STRANGERS TO BROTHERS: INTERACTION BETWEEN SOUTH-EASTERN SAN AND SOUTHERN NGUNI/SOTHO COMMUNITIES Town Cape PIETER JOLLY of University Submitted to the Faculty of Arts , University of Cape Town, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Archaeology. 1994' ·.• • •-<'.>" c:; .. )., ;-c;~.~ .-· ,:,~l._4' -_~ 1 ,;,.- • .._.,.,...,;..,.,,,.1_ . .-.,.,..,~~..,..... The lhiv~ns>t\• nf' ~"'.·.n;; f""m ! 0 r.~ !i".''''" t·:·,,,m !·, , /~1~: r,:;3'd, 1."~ ,.,.,.;, ·~. ·-~;. '. ~ ;"'; ·. ·-. ~·,; : ~; '':ii<JF3 :·.' i .. ~r in rc:~-L .:·,r:; ·~ ·.. '. · ;· .. :L. , i;: · ,;··;~L Jtf- . I , i _._... ' j The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University ABSTRACT There is presently considerable debate as to the forms of relationships established between hunter-gatherers and their non-forager neighbours and whether relationships which are documented as having been established significantly affected these hunter-gatherer societies. In southern Africa, particular attention has been paid to the effects of such contact on hunter­ gatherer communities of the south-western Cape and the Kalahari. The aim of this thesis has been to assess the nature and extent of relationships established between the south-eastern San and southern Nguni and Sotho communities and to identify the extent to which the establishment of these relationships may have brought about changes in the political, social and religious systems of south­ eastern hunter-gatherers. General patterns characterising interaction between a number of San and non-San hunter-gatherer societies and farming communities outside the study area are identified and are combined with archaeological and historiographical information to model relationships between the south-eastern San and southern Nguni and Sotho communities. The established and possible effects of these relationships on some south-eastern San groups are presented as well as some of the possible forms in which changes in San religious ideology and ritual practice resultant upon contact were expressed in the rock art. It is suggested that the ideologies of many south-eastern San communities, rather than being characterised by continuity throughout the contact period, were significantly influenced by the ideological systems of the southern Nguni and Sotho and that paintings at the caves ofMelikane and upper Mangolong, as well as comments made upon these paintings by the 19th century San informant, Qing, should be interpreted with reference to the religious ideologies and ritual practices of the southern Nguni and Sotho as well as those of the San. Other rock paintings in areas where contact between the south-eastern San and black farming communities was prolonged and symbiotic may need to be similarly interpreted - 1 - CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements 111 Chapter One Introduction 1 Chapter Two Some non-San hunter-gatherer groups and their relationships with farming communities 7 Chapter Three South-western Cape and Kalahari San and their neighbours - the "revisionist debate" 23 Chapter Four Southern N guni - San interaction 36 Chapter Five Southern Sotho - San interaction 50 Chapter Six Discussion 70 Chapter Seven The effects of symbiotic interaction expressed in the rock art 106 Chapter Eight Conclusion 128 References 131 Appendix Oral data - Sotho informants 147 - 11 - LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Map showing the location of places opp. 1 mentioned in the text and the approximate location of southern N guni groups and the southern Sotho in the study area c.1850. Figure 2. Tracing of Orpen's copies of paintings 112 commented upon by Qing. I' I . i Figure 3. One of Dingaan's praisers in ceremonial 118 dress. Figure 4. Photograph of masked figures depicted in 118 painting at Tiffin's Kloof and copied by Stow. - 111 - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the course of researching and writing this thesis I was assisted and advised by a number of people to all of whom I owe my thanks. Thanks are due firstly to John Parkington for his supervision. Discussions with Frans Prins concerning interaction between San and southern Nguni have helped me to model the forms of relationships that may have developed between San and southern Nguni communities. Karel Schoeman provided information relating to the establishment of London Missionary Society San missions during the 19th century. Bert Woodhouse kindly allowed me to use a photograph of a painting at Tiffin's Kloof in the Queenstown District which he recently relocated, and Francis Thackeray generously permitted me to cite from some of his unpublished manuscripts. I am indebted to David Ambrose, James Walton, Mosebe Damane and Lukas Smits for assistance in researching San-Sotho relations, as well as to Rev. Albert Brutsch and. Stephen Gill who went out of their way to help me during the time that I was conducting research at the Morija Museum and Archives. I am particularly grateful to Stephen Gill for his translation of Sesotho articles in Leselinyana La Lesotho, although he would make no claim to these translations being definitive, and Imke Seeman kindly translated relevant sections of Ellenberger's "La Fin Tragique des Bushmen". Father Bernard and Edgar Moremoholo generously allowed me to stay at the Mission House at Masitise while conducting interviews in southern Lesotho. Lehlohonolo Matsoarelle and Rasekhele Moeletsi voluntarily gave a considerable amount of their time to act as interpreters for me when I was interviewing Sotho informants. Finally, I thank the Oppenheimer Institute, Department of African Studies, U.C.T., who provided a grant to enable me to conduct research in Lesotho. - IV - CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION The migration of Sotho communities from the Transvaal onto the southern Highveld and the expansion of southern Nguni communities through mixed grasslands to the edge of the sour grasslands after A.D.1000 brought these farming communities into direct contact with south-eastern San hunter-gatherers. While the immigrant farmers may have interacted indirectly with these San communities prior to this time through trade networks, they now came face to face with the original inhabitants of these areas. The nature and intensity of the relationships established between the south-eastern San and their southern Nguni and Sotho neighbours as well as some of the effects of these relationships on the social, political and cultural life of the San are explored in this thesis. A realisation of the importance of contact between hunter-gatherers and adjacent communities for understanding these societies is reflected in the number of studies dealing with this subject in recent years. Whereas hunter-gatherer political and social systems were previously viewed as adapted to and formed by their hunting and foraging economies it is now often suggested that they are shaped, to a large extent, by contact with neighbouring non-forager communities (Murphy and Steward 1956; Fox 1969; Headland and Reid 1989; Wilmsen 1989). The implications of this paradigm shift for our understanding of both historic and prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies have been considerable and have required archaeologists and anthropologists to re-assess assumptions of economic, political, social and ideological continuities in hunter-gatherer societies from the Late Stone Age (hereafter L. S .A.) to the present. A number of archaeological and historical studies have recently been undertaken which focus on San communities of the south-western Cape and the Kalahari, and the effects of interaction between these groups and Khoi, Tswana and other non-forager communities. This "revisionist" debate is directly relevant to the south-eastern San and the relationships that they established with southern Nguni and Sotho communities, but these relationships have received relatively little attention. I hope to at least partially redress this imbalance here. The areas occupied by the south-eastern San are of importance for rock art studies, in particular, since it is here that some of the finest and most complex rock paintings in southern Africa are to be found. It has been argued that most of these paintings are symbolic expressions of the experiences of San shamans while in trance, - 1 - and that rites and symbols depicted in the art are derived exclusively from San ritual practice and religious ideology. It is important, however, to ascertain whether the effects of contact were represented in the evolving symbolic order of south-eastern San communities experiencing change due to contact and how such changes may have been expressed in the rock art. The possible effects of contact on the rock art of the south­ eastern San have been discussed by Campbell (1987), but within a paradigm of rock art studies which assumes the existence of a structural continuity in the religious ideology of San groups throughout the contact period - and for millennia before this time. I argue in this thesis that such assumptions of continuity in the cognitive system of all San groups may need to be re-assessed. I have adopted a four-fold approach to my analysis of south-eastern San - southern Nguni/Sotho relations Studies of interaction between certain hunter-gatherer groups and farming communities outside the study