions in new ways. </p>
<p>Our aim was to see how ostrich eggshell bead size has changed over the past 10,000 years. Bead size has become an informal way to estimate the age of archaeological sites in southern Africa. Yet beads overall have received relatively little attention compared to other types of artefacts and there is much we still don’t know. Our study increases the number of published bead measurements from less than 100 to over 1000, allowing us to study patterns on a larger scale and gain new perspectives on the African past.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306900/original/file-20191213-85371-nc6qvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ostrich eggshell beads at an archaeological site.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elizabeth Sawchuk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our findings provide important insights into how ancient peoples responded to change. Topics like migration and the economy dominate today’s new cycle. Yet ancient peoples also faced issues like <a href="https://theconversation.com/archaeology-can-help-us-prepare-for-climates-ahead-not-just-look-back-101823">climate change</a>, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6466/708">cultural contact</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/angkor-wat-archaeological-digs-yield-new-clues-to-its-civilizations-decline-116793">economic shifts</a>. The things that people made and used, like ostrich eggshell beads, can help us understand the impacts of these changes on their lives. </p>
<h2>Herders versus hunter-gatherers</h2>
<p>Three decades ago, the archaeologist Leon Jacobson noticed a pattern in ostrich eggshell beads from Namibia. Those associated with hunter-gatherer sites tended to be smaller than those associated with herder sites. Since we know that herding entered southern Africa <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-how-livestock-made-its-way-to-southern-africa-64256">around 2000 years ago</a>, Jacobson <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266673511_The_Size_Variability_of_Ostrich_Eggshell_Beads_from_Central_Namibia_and_Its_Relevance_as_a_Stylistic_and_Temporal_Marker">suggested</a> that sites with beads larger than about 7.5mm might be younger than that. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440305001184?via%3Dihub">Other</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889025?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">studies</a> confirmed the same pattern within the western part of southern Africa. Some researchers also argued that bead size might help distinguish which sites were used by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889087?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">herders versus hunter-gatherers</a>. But this <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889154?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">remains contested.</a> </p>
<p>Until now, the idea that ostrich eggshell beads changed with the introduction of herding had only been tested in the southern part of Africa, and with a limited number of sites. We therefore decided to test this with a much larger dataset, and in other places like <a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-is-revealing-the-origins-of-livestock-herding-in-africa-114387">eastern Africa where herding also spread some 3000 years earlier</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306830/original/file-20191213-85367-tzv62j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Modern ostrich eggshell beads.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hans Sell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Regional variations</h2>
<p>At the southern African sites, we also found that larger beads appeared after 2,000 years ago. However, contrary to previous studies, our data show that these larger beads did not replace long-standing bead traditions. In fact, the vast majority of ostrich eggshell beads continued to be quite small. On the other hand, beads from the eastern African sites were highly variable in size and showed no change when herding entered that region around 5,000 years ago.</p>
<p>Ostrich eggshell beads in eastern and southern Africa seem to tell a different story about herding’s spread. <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-domestication-of-cows-170652">Cattle,</a> <a href="http://archaeology.about.com/od/shthroughsiterms/qt/Sheep-History.htm">sheep</a> and <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/the-domestication-history-of-goats-170661">goats</a> are not native to either of these regions and must have been introduced by contact with peoples living farther north. </p>
<p>In both places, groups also made ostrich eggshell beads before and after herding spread. </p>
<p>In eastern Africa, the lack of change in bead size could suggest that local hunter-gatherers adopted livestock, or that incoming herders possessed similar traditions and/or quickly adopted local styles. </p>
<p>In southern Africa, the appearance of larger beads around 2000 years ago suggests the introduction of livestock stimulated a change in bead traditions, or that new styles were introduced at the same time as sheep. </p>
<p>Yet in both places, local bead traditions remained dominant. Curiously, the larger beads in southern Africa fall within the range of eastern African beads, hinting at contact between these regions as suggested by other archaeological evidence and <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170921141311.htm">ancient DNA</a>.</p>
<p>Our research findings suggest that the spread of herding into new areas did not lead to the replacement of local peoples and practices. Rather, people responded in more nuanced ways and maintained certain cultural traditions.</p>
<p>This research not only helps us understand the African past, but is important for considering how we as humans use culture to cope with the changes in our world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128577/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A survey of San ostrich eggshell beads - a common find at archaeological sites - paints a bigger picture of hunter-gatherers, herders and shifting cultural tradition.
Elizabeth Sawchuk, Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
Jennifer Midori Miller, Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127844
2019-12-02T14:11:21Z
2019-12-02T14:11:21Z
How art and technology helped bring faces of the dead to life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304076/original/file-20191127-112499-1cv5azx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Facial reconstruction is best known as a forensic tool that can help identify human remains and reconnect them with families for burial or memorialisation. The technique has a potent claim on our imaginations.</p>
<p>These images are usually produced when other identification methods have failed. It’s usually a last resort with very high stakes. This is perhaps why, when forensic depictions lead to recognition in spite of their own technical limitations, it can feel like a miracle, providing an essential, often long-awaited, piece of an investigative puzzle.</p>
<p>Facial reconstruction becomes most culturally visible when it is applied to <a href="http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/who-am-i-remembering-the-dead-through-facial-reconstruction/the-facial-reconstruction-process/">archaeological research</a>. Depicting past people enables viewers to imagine them as individuals rather than specimens. The facial image becomes a powerful and complex medium, fostering connections between historical events and personal lifeways, and re-establishing a degree of personhood. </p>
<p>This research is facilitated by advances in imaging technologies, and benefits from interdisciplinary input. In turn, it creates new opportunities for the retrieval of previously unknown or suppressed knowledge that reshapes our understanding of the past.</p>
<p>What has become known as the <a href="https://www.news.uct.ac.za/features/sutherland/">Sutherland Reburial project</a> offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the objectives of recreating faces from skulls. The project involved creating facial depictions based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/skeletons-and-closets-how-one-university-reburied-the-dead-126607">human remains unethically acquired</a> by the <a href="https://www.uct.ac.za/">University of Cape Town</a> in the 1920s. </p>
<p>The project has become a platform to ventilate the unfinished business of human remains discovered from <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoikhoi">South Africa’s unpleasant past</a>. It has also set a precedent for repatriation and restitution initiatives. The most critical is the involvement of direct descendants with links to the farm where the majority of these remains were exhumed, and their specific request to “see the faces” of their ancestors. Giving us their permission with their instruction, they collaborated in producing scientific knowledge for the benefit of the source community in Sutherland.</p>
<p>The project has also demonstrated how science, art and technology converge in contemporary facial reconstruction and depiction.</p>
<h2>How it’s done</h2>
<p>At the start of May 2019, the project was undertaken by <a href="https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/research/centres-and-institutes/institute-of-art-and-technology/expertise/face-lab">Face Lab</a>, recognised as an international leader in craniofacial research and analysis, with an entirely digital workflow. </p>
<p>Facial reconstruction interprets the details of the skull to recreate face shape through modelling of facial soft tissues, estimating the shape and size of facial features and using methods developed over a century of scientific and artistic collaboration. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304425/original/file-20191129-95250-l5foxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The human remains do not have to be handled by Face Lab, who work on scans of the remains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12024-006-0007-9.pdf">Current methods</a> have shown that shape can be accurately recreated with less than 2mm of error for approximately 70% of the facial surface.</p>
<p>The surface details of a face, known here as “texture”, are a matter of interpretation. Eye and hair colour, skin tone, wrinkles, scars and other marks, and some aspects of the ear cannot be reliably predicted from the skull alone. <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004224">Genetic phenotyping</a> is making some advances here, but not without <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/nyregion/dna-phenotyping-new-york-police.html">significant controversy</a>.</p>
<p>Yet these details are essential for creating a plausible face, so we must make a reasonable attempt, restricted by what can be justified by the available data. </p>
<p>In Face Lab, we refer to the final result as a “depiction” to distinguish between the process of recreating face shape – informed by anatomical standards that apply across all populations – and the highly interpretive process of adding surface details. The final depiction should employ visual strategies known to optimise recognition, but also infer ambiguity where necessary. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304424/original/file-20191129-95272-cnvu6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some of the many faces reconstructed during projects at Face Lab.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our job is therefore to predict the “most likely” in-life appearance of an individual by attending as closely as possible to the specific, not the average. Producing the right sort of face, with the features in a certain proportional and spatial relationship to each other, determined by a skull’s own architecture, is what narrows the search for an unidentified victim in a forensic context. </p>
<p>Refining individualising detail – a gap between the upper teeth, prominent ears, a crooked nose or asymmetric eyes – increases the chances of successful recognition.</p>
<h2>In the lab</h2>
<p>Face Lab worked with 3D digital models of the Sutherland skulls produced from CT scans, which provided excellent surface detail along with internal information that refined feature prediction and allowed estimation of missing jawbones (mandibles). This was necessary for three individuals in this group. </p>
<p>Where bony fragments were missing or damaged, reassembly was a necessary first step. The more bone is absent, the more qualified the final result.</p>
<p>Face Lab employs a 3D modelling programme with a haptic (touch-sensitive) interface. This process non-destructively mimics a manual sculpting process, enabling optimal preservation of fragile or damaged bone by building up the soft tissues of the face in virtual clay. Rendering the various layers transparent to view the underlying skeletal structure at any time during the process enables continual evaluation.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304426/original/file-20191129-95207-ta9e52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A reconstruction of a woman called Saartje in the Sutherland Reburials Project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Face Lab LJMU/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304427/original/file-20191129-95215-1uzzgng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A reconstruction of the face of Cornelius Abraham in the Sutherland Reburials Project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Face Lab LJMU/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Extensive visual research guided our final presentation choices for the Sutherland faces. This was supported by information from within the team, including ancient DNA which confirmed biological sex in some cases, as well as kinship and geographical origins. </p>
<p>We chose to present these people as they most likely would have appeared at their approximate age at death. The environment in which they lived and their likely lifestyle – harsh weather, basic diet and physical labour – would have affected their appearance. Older adults would have likely had more heavily wrinkled skin than contemporary people of the same chronological age.</p>
<p>Clothing was suggested based on contemporaneous archival photographs taken in the same broad geographical area. Adding a sepia tint introduced an element of colour in keeping with 19th century photographic techniques and visually situates them in the period in which the majority lived. </p>
<p>They are historical interpretations produced with forensic fealty.</p>
<h2>Unnerving reality</h2>
<p>Presenting the images to the families evoked complex emotions, from intense curiosity to guarded apprehension. The level of realism was clearly unnerving, but ultimately compelling. </p>
<p>The faces were ciphers for a process of recognition that was about being seen and heard. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304423/original/file-20191129-95242-1p4tptq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Showing the families the facial reconstructions of their ancestors previously buried on Kruisrivier farm in Sutherland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a place where indigenous histories are conspicuously absent, the Sutherland families believe that having these stories brought to life in a tangible and dignified way fosters meaningful connections between the past and present, and for future generations.</p>
<p>Local heritage practices in South Africa have not taken advantage of what these techniques can deliver. The Sutherland Project is one model of what opening up institutional processes and analyses to those affected by historical crimes might look like. </p>
<p>Informed by how humanitarian values might contribute to historical redress initiatives, the Sutherland project poses ethical questions that have specific local expression but are globally relevant. </p>
<p>The biographies this process was able to reconstruct, embodied in these eight faces, are highly specific. But they stand for the experiences of many others over many decades, who have been lost to history, but from whom we have a great deal left to learn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Smith receives support for her doctoral research from the National Research Foundation. The Sutherland Reburial project was supported by the National Geographic Society.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Wilkinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Through science, art and technology, we are able to reconstruct the faces of the dead based on their remains. The researcher who did this work for descendants in Sutherland explains the process.
Kathryn Smith, Visual/forensic artist, PhD researcher, Liverpool John Moores University
Caroline Wilkinson, Professor at School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126607
2019-11-11T14:10:29Z
2019-11-11T14:10:29Z
Skeletons and closets: How one university reburied the dead
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300866/original/file-20191108-194675-mnznvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">SutherlandReburials Jannetje</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>This story begins with an archive audit at the University of Cape Town’s department of human biology. The audit reveals the remains of 11 human skeletons that had been unethically obtained and used for study many decades earlier. It becomes a stock-taking and place-making moment in the life of the department. A multi-disciplinary team of academics sets about rehumanising the San and Khoi remains, consulting with their ancestors – both past and present – and restoring dignity to the bones. Called the <a href="http://www.news.uct.ac.za/features/sutherland/">Sutherland Reburials Project</a>, the process enabled the university to attempt to provide an ethical model of redress and social justice through science. We asked the project’s Dr Victoria Gibbon to tell us more…</em></p>
<p><strong>How did you rediscover the skeletons and their attendant ethical dilemma?</strong></p>
<p>Globally, the historical unethical procurement and use of skeletal remains is something that haunts biological anthropology. In 2017, there were several South African initiatives to drive a process to distinguish between ethical and unethical procurement of human remains in universities and museums – and to discuss restitution. I returned to the University of Cape Town (UCT) and examined the Human Skeletal Repository records. Unfortunately, I found 11 individuals with known names or dates of deaths or which were known to the donor in life. The research suggested these remains should not be at the university.</p>
<p>Fast forward to 2018 after a lengthy process of figuring out a way forward. With the university’s Office of Inclusivity and Change we have embarked on the initial phase of the restitution project. Of the 11 unethically procured sets of remains, nine are from the town of Sutherland in the Northern Cape. We decided to start there. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300874/original/file-20191108-194624-78w3pm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sutherland in the Northern Cape, where the skeletal remains were from.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The records indicate that in the 1920s a farm owner dug up remains from the worker burial ground on a Kruisrivier farm and brought them to UCT. The records further indicate that some of these individuals had been hunter-gatherers who were captured and forced into labour on the farm. They state one was possibly murdered, others were elderly, and some died of illness.</p>
<p>My focus was to return them to their resting place because the way these people were brought to the university was wrong. I never imagined to what extent the Sutherland families would bring me on a journey with them to share knowledge from the past.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300869/original/file-20191108-194646-cclowz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A visit to the farm in Sutherland where the remains had originally been buried.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>What was it that made this so particular in terms of a model to seek redress?</strong></p>
<p>I have reflected on why this process was so unique and positive. What did we do differently? My feeling is there are three key aspects which shifted power and blame. When I informed my seniors, the immediate response was to place a moratorium on access. To physically seal and remove these individuals from the repository and place the power to study and unseal in the hands of the families. </p>
<p>The second moment was when I was introduced to Deputy Vice Chancellor of Transformation Professor Loretta Feris. An environmental lawyer, she has a passion for social justice, and agreed to lead the project. Through her UCT publicly took responsibility for the injustice in 1920 and committed to addressing it through a meaningful process of restitution. </p>
<p>The third key was the inclusion of a public participation advisor, Doreen Februarie. She went into the community to locate relevant stakeholders and lay the foundation for the community engagement. She built trust for the start of our conversation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300868/original/file-20191108-194646-x68mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A visit by the UCT academics to Sutherland for one of a series of community engagements to find a way forward for the bones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>How was life breathed back into the stories of the bones?</strong></p>
<p>When we informed the community of descendants of the remains, it was painful and raised a lot of questions. They asked for as much information as possible. On behalf of the families I compiled an interdisciplinary team to answer the questions the families had asked. It was agreed that this would encompass the history (Professor Nigel Penn) and archaeology (Professor Simon Hall) of the original cemetery. Of the remains, it would include biological reports (myself and Dr Tinashe Mutsvangwa), stable isotope analysis (Professor Judith Sealy), DNA analyses (Dr Stephan Schiffels and PhD student Joscha Gertzinger) and facial reconstruction (Prof Caroline Wilkinson and PhD student Kathryn Smith). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300872/original/file-20191108-194665-1n81fze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Project member Kathryn Smith showing family the reconstructed facial images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>How did the facial reconstructions enrich the project?</strong></p>
<p>The incredible scientific information has provided a story for each of these people’s lives. Facial reconstruction has brought them to life for all of us. They are a stark reminder that people of the past are people just like you and I. This is obvious of course, but to see them with your own eyes brings a humanity to the story that was unexpected. These nine individuals are more than just individuals, they are representatives of what life was like for San and Khoi people in Sutherland in the 1800s. Life was hard physically and emotionally. We see characters in these people, we see perseverance, resolve and strength of character. They shared a life experience as labourers on Kruisrivier farm. Three individuals have evidence of squatting facets, a sitting position that was culturally and symbolically important for San people – and also for burying their dead in a way that was culturally significant. These two pieces of evidence alone are a statement. The farmer could take their freedom and force them to work but could not take their spirit and culture. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300875/original/file-20191108-194637-t5tx90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ancestral blessing ceremony was part of the restorative justice process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je'nine May/UCT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>There were ceremonies to engage with the ancestors and try to find spiritual restitution as well?</strong></p>
<p>The process of restitution will continue to be a journey. The families visited the gravesite that the individuals were removed from. I provided a biological report on a visit to the community. A blessing ceremony was held at UCT in partnership with traditional leaders. The families also viewed the remains in private, then invited some of us in to ask questions. This moment was important for closure and understanding. Traditional leaders from Cape Town have gone into the community in a knowledge-sharing exercise. I have been involved in community outreach and done educational scientific outreach in the local schools. </p>
<p>During each visit to Sutherland we came to know the families better and understand their desire for knowledge. A quick look at the <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.co.za/Tourism-g1601473-Sutherland_Northern_Cape-Vacations.html">tourism industry in Sutherland</a> today speaks to colonial history, to space and to <a href="http://www.karoohoogland.gov.za/sutherland-tourist-attractions/">star gazing</a>. Where is the deep historical recognition for San and Khoi people in this area? It is missing. The Sutherland families and communities want their history to be acknowledged and preserved for their children. These nine individuals have brought us together and provided a platform of opportunity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Gibbon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When the University of Cape Town discovered skeletons in its archive that had been unethically obtained and used, they set about restoring justice to the bones and the community they came from.
Victoria Gibbon, Associate Professor in Biological Anthropology, Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112313
2019-03-04T13:33:44Z
2019-03-04T13:33:44Z
Debunking the colonial myth of the “naked Bushman”
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261680/original/file-20190301-110146-83k9lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Naron women and children wearing ordinary dress - the photograph was taken in 1919.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fourie collection/ Museum Africa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To dress is a unique human experience, but practices and meanings of dress are as different as the people populating the world. In a Western cultural tradition, the practice of dressing “properly” has for centuries distinguished “civilised” people from “savages” . </p>
<p>Through travel literature and historical ethnographic descriptions of the Bushmen of southern Africa, such perceptions and prejudices have also made their mark on the modern research tradition.</p>
<p>The Bushmen are the indigenous hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa. Today approximately 100 000 live in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Angola. Very few still live a life of primarily hunting and gathering. </p>
<p>“Bushmen” or “San” are both umbrella terms for what constitutes a great variation of different groups and languages. Unfortunately, both terms holds negative connotations and there’s no proper consensus to which term is the less problematic.</p>
<p>Early travellers, adventurers and colonial administrators wrote about the indigenous inhabitants they met on their journeys, from the 17th century onwards. Alongside the increased colonisation of the area and the subjugation of the natives, the popularised discourse evolved into “Bushman research”, using the terms of scientific means and methods. </p>
<p>The developing discourse continued and ultimately formalised and cemented a myth of the “naked Bushman”. It’s a myth that had its origins in a Western understanding of what it means to dress and a strong focus on the Bushman body as a subject of research.</p>
<p>Because Bushmen were widely considered to be nearly naked, the study of dress formed a limited part of the many later academic efforts at understanding Bushman culture. In <em><a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/dress-as-social-relations/">Dress as Social Relations – An interpretation of Bushman Dress</a></em> I challenge this myth. </p>
<p>I provide a study of Bushman dress as it’s represented in the material culture of historical Bushman communities. I used as my source material collections of the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town and Museum Africa in Johannesburg, as well as the better known Bleek & Lloyd archive of /Xam Bushman narratives. This <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/">archive</a> is the result of an impressive recording project of the /Xam language, initiated in the 1870’s by the linguist Wilhelm Bleek.</p>
<p>So what were the different worlds of dress and how did they affect social relations?</p>
<h2>Social relations</h2>
<p>The Bleek and Lloyd <a href="http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/">archive</a> contains 138 notebooks, of kukummi – or news, stories, talk, information, personal histories, day-to-day practices as well as myths and folklore. These myths are often stories about the Early Race, the people that inhabited the world of the /Xam before the /Xam proper. They tell of the world before the present order, when people were animals and animals were people.</p>
<p>In my research I used a broad definition of dress. This allowed me to look for signifiers of dress – such as aprons, bags, karosses, tattoos, cuts and fragrances – as I read through the stories in the notebooks. In this way I was able to identify different contexts and situations where elements of dress seem to have been of particular relevance. </p>
<p>Typical situations were associated with hunting practices and practices related to rain and water. For example, a hunter, before he tracks his prey, must cut himself and rub the cuts with a root called <em>ssho /oa</em>. And he must rub his body with it and wear <em>ssho /oa</em> in a band around his shoulders. This is to get the game to “run foolishly”, not knowing that it is afraid, and to approach the hunter as an equal. </p>
<h2>Nice smelling herbs</h2>
<p>In the narratives I was also able to read about the “New Maiden” – the pubescent girl, who rubbed herself with nice smelling herbs – or buchu. She did this to calm and sooth the angry rain and to ensure a life-giving quiet rain and prosperity of the community. </p>
<p>Other examples tell of the transformation of items of dress back into what they were initially made of. A shoe became an eland antelope, the skin bags transformed back into hartebeests or springbok antelopes. </p>
<p>What all of these examples indicate in different ways is that important relations between people, animals and other beings were mediated through the bodily practice of dress. </p>
<p>Body modifications (such as tattoos, cuts, fragrances) initiated important social relations between the hunter and his prey, and the new maiden and the rain. Whereas body supplements, in these examples the actual skin clothing and the tortoiseshell containers carrying the buchu, maintained and continued these relationships in the present, material world.</p>
<p>The stories about the transformation of skin clothing back into the animal they were made of indicates that the association between the skin and the living animal was never completely broken. When the hunter killed the animal and made his own and his family’s clothing out of it, they dressed in that animal and were required to act respectfully so that the animal didn’t turn back into its animal identity again.</p>
<p>Qualities of the living animal were therefore continuously present in the made clothing. They formed part of the embedded properties of the clothing and maintained and created links and relations between humans and animals. The narratives of the /Xam show us how the bodily practice of dress was an essential part of how to live life in a communal world, between people, animals and other fellow beings.</p>
<p>Far from being naked, or nearly naked, the Bushmen of colonial southern Africa had a complex and meaningful practice of dress. It was intimately related to subsistence, identity and their perception of how to live life in the world as they knew it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vibeke Maria Viestad has published the book in question with Wits University Press. </span></em></p>
Contrary to the colonial view, Bushmen of southern Africa had a complex and meaningful practice of dress.
Vibeke Maria Viestad, Research Fellow in Archaeology, University of Oslo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97704
2018-06-06T14:00:07Z
2018-06-06T14:00:07Z
Storytelling helps indigenous people to build their own social solutions
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221511/original/file-20180604-175438-o4qpoh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Participants map out an ideal future for their community.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Authors supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What happens when local communities are actively involved in plotting their own solutions to the everyday problems that plague them? These challenges could be social, economic, environmental or civic in nature. This question lies at the heart of several inclusive innovation processes that are being used around the world. <a href="http://www.theglobalresearchalliance.org/index.php/inclusive-innovation">Inclusive innovation</a> aims to explore, research, propose and implement solutions to the challenges experienced by low-income and disadvantaged communities. </p>
<p>Such processes make sense. Communities know their own needs best. They also understand how the services they require – healthcare, policing, education – should be provided. But while policymakers, officials and researchers are showing a growing interest in this <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/inclusive-innovation-means-shared-development-12297519">inclusive approach globally</a>, implementation is not yet particularly common.</p>
<p>Inclusive innovation processes could be extremely valuable in South Africa. In recent years the country has experienced <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-15-years-south-africans-in-north-west-have-been-getting-angrier-heres-why-96141">violence</a> and increased tension between the organisations that provide services, like government departments, and communities. This is because of a lack of accessible basic services such as education and access to medical care. It’s become critical to get all the stakeholders involved when developing new service strategies and designing interventions.</p>
<p>We wanted to know what this would look like in practice. So we embarked on a pilot project with 16 San youth from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTFTMd8ectw">Platfontein</a>, just outside Kimberley in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/san">The San</a></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/excavating-meaning-from-the-complex-myths-of-southern-africas-san-people-45451">Excavating meaning from the complex myths of southern Africa's San people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>is Southern Africa’s oldest indigenous community. Our aim was to explore the potential of <a href="https://www.storycenter.org/">digital storytelling</a> as a method to engage community members in the process of identifying service needs and their service delivery context.</p>
<p>The project drew inspiration from the San’s own heritage and long tradition of storytelling – with a modern twist. We used digital storytelling methods like short narrated video clips, drawings and images to create a space in which the participants could – in their own words, in their language of choice – conceptualise possible solutions to their community’s challenges. We also asked them to visualise what they wanted their communities to look like in the future.</p>
<p>This allows for real open innovation, from within a community, to realise and conceptualise people’s service needs and the delivery mechanisms that would work best for them. Our findings add to a global body of work that suggests designers of both products and services, as well as researchers and policy makers must actively explore methods that allow <a href="https://www.unicef.org/adolescence/cypguide/files/Building_a_culture_of_participation.pdf">communities</a> to be part of developing the brighter future they imagine.</p>
<h2>Bringing people’s stories to life</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581910001655">Digital storytelling</a> has several applications. It can be used to capture experiences and individual reflections. It’s also a good method for capturing and preserving culture, tradition and identity for future generations. </p>
<p>We built on this foundation and developed a method that participants could use to express themselves on the issue of service delivery and community needs. Language, cultural practices and lived experiences can all affect how community members and researchers engage with each other. </p>
<p>Adopting digital storytelling approaches for this project meant the traditional power dynamics were no longer present. The participants were able to take ownership of the process and outcome.</p>
<p>First, we asked the participants to physically map their “future community”. The goal was to produce a visual representation of their community, which included the everyday services they require. The maps were constructed on large pieces of paper and included drawings and natural materials from the environment, like sand and seedpods.</p>
<p>The process of creating and visualising a future community gave participants the opportunity to discuss their views with each other. Through this discussion they decided upon a hierarchy of service needs, which allowed insights into the most pressing needs of the community. Medical and social services were noted among the most needed.</p>
<p>As the group began to record their stories and add narrative, they shared a newly negotiated future vision for their community. This aspect of the process meant that the team could capture their community’s collective views and needs in a manner that supported an authentic means of self-expression. </p>
<p>The narration of the video captured the voices, needs, hopes and dreams of real community members.</p>
<h2>Real service solutions</h2>
<p>Several patterns and themes emerged from the participants’ stories, as well as materials from the workshop. </p>
<p>People identified a number of service needs, such as localised medical care and social workers. There was also a call for services that promote cultural preservation and the sharing of indigenous knowledge from one generation to the next. Participants said that educational support was needed along with sport facilities and organisations, as well as services to help tackle alcoholism and substance abuse. </p>
<p>The next step would be to see these needs converted into real service solutions. And this is where innovation thrives. For example, <a href="https://www.ideo.com/case-study/singapores-road-to-a-human-centered-government">Singapore’s government</a> collaborated with design group IDEO to work on their services in several government ministries to dramatically improve services for the public.</p>
<p>Many of the service needs and community challenges highlighted by the San participants could be supported or resolved through technology. Mobile-based information services, or diagnostics using a mobile phone camera may support a medical decision as to whether an individual needs to travel to a local hospital. </p>
<p>New service strategies could support educational needs. This could take the form of mentoring local community members to support families with early childhood development. All of this means that concepts for technological innovations, or local service offerings, are no longer being “pushed” onto communities. Instead, they are evolving from community-identified needs. </p>
<p>Our findings informed the development of similar workshops elsewhere in South Africa and in Namibia for the European Union-funded <a href="https://www.ulapland.fi/EN/Webpages/PARTY">Participatory Development with the Youth</a> project.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vikki Eriksson receives funding from the National Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Barnes receives funding from The National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>
Inclusive innovation processes could be extremely valuable to low-income and disadvantaged communities in South Africa.
Vikki Eriksson, Design Theory and Research Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Veronica Barnes, Product Design Lecturer and supervisor, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94591
2018-04-15T08:45:11Z
2018-04-15T08:45:11Z
Marginalised Namibians are trying to reclaim photography after colonialism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214271/original/file-20180411-543-x7bn9u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This image, taken by a member of Namibia's San community, reveals a great deal about representation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tertu Fernandu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people think of photography as the ultimate democratic mass medium. Anyone can take and upload a selfie to global platforms. Photos taken by ordinary people and shared on social media have contributed to political change, for example during the <a href="http://www.tjmholden.com/tjmholden.com/TJMH_Academic/University_Courses/Crisis_Communication_2012-2013/Crisis_Communication,_2012-2013/Readings_files/Khamis_Cyberactivism_updated.pdf">Egyptian revolution of 2011</a>.</p>
<p>But in much of Africa, photography has a dark past and a chequered present. Namibia, for instance, was the scene of a <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2018/03/addressing-genocide-namibia/">genocide between 1904 and 1908</a>. Up to 80% of the Herero ethnic group and large portions of other groups were wiped out by the German colonial military machine. Photography played a role in justifying these massacres and in what followed. </p>
<p>Namibia’s archives contain images of proud German troops standing to attention next to the hanged bodies of Herero prisoners. In the years that followed, colonial authorities tried to portray a gentler side of white rule. Images of black people fascinated by white technology – cameras, airplanes, cars – are not uncommon. The South African rulers who followed the Germans from 1915 to 1990 also used photography for propaganda purposes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214272/original/file-20180411-560-q10wly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A German officer identified as Lieutenant von Durling with Herero captives in about 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herero_Nama_Shark_Island_Death_Camp_Lieutenant_von_Durling_05.jpg">Wikicommons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even today, photography is misused in Namibia. During interviews I conducted for my recently submitted doctoral dissertation, indigenous San people described how, in various villages and on some development projects, the privilege of taking photographs of San people was traded for money and donations of food. </p>
<p>This reality threatens to limit how far photography can be emancipatory in the future. My research involved a number of Namibian organisations that have made photography part of their mission to empower marginalised people. I found that their work is often incredibly positive, challenging widely held Namibian social norms and portraying an urgent demand to be seen. But the devil is in the detail, and often that detail relates to ongoing patterns of privilege.</p>
<h2>Different ways of seeing</h2>
<p>The organisations I worked with seek to “take back” photography from its historical and present misuse. They aim to get marginalised Namibians involved in telling their own stories and documenting their own communities through photography.</p>
<p>I was embedded in some of these projects as an ethnographic researcher, along with some of my senior students from the <a href="http://www.nust.na">Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST)</a>. We were all relatively privileged Namibians and had to take this into account when trying to help people empower themselves through images making without centring our own experiences, especially when acting as teachers and experts.</p>
<p>The role of the teacher and the role of the expert are both traditionally imbued with a degree of power. Such ways of thinking about knowledge are problematic because they imply that for every expert, there is a non-expert who needs to be “given” information. This implies a powerful, involved expert on one hand and a passive receiver of knowledge on the other. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSSgXhajqQ">As I’ve explained in a TEDx talk related to the project</a>, this is a particularly pervasive danger when it comes to education concerning technology.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1094&context=jmle">research shows</a> that people learn in a better and more empowering way when they are allowed to <em>construct</em> their own knowledge, and are the owners of a process that decides what knowledge is important and what is not. </p>
<p>Through my research, I was able to see what happens when traditional ways of thinking are put aside and power is given to students to photographically describe their own identity. The results can be interesting and unique. </p>
<p>One example was the involvement of members of Namibia’s San communities in photographic projects. San people are widely photographed. But their own pictures, which they take themselves, hardly ever show up in published or exhibited photographic work. </p>
<p>The main picture with this article was taken by Tertu Fernandu, one of the San members of a photographic project I work on. The woman in the picture, Kileni Fernando, is a member of one of Namibia’s San communities. She is active in several organisations that represent the San as a collective. </p>
<p>It’s interesting to note the advertising sign for a curio/tourist shop called “Bushman Art” behind her. Bushman is term imposed upon a variety of San ethnic groups by Westerners, and is sometimes seen as derogatory by the San themselves. Stylised representations of typical Namibian ancient rock paintings, as supposedly emblematic of San or “Bushman” culture, are visible as part of the sign and are also painted on the wall behind it. </p>
<p>In the difference between its subject and the background, then, the picture seems to suggest a disconnect between what San people were seen to be in the past and what they are now. It also shows the differences between representations of San people offered to foreign visitors and the characteristics of living Namibian San people in reality.</p>
<h2>Challenging power</h2>
<p>Some of the participants’ photographs also indicated the “in-between-ness” that many told me in interviews they felt regarding their national, regional, gendered, ethnic and other identities. They often used symbolism in photographs to illustrate these feelings.</p>
<p>This picture was taken though the window of a curio shop which sells artefacts supposedly representing Namibia, chiefly to tourists. A hand is seen in the reflection making the sign language symbol for Namibia. On the inside of the window a sculpture of a Himba woman and child wearing traditional dress can be seen, as well as what appear to be a necklace and a carved sculpture of an elephant. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213812/original/file-20180409-114076-rt6akl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reflections and curios: an image taken by a photography student.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emmency Nuukala</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The picture seems to suggest that there are many ways of being Namibian, and that the image presented to foreign visitors is only partially correct. It’s only part of the story.</p>
<p>These pictures seem to challenge, or at least question, societal power relationships in Namibia. My participants said in interviews that photography could be a challenge to power structures. They said it could, for example, show queer Namibians – who still face huge <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/namibias-gay-paraders-call-for-legal-protection-20170730">discrimination</a> – as ordinary people with hopes and desires like anyone else. It was seen as a way for “the youth” to talk to and about each other via social media.</p>
<h2>Photography in future</h2>
<p>It is to be hoped that Namibians interested in photography continue to engage with the photographic record and ask how they can make their practice more humane. </p>
<p>This is happening to some extent. Feminist organisations like the <a href="http://www.wlc-namibia.org/index.php/publications">Women’s Leadership Centre</a> have led the way in publishing books of women’s photography and writing. A number of young urban black women are producing challenging <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/65420/read/Hildegard-Titus-Us-Now--Rousing-and-Relevant">photographic work</a> within the genre of “<a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/175058/archive-read/Mbewes-Afrofuturist-Village-Inclusive-and-Inspired">afrofuturism</a>”. However, more must be done to take this movement to rural areas.</p>
<p>In short, it is vitally important that marginalised Namibians are encouraged to take up cameras to document their lives – on their own terms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Ellis received funding for this project from the Namibia University of Science and Technology. He is a board member of the //Ana-Djeh San Trust, which represents the interests of San youth, especially students, in Namibia.</span></em></p>
Marginalised Namibians should be encouraged to take up cameras to document their lives – on their own terms.
Hugh Ellis, Lecturer: photojournalism and digital media, Namibia University of Science and Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75566
2017-04-04T14:04:19Z
2017-04-04T14:04:19Z
We’re closer to learning when humans first daubed arrows with poison
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163457/original/image-20170331-31763-1vgslll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The San's arrows may look dainty, but when tipped with poison they are lethal for hunting.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fred Dawson/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Exactly when did human beings start tipping their weapons with poison to hunt prey? This is a question at the forefront of recent archaeological research. </p>
<p>In southern Africa San (or Bushman) hunter-gatherer groups, such as the /Xam of the Western Cape and the Ju/wasi and Hei//om of Namibia, used poisoned arrows for hunting during the <a href="http://www.sahumanities.org/ojs/index.php/SAH/article/view/362">19th and 20th centuries</a>. The origins of this technology, though, may be far older than we thought.</p>
<p>Recently, traces of the poison <a href="http://www.medicinenet.com/ricin/article.htm">ricin</a> were found on a 24 000 year-old wooden poison applicator at Border Cave in South Africa’s Lebombo mountains. If this identification is correct it would mean that people in southern Africa were among the first in the world to harness the potential of plant-based poisons. </p>
<p>South Africa has provided plenty of evidence of behaviours that could be attributed to cognitively complex <em>Homo sapiens</em>. This includes early evidence of hafted <a href="https://www.academia.edu/4561170/Quartz-tipped_arrows_older_than_60_ka_further_use-trace_evidence_from_Sibudu_KwaZulu-Natal_South_Africa">projectile technology</a>, the selection of aromatic plants for <a href="http://in-africa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Wadley-et-al-2011-Science-MSA-bedding-Sibudu.pdf">bedding materials</a>), and the use of ochre as an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=KJn93toAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=KJn93toAAAAJ:_FxGoFyzp5QC">insect repellent</a>.</p>
<p>The early use of poison is one more indicator of an advanced repertoire of behavioural and technological traits that have characterised our species from the earliest times. The problem is that it’s not easy to identify the remnants of ancient poisons. Organic molecules, including those that make up different poisons, degrade over time and seldom resemble their parent compound. For this reason it is often very difficult to accurately identify ancient organic residues.</p>
<p>Now a team of archaeologists and organic chemists from the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Pretoria and Johannesburg has <a href="http://www.sajs.co.za/potential-identifying-plant-based-toxins-san-hunter-gatherer-arrowheads/madelien-wooding-justin-bradfield-vinesh-maharaj-dwayne-koot-lyn-wadley-linda-prinsloo-marlize">published</a> details of a method that can – with reasonable accuracy – identify plant-based toxins and other unique chemical markers present on archaeological artefacts . </p>
<p>This may allow scientists to infer the presence of toxic plant ingredients applied to ancient weapons. It adds to our growing appreciation of the full complexity of early human populations – in southern Africa as well as in the world. </p>
<h2>Testing the method</h2>
<p>Anyone who’s watched BBC nature documentaries will <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o">recall</a> scenes of small groups of Bushman hunting antelope with their delicate little bows and arrows. This flimsy equipment was able to bring down large game because of poison. </p>
<p>The most well known source of arrow poison in southern Africa is a beetle larva known as Diamphidia. The Diamphidia grub is still used today by traditional hunters living in the Kalahari. The grub is eviscerated between the hunter’s fingers and its entrails applied directly to an arrowhead’s base. The poison, known as diamphotoxin, can bring down a fully-grown giraffe. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.sahumanities.org/ojs/index.php/SAH/article/view/362">historical records</a> indicate that many other, different plant ingredients were used. The particular ingredients and recipes used to make arrow poison <a href="http://www.sahumanities.org/ojs/index.php/SAH/article/view/362">differed</a> between groups and locations. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/33/13214.abstract">archaeological discovery</a> at Border Cave (on South Africa’s border with Swaziland), revealed trace amounts of a substance still adhering to a 24 000 year-old wooden poison applicator. This substance was <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/33/13214.abstract">identified</a> as by-products of the poison ricin. Ricin is produced by the castor bean plant, from which castor oil originates. This discovery, though not without its detractors, sparked <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618215014111">renewed interest</a> in identifying poison ingredients on archaeological artefacts in various parts of the world.</p>
<p>This is where our research comes in.</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.sajs.co.za/potential-identifying-plant-based-toxins-san-hunter-gatherer-arrowheads/madelien-wooding-justin-bradfield-vinesh-maharaj-dwayne-koot-lyn-wadley-linda-prinsloo-marlize">paper</a> presented the results of a pilot study designed to accurately detect minute amounts of organic compounds from poisonous plants found on archaeological artefacts. We used an analytical technique known as ultra performance liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) – to characterise the organic compounds present in 11 species of poisonous plant found in southern Africa. </p>
<p>To test the reliability of our detection technique and our ability to accurately identify the most likely plant source of identified compounds, we conducted a blind test. Three plant extracts were prepared following a known poison recipe and applied to a modern arrowhead. The plants used in this recipe were known to only one of the authors. Once the poison coating on the arrowhead had dried, a small amount was scraped off and analysed using UPLC-MS. </p>
<p>We were able to identify two of the three plants used in the poison recipe; identification of the third, belonging to the euphorbia taxa, was not definitive.</p>
<p>Finally, a 90-year-old poisoned arrowhead from Namibia was analysed following the same protocol. The results showed that our method can be used tentatively to identify toxins based on comparative overlays with fresh plant material. Furthermore, the method is able to identify non-toxic compounds that may be unique to specific species of plants. This means the plant in question could be identified even in the absence of known toxins.</p>
<h2>Opening new doors</h2>
<p>Our study’s importance lies in the ability to recognise organic components of ancient plant-based poisons that may be hundreds – or even thousands – of years old. This is particularly impressive in instances where several ingredients were mixed together to prepare an arrow poison and where only minute amounts of this poison survive on the implement. </p>
<p>No historical information exists on the variety of plants used (nor, indeed, the recipes) for arrow poisons in the eastern half of southern Africa. Also, apart from the single discovery at Border Cave, we have no idea when people started using poisons to assist in hunting. Hopefully this new method can help to address both of these issues and build on existing scholarship of Africa’s indigenous knowledge systems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Bradfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The early use of poison is one more indicator of an advanced repertoire of behavioural and technological traits that have characterised our species from the earliest times.
Justin Bradfield, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Evolutionary Studies Institute), University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67256
2016-11-22T20:00:43Z
2016-11-22T20:00:43Z
Why forging social cohesion still eludes post-apartheid South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146951/original/image-20161122-24569-uxusay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman arrives for Nelson Mandela's memorial. The idea of a rainbow nation has been futile.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jim Hollander</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The call on South Africans to commit to the principle of social cohesion has become more strident in recent years. The plea typically gains urgency when issues of racism and xenophobia resurface on the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/two-decades-after-apartheid-ended-racial-tensions-rattling-south-africa/article22571118/">national radar screen</a>.</p>
<p>Persistent calls for harmony offer some indication of how divided and conflicted South Africans remain. Prior efforts to build a cohesive society seemed to have failed. Even at universities, where future leaders are usually groomed, the problems of prejudice and <a href="https://www.cput.ac.za/storage/services/transformation/ministerial_report_transformation_social_cohesion.pdf">bigotry persist</a>. </p>
<p>A number of initiatives have been launched to address the problem. These include a Social Cohesion <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/sites/default/files/NATIONAL-STRATEGY-SOCIAL-COHESION-2012.pdf">Summit</a> in 2012 following harrowing incidents of brutal xenophobia in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/xenophobic-violence-democratic-south-africa">parts of the country</a></p>
<p>But none appears to have made any decisive impact. Xenophobia remains a constant threat while horrendous racist attacks remain a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/16/two-white-south-africans-in-court-over-racist-coffin-video-case.html">reality</a>. So what are the key, overriding aims and goals of social cohesion, as officially defined in South Africa? Why do they remain so unreachable and unfulfilled in the democratic era? </p>
<p>In South Africa the principle of social cohesion can be viewed as an important, humanist philosophical mission intended to counter the apartheid belief system based on racism, exclusion, partition and gross human abuse. But it does far more than that: as the South African culture ministry <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/sites/default/files/WHAT%20IS%20SOCIAL%20COHESION%20AND%20NATION%20(3).pdf">says</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[A] community or society is cohesive to the extent that the inequalities, exclusions and disparities based on ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, age, disability or any other … are significantly reduced or eliminated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reinforcing and bolstering this mission is the principle of nation building. It advocates the actual coming together of the country’s diverse histories, languages, cultures and more. Together these aspirations coalesce, culminating in the quest to establish a single, inclusive, national community. This quite strikingly invalidates a core ambition of the <a href="http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/%7Ecale/cs201/apartheid.hist.html">apartheid system</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the noble goals of the new South Africa, in 2012 the Institute for Justice and <a href="http://reconciliationbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-SA-Reconciliation-Barometer-FINAL.pdf">Reconciliation</a> found that less than a fifth of South Africans always or often socialised with others in residential areas, while only 21.6% sometimes do and 56.6% rarely or never do. </p>
<h2>It’s not purely class</h2>
<p>Contemporary analysts have generally highlighted the spectacular rise in social inequality, and how this has <a href="http://www.esset.org.za/content/Resources/Publications/2010-The-redistributional-effects-of-socioeconomic-rights-in-post-apartheid-SouthAfrica.pdf">bolstered class divisions</a>. But the problem does not only exist in the economic domain. </p>
<p>Quite crucial, too, are the deeper and more symbolic aspects of the country’s culture policy. This may offer a clearer perspective of some of the factors that have contributed to the breakdown of the social cohesion project. The American communication theorist William R. Brown played a central role in formulating the now celebrated Rhetoric of Social Intervention Model, which is helpful in this instance. This offers a systematic theory of how human beings symbolically constitute, maintain or <a href="https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/afr/the-rhetoric-of-social-intervention/book231667">change social systems</a>.</p>
<p>So attention was drawn to individuals’ capabilities to figuratively receive and/or convey information and, by extension, values, beliefs, concepts and ideas. Symbols, therefore, can inspire people to transform their hopes and desires into tangible realities – good or bad.</p>
<p>A deeper scrutiny of the country’s national cultural symbols and, more distinctly, the actual codes and beliefs they transmit, shows at times a distinct deviation from what social cohesion really aspires to achieve. This may have impelled rather than curtailed the schisms so widely experienced throughout the country today.</p>
<h2>Cultural strategy</h2>
<p>Let’s start with the now defunct notion of the <a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-is-South-Africa-called-rainbow-nation">rainbow nation</a>. As Mangaung metropolitan mayor Thabo Manyoni rightly <a href="http://theweekly.co.za/?p=18833">sums it up</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when we claimed to be a rainbow nation, there was nothing binding us and there is still nothing that is binding us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, the rainbow image did not or was not endowed to transmit the primary objectives of social cohesion. Its distinct colour configurations effectively conveyed an underlying creed of the past – the notion of “separate-but-equal”. This was apartheid’s ideological bedrock in the years when it grappled to give human segregation – apartheid – a <a href="http://www.apdusa.org.za/book-authors/tabata-i-b/Tabata">more acceptable name</a>.</p>
<p>The “them and us” motif is also quite pronounced in the formal structure of the national anthem. Furthermore, the incorporation of Die Stem (the apartheid national hymn) into the new anthem “has an echo of humiliating memories to many black people, a sad reminder of the loss and indignity black people have <a href="http://www.dawn.com/news/122119/">suffered</a>”. </p>
<h2>Unity or diversity?</h2>
<p>The national motto – <em>ke e: /xarra // ke</em>, which in San language means “diverse people unite” – is <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-12-05-00-khaya-dlanga-diverse-people-unite">hugely promising</a>. But here, too, we are faced with an immense incongruity. The motto’s official and socially-dominant interpretation generally is <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">“unity in diversity”</a>.</p>
<p>Accordingly, previously marginalised cultures are afforded official recognition and opportunities for <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/content/white-paper-arts-culture-and-heritage-0">expression and development</a>. While cultural restitutive practices remain crucial the focus, it appears, has been on promoting prevailing, individually-distinct, historically-separated cultures. </p>
<p>In doing so, this campaign may have inadvertently perpetuated past cultural patterns. This includes those imposed or tainted by a belief system <a href="http://reconciliationbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-SA-Reconciliation-Barometer-FINAL.pdf">rooted in separateness</a>. Likewise, the frenzied promotion of individual identities and cultures may also have laid the basis for the preservation of discriminatory beliefs and exclusionary customs. Intransigent champions of apartheid have openly called on like-minded individuals to safeguard the icons of Afrikaner <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/10/afrikaner-singer-chains-herself-to-vandalised-south-african-statue">nationalist rule</a>. </p>
<p>The promotion of diversity – in its current form – thus involuntarily upholds group cultural expression, even if such action may be deemed offensive by others. </p>
<p>The much-contested Traditional Courts <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/bills/2012-b01tradcourts.pdf">Bill</a> if signed into law, is set to fuel such divisive trends. It upholds historically-disjointed, traditional governing structures. It undermines equal citizenship in a unified South Africa. It bolsters notorious, outdated <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2014-02-06-reviled-land-act-is-being-re-enacted">apartheid practices</a>. The bill poses a flagrant threat to the code of cohesion as well as <a href="http://www.politicalanalysis.co.za/2012/05/07/the-zulu-affair-the-re-emergence-of-tribalism-under-zuma-presidency">constitutional democracy</a>. </p>
<h2>So what’s to be done?</h2>
<p>In certain influential cultural circles there seems to be a lack of historical consciousness of apartheid ideology and its <a href="http://www.apdusa.org.za/book-authors/tabata-i-b/Tabata">underlying ambitions</a>. Deeper understanding of the word apartheid, and its most rudimentary meaning – <a href="http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/%7Ecale/cs201/apartheid.hist.html">to set apart</a> – seems to be non-existent in mainstream orbits of thought. What, we may ask, was the broad and sweeping anti-apartheid movement all about? </p>
<p>The plea “diverse people unite” must be resurrected from slumber. It persuasively challenges the rudiments of a divisive and distorted belief system. IIt also essentially echoes the code of cohesion which actually reaches out to communities, imploring them to come together for the purposes of cultivating unity. </p>
<p>In its true historical form, ke e: /xarra // ke fortifies the goals and principles of social cohesion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clive Kronenberg receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>
Despite the noble goals of the new South Africa and its ideals of racial harmony, racial tensions remain a major problem in the country. Prejudice and bigotry persists even in universities.
Clive Kronenberg, NRF Accredited & Senior Researcher; Lead Coordinator of the South-South Educational Collaboration & Knowlede Interchange Initiative, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68693
2016-11-22T20:00:34Z
2016-11-22T20:00:34Z
How justice can be brought to South Africa’s rooibos industry
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146741/original/image-20161121-4544-1l8awlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A worker piles up leaves of rooibos tea for drying. Local people have been marginalised in the industry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are political, environmental and social controversies associated with that most delectable of South African beverages: rooibos tea. The industry is based upon <em>Aspalathus linearis</em>, a leguminous plant from the Fabaceae family that occurs only in South Africa’s fynbos region. The debate enfolds both the plant itself and the traditional use and knowledge that fostered the growth of this lucrative industry.</p>
<p>Rooibos was first commercialised at the turn of the 20th century and is now a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0254629916305300">R300 million-a-year local industry</a>. It employs 5,000 people and trades up to 15,000 tonnes a year. </p>
<p>But these economic feats have been accompanied by dispossession and adversity stretching back over centuries through colonialism and then apartheid when the government imposed a 40-year monopoly on rooibos.</p>
<p>The inequalities continue. About 350 commercial farmers produce 98% of the harvest. Less than 7% of land on which rooibos tea is grown is controlled by coloured – the name given to mixed race descendants of settlers, former slaves and Khoi or Bantu people – farmers who produce about <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Bek/publication/222301191_'Alternative_foods'_and_community-based_development_Rooibos_tea_production_in_South_Africa's_West_Coast_Mountains/links/02e7e5149b1fe04b26000000.pdf">2% of tea volumes</a>. Despite their involvement in fair trade, many of these farmers remain economically, politically and geographically marginalised.</p>
<h2>Laying claim to rooibos</h2>
<p>There are claims that the rooibos industry grew on the uncompensated back of traditional knowledge. This has led to the launch of demands by indigenous San and Khoi for a stake <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Companies/Agribusiness/Tea-industry-urged-to-share-benefits-with-Khoi-San-20150522">in rooibos benefits</a>. </p>
<p>This is in line with South Africa’s <a href="https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/legislations/nema_amendment_act10.pdf">Biodiversity Act</a> and its <a href="https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/legislations/nemba_regulations_g30739rg8831gon138.pdf">2008 Bioprospecting, Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations</a>. Growing from the international <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf">Convention on Biological Diversity</a> and its <a href="https://www.cbd.int/abs/doc/protocol/nagoya-protocol-en.pdf">Nagoya Protocol</a>, the law states that benefits arising from use of indigenous biodiversity should be shared with resource custodians and traditional knowledge holders.</p>
<p>In 2010, the <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-90-481-3123-5_9">South African San Council</a>, one of the organisations representing first indigenous peoples of Africa, wrote to the Director-General of Environmental Affairs to claim their rights as primary knowledge holders of rooibos and honeybush tea. They were joined, in 2013, by the <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/government-system/traditional-leadership">National Khoisan Council</a> – established by former President Mandela to create a platform for Khoisan historical leadership in South Africa’s Constitution. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.environment.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/traditionalknowledge_rooibosandhoneybushspecies_report.pdf">Government-commissioned research</a> supported claims by San and Khoi. Its report urged those involved in using rooibos or honeybush to negotiate benefit-sharing agreements. These agreements set out the terms under which genetic resources and traditional knowledge should be used and their benefits fairly and equitably shared. </p>
<p>The report caused ructions. The rooibos industry dismissed it as lacking credibility and commissioned its own report, unpublished to date. At the same time it continued to use images of San and Khoi in the marketing of rooibos. Negotiations are now underway to seek resolution between the rooibos industry and the San and Khoisan councils.</p>
<h2>Whose knowledge counts?</h2>
<p>There is a tension between achieving historical and restorative justice for the San and Khoi and recognising the long chain of those who have contributed knowledge in different ways.</p>
<p>The San and Khoi indisputably inhabited rooibos-filled landscapes, but by the end of the 18th century the numbers of San had been decimated. Yet their knowledge of local plants was unquestionably passed on.</p>
<p>Important questions have thus been raised about claiming priority, or who was first.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0254629916305300">Tryntjie Swarts</a>, for example, was a local woman who located the elusive rooibos seed in ant nests in the 1920s, which led to the industry’s expansion. </p>
<p>Russian immigrant <a href="http://www.rooibosltd.co.za/rooibos-background.php">Barend Ginsberg</a> first established the industry in the early 1900s, his dream being to make rooibos the “Ceylon of the Cape”. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/opinion/2016/03/06/Obituary-Annekie-Theron-founder-of-global-rooibos-company-who-built-R80m-business">Annekie Theron</a> was a Pretoria housewife who accidentally discovered that rooibos had a soothing effect on her hyper-allergic baby. This led to a dramatic increase in demand. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146235/original/image-20161116-13521-n3b9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The rooibos industry has largely been built on the back of cheap labour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rooibos Limited</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Researchers and innovators have demonstrated the <a href="http://sarooibos.co.za/">health-giving properties of rooibos</a> and have pioneered different processing techniques. Local farmers have contributed production innovations.</p>
<p>There are questions about who should benefit from agreements under the Biodiversity Act. San and Khoi councils have been proactive in their demands but until recently have not included local coloured rooibos farmers. </p>
<p>These farmers are typically mixed-race descendants of settlers, former slaves and Khoi. They do not easily identify as indigenous or associate themselves with contemporary San or Khoi political structures. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aman.12096/full">plant, not the culture</a>, serves as the economic anchor for many. Now there are moves to include these rooibos farmers in benefit-sharing agreements.</p>
<h2>Adding value</h2>
<p>A potentially larger set of issues also requires resolution. The Biodiversity Convention and Nagoya Protocol are underpinned by the principle of fair and equitable benefit sharing. This is between technology-rich countries of the global North and biodiversity-rich countries of the global South. These principles of remedying global injustice have been all but ignored for rooibos.</p>
<p>For example, flavonoid C-glycosides of the plant have <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0254629911001086">anti-oxidant properties</a> thought to protect against cancer, heart attacks and strokes. </p>
<p>These are attracting growing international interest but this bioprospecting, meaning the search for useful chemical compounds and genes from biodiversity, has yielded few benefits for South Africa. </p>
<p>By 2016, 141 patents had been filed for rooibos, <a href="http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/ip-development/en/economics/pdf/wo_1013_e_ch_2.pdf">most by Japanese and other foreign companies</a>. These cover a range of uses from pharmaceuticals to teas and cosmetics. Many of these remain inactive but they raise questions about how material was obtained and compliance with South Africa’s Biodiversity Act. </p>
<p>Rooibos tea is a commodity, but research and development for new products is characterised as bioprospecting and requires a permit. A <a href="https://www.cbd.int/abs/side-events/resumed-abs-9/id2114-berne-policy-brief.pdf">controversy</a> involving food giant Nestlé brought these issues to the fore.</p>
<p>The fact that more than 95% of rooibos is bulk exported without value-adding is also cause for concern. A step in the right direction is the recent <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/sas-rooibos-tea-gains-protection-under-eu-deal-20160617">granting of geographic indication status</a> for rooibos. This is an important way to secure the plant’s origin in the market.</p>
<p>There are also invisible injustices, which must be attended to. A central motivation for bioprospecting is that it should enable biodiversity conservation to pay its way by creating incentives to conserve the resource. Yet the conservation of rooibos as a genetic resource, as a habitat and ecosystem, and as a landscape has been all but ignored in the business model of rooibos.</p>
<p>Because the crop is an indigenous species, it is often promoted as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional agriculture. But thousands of hectares of natural mountain fynbos, constituting one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world, are ploughed up every year to grow uniform plantations of rooibos tea.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sanbi.org/sites/default/files/documents/documents/biodiversitybusiness.pdf">footprint for cultivated rooibos has grown</a> from 14,000 hectares in 1991 to over 60,000 hectares today. Chemical inputs are also a concern and soils have been depleted. </p>
<h2>The vision</h2>
<p>Implementing access and benefit sharing in the rooibos industry requires a unifying, integrative and inclusive vision.</p>
<p>Such an approach needs to:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>recognise the historical and existing injustices of the sector;</p></li>
<li><p>acknowledge the significant contributions that have been made by traditional knowledge holders, researchers, individuals, farmers and commercial enterprises;</p></li>
<li><p>regulate research and development to optimise benefits from bioprospecting;</p></li>
<li><p>take action to deal with the environmental problems;</p></li>
<li><p>embed access and benefit sharing within a wider developmental agenda involving access to markets, credit and land; and</p></li>
<li><p>set in place restorative measures to transform the industry.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It is clear that the rooibos industry is poised for transformation. Decisions taken today will not only influence the local industry, but will also have an impact across the seas. Access and benefit sharing, while fraught, irreconcilable and fractured, could catalyse just the kind of forum needed to turn challenges into opportunities for growth, redress and a rethink of the rooibos industry.</p>
<p><em>The research described in this article is based on a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0254629916305300">recent published review</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68693/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Wynberg works for the University of Cape Town, South Africa where she holds a research chair funded by the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation. She consulted for the Department of Environmental Affairs for many years on policy issues relating to access and benefit sharing as well as for the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the ABS Capacity Development Initiative. She serves on the Boards of Biowatch South Africa, Environmental Monitoring Group and was previously VIce Chair of the Board of PhytoTrade Africa. This article is written in her personal capacity and does not represent the views of any of these organisations. No benefit will accrue to any organisation.</span></em></p>
The rooibos industry has been accompanied by dispossession and adversity stretching back over centuries.
Rachel Wynberg, Associate Professor and DST/NRF Bio-economy Research Chair, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65349
2016-09-20T12:18:14Z
2016-09-20T12:18:14Z
Botswana at 50: The end of an African success story?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138105/original/image-20160916-16988-1dc3n5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President of Botswana Ian Khama. He leads a country that's lost the shine created by his father Seretse Khama.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Alejandro Ernesto</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>September 2016 marked 50 years since Botswana <a href="http://www.officeholidays.com/countries/botswana/botswana_day.php">attained independence</a> from British rule. Over the decades, the small landlocked country has been regarded as a role model for <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/botswana-role-model-country-success">success</a> in Africa. It has achieved political <a href="http://internationalpropertyrightsindex.org/country?c=BOTSWANA">stability</a>, democratic <a href="http://static.moibrahimfoundation.org/u/2015/10/02201308/04_Botswana.pdf">government</a>, and remarkable <a href="https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BWA&ifdim=region&hl=en&ind=false&icfg">economic growth</a>. </p>
<p>The attraction of Botswana and its history is newly reinforced in the film ‘<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3387266/">A United Kingdom</a>.’ The <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55734/colour-bar/">story</a> begins more than 15 years before independence when the territory was known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The plot follows the marriage of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/president-seretse-khama">Seretse Khama</a>, a royal African prince, to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37297708">Ruth Williams</a>, a white British woman. </p>
<p>The apartheid regime was outraged and exerted political pressure on the British, who held important mining interests in South Africa. To ease tensions, the British forced Seretse into exile in England from <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13041658">1950 to 1956</a>. He was only allowed to return to Botswana after abdicating his claim to the chiefdom. </p>
<p>Seretse would later enter party politics in the early 1960s, leading the then <a href="https://www.eisa.org.za/wep/bot1965overview.htm">Bechuanaland Democratic Party</a> to victory in 1965 and independence the following year.</p>
<p>For a global audience, the movie provides a topical account of race relations. The love story is also likely to revitalize the <a href="https://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/31864654/botswana-is-the-best-place-to-visit-in-2016/#page1">popular perception</a> of Botswana as a national <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=290791">success story</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pX5vI4osR50?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A United Kingdom (2016), directed by Amma Asante, and starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 50-year anniversary was a time for Botswana to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bot50/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED">celebrate</a>. But now is the time to reflect on the historical context for this imagery and question whether it has relevance for modern-day Botswana. </p>
<h2>The building of a tiny country</h2>
<p>Geopolitically and economically Botswana was one of the weakest countries to ever gain freedom from colonial rule. Its <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00291958408552111?journalCode=sgeo20">landlocked position</a> was ominous. It bordered white minority regimes in South Africa, South-West Africa (Namibia) and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). South Africa, occupying the main trading route, could readily intimidate Botswana with crippling sanctions and violent incursions. </p>
<p>Diplomacy was difficult. Relations with the apartheid regime in South Africa required a tightrope walk between economic cooperation and political distance. Botswana’s post-colonial leadership was slow to build wider credibility within the <a href="http://www.au.int/en/history/oau-and-au">Organisation of African Unity</a>. Overly reliant on British aid, the country was in desperate need of economic partners and diplomatic connections further abroad. </p>
<p>External onlookers doubted Botswana’s viability and its capacity to resist South African pressure. In defiance, Seretse upheld a vision of security and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=7720&t=79">prosperity</a> in a non-racial democracy. </p>
<p>He insisted all individuals were entitled to political freedoms and individual protections, without racial discrimination. These values appeared ambitious to uphold in a young developing state. But they soon proved to be a vital asset.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C1iWS7BQlqc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Seretse Khama, video interview by Adrian Porter, Independent Television News (ITN) reports, 17 March 1965.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regarded as noble and sincere, Seretse thrived in multilateral forums and bilateral meetings. His country had qualities that appeared exceptional and therefore worthy of assistance. There was even a convincing proposal that Botswana could encourage a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=477945378954792&id=148228411926492">wider transformation</a> throughout Southern Africa. </p>
<h2>Seretse’s winning strategy</h2>
<p>Seretse’s argument was simple. Apartheid relied on the notion that multi-racialism could not work in southern Africa. To challenge this, peacefully, Botswana needed to present a thriving alternative.</p>
<p>The more aid Botswana received, the more of a success it could become. And the more it could be seen as a success, the more it would undermine the ideology of apartheid. This was not purely a form of wishful idealism. Instead, it proved to be a practical response for a country that upheld the integrity of its principles.</p>
<p>The approach had its greatest appeal in the U.S. It inspired diplomats, politicians, scholars and anti-apartheid activists. In the following decade, Botswana became one of the <a href="http://us-foreign-aid.insidegov.com/l/22/Botswana">highest recipients</a> of U.S. foreign aid per capita. </p>
<p>Effective leadership and policymaking were also crucial. This was best demonstrated in Botswana’s effective management of a rich mining boom in <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/06/29/483695466/botswana-s-economy-needs-more-than-diamonds-to-shine">diamonds</a>.</p>
<p>Despite Botswana’s apparent achievements, the territory’s external security could not be guaranteed for many decades. Botswana accepted refugees provided they did not use its territory as a base to advance liberation struggles. But without an army until 1977, it was powerless to stop deadly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/20/world/pretoria-s-forces-raid-3-neighbors-in-move-on-rebels.html">incursions</a> by South African and Rhodesian security forces chasing suspected freedom fighters. </p>
<p>Yet Botswana’s great appeal, especially in North America and Western Europe, proved to be its own form of defense. Botswana could rely on almost universal <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/11176/69574">diplomatic protests</a> toward any act of provocation. </p>
<p>The nation would outlive the neighboring powers that once posed a threat to its existence.</p>
<p>Seretse, who died in 1980, ultimately proved that multi-racialism was possible in the region. </p>
<h2>Botswana today</h2>
<p>With these white minority regimes now long gone, Botswana has lost its claim to exceptionalism. Today, there are valid reasons to <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21688387-africas-exemplar-good-governance-faces-rockier-days-losing-its-sparkle">question</a> Botswana’s “success.” The Botswana Democratic Party has remained in power since independence. President Ian Khama, Seretse’s son, shows <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/trouble-paradise-botswana-journalist">increasing signs</a> of authoritarianism. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/africa/botswana">Homosexuality is illegal and the San</a>, an indigenous hunter-gatherer population, face appalling levels of discrimination.</p>
<p>Growth is <a href="http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/AEO_2016_Report_Full_English.pdf">slowing</a> in an economy that has failed to diversify away from <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/diamonds-aren-t-forever-for-botswana-as-mining-boom-fades-away">diamonds</a>. More worrying, Botswana’s supply is expected to run out within the next two decades. </p>
<p>As the nation reached 50, the historical context of Botswana’s “success” reveals it to be an outstanding example of image-building in circumstances where survival was tied to international visibility. </p>
<p>Botswana may be reasonably depicted as a “United Kingdom” that triumphed because of its inspiring message of interracial unity. Nonetheless, the portrait of success is outdated. It is unlikely to be revived for future anniversaries without substantial improvements in economic progress, human rights and social justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Kirby has received scholarship funding from the Australian government under the Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) and a research grant from La Trobe University.</span></em></p>
For a global audience, the movie ‘A United Kingdom’ provides a topical account of race relations. The love story is likely to revitalize the popular viewpoint of Botswana as a national success story.
James Kirby, PhD candidate in History, La Trobe University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53594
2016-02-04T04:27:35Z
2016-02-04T04:27:35Z
How the origin of the KhoiSan tells us that ‘race’ has no place in human ancestry
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109968/original/image-20160202-32222-14dj62q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The annual 'Living Landscapes' procession is aimed at raising awareness of the Cedarberg's KhoiSan cultural heritage. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ancient origins, anatomical, linguistic and genetic distinctiveness of southern African San and Khoikhoi people are matters of confusion and debate. They are variously described as the world’s first or oldest people; Africa’s first or oldest people, or the <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Khoi-San-want-recognition-as-first-people-of-SA-20150820">first people</a> of South Africa.</p>
<p>They are in fact two evolutionarily related but culturally distinct groups of populations that have occupied southern Africa for up to 140,000 years. Their first-people status is due to the fact that they commonly retain genetic elements of the most ancient <em>Homo sapiens</em>.</p>
<p>This conclusion is based on evidence from specific types of DNA. This evidence also demonstrates that other sub-Saharan human populations retain genetic bits and pieces of DNA from non-KhoiSan primordial humans. These pre-date their out-of-Africa colonisation of the balance of the world.</p>
<p>What is important in the debate on the origins of, and diversity among, population groups of <em>Homo sapiens</em> is to establish what cannot, and should not, be derived from the various DNA evidence used to support the KhoiSan-as-first-people hypothesis. </p>
<p>This is that the KhoiSan, or any other groups of humans, can be assigned to evolutionarily meaningful “races” – or subspecies in biological classification.</p>
<p>The DNA evidence, if interpreted incorrectly, could be used to support the findings of “scientific” racial anthropologists such as <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Carleton_Stevens_Coon.aspx">Carleton S. Coon</a>. </p>
<p>As recently as 1962, Coon “recognised” the KhoiSan as the Capoid race. He based this on the distinctive anatomical features of the Capoids from those he used to designate the Congoid race. These include golden brown rather than sepia-coloured skin, the presence of epicanthic eye folds, prominent cheekbones and <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steatopygia">steatopygia</a>.</p>
<p>But, if correctly interpreted, the scientific evidence points quite to the contrary.</p>
<h2>Human evolution cannot be drawn like a tree</h2>
<p>If one were to compare the entire DNA genomes from representatively sampled human populations from around the world, the resulting relationships would look more like an evolutionarily reticulated chain-link fence. In other words, a network rather than a tree. This applies to even purportedly racially important anatomical features.</p>
<p>This is because human population groups worldwide are highly homogeneous (99.5% similar) genetically and their anatomical features vary in an uncorrelated fashion over the landscape. </p>
<p>These groups are, in evolutionary terms, very recent entities that have no biological or <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-science-has-been-abused-through-the-ages-to-promote-racism-50629">taxonomic</a> significance.</p>
<p>The DNA evidence used to discover the human genetic “footprints” that characterise the KhoiSan, and other diverging populations, is today easily put together. Forensic pathologists use it to determine an unidentifiable corpse’s population group. This process has been popularised on television shows such as <a href="http://www.tvmuse.com/tv-shows/CSI--Crime-Scene-Investigation_8779/">CSI</a> and <a href="http://www.fox.com/bones">Bones</a>.</p>
<p>This DNA evidence comes from:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Y chromosome polymorphisms inherited without recombination along <a href="http://www.ramsdale.org/dna13.htm">male lineages</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, from nuclear <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/full/409821a0.html">DNA</a>; and</p></li>
<li><p>most especially from <a href="http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/3/757.full.pdf+html">mitochondrial DNA</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Mitochondria are organelles within a cell that have their own independent DNA separate from that in the nucleus that determines an organism’s external appearance and physiology. They are involved with cellular respiration and nothing more.</p>
<p>Mitochondrial DNA allows the detection of direct genetically “ungarbled” connections among evolutionarily evolved human population groups. This is because a component of it evolves much faster than the bulk of nuclear DNA. Also, mitochondrial DNA is inherited maternally and is thus not intermixed with paternal DNA during reproduction.</p>
<p>Some evolutionary genetic anthropologists ignore the overwhelming balance of evidence that there is no evolutionarily significant <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-science-has-been-abused-through-the-ages-to-promote-racism-50629">racial variation</a> in either genes or anatomy. Instead they focus on these very few bits and pieces of DNA that, in evolutionary terms, change rapidly. This way they reach distorted conclusions about discernible “races” within the human species.</p>
<h2>Why there is only one race</h2>
<p>Recent DNA results used to detect human population genetic “footprints” is <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24988-humanitys-forgotten-return-to-africa-revealed-in-dna/">summarised</a> in: Humanity’s forgotten return to Africa revealed in DNA.</p>
<p>The story it tells is as follows. About 140,000 years ago human populations from East or Central Africa moved southwards and “colonise” western southern Africa. The probable nearest living relatives of these source populations are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text">Hadzabe people</a> from north-central Tanzania; and</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature5/">Mbuti pygmies</a> from the eastern Congo.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This migration gave rise to the present-day <a href="http://www.san.org.za/history.php">San hunter-gatherers</a>.</p>
<p>Much more recently – about 2000 years ago – there was a second movement of “colonists” from the north into southwestern Africa. They gave rise to the pastoral <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people-south-africa/khoikhoi">Khoikhoi people</a>.</p>
<p>This second group of “settlers” carried within its genome bits of Eurasian-sourced – and even some <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis">Neanderthal</a> – DNA derived from European humans who had returned to Africa about 3000 years ago.</p>
<p>Subsequent to this second colonisation, there was intermixing between the Khoikhoi and San. This gave rise to their close anatomical similarities despite the fact that they retained their marked cultural and linguistic differences.</p>
<p>Much more recently – about 1700 years ago – there was a third major north-to-south migration. This time it was the Bantu-speaking, black Africans into south-eastern Africa. Those “settlers” that eventually became the Xhosa peoples moved westwards and encountered the Khoikhoi, whom they drove further west and intermixed with genetically.</p>
<p>So, it is now possible for genetic evolutionary “anthropologists” to distinguish population differences among humans to infer the timing of their movements throughout the globe.</p>
<p>It is even possible to map one’s genetic “ancestry”, as South African President Nelson Mandela did, indicating that he possessed some <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/dna-test-may-reveal-youre-related-to-madiba-1.268615">KhoiSan</a> DNA.</p>
<p>The important point is that this evidence should not be used to assert that these differences, or shared bits of “ancient” DNA, support the identification of multiple human “races”. In fact, it confirms the wise assertion by the pan-Africanist leader, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959">Robert Sobukwe</a>, that there was only one race: the human race.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Before his retirement Tim Crowe received funding from the South African National Research Foundation and Department of Science and Technology through an award to the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology as DST/NRF Centre of Excellence.</span></em></p>
Human population groups worldwide are highly homogeneous genetically. They are in fact 99.5% similar and their anatomical features vary in an uncorrelated fashion over the landscape.
Tim Crowe, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48474
2015-10-02T04:38:44Z
2015-10-02T04:38:44Z
An enigmatic theme in San rock paintings is finally unlocked
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96971/original/image-20151001-23058-3m7iux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A painting from Botha’s Shelter in the Ndedema Gorge in the Drakensburg, said to be home to a rich tapestry of San art and life. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Termites of the Gods, I narrate a personal journey, over many years, to discover the significance of an enigmatic theme in San rock paintings known as “formlings”. </p>
<p>Formlings are a painting category found across the southern African region, including South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, with its densest concentration in the Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>Generations of archaeologists and anthropologists have wrestled with the meaning of this painting theme in San cosmology without reaching consensus or a plausible explanation.</p>
<p>Drawing on San ethnography published over the past 150 years, I argue that formlings are representations of flying termites and their underground nests. I go further to argue that they are associated with botantical subjects and a range of larger animals considered by the San to have great power and spiritual significance.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sarada.co.za/people_and_institutions/researchers/jeanette_deacon/">Archaeologist</a> Janette Deacon believes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This book has the potential to change the public perception of San rock art as a relatively trivial pastime. It could replace it with convincing evidence that many images and themes are in fact based on sophisticated religious symbolism that permeated all aspects of San life over thousands of years.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Unravelling the mystery (extract)</h2>
<p>My analysis shows that formlings were structured in a way that adheres to the general manner of San graphic representation in southern Africa.</p>
<p>Understanding formlings’ relationships with associated imagery, as individual metaphors in their own right, allows interpretation of their symbolic associations. It may also help to place an enigmatic image or class of paintings in a category of San life and belief.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96969/original/image-20151001-23058-1psx10r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>San rock art is currently approached from a detailed understanding of San ethnography. For this reason I deal with aspects of San belief and cosmology which revolve around flying termites. And, as a supplementary metaphoric layer, bees and honey. </p>
<p>The significance of the metaphoric links between these insect forms and aspects of San belief and spiritual world view is relevant to unravelling formling painting contexts.</p>
<p>To comprehend the painting contexts, I review the significance of these insect forms and suggest why they, and not other insects, were chosen
for depiction.</p>
<p>I also discuss both the mundane and the supernatural values these insects have in San thought to elucidate the symbolism of formlings. </p>
<p>At the first level of symbolic analysis, it seems that the meaning of formlings hinges on San religious beliefs concerning flying termites and bees as honey-fat creatures. Both substances hold high symbolic value for the San. </p>
<p>At the second level, I argue that we should search for San metaphoric cross-referencing between the natural history of these insect forms and various aspects of San belief and cosmology. As David <a href="http://www.sarada.co.za/people_and_institutions/researchers/david_lewis-williams/">Lewis-Williams</a> wrote in <a href="http://www.royalsocietysa.org.za/?page_id=1509">Seeing and Believing</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… religious statements are symbolic, not iconic, because they signify by an association of ideas rather than by likeness or similarity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I suggest that these insects are strongly connected with a powerful cosmological concept in San thought and world view. Therefore, in the rock paintings, formlings became its mediated symbolic representation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Termites of the Gods is published by <a href="http://witspress.co.za/contact-details/">Wits University Press</a>. The book is available in Paperback (EAN: 978-1-86814-776-2 and PDF EAN: 978-1-86814-777-9) with a recommended price of $US39.95.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siyakha Mguni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Formlings are representations of flying termites and their underground nests. They are associated with botantical subjects considered by the San to have great spiritual significance.
Siyakha Mguni, Project Manager, International Rock Art Collaboration, Rock Art Research Institute, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/45912
2015-08-14T03:56:23Z
2015-08-14T03:56:23Z
Paint gives clues about the ingenuity of ancient culture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91807/original/image-20150813-21425-1bxuub2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Impala drink at a waterhole in South Africa's Kruger National Park. Milk used in paint nearly 49,000 years ago could have come from their early antecedents.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jon Hrusa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How do we know when people developed minds capable of solving problems in the way that we do today? Archaeologists cannot excavate human minds from the past: they can only recover the material remains created by those minds. In the case of the people of <a href="http://archaeology.about.com/od/shthroughsiterms/qt/sibudu_cave.htm">Sibudu Cave</a> in KwaZulu-Natal, we can see that some items that they made required special skills that could only have been undertaken with minds like ours. </p>
<p>Mixing substances, like tempera paint, is one example of behaviour that involves the sort of brain power that we associate with people today. Sibudu’s people made paint from powdered ochre and milk extracts from wild animals because the process took place 49,000 years before the arrival of cows. </p>
<p>It is clear that that this type of composite paint cannot be made from precise recipes because the attributes of natural ingredients, like absorbency, vary according to local conditions. An artist must decide on recipe quantities while assembling the paint mix, and may need to make changes swiftly to avoid spoiling the product. </p>
<p>The ability to do this implies long attention spans, a capacity for multi-tasking and the ability to plan the assembly of ingredients. Such behaviour, also inferred from the making of compound adhesives at Sibudu, implies complex cognition of the kind possessed by modern people. </p>
<h2>The analysis</h2>
<p><a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131273">Discovered</a> by an international team of researchers, the unusual paint mixture used approximately 49,000 years ago at Sibudu Cave shows that milk was used as a binder well before the introduction of domestic cattle in South Africa in the first millennium AD.</p>
<p>The paint mixture contained red powdered ochre and casein, which is dried milk protein. Casein is an ingredient of <a href="http://www.crayola.com/things-to-do/how-to-landing/tempera-paint.aspx">tempera paint</a>, though some recipes use egg.</p>
<p>The casein was clearly not human, nor equid, but it closely resembled bovid. Domestic cows are bovids, but cattle were not present in southern Africa 49,000 years ago. The earliest date for these is AD 420 from the site of <a href="http://www.sahumanities.org/ojs/index.php/SAH/article/download/81/71">Mzonjani</a>, near Durban, where early farmers kept cattle.</p>
<p>Because the Sibudu paint predates cattle farming, it must have been made from the milk of a wild bovid. Bones of bovids that are known to have been the prey of the early hunters such as buffalo, eland, kudu, impala and duiker have been found at the site.</p>
<p>Sibudu is already well known for having the earliest evidence in the world (77,000 years ago) for plant bedding with insecticidal properties, as well as early engraving of bone and ochre, and the manufacture of marine shell beads.</p>
<p>The paint residue looks like cracked mud on the edge of a small stone flake excavated from the cave. A micro-sample (3.3 mg) of residue was removed from the flake for testing. The researchers used elemental analyses (scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and chemical analyses (gas chromatography/mass spectrometry) to establish that powdered ochre was mixed with milk in its liquid form.</p>
<p>The elemental analysis identified hematite and clay minerals in the ochre powder. The chemical analysis identified several amino acids that were submitted to principal component analysis with more than 100 reference samples. The presence of casein was inferred from the score plot. The question that arose from this initial analysis was: what kind of milk was used? Was it human or animal?</p>
<p>Proteomic (protein) analyses were conducted on the casein and on a set of Sibudu bones from the same layer. The bones were from zebra and from various medium-sized bovids, for example, hartebeest and wildebeest.</p>
<p>Milk may have been obtained by killing a lactating or juvenile bovid. Many wild bovids separate from the herd when giving birth and some, like kudu, hide their young and go off to browse alone. Such animals are easy prey for hunters. Richard Klein concluded that hunters at Klasies <a href="http://archaeology.about.com/cs/humanorigins/a/klasiesriver.htm">River</a> Cave I, southern Cape, targeted giant buffalo in advanced pregnancy or in the process of giving birth. </p>
<p>Such cows would already have milk. Many southern African bovids give birth in early summer, so the use of milk could have seasonal implications. Nevertheless, small bovids like duiker may give birth several times a year making the season of collection uncertain.</p>
<h2>Older than Greek and Egyptian art works</h2>
<p>Casein paint was used for art works about 3000 years ago in Greece and Egypt, but the Sibudu find is much older. The Sibudu liquid paint may have been used as body decoration or for painting on surfaces such as stone or wood.</p>
<p>Body painting is documented in <a href="http://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_bushmen.html">San</a> ethnographies and in rock art images. Ian Watts claims that red ochre was used as body paint for rituals from about 100 000 years ago. There are, however, no ethnographic precedents for mixing ochre with milk as a body paint, though modern Himba in Namibia mix ochre with butter as a coloring agent for skin, hair and leather clothing. </p>
<p>Ochre traces inside perforated marine shells from Blombos Cave, Sibudu, Border Cave and North African sites suggest to <a href="http://www.cecd.ucl.ac.uk/people/?go1=63">Marian Vanhaeren</a>and <a href="http://tracsymbols.eu/francesco-derrico">Francesco d’Errico</a> that they may have been worn against painted bodies. An ochre-rich compound blended with marrow fat was found stored in two abalone shells at the site of Blombos (100,000 years ago). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.wits.ac.za/academic/research/evolutionary%20studies%20institute/staff/22761/christopher_henshilwood.html">Christopher Henshilwood</a> and colleagues propose that this product may have been for decoration, but could have been for skin protection. Riaan <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KJn93toAAAAJ&hl=en">Rifkin</a> has shown that ochre can be both an effective sun screen and an insect repellent.</p>
<p>While it is not impossible that Sibudu’s tempera paint was used for body painting, the medium has a tendency to crack on flexible surfaces and is better suited to rigid planes like stone or wood. Rock paintings are known in Europe from about 40,000 years ago, but the earliest known southern African figurative art is dated to approximately 27,000 years ago at <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/apol/hd_apol.htm">Apollo 11</a>, Namibia. </p>
<p>These plaques have not yet been chemically analysed so we do not know how the paint was made. Where chemical studies have been conducted, neither milk nor casein has been documented as media for southern African rock art.</p>
<h2>The why and the how</h2>
<p>Although the use of Sibudu’s tempera paint remains uncertain, the people who made the product may have attributed a special significance and value to it. Whether or not it was obtained in a specific season, the bovid milk would have been an irregular acquisition.</p>
<p>Milk spoils quickly. So, in the absence of refrigeration, tempera paint must be used soon after manufacture. Although speculative, it is tempting to suggest that Sibudu’s tempera was reserved for special tasks that were different from ones making use of other ochre recipes.</p>
<p>Francesco d’Errico has suggested that the production of figurative art may not have a single geographical or cultural origin. The use of tempera paint at Sibudu suggests, further, that there may once have been several cultural traditions involved in the manufacture of colouring agents, just as there were distinct traditions involved in making bone and stone tools.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lyn Wadley receives funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>
It may have been a cultural tradition to use tempera paint that contained traces of milk on bodies according to a discovery at Sibudu Caves in KwaZulu Natal.
Lyn Wadley, Honorary Professor, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.