The origins of the Bushmen, also called the San, go so far back that they are lost in the mists of time. There have been a great many theories put forward about the beginnings of these mysterious little men whose remarkable way of life has gone on virtually unchanged for since the Stone Age. These small, light-skinned people called Bushmen by Europeans know themselves as the ‘Khwai’ or ‘men’. They were dispersed over an area stretching from Walvis Bay to the Zambezi valley and then southward past Lake Ngami and Botswana to the southeastern coast near Port Elizabeth. Having at different times in the past run foul of Hottentots, Bantu, Dutch and British in the Cape, they are now mostly concentrated in the Kalahari, and number between 30 000 and 55 000 people.
Bushmen live in clans and loosely connected family groups consisting of 120 or more, but never in anything like a tribal entity. Each clan has a right of use over some land and they are careful not to trespass on their neighbour’s property. The hallmark of their social attitudes is their utter belief in co-operation – within the family, between clans, and within nature itself. Their customs are geared to exclude anything that causes personal antagonism. There is, therefore, no ownership of property. Even the spoils of a hunt are divided according to customary allocation. The Bushmen believe that if he misuses his environment, he will be punished by the Supreme Being. So he never takes from the soil or from the herds of game more than he needs to stay alive. In his long history there is no evidence that he has ever needlessly exploited nature – and some experts have actually described the San as the world’s greatest conservationists.
