A few hundred miles
north of Cape Town in the dry and rugged Richtersveld mountains lie four
communities along the Orange River whose people are known by several names; the
Nama, San, Khoisan, the ‘people of the Richtersveld’, and derogatorily also
known as the Bushmen. With a slim frame, a biscuit or apricot-colored
complexion, wrinkly features, wiry hair, they are the remnants of the
indigenous people who once were hunter gatherers and beachcombers in the early
Cape.
They had lived for
centuries in the mountains, fished in the waters and looked for food along the
shore. They have good eyesight and make excellent trackers and have the ability
to study a pile of manure or animal dung and tell you which animal had made the
deposit, the age of the animal, and the direction in which it had gone. They
left behind a trail of rock paintings along the coast and had a wonderful sense
of poetry, music and art. Some of these paintings can be seen at a resort in
the Cedarberg where San children and adults are on display in their original
skins and habitat.
Living conditions
It is shocking that
once the land which had been freely used by all were taken away and some of
them migrated towards the Cape, some wandering in the streets, some finding
jobs, others living out their lives as alcoholics. In the past part of the
white man’s form of payment was a ‘dop’, alcohol, which kept them in a
perpetual state of slavery. Filmmakers saw a chance to join in and a film by Jamie
Uys, The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a Coke bottle falls from the sky and causes
a tribe member to start walking to the end of the earth to return it to the
gods, was born. The San were romanticized and the act of trying to give back a
Coke bottle to the gods attests to their delightful nature. They speak both
Khoisan and Afrikaans which has a click to it when they talk. Hunted by the
early settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries, they fled
north and disappeared.
The Nama
Another
group of indigenous people are the Nama, similar in colour and stature to the
San, who also had Mongolian features, and lived around
the Orange River in the mid nineteenth century. These indigenous people were
called Hottentots. Today, about 60,000 Nama live in Namibia and in the Richtersveld which are made up of Eksteenfontein,
Kubus, Sanddrift and Port Nolloth.They
have been granted houses along sandy streets and there is the normal church and
school and a piano which provide entertainment. The Nama Dance which has them
dancing around a fire in a trance is a particular favorite.
Culture in the Richtersveld
They are also known
for their natural remedies and their rooster brood, flat bread baked on a stone
oven. Problems in the community are teenage pregnancy and alcoholism; their
biggest concern is that their culture and language is dying out. Elders are
worried and say that the children are uninterested in learning the language of
their elders and many of them now speak only Afrikaans and a few words of
English. Their second claim to fame is that when Queen Elizabeth was in South
Africa the last time she met with the leader of the four communities, Oom Po’,
and shook his hand. A large framed photograph of the Queen is on the wall in
the living room where everyone can see it. Of all the communities in the Cape
these indigenous people have fared the worst.
