The San Bushmen

The San or Bushmen known as hunter-gatherers, and perhaps the finest of all prehistoric artists, were gentle folk who enjoyed the great open spaces in Africa. Long ago before the coming of the more territorial and aggressive Bantu speaking migrants from the north, the San bushmen's range was very wide. The bushmen were dominant in an immense area stretching from East Africa to the Southern Cape shores and across the continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

The San Bushmen, left alone with limitless room to move, developed a free spirit and harmonious relationship with the world around them. The San Bushmen was a sharing society, where competition and greed were unknown. The San Bushmen had no chiefs and all decisions were made communally within the group. The size of the group varied from small family units to bands of eighty members or more. Each Bushmen group had clearly defined hunting and gathering territory and men and women enjoyed equal status.

The Bushmen women gathered fruits, bulbs and seeds froom the surrounding countryside. Men hunted with bows and poison-tipped arrows and were superb trackers of game. The hunt was a crucial part of San culture and an event which held profound, mystical significance. The hunt was conducted sparingly and always with the assumption that the prey had as much right to live as the hunter. When a kill had been made the entire bushmne group joined in a night-long feast to sing and dance in a trance-like ritual around the fire.

Sadly, today these San Bushmen folk live in settlements where poverty and alcohol are rampant and the ancient ways are a mere memory. For the San Bushmen, the world has crumbled and he can see no guiding star before him. However their magnificent cave paintings still remain around Kwazulu Natal, a legacy of those ancient, yet paradoxically, advanced people.