Leisure was very important to the Bushmen. They spent large amounts of time with conversation, music, and sacred dances. They speak a variety of languages, all of which incorporate ‘click’ sounds represented in writing by symbols such as ! or /. They make their own temporary homes from wood that they gather.

Kalahari desert

southern Africa

Nomadic women of the ! Kung, a group of the San people of southern Africa, use no contraceptives but have a mean interval between births of 44 months and an average of four or five deliveries in a fertile lifetime.

1. San (Bushmen) The San tribe has been living in Southern Africa for at least 30,000 years and they are believed to be not only the oldest African tribe, but quite possibly the world’s most ancient race. The San have the most diverse and distinct DNA than any other indigenous African group.

The San are the oldest inhabitants of Southern Africa, where they have lived for at least 20 000 years. Like the first people to inhabit other countries in the world, the San have an unfortunate history of poverty, social rejection, decline of cultural identity and the discrimination of their rights as a group.

The San people literally have to find something to eat from the ground, fight with live animals to survive, and live in the twig-weaved hut. In our standard, they are not doing well. Nonetheless, they were the happiest people I’ve ever met in a long time. Happiness is state of mind, I’ve realized it again.

The earliest hunter-gatherers in southern Africa were the San people. They mostly survived by hunting Gemsbok and other antelope and gathering plants. Hunter-gatherer societies hunt, fish and gather wild plants to survive. They also move around from place to place, following a nomadic way of life.

” The spread of the Khoikhoi herders into the Cape resulted in a conflict of interests with the San hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the area. But while the Khoikhoi started competing with the San for game, their sheep and cattle were creating a further problem by denuding the pastures on which the game was dependent.

Nomadic Culture The main reason behind this was to ensure that their animals had sufficient grazing. This nomadic culture meant that the Khoikhoi had to be able to carry their belongings or have them strapped to their animals; consequently their houses were made of lightweight materials such as reeds and poles.

Khoekhoe, also spelled Khoikhoi, formerly called Hottentots (pejorative), any member of a people of southern Africa whom the first European explorers found in areas of the hinterland and who now generally live either in European settlements or on official reserves in South Africa or Namibia.

The Khoi Khoi were skilled in the practice of nomadic pastoral agriculture. The maintained large herds of cattle throughout the country, and evidence suggests that they migrated to South Africa from Botswana.

Khoisan /ˈkɔɪsɑːn/, or according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography Khoe-Sān (pronounced [kxʰoesaːn]), is a catch-all term for the “non-Bantu” indigenous peoples of Southern Africa, combining the Khoekhoen (formerly “Khoikhoi”) and the Sān or Sākhoen (also, in Afrikaans: Boesmans, or in English: Bushmen.

Coloureds (Afrikaans: Kleurlinge or Bruinmense, lit. “Brown people”) are a multiracial ethnic group native to Southern Africa who have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including Khoisan, Bantu, European, Austronesian, East Asian or South Asian.

Utixo

The Khoisan were accorded religion, usually connected to worship of the sun or moon, at periods when they were acquiescent, but were seen as lacking religion when they offered resistance to settler expansion.

Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they had hereditary chiefs, their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves by consensus, with women treated as relative equals.

Increased European encroachment ultimately led to the colonisation and occupation of South Africa by the Dutch. The Cape Colony remained under Dutch rule until 1795 before it fell to the British Crown, before reverting back to Dutch Rule in 1803 and again to British occupation in 1806.