My humble tribute to the San people. I Tried this resumee about the subject.
By kantabriansea
The Khoisan, Khoi and San peoples are amongst the oldest human group in Africa and the world.
Thousands years ago they inhabited most of the South, East and Northeast of Africa.
Peoples with the same haplogroup than the San ( the khoi or the khoisan are the same) leave Africa more than 40.000 years ago, becoming what europeans or Asians are today.
But they were gradually displaced by other peoples in all Africa.
Today they can only be found in small areas in Africa, usually the most desolated and inhospitable ones.
Most of these areas are placed in South Africa.
They inhabited most of todays' South Africa until a few hundred years now.
They were the authentic people of South Africa, the genuine characteristically
small-built San people,
The preservation of the wildlife, landscape and nature is something very important in their beliefs.
Then the
bantu expansion forced them more into the South. Some of the Sam peoples learnt from the bantues how to shepherd animals and they became the Khoi the pastoralist .
Some others refused and continued their old lifestyle, the Sam the hunt gatherers.
Many years later some of these groups mingled between each others and became the khoisan.
But war continued between the khoisan peoples and the Bantu invaders.
Most of the times the bantues won territory at the expense of the Khoisan, the relations between them were not good and they didn't used to live in peace or mix between each other, with very few exceptions.
The continual war between bantu and khoi people took a great toll for the Khoi people because bantu peoples were by far superior in numbers and maybe in warfare too.
To get things worse, Dutch settlers appeared, and they called the Sam, Khoi and Khoisan people derogatory names as
"bushmen" or "hottentot", they were sometimes considered subhumans and were pushed towards the wastelands of kalahari, killed and treaed like animals.
Dutch East India Company (VOC) imported more zulu warriors from Angola and Guinea to help them in their war against the khoisan peoples.
Afrikaners and british were on war. But the people who suffered most were the khoisan, killed by the europeans and the bantu tribes.
Most of them were killed or displaced from the lands, which had been inhabited since time immemorial by their most ancient inhabitants, the KHOISAN people.
The appearance of the europeans was the definitve blow to the weak position of the khoisan people.
But we have to remember that
the first colonialists to kill the Bushmen en masse were the Bantu people.
They suffered a genocide, at the hands of europeans and bantu peoples. There are reports that during the last ten years of the Dutch East India Company’s rule (1795), 2,504 “Bushmen” were killed, 669 captured and 276 colonists ( Khoikhoi) slain.
After a hundred years, the genocide slowly continued, forced to servitude.
In 1809 the so-called “Magna Carta of the Hottentots” was proclaimed that required Khoisan to register and carry a pass or risk being arrested as vagabonds.
Fortunately there were a few exceptions to this cruel situation.
For example Van der Kemp married a Khoikhoi woman, and complained to London the ways the Khoisan were enslaved.
Their charges of cruelty and murder were investigated by judges in what was called the “black circuit".
But the bantu attacks continued, in this case the Xhosa, with continued raiding and many boer khoisan were killed, these xhosa raids ended up in an open war.
During the South Africa and Imperial Wars...
Again more war, but this time zulu or Khoisan take much less causualties than the europeans, but equality brutal, for example the British killed, starved to death ot let to die by many other means 26000 boer women and children.
In 1922 the Smuts general regime destroyed the Khoi chiefdom of the Bondelswarts in southern South West Africa, the excuse was that they refused to pay a dog tax.
In 1927 Dr. Abdurahman, organized the first Non-European Conference in 1927 for Colored (APO), the ANC, and the South African Indian Congress (SAIC)... but there was no repesentation at all for the khoisan people.
In the XX century more and more bantu peoples went into South africa, in 1936 a census showed that there were a half million more Africans outside of the native areas than inside them, this also had a negative impact on the remaining khoisan.
In 1943 the ANC adopted a new constitution, but nothing regarding khoisan, Mandela chief of the MK the military wing of the ANC, was more worried about the communists, breaking up Communist Party meetings by tearing up signs and capturing the microphones, or fighting with Lembede or Sisulu to exclude whites from the League, than for the real native inhabitant of South Africa.
In this apartheid era, and obviously things didn't improved for khoisan, they were even denied from South African nationality.
The represion was great against black people (bantu) but was worst for the khoisan people, rejected by white, black or indian populations.
When the white apartheid regime was thrown, things didn't improved for them either. The ANC regime looked at the other side when khoisan people was killed,
or recluded in settlements where poverty and alcohol destroyed their lives,
with the ancient ways turned into are a mere memory.
And the genocide continues, in South Afrika, Botswana... pushed further into the Kalahari desert interior, new laws prohibiting more hunting, making life impossible for the few that are left.
There' s in fact a A Cultural Genocide.
04 August 2013 “A Cultural Genocide court case (EC05/2013) was lodged against Premier Helen Zille, SA President Jacob Zuma, and all the members of the South African Parliament, writes Chief Ikeraam Korana Kellerman on his website.
Cultural Genocide Case EC05/2013 by Korana KhoiSan first-nation group leader Ikeraam Korana Kellerman against current political leaders of SA | CENSORBUGBEAR.org
Actual African probantu politicians pretend that the history of the Khoi and the San people never existed, that the ancient rock paintings were made by the xosha newcomers and things like that.
... all to try to build a prove that they have the real legitimacy to have a claim to the Cape.
Most people in this subject are wrong the Khoi-San people are or were cultural, genetical, etnical or linguistically different from the Bantu who came from Central Africa. They are a unique human group that shouldn't be lost.