OPEN LETTER TO MARK OR MATTHEW BIGGARS (TWO FACEBOOK PAGES) AND SHIRLEY PAUWELS SUBJECT: IN RESPONSE TO MARK OR MATTHEW BIGGARS WHO INCORRECTLY CLAIMS KHOISAN NEVER EXISTED PRE- 1994 AND THAT HE DONT BELIEVE IN THE KHOI+SAN PEOPLE OR KHOISANIA? OVERWHELMING MASTERs AND DOCTORAL THESIS DONE ON KHOISAN... Firstly in the PHD Thesis, “The Silence of Colonial Melancholy: The Fourie Collection of Khoisan Ethnologica by Ann Wanless” the following is stated: Terminology Bushman/Khoisan/San The controversy over the use of the terms Bushmen, San, and Khoisan began long before 1930 when Isaac Schapera’s The Khoisan People of South Africa synthesised all published material on these groups to date, and explained that L. Schultze had coined the term Khoisan in 1928 “to denote the racial stock to which the Bushmen and Hottentots belong” (Schapera 1930:31). It continues to vex scholars and writers to this day. NB …KHOISAN BEGAN LONG BEFORE 1930” … MARK or MATTHEW BIGGARS AND SHIRLEY PAUWELS… The term “San” was used by the Khoekhoe and was first noted in 1870 (Gordon 1992:5), but its meaning has been difficult to clarify. It could have been derogatory, or it could have simply meant “to be located, to dwell, to be settled, to be quiet” (T. Hahn 1881:3). Robert Gordon describes an authoritative discussion of the origins and multiple meanings of the words Bushman and San by G.S. Nienaber in 1950, both of which hold the potential for glosses of a derogatory nature, which did nothing to settle the uncertainty (Gordon 1992:5-6). Since then cogent arguments have been used for and against the use of both Bushman and San in the many publications on this group of groups. Alan Barnard, in his detailed discussion of this problem, points out that “the problem is further complicated because the distinction between Khoe and San, or Khoekhoe and Bushman, is by no means clear. The edges of the anatomical, linguistic and cultural distinctions between the two groups blur under scrutiny, he continues, but “the concept of ‘hunter-gatherers who live in small bands’ is a helpful one”, and some sort of term is needed to distinguish this category from the Khoekhoe who “all speak closely related languages and whose cultures and social organizations are relatively uniform”. The groups in the former category “speak a variety of languages, which are only very distantly related, or even unrelated” and “are also more culturally diverse” (Barnard 1992:10-11). Ultimately, it seems that writers are forced to choose the word they find to be the least insulting for there is no satisfactory way to describe these groups as one unit. The fundamental problem is that those who we choose to fit into the category of Bushmen or San do not identify themselves in the same way, and so do not have a name for this construct, or this “alien culture” created by ethnographers, as Wilmsen describes it (1989:xv). Whatever word we choose is an imposition, and signifies the cultural category we have created for our own purposes. As Gordon says, our objections mirror our own socialisations and prejudices. Louis Fourie used the terms Bushmen and Hottentots when speaking generally, but was careful to use more specific group names (such as Naron, Hei-//om) whenever possible. The museums that received and catalogued and labelled his collection used the same terms as Fourie, following his lead and the conventions of the time. Fourie’s (and the museums’) use of the terms Bushman and Hottentot signal to us today that they favoured the idea of a group of people who embodied pure physical, cultural, and linguistic entities, in spite of the fact that Fourie commented that identities were not fixed and origins were complex. The languages spoken by the groups he studied combined Khoekhoe and San with other influences such as Ambo, German and Afrikaans. In addition their customs and economies accommodated the presence of colonisers and other neighbours who encroached on their food and water sources. Fourie’s two published works focus on the Hei-//om, a group whose culture and language approached most closely those of the Khoekhoe, but who were categorised as Bushmen. Taking that into account, and following Barnard’s finding that the distinctions between groups are/were hazy, I have chosen to use the term Khoisan when describing generally the people studied by Fourie. I use the term Bushmen in an historic sense (so to speak) when describing the entity conceptualised and described as such by Fourie and his contemporaries. Secondly as cited in the Master Thesis, “Dutch have made slaves of them all, and… they are called Free”: Slavery and Khoisan Indentured Servitude in the Eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Colony By Ashley T. Brenner , Master of Arts The term “Khoisan” is used in current scholarship to describe people indigenous to the southwestern Cape of Africa. When Europeans arrived at the Cape in 1488, they found a people who differed from other African groups in both their language and appearance. Khoisan languages differed from other African languages by their use of implosive consonants or clicks. The appearance of Khoisan also distinguished them from other groups that Europeans had previously encountered, intriguing visitors to the Cape throughout the Dutch and British colonial periods. Many of these travelers wrote about Khoisan simply to describe their language and appearance for Europeans back home, but they were also exceedingly interested in the origins of Khoisan. In 1719, Peter Kolb assumed that Khoisan had lived at the Cape since biblical times. NB… IN 1719, PETER KOLB ASSUMED THAT KHOISAN HAD LIVED AT THE CAPE SINCE BIBLICAL TIMES…. Later, O.F. Mentzel, writing in 1787, argued that Khoisan were descendants of Europeans who “many hundreds, perhaps even some thousands of years ago… came to the furthest point of Africa then still uninhabited, either through shipwreck or in some other way, and reared children there…” The differences between Khoisan and other human groups thus stimulated much conversation and interest. Other scholars debated the similarities and differences between various groups covered by the term “Khoisan.” Khoisan is a modern term that has been forged from the names of the two groups into which Khoisan were historically divided: Khoikhoi, also called “Hottentots” in the Dutch period, who possessed cattle, and San, called “Bushmen” in the Dutch period, who were hunter-gatherers without cattle.31 Early in the Dutch colonial period, Europeans had difficulty distinguishing between Khoikhoi and San groups in the areas nearest to Cape Town.32 The terms used to describe the two Khoisan groups were therefore mired in confusion throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While general understanding held that San were distant relatives of Khoikhoi, their relationship remained contentious in European circles and was never explained by Khoisan themselves. By the second half of the eighteenth century, scholars began to believe that Khoikhoi and San groups were unrelated because of the conflicts they found between these two groups further into the interior of the Cape Colony. In the Northern Cape in the second half of the eighteenth century, rural settlers could not help but notice the conflict between the recently immigrant pastoral Khoikhoi and the original hunter-gatherer San who clearly spoke different languages and frequently engaged in hostilities with one another.33 Travelers to the Cape who journeyed into the interior also drew distinctions between “Hottentots” and “Bushmen.”34 Sparrman claimed that San differed from pastoral Khoikhoi in that they did not keep animals. Instead, San relied on a hunting, gathering, and plundering existence which, he explained, was why they were “pursued and exterminated like the wild beast.”35 Captain Robert Percival, writing in 1804, also noted that the “Boschies Hottentots (San), in some respects, differ from those who live nearer the Cape and acknowledge the Dutch authority (Khoikhoi). NOW THEN WHO IS LYING AND GIVING FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF KHOISAN NEVER EXISTED PRE 1994…MARK OR MATTHEW BIGGARS AND SHIRLEY PAUWELS, YOU ARE BOTH IGNORED WITH NO QUALIFICATIONS AND WANT TO DENY OUR KHOISAN PEOPLE EXISTED… YOU GARBAGE CLAIMS AND CRAP THAT KHOISAN NEVER EXISTED PRE-1994 HAVE JUST BEEN VERIFIED TO BE INCORRECT AND TOTALLY FALSE. KHOISAN EXISTED LONG BEFORE 1719 IN EXISTENCE FROM MASTER DEGREE AND DOCTORAL STUDIES… YOU CAN GO AN JUMP WITH YOUR COLOUREDNESS AND MISLEADING OF THE KHOISAN PEOPLE. THIS SHOWS THAT KHOISAN IS HERE, HAS BEEN HERE AND SO TOO IS KHOISANIA. THE TRUTH WILL SET ITSELF FREE AND NEED NOT BE DEFENDED. THERE IS NO GREATER RELIGION THAN TRUTH AND NO GREATER FAITH THAN FACT…MARK OR MATTHEW BIGGARS AND SHIRLEY PAUWELS, YOU ARE EXPOSED THROUGH THIS INFORMATION.. PRAISE GOD (TSUI), FOR THE KHOISAN NATION SEES YOUR LIES… INDEED EMPTY VESSELS MAKES THE MOST NOISE…STOP MAKING STUPID PEOPLE FAMOUS…
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 17:12:33 +0000
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