Bushmen

The Bushmen (also known as Khwe (Khoe), Basarwa, or San) peoples of South Africa and neighbouring Botswana and Namibia, who live in the Kalahari, are part of the Khoisan group and are related to the Khoikhoi. However, they have no collective name for themselves in any of their languages, all of which incorporate "click" sounds. They have lived in southern Africa for some 20,000 years. Along with the pygmies of Central Africa, the Bushmen have been considered a possible root or source for the female DNA lineage?the so-called Mitochondrial Eve.

Related Topics:
South Africa - Botswana - Namibia - Kalahari - Khoisan - Khoikhoi - Africa - Pygmies - Female DNA - Mitochondrial Eve

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Traditionally the Bushmen culture is hunter-gatherer with the people living in temporary wooden shelters amidst a difficult environment. The Bushmen would use a manual communication system while hunting. Since the mid-1990s the central government of Botswana has been trying to move Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve even though the national constitution guarantees the people the right to live there in perpetuity. The Game Reserve was originally created in 1961 to protect the 5,000 Bushmen living there who were being persecuted by farmers and cattle-rearing tribes. The government's position is that it is too costly to provide such basic services as medical care and schooling. It has banned hunting with guns in the Reserve and has said that the Bushmen threaten the Reserve's ecology. Others, however, claim that the government's intent is to clear the area for the lucrative tourist trade and for diamond mining.

Related Topics:
Hunter-gatherer - Manual communication - 1990 - 1961

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Many of the involuntarily displaced Bushmen live in squalid resettlement camps and have resorted to prostitution, while about 250 others remain or have surreptitiously returned to the Kalahari to resume their independent lifestyle. The group as a whole has little voice in the national political process and is not one of the tribal groups recognized in the constitution of Botswana. In modern South Africa the Bushmen have largely been absorbed into the so-called Coloured or Griqua population.

Related Topics:
Coloured - Griqua

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The term "San" was historically applied to Bushmen by their ethnic relatives and historic rivals, the Khoikhoi. This term means outsider in the Khoikhoi language and was derogatory; anthropologist Henry Harpending states that "in the Kalahari, 'San' has all the baggage that the 'N-word' has in America." http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=17062002-072804-4319r For this reason, many of this group prefer to be called Bushmen, despite the fact that the term is sometimes considered politically incorrect by Westerners http://www.kalaharipeoples.org/documents/San-term.htm.

Related Topics:
Khoikhoi - Khoikhoi language - Henry Harpending - N-word

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Bushmen of the Kalahari were first brought to the western world's attention in the 1950s by South African author Laurens van der Post with the famous book The Lost World of the Kalahari, which was also a BBC TV series.

Related Topics:
Kalahari - Laurens van der Post

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The 1980 comedy movie The Gods Must Be Crazy portrays a Kalahari Bushman tribe's first encounter with an artifact from the outside world (a Coke bottle).

Related Topics:
1980 - Comedy - The Gods Must Be Crazy - Artifact - Coke

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~