A Necklace of Springbok Ears : /Xam Orality and South African Literature [1 ed.] 9781920689902, 9781920689896

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A Necklace of Springbok Ears /Xam Orality and South African Literature

Helize van Vuuren

A Necklace of Springbok Ears – /Xam Orality and South African Literature Published by SUN MeDIA Stellenbosch under the SUN PRESS imprint. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 Helize van Vuuren The author and publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyrighted material. Please refer enquiries to the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, photographic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording on record, tape or laser disk, on microfilm, via the Internet, by e-mail, or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission by the publisher. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher. First edition 2016, revised ISBN 978-1-920689-89-6 ISBN 978-1-920689-90-2 (e-book) DOI: 10.18820/9781920689902 Set in Garamond Premier Pro 12/14 Cover design and typesetting by SUN MeDIA Stellenbosch. Cover image: Bushmen ankle-rattles made from springbok ears © Percival R Kirby. Used with kind permission from Mrs Anthea van Wieringen. Respective poetry extracts reproduced by permission of NB Publishers. SUN PRESS is an imprint of AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. Academic, professional and reference works are published under this imprint in print and electronic format. This publication may be ordered directly from www.sun-e-shop.co.za. Produced by SUN MeDIA Stellenbosch. www.africansunmedia.co.za africansunmedia.snapplify.com (e-books) www.sun-e-shop.co.za

Contents Introduction and acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii 1

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2

GR von Wielligh’s life and work  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3

//Kabbo and Rooizak’s early South African testimonies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4

A spring song to the uintjieblom  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5

The Bushman in our consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

6

The Namibian oeuvre of Piet van Rooyen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

7

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and



Eugène Marais  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

8

Man as fire beast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

95

Notes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Index  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

List of illustrations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Small tortoise shell, used as a holder and pierced with a “riempie” or skin string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Men walking in procession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Women with digging sticks (detail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chart of the family tree of the ancient race (ougeslag) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Large elephant surrounded by people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Gideon von Wielligh, circa 1883 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 GR von Wielligh 1890-91 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 First page of a letter written by GR von Wielligh on 15 July 1895, addressing Loveday and Jeppe’s accusations levelled against him . . . . . . . . . 46 13 October 1895. Telegram by Von Wielligh, desperate for work from the ZAR government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Von Wielligh 1896 telegram to President Paul Kruger about demarcation of Swaziland border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Letter of 1 May 1896, written from Paarl, enquiring whether ZAR government still needs his service to demarcation of the borders . . . . . . . . . 47 Letter of 11 June 1897 by Von Wielligh, requiring an answer about a job application he had made earlier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Letter of 6 May 1898 by GR von Wielligh to ZAR surveyor general . . . . . 48 5 June 1909 petition by GR von Wielligh for pecuniary assistance from the Transvaal Parliament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Front cover of Dire Storiis (1907) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Ons Klyntji 1896, with Von Wielligh's first chapter of Jakob Platji . . . . . . . 57 Excerpt from Langs die Lebombo (Beside the Lebombo) 1923 . . . . . . . . . . . 58 First editions Boesman Stories, volumes I–III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Map: Main places of interest in Von Wielligh’s Boesman-Stories . . . . . . . . . 73 The bloublommetjie-uintjie flower, Moraea fugax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Moraea fugax sp. filicaulis watercolour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Stompiesfontein rock paintings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

In memory of Hennie Aucamp (pointer of the way to Timbuktu), 1934-2014 Francois Pauw (mountain-map reader and finder of caves), 1950-2014 Barend J. Toerien (for the honey of the names and songs), 1921-2009

Introduction and acknowledgements This monograph contains the results of a somewhat variegated, long-standing project that focussed on the narratives, myths and poetry of the /Xam and other Bushmen, as well as their interface with South African literature in general, but primarily Afrikaans literature. Week-long winter mountaineering trips in the Drakensberg (1986-1995), sleeping in caves, sometimes under rock art, made me acutely conscious of the ‘absent presence’ of the San Bushmen in the South African landscape. Olive Schreiner, the first English South African author, portrays the common occurrence of this type of experience near rock faces in the open veld in The Story of an African Farm (1883). She gives the scene a particularly ironic twist with the obvious disregard of her characters for the rock painting, sitting with their backs turned towards it: They sat under a shelving rock, on the surface of which were still visible some old Bushman paintings […] preserved through long years from wind and rain by the overhanging ledge; grotesque oxen, elephants, rhinoceroses, and a one-horned beast, such as no man ever has seen or ever shall. The girls sat with their backs to the paintings.

Today, the primary source of further information on these first inhabitants is the Bleek and Lloyd digital /Xam archive housed at the University of Cape Town. A multitude of recorded oral narratives, myths and fragments of narratives are contained here, recorded in /Xam and translated into English, given by various informants (available online as The Digital Bleek and Lloyd at http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/). But then there is also the less well known four-volume /Xam archive, recorded and compiled in Afrikaans – what had come to be the second language of the /Xam – as Boesman-stories (‘Bushman Stories’) by GR von Wielligh (1919-1921; republished in two volumes in 2009 and 2010). A conscious study of this body of work and similar lesser-known texts on, about and inspired by the Bushmen has been the motivating force behind the present volume. My aim is both to describe and analyse the ideological dimensions of the texts. This means asking: How are these first people portrayed? What implicit attitudes do the authors have towards their subjects? How does the reading of these recorded oral narratives influence the contemporary view? What do contemporary readers make of these narratives and myths? When my research project began in 19941, there was at best meagre evidence in the then extant South African literary histories of the Bushman oral tradition. It was as if these first South African people had never existed, silently forgotten or banished from official and academic recognition. The watershed came after the founding of

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A Necklace of Springbok Ears

the new South African democracy in 1994; this led to more, and more inclusive literary histories. In 1996, Michael Chapman published his single-authored Southern African literatures, which included sixteen pages on ‘Bushman (San) songs and stories’ (Chapman 1996:21-37 – between three and four percent of the 430 text pages). In 2012, there followed the encyclopaedic, team-written The Cambridge History of South African Literature, edited by David Attwell and Derek Attridge. They opened their literary history with twenty-two pages covering the /Xam narratives from the Bleek and Lloyd collection (Attwell & Attridge 2012:19-41, between two and three percent of 837 text pages). Both parties – Chapman in 1996, as well as Attwell and Attridge in 2012 – also allocated a handful of further pages covering other Southern African oral traditions. What seems absent is a consciousness of Bushmen myths and narratives as preceding South African literature. In many ways, this consciousness is already present in Von Wielligh’s texts. He recorded the /Xam narratives through the medium of Afrikaans, his mother tongue, and the language of bilingualism for the /Xam and Khoi. Through intercultural communication, the /Xam had acquired Afrikaans as their second language early on in the period of colonisation. In the same way, many farm-children and farmers had acquired /Xam. In Margo and Martin Russell’s Afrikaners of the Kalahari: white minority in a black state (1979), intermarriage between Bushmen women and white men is described as a common occurrence in that border region of Southern Africa. The peaceful coexistence in the thirstlands of the northern countryside was thus a well-kept secret of which most scholars today are still seemingly ignorant, emphasising only the genocide and physical strife between the races. Certainly, when one reads Von Wielligh’s nonmythical Bushman stories in volumes 3 and 4, set for the most part in the years 17951860, the emphasis is not on genocide but on the peaceful collective hunting parties on the other side of the Orange River, the bartering of leopard skins, dogs, and the like, with Bushmen working voluntarily for farmers ‘to see what it is like’ (as does the brother of Von Wielligh’s main informant, Old Bles). Von Wielligh describes peaceful conversations with the /Xam in their own region (Bushmanland, now Northern Cape), between informants and farmers, and with the young land surveyor, Von Wielligh, and others. That the milieu was different for the non-South African Bleek and Lloyd is clear: they were interviewing their /Xam informants in Cape Town, far from their /Xam homelands, and without having, at first, a language in common. The first chapter of this book offers a multidisciplinary analysis of the /Xam’s myth of origin, recorded by Von Wielligh as ‘Night and Darkness and their three daughters’ (1919:9-16). This is read in the context of the Anthropocene, relating the centrality iv

Introduction and acknowledgements

of the necklaces in the myth to recent discoveries at Blombos cave that indicate the nature of homo symbolicus. The next chapter offers a revised perspective on the figure and methodology of Von Wielligh, based on new archival research. The neglect of Von Wielligh’s /Xam recordings by Bushmen studies scholars is discussed, as well as those of literary critics. The early South African life histories of //Kabbo (1873) and Rooizak (1875) feature, as well as a very early song that concerns the spring arrival of the ‘uintjieblom’. This flower heralded the arrival of spring and an abundance of veld food. Later chapters trace the ideological approach to the Bushmen in the Namibian trilogy and autobiography of Piet van Rooyen, as well as in modern Afrikaans poetry. In Van Rooyen’s Bushman trilogy, man’s relationship with nature is vicariously played out in contemporary society by comparing it with the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The seventh chapter questions the nature of the interface between Bushmen orality and South African literature, primarily in the work of Eugène N Marais, but also that of Stephen Watson and Antjie Krog. With the aim of establishing the implicit ideological attitudes of poets to the first inhabitants, the final chapters trace the approach to the Bushmen in modern Afrikaans poetry, including DJ Opperman’s startlingly prophetic poem, ‘Vuurbees’ (‘Fire Beast’). He sees modern man as intimately connected to his earliest predecessors through the basic drives of creativity and destruction. Coming from a background rooted in Afrikaans literature, it has always struck me that various layers of meaning in certain Afrikaans texts cannot be understood without the necessary informational background. These types of texts demand the highest degree of interdisciplinary knowledge to unlock different layers of meaning. Two pertinent examples in the focus of this book are Dwaalstories (1927) by Eugène Marais and Von Wielligh’s myths of origin (1919-1921), often relegated to the genre of ‘children’s stories’. Text-orientated literary analysis, which still holds sway, seems inadequate to the task of identifying and explaining the layers of meaning in these texts. These ‘texts’ are transcriptions of oral narratives, from one language to another, which originally served communal purposes in a way that, apart from prayer in European societies, has little precedent in Western culture. However, the higher the degree of multidisciplinary knowledge gained of the Bushmen (socio-politics, history, anthropology, botany, zoology, rock art, water management and even palaeoanthropology), the more are the significant meanings embedded in these texts revealed. Although seemingly disparate at first glance, the contents of this study hang together as in a “necklace of springbok ears” (in Von Wielligh 1919, first /Xam myth of origin). The cover illustration is a very rare photo featuring such dried ears that have been made into a dancing rattle.2 The /Xam custom of using dried springbok ears for bodily v

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

adornment and musical instruments presumably ceased when springbok became scarce due to the onslaught of colonial hunting parties and the fencing of land. The last dancing rattle, photographed in the Kirby collection, has now crumbled to dust. Yet the binding string serves as a useful metaphor of the interconnectedness between literary texts discussed here and their relation to the culture of the First People. Before the advent of settlers in their areas, the Bushmen were spread in many multilingual groups. These ranged from the mountains of the Cederberg up to the Orange River; from the Tugela into the Drakensberg; and from the Waterberg to the Limpopo River. Through intercultural connection, the Cape-Dutch (later Afrikaans) trekboers learnt the “Bushman veld lore” (Smith 1966:6), and ways of living on the land. This knowledge has left its indelible marks in a distinct stream of Afrikaans literature, and is perhaps its central core. It starts with GR von Wielligh in the 19th century and continues via Eugène N Marais, PJ Schoeman, Karel Schoeman, DJ Opperman, Wilma Stockenström, Antjie Krog to Piet van Rooyen and others in the late 20th century. This stream, specifically in poetry and fiction, is discussed in the following chapters. South African literary historians still tend to segregate oral traditions from the mainstream ‘literary’ content in their publications. My aim in this monograph is to illustrate, inter alia, that the compartmentalisation, in certain literatures and among certain writers, does not exist. The fragility of a divide between a /Xam origin myth and Opperman’s ‘Vuurbees’ (‘Fire Beast’) is, for instance, clear evidence thereof. I hope that this study will, by contrast, show the underlying connection between the native oral and the literary traditions. The integrated /Xam worldview – the cosmology embedded in the /Xam myths as recorded by Von Wielligh – seems to share much with contemporary consciousness: in order to survive, humankind needs to recognise the interdependence of all life. The Von Wielligh material (chapters 1 and 2, forming almost half of the study) and chapter 8 (on Opperman’s ‘Vuurbees’) are here published for the first time. All other chapters are extensively revised versions of essays previously published. I am grateful to the editors and proprietors in each case for their permission to republish as follows: ■■ Chapter 3 in The Conscience of Humankind: Literature and Traumatic Experiences (2000) (Elrud Ibsch, ed. Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi) ■■ Chapter 4 in The courage of ||kabbo (2014) (Skotnes, P and Deacon, J eds., Cape Town: UCT Press) ■■ Chapter 5 in Stilet XIV/2 (2003) ■■ Chapter 6 in Perspektief en profiel, vol. 3 (2006) (Pretoria: Van Schaik) ■■ Chapter 7 in Journal of Literary Studies, 24/4 (2009).

vi

Introduction and acknowledgements

I am also grateful to: David Lewis-Williams, whose remark in 1994 kick-started this project; Sigrid Schmidt, who mentored me in Khoisan folklore; the National Research Foundation (South Africa); and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University for supporting the research on which this book is based.

vii

1 The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

I

t  is a sobering experience reading the /Xam origin myths during the early 21st century, a time marked by climate change, natural disasters and an increasing number of species becoming extinct. Scientists have written of the advent of an ‘empty landscape’:1 The scale and rate of large herbivore decline suggest that without radical intervention, large herbivores (and many smaller ones) will continue to disappear from numerous regions with enormous ecological, social, and economic costs. We have progressed well beyond the empty forest to early views of the “empty landscape” in desert, grassland, savannah, and forest ecosystems across much of planet Earth (Ripple et al. 2015:9).

With increasing globalisation and its resultant uniformity, minor languages are falling out of use at an increasing rate. Where once there were twenty-nine Bushman languages (and/or dialects) in Southern Africa (D.F. Bleek 1956: introduction), few now remain. The loss of these languages results in the loss of their stored oral culture and indigenous knowledge. All that remains are archaeological evidence and rock art, or slim archives recorded by individuals, such as Wilhelm Bleek, Lucy Lloyd and GR von Wielligh, who heard the encroaching language and cultural death knell before it was too late. Karel Schoeman ends his historical novel, Verkenning (1995), with the inner monologue of such a Bushman speaker: Where she lay awake at night, she sometimes called up the contents of her skin bag and counted the things and remembered them one by one and named them to herself, so that she would remember her possessions and not forget their names, so that all the words no longer heard nor used by her would not be forgotten […] softly to herself, she said the names, the beads and arrows and calabashes and thongs, the uintjies2 and succulents, the different grasses, the bushes, the animals and birds and their calls, the feathers and quills, the claws and horns and skins, the wind and the stars and the cloud striped with rain, and all the people she knew and lived with […] she also remembered […] the voices of the people at the feast with their laughter and singing and clapping of hands in the firelight, and in wonder she caught up the words she had heard so long ago and recognised and understood them till the very last ones and eventually fell asleep in the dark. 1

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

The novel is set in the early 1800s. The narrator, whose words conclude the book, is a nameless /Xam woman who was captured during a commando raid and is now working as servant in a Boer household. She is living in a Cape Dutch (later to become Afrikaans) community, severed from her own language community (who were in the process of being decimated), with her language in its death throes. In 2013, forty six percent of all living languages (3,176 in total), were on the red list of endangered languages:3 [By] 2115, it’s possible that only about 600 languages will be left on the planet as opposed to today’s 6,000 […] Too often, colonalization has led to the disappearance of languages […] This has rendered extinct or moribund, for example, most of the languages of Native Americans in North America and Aboriginal peoples of Australia (McWhorter 2015).

To this list should obviously be added the many once-vibrant Khoisan languages of Southern Africa. Offering particular insight into the past, are the ongoing excavations led by Christopher Henshilwood at Blombos Cave, near Still Bay, that date archaeological artefacts from between 100,000 and 70,000 years before the present time (d’Ericco & Henshilwood 2011:52). The prehistoric past of Africa is steadily opening up as archaeological finds increase. Reading /Xam hunter-gatherer cosmogonic myths against the backdrop of Homo symbolicus (2011) is informative. It juxtaposes different ways of being in the world and interacting with natural surroundings. The /Xam archive recorded by Von Wielligh in what was once called Bushmanland (now the Northern Cape: south of the Orange River and north of Calvinia) in the 1870s and ’80s was published in 1919‑1921. It consists of twenty-two myths of origin in volume I, twenty-three anthropomorphic animal tales in volume II, plus another fifty recordings of oral memory and oral history covering /Xam customs and culture in a further two volumes. Von Wielligh’s subtitle – Mythology and legends – explains the nature of the narratives collected in the first volume (Von Wielligh 1919:1‑193). An interdisciplinary and comparative approach is followed here (with reference to a broader hunter-gatherer tradition, specifically that of the Khoi and Bushmen of Southern Africa), based on a contextualised close reading of, especially, the first seminal /Xam myth that Von Wielligh recorded (Von Wielligh 1919:11‑15). The context is the erstwhile Bushmanland, the setting for a myth about the early race, entailing descriptions of their customs and beliefs transposed onto an imagined primal world. The first myth, translated from Afrikaans, the language his informants used in conversation with him, and in which they were well versed, is quoted in full. At the 2

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

time of recording by Von Wielligh, 1870‑1883, the /Xam language was in a terminal state but the /Xam speakers were bilingual and fluent in Afrikaans. Likewise, many of the farmers and their children learnt /Xam and “were bilingual by the 1870s” (Traill 1995 – personal communication). The interaction between informants and recorder in Von Wielligh’s case, sharing a language as a medium of communication in which both parties were at home, was thus totally different from that between Bleek and Lloyd and their informants. The narratives in Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive are chronologically numbered, in line with the philological tradition of folklore transcription in the 19th century, and more than fifty have been taken up in Sigrid Schmidt’s two-volume catalogue of Khoisan folklore (1989, reprinted 2013). However, it is the mythological content of the narratives that is my focus here. For the concept of myth, I take the following description as point of departure: “a myth is a traditional tale…[and] the defining feature of myth as opposed to saga, fairy-tale, and folktale, is its connection with ritual.” (Burkert 1983:31) Furthermore, “ritual is a theatrical dramatisation of myth… The relationship of the two becomes clear if we take ritual for what it is, if we accept that its function is to dramatise the order of life…[while] myth clarifies the order of life” (Burkert 1983:33). Myth, ritual and the customs and beliefs of the /Xam’s ancient generations are at the centre of Von Wielligh’s first volume, and also present in the following volume of anthropomorphic animal tales. Myth expresses the unity and organisation of a group (Burkert 1983:34) and this becomes quite clear in the /Xam myth of origin below. This myth is preceded by a first narrative in which the compiler describes /Xam storytelling as mostly a nocturnal affair, around an outside fire (‘veldvuur’), “that stimulates conversation,” he writes in Langs die Lebombo (‘Alongside the Lebombo’) (Von Wielligh 1923:189). The performance of the story, with sound effects and audience participation, entails much repetition; some of that, he says, he excised to facilitate easier reading. This technique – excision and some editing of the oral leftovers in a tale – is common in the practice of DF Bleek (1924) and David Lewis-Williams (2000:39). “Some I have shortened by leaving out wearisome repetition,” writes Dorothea Bleek in her introduction (unnumbered first page) to the Bleek and Lloyd tales, collected in The Mantis and his friends. Lewis-Williams refers, for instance, to the “aberrant tense” (my italics) where “narrators sometimes slipped from one tense to another”, and that he changed in the written version thereof, for the conformity of the narrative (2000:39). After a thorough reading of exactly where these changes take place throughout Von Wielligh and Bleek & Lloyd’s recorded /Xam narratives, I could come to no other conclusion but the following: 1) The change from past tense at the beginning of orally-told narratives into the present tense later in the tale is an essential technique 3

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

for the effect of the immediacy of events on an audience; 2) These changes in the tense used, clearly mark the narrative’s origin as orally-narrated story. This happens in spite of the fact that the sudden and unexpected change from past to present tense in medias res clashes with the convention of English writing. Against the literal translations of the /Xam into English by Bleek and Lloyd (Specimens of Bushman folklore 1911:444 – “as literal an English translation as yet could be achieved,” writes Wilhelm Bleek in 1873), Von Wielligh was able to interact – listen to narratives and ask questions where matters were unclear – under freer circumstances with informants who presumably spoke to him of their own volition in their home terrain. His version of the /Xam myths is, therefore, expressed in language that is at once more fluid and coherent than the versions, or fragmented versions, often encountered in Bleek and Lloyd. Added to that, there is the constant reminder throughout their archive – as in the published Bushman dictionary, with its countless loan words from Afrikaans (often misspelled) – of Afrikaans as an essential medium of expression and explanation on the side of the informants (Van Vuuren 1995:31).4 Linguists have recently described the English texts in the Bleek and Lloyd archive as “a particular form of European writing” and stated that “the stylistic choices employed […] impart a specific ‘flavour’ to the narratives”, where the translations from the /Xam “often appear to have a ‘poetic’ cadence in English” (Loughnane et al. 2014:308). The Afrikaans recordings by Von Wielligh are more fluent than the often haltingly literal Bleek and Lloyd tales, most likely due to the ease of interaction with his informants. That each recorder in writing about another culture’s oral myths also leaves his or her own imprint somewhere in the written version or description thereof, is inevitable, whether it be in a ‘poetic cadence’ or some trace of literary embellishment. What follows is an English translation of the first /Xam myth, originally heard and recorded in Afrikaans, in the last decades of the nineteenth century. (Habitually, Von Wielligh inserted summarising remarks before each narrative, not included here.) No. 2 Night and Darkness and their three Daughters5

I

n the old days there was only dusk – as if on a dark stormy day. It was cold and the Sun, the Moon and the Stars didn’t shine yet. Old ’Ga (Night) and his old wife ’Gagen (Darkness), lived in a stone cave. They didn’t have sons, but only three daughters. When the three girls had grown-up, the mother took small Tortoises, scraped out the meat, drilled holes at the front of the shell, put small stones inside to make a noise when the shell is shaken; she strung the shells together with string made from Baboon skin and hung the necklace round the neck of her eldest daughter. She forbade the daughter to take the string from her neck, because if she did so, all the food in the neighbourhood would disappear.

4

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

Figure 1 Small tortoise shell, used as a holder and pierced with a “riempie” or skin string (bought in Tsumkwe, Namibia in 2001)

Then the mother took small calabashes. She cleaned out the shells and put berry seeds inside, strung them on a string made from the inner bark of a tree, and then hung the necklace with small calabashes around the neck of her second daughter. She also forbade this daughter to take off the necklace from her neck otherwise all the food in her area would disappear. Thereafter, the mother took the ears of Springbok, cut away the hairy outer skin, took the white inner parts of the ears, made small balloons of them, and then filled them up with dry sand to dry them well. When the little balloons were ready, she put the hard inner part of Springbok eyes inside so that they would make a noise, strung the small balloons on a string made from Springbok sinew and hung the necklace around the neck of the youngest daughter, with the order not to take it off. Then the father and mother called the three daughters to dance in front of the people, so that the people might see how beautifully they could dance and to listen to the beautiful sound of the necklaces around their necks as they danced. Many people came from far away to look in wonder at the beautiful dance of the three young girls. But the young men were wary of the three girls because they viewed the three dancers as witches. The three did not worry themselves too much about this, because they were happy where they were. The Insect that we call the Mantis, that the Bushmen call ’Kaggen and looks just like a long flat locust, that holds his thick front feet together as if he is praying – well, that Mantis sat on a bush and looked and listened how the three young girls danced. To see and listen better he changed himself into a big wild buck and then came closer to look with curious eyes at the dancers. The old father grabbed his quiver and bow and stalked the buck. He shot and shot but each time missed the mark. Once more, he crept closer, aimed well and hit the buck. The buck ran a short distance and then fell dead – or let us rather say: he played at being dead. Then the mother and father with their daughters walked to the buck to slaughter him. After slaughtering him, the man cut the buck into parts. He picked up a hindquarter and the skin, and carried this; the other hindquarter and the innards his wife carried. The eldest daughter picked up a front quarter; the second daughter took the other front quarter, while the youngest daughter carried the head and backbone.

5

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

Then the head started talking to the youngest daughter and asked why they hurt him so much. The head blinked its eyes and moaned as if in pain. The youngest daughter shouted out, “Father! The buck’s head is still alive – come hear how he talks to me and how he moans!” The other carriers thought that she was joking and didn’t pay attention to the talk of the youngest sister. Again, the youngest daughter called out, “Father it’s really true, the buck’s head is still alive – listen to how he speaks to me and moans – look, he blinks his eyes!” The other carriers continued walking and took no notice of her. But when she called out for the third time and said, “Father, I’m going to throw away the buck’s head and backbone; listen how he speaks and moans, and look how he is blinking his eyes.” Then the other carriers stopped to look. And while they stood looking, the four quarters on the heads of the carriers started moving. Alarmed, they put the quarters down on bushes so that they would not pick up sand. Each quarter turned itself over because the thorns and the sharp points of the branches hurt them. Even more shocked, the people stood further away. The one hindquarter sprang up and went to its place on the backbone and attached itself there. Then the other hindquarter also sprang up and attached itself to its place on the backbone. Thereupon, the front quarter jumped up and went to its place, followed by the other front quarter. Then the intestines crawled back into the slaughtered buck. The buck jumped towards its skin and the skin folded itself around the buck so that it became just as it was before, and the buck stood calmly looking at the carriers. Then he ran away at a short gallop, and then became the Mantis again, that looks like a long thin Locust. This is how the old father and his family found out that ’Kaggen had fooled them. But this was not the end. After a few days, Mantis changed three of his own sons into three young men and sent them to the three young women. The three young women were very taken with the three beautiful young men. Each young man took one of the daughters and married her. They made huts of bushes and lived in them, because there was enough game and veld food – just like their mother predicted – as long as the three daughters wore the necklaces around their necks. After that, many other Bushman came to live there, hunting the game and gathering the veld food. That is how that place became a place of pleasure. Without fighting they lived together there in peace, because they had food and all they needed; pleasure and fun did not lack, and what more could they want? It was a land of plenty. ( Von Wielligh 1919:11‑15; my translation)

In the doubling of “Night” and “Darkness”, the mythical parents of the early race (‘die ougeslag’) are personified. Their /Xam names are given, Father ’Ga (Night) and 6

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

Mother ’Gagen (Darkness), and also the name of the mantis trickster, /Kaggen. The names of the daughters only appear in later myths. Here, they are nameless. This introduction of /Xam names throughout the narratives suggests the original language in which they were told in performance situations in the /Xam community. In the 1870s and ’80s, when he recorded these tales, Von Wielligh’s old male informant was narrating the myth through the medium of Afrikaans, a result of decades of cultural interaction with the Afrikaans farmers who had slowly started infiltrating the thirst lands of the last frontier south of the Gariep (later Orange) River. Let us attempt to reconstruct a first minimal reading.6 Clearly this is a myth of origin in which an attempt is made to explain the origin of the natural world. From night and darkness emerged mountains, plains and water (pans, waterholes, rivers). These three entities (Mountains, Plains and Water) are portrayed as the three daughters of a father and a mother, who are both characterised by darkness, and who live in a stone cave. The mother fabricates three necklaces (with raw material from the environment) for each of her daughters, and then sends them to dance to a gathered community of people, some from far away (where these people come from, and how they know about the dance is not explained).

Figure 2 (top) Men walking in procession (Zuurvlakte/Zoo Ridge, Southern Cederberg) Photo: Jacques Tredoux. (left) detail

Also in attendance is a mantis, watching the dancing girls from the top of a bush. Reference is made to the audience’s amazement and surprise, and fear from the young men, plus the dancers’ indifference to that fear: [They looked] in wonder at the beautiful dance of the three young girls. But the young men were wary of the three girls because they viewed the three dancers as 7

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

witches. The three did not worry themselves too much about this, because they were happy where they were. (my italics)

The focus then shifts to the mantis. His /Xam name is given as /Kaggen, and he is described as if he is in a praying position: The Insect that we call the Mantis, that the Bushmen call ’Kaggen and looks just like a long flat locust, that holds his thick front feet together as if he is praying – well, that Mantis sat on a bush and looked and listened how the three young girls danced. To see and listen better he changed himself into a big wild buck and then came closer to look with curious eyes at the dancers.

To improve his vision of the dance and his hearing of the music, he then transforms himself into a “large wild buck” with “curious eyes”. Wonder from the audience and fear from the young men, with indifference and contentment in the dancers, make way for the enigmatic apparition of the transformed mantis with his hardly disguised fascination with the dancing girls. The communal scene around the young women’s dance ends without further ado. The next episode is the hunting party, with the mantis-antelope as their father’s quarry. At first the hunter misses his prey. Only after the third shot (three being a typically magical number in folktales) does he find his aim, and the ‘buck’ is ‘killed’. Father, mother and the three daughters slaughter the animal, divide it into four quarters, plus head and backbone, and carry the meat home. The head of the dead buck starts quietly talking to the youngest daughter, Water (!Khwa), who is carrying it. Thrice she warns the family that something is amiss with this talking head of a supposedly dead animal (it demands to know “why they hurt him so much”). After the third sign of life (he expressed his pain, fluttered his eyelids and groaned), she throws the head down. Only then does the family stop walking and come to investigate. Inexplicably frightening behaviour is coming from the head. While they look on, the parts of the slaughtered buck suddenly jump up, resurrect themselves and magically come together at the places where they were cut asunder during the slaughtering process. The newly resurrected buck runs a little distance away. Thereupon he turns back into the form of the original mantis, revealing his magical trickster abilities: This is how the old father and his family found out that ’Kaggen had fooled them. But this was not the end.

Time passes. In the final episode the mantis uses his shape-shifting powers on “three of his sons” (till then known as the elements Wind, Fire and Water, as is revealed in later myths), and changes them into three attractive young men. He sends them as suitable husbands to the three daughters (in later myths revealed as Mountains, Plains and Water), whom they marry. The three couples build huts of singing reeds 8

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

(“fluitjiesriet”) and live there happily, in a land of plenty, with plenty of game and veld food (roots, corms, ant-rice and berries). Remarkable throughout is the central number, three, typical of magical happenings in folktales, as well as the four distinct sections of the myth: 1) background and preparation of the girls by the mother for the dance (fabrication of necklaces); 2) the dance, music and reactions by the audience; 3) the hunting and talking-head passage; 4) the metamorphosis of the mantis sons into suitably attractive husbands for the three girls; and, finally, 5) the denouement where all live happily ever after in a land of plenty, with one caveat – as long as they keep wearing their necklaces.

Figure 3 Women with digging sticks (detail) (Zuurvlakte/Zoo Ridge, Southern Cederberg). Photo: Jacques Tredoux.

In this reading, one does not really notice the necklaces, until the very end, in the third last paragraph: […] there was enough game and veld food – just like their mother predicted – as long as the three daughters wore the necklaces around their necks. (my italics)

The jewellery at first seems so much decorative detail in a rather roundabout narrative, with rather abrupt, unannounced changes of scene, with no explanatory links. To a 9

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

contemporary reader there is some fragmentation between the prior episodes (the domestic scene of the dark couple living in a stone cave with their three daughters and the manufacturing of the necklaces, followed by the ‘coming out’ dance) and the next episode (the hunt and its strange development of the shape-shifting of mantis to buck and back to mantis). The last scene, of the happy inhabitants with the three new couples living in huts, again hangs somewhat apart from the preceding ones. It is as if a human community in recognisable hunter-gatherer form has now settled in that natural environment, in their self-fabricated huts, away from the cold, dark stone cave of their parents. A thorough and close reading brings to the fore certain pivotal elements around which the narrative hinges: the double role of natural elements personified as human beings at the same time (the three daughters and three mantis sons); the strangely long-winded description in minute detail of each necklace; the taboo that rests upon removal of the necklace; the disjointedness between the domestic scene with necklaces and the girls’ dance, that subsequently changes into first a metamorphosis, and then the hunting, slaughtering and to and fro shape-shifting of the mantis. Finally, the reader is struck by the strangeness of the land of plenty formed with the three new couples at its centre in their huts, and the seminal role in this utopic world of the continued wearing of the different necklaces by the new brides. ‘Utopic” has overtones of the happy ending of resolutions – out of time. This suggests a world where narrative and narrated time no longer shape things. It signals the end of history, the merging of human beings and nature. Transformation is achieved and thus conflict, which has been a mechanism of transformation, has no call. It is at this point, that one starts paying closer attention to the detail of the necklace material, how it was made, and the particular taboo against removal, that the mother repeated three times (reminiscent of similar repetition in European folktales). However, from the very first reading it is also clear that there is a strong mythical element in this narrative. There is no clear division between natural elements, human beings and animals – there seems to be a very thin veil between the species, easily traversed. Shape-shifting back and forth is a common occurrence in this mythical world. Closer analysis reveals embedded significance in the ‘growing up’ of the girls; the contents of the necklaces (mere decorative detail at a first reading) and the warning about their removal (repeated three times); the necklaces’ multiple function during the dance (where they also serve as dancing rattles, producing music in varied tones and rhythms); and the fact that the dancing, music-making girls are perceived by the possible suitors (the young men) as witches (‘toorhekse’, possessing the ability to make magic, female witch-doctors or medicine-women, in an analogy with ‘towenaar’, which is a sorcerer. These ‘toorhekse’ are thus sorceresses and enchantresses). The same embedded meaning and patterning is visible in the shape-shifting mantis, the shape10

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

shifting of the three young women and their progeny in later myths, plus the nature of each mythological narrative as an open-ended story that leads on to the subsequent ones in the volume. Each narrative contains a surprising concentration of the magical and the supernatural, that at the same time functions as explication of hard scientific facts, drawn from botanical, zoological, and geographical knowledge of the area that it is set in, the then Bushmanland (now Northern Cape). Here, Mountains, Plains (alternatively Grass) and Water (or River) Bushmen lived. This area could feasibly stretch from the Elands Bay cave and the Cederberg in the west, including all of the area to the north up to the Gariep (Great or Orange) River, to the Hartebeest and Sak Rivers (as rough boundaries) in the east, including the Stront/Strand, Kamies and Karee mountains of this semi-desert. The /Xam tales in volume I (1919) are set in mythical times, before the advance of colonial settlers. In the second volume (1920), we find cultural interaction with black, white and other strangers. It describes the lifestyle of a community of hunter-gatherers, living intimately in nature, with animals, stellar bodies, with mountains, scarce watercourses and the plains around them. The strange similarity between the two entities named as the parents, mother “Night” and father “Darkness”, suggests that they are the typical doubling found in myths (often found together with triplication or quadruplication). This type of repetition functions “to make the structure of the myth apparent”, as a “myth exhibits a ‘slated’ structure hidden beneath the surface” while the myth also “grows spiral-wise until the intellectual impulse that has originated it is exhausted” (Lévi-Strauss 1955:443). Subsequent narratives then develop into parallel strands of unfolding creation. They describe a family tree (see Figure 4, page 17) of the First People of the early race (‘die ougeslag’ in Afrikaans), suggesting the description of a near paradisiacal setting. Yet the later threats of drought and lack of food are present in the narrator’s consciousness from the very first myth (as long as the necklaces are worn, there will be plenty of food and water, suggesting the opposite possibility). The necklaces also refer to the three different geographical areas of Bushmanland: mountains, plains and water. Implied is the self-identification of the different /Xam groups living in Bushmanland up until the middle of the 19th century, and inhabiting the different regions: the Mountain Bushmen; the Plains or Grass Bushmen; and the River Bushmen.7 Each of these live in their specific geographical area (mountain, plain or river), together with the animals, vegetation, insects and food that are characteristic of each area. The three personified geographical areas, or ‘daughters’ (mountain, plains and water), each slowly populate their home area throughout the narratives with husband, child, a grandchild in one case, and regionally specific flora and fauna, as well as stellar bodies (sun, moon and stars). As the myths follow one after the other, the primal cosmos is gradually filled with the progeny of the first three ‘daughters’ (who had later married the three natural elemental ‘sons’ of the mantis trickster, 11

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

/Kaggen), Wind, Fire and Water, changed by their father into the bridegrooms: Wind Bird, Fire Dancer and Rain Bull. This first narrative, ‘Night and Darkness and their three daughters’ (and the triple series of three myths connected with the families of each of the three daughters), creates a vision of a freshly unfurling primal world, seen through /Xam eyes. In the finely worked out, detailed description of the necklaces made by ‘Mother Darkness’ for each of her three daughters lies the kernel of the deeper structure of this myth. There seems to be a suggestion of a strong matriarchal influence in this first earth mother’s creativity, together with the involvement of her three ‘daughters’ in carrying forward the creative process. The making of the necklaces happens pointedly at the time when “the girls had grown-up”, suggesting their nubility after the rite of first menstruation. Rachel/!Kweiten ta /ken used this very same euphemism (‘grew up’) for a euphemistic reference to first menstruation (entitled !kouken in /Xam, in DF Bleek 1956:445). This period of first menstruation could not have fallen at the same time in the lives of three daughters of different ages, thus pointing markedly at the imaginative construct of the narrative. As the chronological references to the girls as “eldest”, “second” and “youngest” do not work on the personified human level, it must therefore refer to the imagined coming into being, one after the other, of the visual features of the landscape. Out of the darkness appeared first mountains, then plains/grassland/veld, then waterholes and rivers. What appears to be merely decorative detail in the necklaces are revealed on closer inspection to hold the new world in embryonic form with great geographical, zoological and botanical detail, suggesting intimate knowledge of the region’s flora and fauna. Each daughter receives a necklace made of and containing material that are the building blocks of the geographical area encapsulated in her name (Vlaktes/Plains, Berge/Mountains, Waters). The material of each necklace constitutes their bodies. These bodies are at the same time a geographically distinct aspect of the Bushmanland landscape, and also three different young women, according to roles assigned to them (menarche, dancing to allure the young men, marrying and settling down in huts of their own). Mountain’s necklace is made of small hollowed-out tortoise shells, filled with small stones, with the shells strung together on a thong made from baboon skin. Baboons, stones, tortoises all populate the mountains (the Karee and Kamies mountains, and the Cederberg, where Mountain Bushmen lived, and more to the southwest, the Roggeveld mountains). Tortoises were a favourite food of the First People. The dried shells of small tortoises (‘padlopertjies’, small speckled padloper, Homopus signatus cafer8 or perhaps small ‘rooipensies’, Chersina angulata) were used as containers (for ant rice, one of their delicacies) and also made into small pouches in which to carry the fragrant mountain herb, buchu, Agathosma betulina, or ‘bergboegoe’ (mountain buchu),9 and made into stringed instruments (with the plastron, the 12

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

shell’s underside, removed and replaced with sinew strings to make a primitive lute). Baboons, whose skin was used as string for the tortoise shell, are natural inhabitants of South African mountains. The necklace around the neck of Plains (Vlaktes) consists of small gourds or calabashes – ‘narras’, ‘bitterpit’, or Acanthosicyos hotrida Welwitschia, a wild melon indigenous to the semi-desert and desert areas, the seeds of which are eaten by the Bushmen and others (Rosenthal 1967:322). These dried containers (the hard husk of the melon) are filled with berry seeds and strung together with the phloem10 or inner bark of trees. South African practitioners of indigenous medicine commonly strip the bark off trees, and such stripping “can lead to the death of the plant” (Street & Prinsloo 2013). This botanical fact plays a pivotal role in the further development of the myths surrounding Plains (’Kaun), and her life after death, when the vindictive trees grow into her ‘grave’. Hard calabashes, or gourds, are one of the more ancient African plants. Recent scientific research illustrates this wild gourd’s origin in the Pleistocene, and its transoceanic movement from Africa to the Americas: Bottle gourd, one of the most cross-culturally ubiquitous crops, had a pantropical distribution by the beginning of the Holocene [11,700 B.P.] […] Wild Cucurbita seeds have been found in Late Pleistocene mastodon dung in Florida […] revealing megafaunal dispersal of very similar fruits. Today, no wild bottle gourd populations survive in the Neotropics, and wild gourds are near extinction in Africa. This result may reflect ecological changes since the Late Pleistocene […] We find that all pre-Columbian bottle gourds are most closely related to African gourds, not Asian gourds. Ocean-current drift modelling shows that wild African gourds could have simply floated across the Atlantic during the Late Pleistocene (Kistler et al. 2014: 2937).

Gourds11 are particularly versatile as they have multiple uses as food, as water containers, musical instruments, as well as bodily decoration as in the present case of the fabricated necklaces. The various wild fruits of the plains, ‘veldkos’ – the roots, berries and fruits naturally occurring in the soil, on bushes and trees of the environment of the grasslands, gathered traditionally by the /Xam women folk, plus the trees, seeds of plants and calabashes – are all represented in some form in this piece of necklace. The youngest daughter, Waters, receives the most remarkable necklace of all. It consists of the dried outer ear of springbok without the hairs, and inside as container the inner ear or bulla of a springbok, filled with the hard lenses of springbok eyes, all strung together on a thong made from springbok sinew. 12 Although there are many examples in literature of springbok ear Bushman rattles (Burchell, vol. 2 1824:65, Bleek & Lloyd 1911:353 & Kirby 1968:1&3), nowhere else are springbok rattles filled with 13

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

such specific further body parts of the springbok’s ear and eye. This suggests intimate knowledge of the facial and cranial anatomy of the springbok, probably from hunting and slaughtering these animals at a time when springbok were still as bountiful ‘as the water of the sea’13 (D.F. Bleek 1956: 751). It also accentuates the importance of acute vision and hearing in this antelope species. By close association with the springbok body parts used in the necklaces or dancing rattles, the /Xam hunter-gatherers imagined similarly acute seeing and hearing abilities. In this close alliance between waters and springbok lies the future promise of game as food (the male hunters’ terrain), as well as the ability (through imagined transposition from animal to human), to run fast, see and hear sharply and survive with a minimum amount of water. This ability of the Bushmen hunters reflects that of the springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), noted as a species for their ability to do without water for long periods (Apps 1996:187‑189). The behaviour of the springbok has striking parallels with /Xam hunter-gatherer life-style in its adaptation to drought in semi-desert areas – obtaining moisture when water is scarce from foods that are full of sap – and in the ability to survive without water for long periods: Springbok can meet their water needs from the food they eat, and survive without drinking water through dry season[s], or even over years. Reportedly, in extreme cases, they do not drink any water over the course of their lives. Springbok may accomplish this by selecting flowers, seeds, and leaves of shrubs before dawn, when these foods are most succulent (David 1978:129).

The /Xam archive of Von Wielligh strongly suggests that, because of their intimate association with springbok, this animal, rather than the eland (as in the Drakensberg), was central to their focus, both as bountiful food source and as an animal with which they closely identified. The necklaces are not merely decorative and symbolic or metonymic. They also function as amulets,14 warding off hunger and drought – as long as the taboo on removal is kept. The parents ask their daughters to dance for the people “so that they may hear the beautiful sound of the necklaces.” The rattling necklaces keep the audible beat when the body moves in dance, so they also function as Bushman dancing rattles.15 This double function indicates the introduction of music and dance as basic elements in the building of social group cohesion in this primal huntergatherer world: Group displays of musical behaviours can indicate group stability and the ability to carry out complex coordinated actions precisely because they can engender these things […] the most important roles of music amongst Plains Native Americans […], African Pygmies […] and Australian Aborigines […] are social, interactive, and integrative, and the participants themselves often see these as the most important consequences of the activity. (Morley 2014:166) 14

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

Megan Biesele stressed the role of music as “one of the basic vehicles of transcendence, enabling curers to achieve trance” (Biesele 1973:6). It is clear that rattles “often have a magico-religious significance”, and are often part of the equipment of a shaman (or at least lead him or her into trance, as Biesele pointed out). The hissing noise inside a gourd “caused by the friction against the walls of the container, not unlike the noise of a receding wave on a shingle beach […] captured man’s early imagination” (Wachsmann 1963:26‑27). Percival Kirby states that dancing-rattles, probably acquired by the Berg-Damara and Herero from the Kalahari Bushmen, were made from hard seed-shells that “sound most melodiously”. These were only used in women’s dances and only women were allowed to wear them (Kirby 1968:3). The affinity between necklaces and rattles resides in their design as both are strung on a cord or string. The centrality of the ‘string’ as concept in /Xam hunter-gatherer affairs is remarkable: there are ‘thinking strings’, bow strings, necklace and rattle strings, and the psychological ‘string’ connected with a sense of place and order, that was torn asunder for the shaman in ‘The broken string’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:236). As recipients of the mother’s gift to her daughters, passed down through matrilineal descent, the daughters each become the female custodians of their regions (echoing the concept of ‘Mother Nature’). Two of the personified daughters later literally fall asleep with satiation: Mountain, or ’Kou, from eating too much tortoise meat (Von Wielligh 1919: 19), and Plains, or ’Kaun, overindulged on wild fruits and roots (Von Wielligh 1919:43). They take on the nature of that which they ate, with ’Kou becoming as ‘slow and lazy’ as a tortoise (befitting a mountain!) while ’Kaun becomes as lazy as the roots on which she gorged herself. Physically they grow into the different regions (mountains, plains and water). They also hold the ‘keys’ (in embryonic necklace form) to the food, the animals and the ecological rhythm of place, animals and plants in fine balance with the human inhabitants. The necklaces are no mere aesthetic trifles but the symbolic keys to a fine-tuned social and cosmological rhythm, suggested through the dance and its music. That necklaces did indeed play a central role in young /Xam girl’s lives, becomes clear in one of the later animal tales, ‘Hyena and His Two Wives’ (‘Wolf en sy twee vroue’, Von Wielligh 1920:131‑133). Here Hyena seeks the hand of a young girl in marriage, but she sets him a test to see his prowess, before she will give him an answer. The test is to find her necklace: “hidden in the ear of a kudu” and secreted away in a rock cleft. When he finds it through underhand ways (first eavesdropping at her home, and then getting Dung-beetle to retrieve it for him), she believes in his powers and agrees to marry him. It seems as if /Xam girl’s necklaces are a type of trousseau, symbolic of their procreative power – the power of the necklaces ‘shared’ by the men they marry. There are other roles in Khoisan tradition for necklaces as empowering the wearers. Recently Chris Low has traced the use of ‘power necklaces’ to contemporary Khoisan context and even drawn a map to show their widespread use still today in 15

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

Southern Africa. They are believed to empower children to be strong or ‘wake up’ (Low 2014:354). Following on from this his research shows that the concepts of being strong and empowered is reflected in Khoisan beliefs in an “undoubted link between standing up, waking up, ‘dancing up’, growing up and being potent” (Low 2014:359). The inclusion of “growing up” in this list accentuates the significance of the menarche and first initiation rites as an empowering event in human life. The transformation of the youngest daughter, ’Khwa, is in surprising contrast to that of her two sisters: ’Khwa differed a lot from her two sisters. The string necklace of Springbok ears made her as agile as a Springbok. And because a Springbok is an animal that does not sleep at night, ’Khwa also slept very little. She was always bustling about, always busy – only rarely did she rest. The necklace of Springbok ears gave her an insatiable appetite for Springbok meat and she took great pleasure hunting the buck herself.

This woman is a Bushman Amazon who hunts her own springbok. In /Xam huntergatherer groups, there exists a strict gender role division between men as hunters and women as gatherers. This mythological turn of events, where a mythical female hunts, is highly puzzling in the light of gender role division. It probably suggests that ’Khwa is a shaman, which would then, by association, also include her mother and two sisters. Unlike the two passive sisters, ’Khwa is always active, taking on the characteristics of her prey (she does not sleep much, is very active and has a voracious appetite). She differs in many respects from her sisters. Like her parents, Father Night and Mother Darkness, Water marries a husband who is of her kind, the Rain bull, which is another facet of doubling in the myth. Double Darkness spawns Waters which through marriage becomes Double Waters. They have a daughter, the Great Watersnake, and later there is the “Maid of the Waters”, a closely aligned relative of the Waters family. Strange, though, is that the Rainbow is not one of their progeny, but the daughter of Mirage (the Mother of Dreams) and the granddaughter of Plains and Fire. Yet her affinity to rain is stressed in the later myth about her and her two lovers, Wind Bird and Rain Bull (both great uncles on her mother’s side). She is more drawn to Rain Bull, but eventually escapes from both, and is hidden underground by her mother, Mirage, only to appear as untouchable in the sky from time to time, around times of rain. In ‘The Rainbow’ (Von Wielligh 1919: 119‑126), the Afrikaans /Xam collection thus offers a mythological identity for Bleek and Lloyd’s nameless young “woman of the early race” who was similarly courted by the Rain Bull (Bleek & Lloyd 191:193‑199). She has a name, and she has a family tree – see Figure 4. Rainbow and Mirage (the ‘Mother of Dreams’), are the intangible natural apparitions that suggested magic and the supernatural to the /Xam, before the advance of physics. 16

’Kaun = Plains Fire ‘Dancer’/Sun = his head

Rainbow/Lovers: wind bird & rain bull

Mirage/Antjie Vlaktes/Mother of dreams

Wind bird

Water snake

Rain bull

Water maid, hamerkop, frogs, water flowers, full moon

’Khwa = Waters

Hamerkop bird

Owl

’Kaggen = Trickster (mantis 3 sons (wind, fire & water) and 2 daughters (owl & hamerkop bird)

Figure 4 Family tree of ancient race (‘ougeslag’), illustrating the intermarriage of two old families and their descendants: light grey = Father ‘Ga & Mother ‘Gagen, black = ‘Kaggen, who is wifeless (married to Dasse/Dassie in Bleek & Lloyd 1924:68) in the Von Wielligh archive.

Musician-suitor ‘Speelman’

Echo

’Kou = Mountains (eldest)

’Ga = Night (father)................................’Gagen = Darkness (mother) (lived in a cave, Vol III: 1 1) 3 daughters: Mountains, Flats, Water

Von Wielligh vol III 1921:43: “In the beginning (there was) an old generation of Bushmen...” = ’Chwe-’na-ssho-’ke (who could change themselves into animals, trees or human beings). Everything was born out of darkness, vol III 1921:11 (“Khwe//na ssho !kui” //Kabbo to Lloyd 1873 – in Lewis-Williams 2000: 174-205)

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

17

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

Both these supernatural personae also imply the presence of dreamtime, and dream visions in /Xam culture, as in the culture of the Australian Aborigines. Both these dream visions of a rainbow16 or a mirage17 in the semi-desert are intimately connected with rain and the promise of rain or presence of water, essential for survival in the often drought-stricken Nama Karoo biome of Bushmanland (Mitchell 2002:15). It is remarkable how the cycle of three myths clustered around each of the personified daughters18 is structured in parallel ways, with certain set formulae repeated in each myth. Every time there is a reference to /Kaggen he is described with the same formula, given here in translation (my italics and bold): 1 Mantis sat on a bush and looked and listened how the three young girls danced. […] To see and listen better he changes himself into a big wild buck […] (Von Wielligh 1919:12) 2 Mantis, the father of the man, watched the affair calmly. He changes his son into a big Bird and the child he changes into an Echo […] (Von Wielligh 1919:23) 3 Mantis […] was sitting nearby on a little branch, looking at and listening to everything happening there. He then changes the man, who was his own son, into a big Fire and the child into a Mirage […] (Von Wielligh 1919:44) 4 Mantis, who was sitting on a nearby bush, viewed it all. He changes the man into a big Bull, also called the Water Beast or Rain Animal, and the child he changes into a large Watersnake […]. (Von Wielligh 1919:62)

The Mantis observes, with special emphasis in each case, on the use of his eyes: looking, viewing, watching. This is another example of what Lewis-Williams pointed out: “Eyes are clearly important beyond the blinking”, and there is great importance in the action of eyes in Bushman “connotations of eyes and what eyes can do” (2015:127). Thereupon, he intervenes in the situation going awry, through his special supernatural ability of transformation. At first he transforms himself; in the latter three cases he transforms his sons into other beings, out of harm’s way, thus supernaturally solving the crisis situations. Set formulas and the repetition thereof is typical of folktales. This is not different in these /Xam tales. There is a permutation of groups of three – perhaps in the case of Waters, four – myths clustered around each daughter and her family. Reading the three groups of myths around each of the three nuclear families (Mountains – myth 3, 4 and 5; Plains – myth 6, 7 and 8; and Waters – myth 9, 10 and 11) parallel to each other, one finds a “whole series of variants in a kind of permutation group” (Lévi-Strauss 1955:442). First each specific daughter is named and her nature is described: (‘No. 3. Mountains is the Eldest Daughter’, ‘No. 6. Plains is the Second Daughter’ and ‘No. 9. Waters is the Youngest Daughter’). Thereafter in each of the groups of three myths clustered around the specific daughter, the name and nature of the husband, in every case a son of /Kaggen, is given: ‘No. 4. The Wind and the 18

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

Wind Bird’; ‘No. 7. The Fire and the ’Nu festival’; and ‘No. 10. The Rain Bull and the Baboon’. The last of these cycles of three around each daughter of the early race features the offspring of the husband and wife, three different daughters (‘No. 5. The Echo’, ‘No. 8. The Mirage’, ‘No. 11. ‘The Great Watersnake’); Rainbow also appears, as the granddaughter of the Plains (‘No. 17. The Rainbow’). Remarkably, all the offspring are female, continuing the pattern of the first myth. No male descendants are personified in this family tree (see Figure 4, page 17) portrayal of the primary elements of nature. Male descendants from /Kaggen’s sons are seen only in the later myths gathered together here (the stellar bodies, Sun, Moon and Stars; the birds, Owl and Hamerkop; and the remarkable insects, Pisser and Shooter (‘Spuitertjie en Dampertjie’).19 In the case of each nuclear family, the mantis trickster uses his “mediating function” (Lévi-Strauss 1955:441), acting in all three cases as the agent of transformation. In the first origin myth (Von Wielligh 1919:12), he transmogrifies from insect to a “very large wild buck”, whereas in the other cases he saves his progeny from outside threats by changing them from human beings of the old generation20 into natural elements. His three sons, Wind Bird, Fire dancer and River Bull are married to the three daughters, Mountains, Plains and Waters, who danced so beautifully to the people in the first myth. Their three children (Echo, Mirage and Watersnake) make up the rest of the nuclear families threatened successively by the baboons, the forest of trees and the herd of springbok. The reason for their warfare against these people of the old generation lies in the string material that the baubles of the necklaces were strung upon: baboon skin, the inner bark of a tree and springbok sinew. Although these mythical people of the early race are reliant on their animal and vegetal environment for sustenance, they are also hunter-gatherers and therefore in conflict with this self-same environment. This ambiguous relationship of sustenance through hunting and gathering, but at the same time killing that which they feed upon and rely upon, thus means death. Lévi-Strauss illustrates the predicament in a discussion of the Zuni emergence myth (1955:437): “The basic problem consists in discovering a mediation between life and death”, and “vegetal life (emergence from the earth)” is associated with fibre strings that “are always superior to sinew strings (animal)”. But hunting also provides food “and is similar to warfare which means death” (Lévi-Strauss 1955:438). Life and death are thus intimately intertwined. (This has much in common with a Zen-Buddhist perspective.) The intertwinedness of life and death is graphically described in the /Xam emergence myths that Von Wielligh recorded. It is also clear in the wrath of the trees, the baboons and springbok towards the first peoples, or ‘Chwe-’na-ssho-’ke. All three are prepared to kill the human beings, or mythological figures parading in the narratives as human beings. The French anthropologist perceived various sequences in these emergence myths of the Zuni, as described by others in the field: from plants to animals (Cushing and 19

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

Stevenson) or from mammals to insects and from insects to plants (Bunzel) (LéviStrauss 1955:438). A parallel sequence is present in the /Xam myths that Von Wielligh describes in his first volume: from natural elements (landscape, fire, wind and water) and humans to stellar bodies, animals, insects and finally trees. All are imbued with supernatural power in these emergence myths. All are able to shape-shift their nature to and fro between these various species and elements. Thus the sun was first a man. When beheaded, his head became the stellar body that shines above, the sun, and the rest of his body became a crab, forever searching for the missing head. This ancient race (“ougeslag van Boesmans”, Von Wielligh vol. II 1921:43) had remarkable shape-shifting abilities and could change into any animal, tree or human being. One of them was Sun, a great hunter and sorcerer (Von Wielligh vol. II 1921:43; my italics). Two aspects of this statement are important to keep in mind when reading these myths: a) members of this ancient race were shape-shifting sorcerers; and b) the remarkably clumsy spelling of their name, ‘Chwe-’na-ssho-’ke, by Von Wielligh. Familiar as most scholars of Bushmen studies are with the sophisticated orthography for the /Xam language developed by the European-trained Wilhelm Bleek, one is struck by Von Wielligh’s far more naive attempts at giving the /Xam sounds a written representation (probably based on Hinrich Lichtenstein’s only widely known orthography, Bleek 1911:441). At this stage, he was clearly unfamiliar with Bleek’s orthography, which renders the spelling for the same concept as !Khwe //na ssho !kui, or in Matthias Guenther’s spelling, !Xwe-//-na-s’o !k’e. (Guenther 2014:202). True to the parallel structure in the preceding myths, ’Khwa (Water), is threatened by ‘relations’ of her necklace – a herd of springbok who want to “trample her to death”. Thus, violence also enters the myths via the necklaces. In the case of each daughter, the threat becomes more intense. At first, the baboons only threaten to trample the huts of ‘Kou’s family (the Mountain) to the ground and to disturb the stones on her grave. In the second case, that of ’Kaun (the Plains), the threat is to tear off the string around her neck, with a whole forest of trees coming to threaten her family (chased away by Dancer, the man of Fire into which her husband changed). Trees are particularly prominent in the /Xam belief system as recorded by Von Wielligh. Three mythical trees figure prominently: the Dead Elephant Tree that provides sustenance to the hungry animals (No. 24, Von Wielligh 1919:179‑184); the Tree of Forgetting that helps Old Mother Lion to adopt Bushmen children as helpers in her old age (No. 39, Von Wielligh 1920 vol. II:110); and Tatsi’s moon-horn tree that feeds the community as a lunar cornucopia after the death of Tatsi, the vagabond (No. 49 Von Wielligh 1919 vol. III:183). All three trees provide abundant food, and possess magical powers of self-regeneration. They are ‘trees of life’ in a frequently drought-stricken world.21 20

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

This confirms the “unique position in hunter-gatherer belief and folkloric systems” of “arboreal subject matter”, as Syakha Mguni has illustrated persuasively in his study of Southern African rock art (Mguni 2009:139): Anthropological accounts used in this analysis show the significance of arboreal associations in hunter-gatherer thought, belief, folklore and rock art. These symbolic and graphic expressions lead to, and demonstrably mesh well with, the spiritual worldview, suggesting the weight of the arboreal generative force. This superlative force manifests itself in the union of material and nonmaterial worlds via trees into the otherworldly entities of God’s house and spirit divinities. Together these beliefs and concepts make up an element at the heart of huntergatherer cosmology that interconnects trees and the human and animal worlds. Boundaries are fluid between people and trees or animals and vice versa. Personae of animal and arboreal subjects metaphorically connect and converge in the natural and the spirit worlds. (Mguni 2009:145; my italics)

Through use of the phloem or inner bark of a tree as string in Plain’s necklace, the generative force at the heart of /Xam hunter-gatherer belief is represented. Throughout the /Xam myths there is this belief in the generative force possessed by the smallest part of a bigger organism. Such a small part has, according to their belief, the supernatural ability to regenerate into the original organism when immersed in fluid. The most pertinent example is the dead son of /Kaggen, with whose eye the baboons played ball. When /Kaggen manages to get hold of this eye and immerse it in water, his son later revives. He becomes fully alive, regenerated from that single small part of the once living body (Von Wielligh vol IV:180‑184). Elephants and trees are also often closely linked in the /Xam myths in the Von Wielligh archive, as

Figure 5 Large elephant surrounded by people (Zuurvlakte/Zoo Ridge, Southern Cederberg . Photo: Jacques Tredoux.

21

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

in ‘The animals ask for food and water’, where the spirit of a dead elephant (killed by a snake) becomes trees, plants and grass (Von Wielligh 1919:179‑184), or in the magical meat-bearing tree, ‘The tree that dies for months and revives again’: “There in the land where the old generation lives, the tree stands to this day” (Von Wielligh 1920:180‑188). It is clear that in this /Xam perspective animal, vegetable and human species are interdependent, while the spiritual and physical realms are also not clearly distinct. An overview of the perceived Bushman cosmos has a three-tiered dimension, according to David Lewis-Williams: In the middle was the level on which they lived their daily lives, hunted animals and gathered plant foods. Above was a level of spiritual things. Here were the trickster-deity and other spirit beings, all of who lived alongside god’s vast herds of animals. […] Below the level of daily life was a subterranean spiritual realm, accessible by means of holes in the ground, cracks in a rock face and waterholes. Here, underwater, dwelt the rain-animal and other spirit beings. (Lewis-Williams 2010:7)

This three-tiered view is echoed in the /Xam cosmology that Von Wielligh recorded: Mountains above, Plains or grassland below, and Water in the very few waterholes of Bushmanland. Yet the heavy accent in Lewis-Williams’s description of a separate spiritual level (‘above’, or ‘below’ in the water), is a typical modern view, while an intermingling at all levels, of the spiritual and the physical, is more in line with /Xam perspective. The always vigilant mantis trickster intervenes when the youngest daughter is threatened by the herd of vindictive springbok, and through his supernatural powers, he transforms ’Khwa’s husband into the Rain bull, and their daughter into the Water snake: Mantis, who was sitting on a nearby bush, viewed it all. He changes the man into a big Bull, also called the Water Beast or Rain Animal, and the child he changes into a big Watersnake, that has a pretty, shining stone on its head. The Rain Animal then blows a thick mist out of his nose and thick black rain clouds into the air, from where a heavy shower falls so that it becomes dark and a big water flood develops. The Watersnake also causes streams of water to bubble up from underground. The Springbok had to swim and flee to save their lives. They got such a shock that Springbok from that day on do not drink water. When the Rain Animal and the Watersnake searched for ’Khwa, they discover that it is she who had changed to the Waters. And because ’Khwa was restless and always on the move, Waters will always be just like that – in it there will be movement and a restlessness, just like the Sea is today.

22

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

Striking in this passage is the change from past to present tense, signifying mythological timelessness. Also remarkable is the view of an experienced interconnectedness between the physical, natural world and the spiritual realm: The Waters – just like her other two sisters, the Mountains and the Plains – is strong. The Waters can move big weights and heavy things can float on her. She doesn’t only live on and under the ground, but also in people, animals and plants. When she departs from people, animals and plants, they die of thirst. Thus Water, Fire (warmth) and Wind (breath) is what keeps people alive […] if Water, Fire and Wind move out of people and animals, then the people and animals die. (Von Wielligh 1919:65‑66)

Such a holistic cosmic perspective is increasingly surfacing today, no doubt under pressure of the intensified and marked effects of climate change. However, scientists of the 21st century have a heightened dystopic perspective (fuelled as it is by accelerated species extinction, natural disasters and overpopulation), unlike the origin myths of the /Xam. In juxtaposition with each other, the /Xam myths suggest a world view with the interconnectedness of man and nature as its first axiom, with mankind but one element in the hugely populated cosmos of living beings, where stars sing, trees talk and animals take revenge on humans. Necklaces discussed here as the central kernel of the first /Xam myth of origin as recorded by Von Wielligh, are also at the centre of discussions on man’s first symbolic culture in Homo Symbolicus (2011). This monograph has in its focus the significance of the recent discoveries of the pierced shells and decorated ochre from excavations at Blombos Cave, dating back to between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago. A multi-disciplinary team of scientists considered the possible symbolic function of the ‘hypothetical necklace’ and the decorated ochre pieces. It is enticing to link the function of the necklaces in ‘Night and Darkness and their three daughters’ to the conjectures about the function of necklaces in Homo Symbolicus by authors such as William McGrew (“a necklace necessarily means deliberate ornamentation, which amounts to evidence of symbolic capacity”, McGrew 2011:9) and Paul Pettit: “assuming that pigment colourants and perforated shells and beads were used to ornament the body, one can conceive of different levels of use, from the simplest […] through to concept-mediated symbolism” (Pettit 2011:148). Pettit mentions three possible functions: 1) decoration, enhancement, and accessorisation; 2) full symbolism; and 3) time/space-factored symbolism: “the incorporation of temporal and spatial dimensions into full symbolism” (Pettit 2011:148). These three functions all coincide with the functions of necklaces as described in the origin myth recorded by Von Wielligh. But in the /Xam origin myth one could add other functions: musical instruments; representative of future sustenance in microscopic form (seeds, berries, eye and ear parts of springbok – all 23

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

small parts representing large organisms; and as amulets, functioning supernaturally for warding off future catastrophe (drought, hunger or floods). In this origin myth of Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive lie embedded the possibilities of further understanding of the cultural and symbolic value of the “putative necklace” (McCrew 2011:9) found in the Blombos excavations. However, the making of the necklaces, the taboo against removal and the ‘coming out’ dance of the new sorcerer maidens is but the primary female-orientated episode of this myth; what follows is a second episode, dealing with the male concerns of hunting and marriage. It starts with /Kaggen’s metamorphosis into a large wild antelope, watching the maidens with ‘inquisitive eyes’ (‘nuuskierige oë’). His behaviour probably suggests an element of strong male erotic interest. More than likely, this can be seen to have been censored out by Von Wielligh – especially if one compares it to the naturally robust, scatological and sexually explicit nature of the creation myths of the Namibian Ju/’hoansi collected by Biesele (Biesele 1993:124‑138) – much like other soft-pedalling around Victorian sensibilities, such as explicit sexual content in Lloyd’s recordings of /Xam narratives (Bank:98). Each of the three girls in Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive lived in a land of peace and plenty, “as long  as they kept the strings around their necks” (Von Wielligh 1919:14‑15). Depending on the non-removal of these amulets for the continuance of “peace and plenty”, the first /Xam creation myth ends here. Yet at the end of this first volume of Boesman-Stories (Bushman stories) there is eventually severe hunger and thirst in the land, as evident in the last two sections, ‘The animals ask for food and water’ and ‘Bushman prayers’ (Von Wielligh 1919:179‑191). This raises the question: when and where were the magical necklaces removed? Why was the powerful taboo broken? The strange answer lies in the nature of the necklaces, in a tragic flaw built into their make-up. This is most evident in Plains’s calabash-necklace, filled with berry seeds. These seeds begin to sprout (as she lies asleep), as seeds will do given a fertile environment, and grow into her neck, feeding off the blood in her veins (a metaphor for the gradual population of the ‘body’ of the sleeping Plains with vegetation). As the plants, bushes and trees grow larger, they break their containers. They break the necklace made of vegetable matter. This growth process also fits in with the /Xam belief that a body part ‘placed in a fluid medium’ will regenerate or be resurrected (Du Plessis 2014:299). The over-satiated sleeping Mountains undergoes a similar fate, with baboons moving rocks around on her body continuously. Presumably in the case of Waters, whose necklace was made exclusively out of springbok body parts, the final breaking asunder of the necklace came through one of the seasonal springbok treks (1925:56‑59, see footnote 13) that plunged regularly into her riverine ‘body’. The implication seems to be that the mythical utopia ends because built into the necklaces are the daily and seasonal rhythms of nature (the baboon-skin string, the seeds and the springbok ‘bits’ are the potent, seemingly magical fragments from which later 24

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

come the baboons’ activities, the growth of the seeds, and the seasonal treks of the springbok). In Specimens of Bushman Folklore the narrative that points to the end of the mythical era is the lament for the dead magician, !nuin/kui-ten, in ‘The Broken String’. This was “dictated in July, 1875, in the Katkop dialect, by Dia!kwain, who heard it from his father, Xaa-ttín (1911:236‑237): People were those who Broke for me the string. Therefore, The place […] became like this to me, […] Because the string has broken for me. Therefore, The place does not feel pleasant to me, On account of it

The implication in this iconic Dia!kwain text is that the ending of the utopian life style was brought about through the violent intervention of human beings (the Boer who shot the transmogrified magician-cum-Lion). In the Von Wielligh /Xam archive the end comes through natural elements and their inherent, vibrant and even sometimes violent life force (as with the trekbokke), which cannot be contained in a necklace. The hunting episode in the first myth recorded by Von Wielligh is partially known from Bleek & Lloyd’s first narrative, ‘The Mantis Assumes the Form of a Hartebeest’, in Specimens of Bushman folklore (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 2‑17). Bleek recorded the narrative, but without the prior hunting episode, the whole family’s involvement, or the earlier scene with the Mantis watching the dance of the three maidens with the people gathered round. As it stands ‘cold’ in Bleek & Lloyd, the mythical coherence is largely missing. About /Kaggen and his relationship to game, Jeremy Hollmann remarks that /Kaggen is “a trickster deity who ‘owned’ the animals and guarded them from hunters” (Hollmann 2007:85): Hunting was a chancy and protracted enterprise (Lewis-Williams 1981: 55‑6; Marshall 1999: 143; Vinnicombe 1975: 394) and the /Xam had an intricate web of observances concerned with hunting, known as !nanna-sse, ‘hunting observances showing respect’ (Bleek 1956: 473; see also Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 271‑85; Lewis-Williams 1981: 55‑67; Vinnicombe 1975: 388‑91, 1976: 178, 180). This code of behaviour was derived ultimately from /Kaggen himself, and its observance governed people’s chances of success in hunting large game animals, especially eland (Hollmann 2004: 68‑77). The odds were against the 25

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

hunters – usually /Kaggen tried to break the link between the hunted antelope and the hunter (see Lewis-Williams 1981: 121‑2 for a discussion) because of his great love for the game. /Kaggen was also closely identified with the hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus) (Bleek 1924: 12); in fact, his head was said to resemble that of the hartebeest (Bleek 1924: 10). This intimate relationship extended to his possessions: /Kaggen’s bag, kaross and shoes were made from hartebeest skin. He addressed these as ‘Hartebeest’s Children’ and could teleport them to wherever he was (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 29). The killing of one of his creatures was believed to be a direct affront to /Kaggen. A /Xam informant stated this succinctly: ‘Mantis does not love us, if we kill an Eland’ (Bleek 1924: 12). Sometimes, to save the life of one of his tshweng, the /Xam word for ‘things’ or ‘game’ (Bleek 1956: 238), /Kaggen would transform himself into an insect to trick people into destroying him, thereby breaking the link between hunter and hunted. (Hollmann 2007:94‑95)

Hollmann describes how people generally ignored /Kaggen’s presence, so as not to disturb the link with the game. Clearly the unidentified ‘large wild buck’ into which he transforms himself ‘to see better’ (probably a hartebeest, as this was the animal most closely associated with /Kaggen) was trickery, inviting the hunter and the group into shooting him, and thinking that they had shot meat. The hunting episode in the longer narrative as recorded by Von Wielligh is a cryptic description of /Kaggen’s power in /Xam life, and command over their survival. The /Xam myth as recorded by Von Wielligh has interesting layers of significance for the relationship between nature, man, and animal. It is grounded in context (Geertz 1973:5‑6), and the later myths gathered here by Von Wielligh form into systems with a “mytho-logic” that “reveal the foundations of social life” (Geertz 1988:45). Add to this the necklace-rattles of the young women – clearly made from raw material left over after both foraging and hunting, as is evident in the springbok ears, the tortoise shells and the gourds out of which the necklaces are made. The dancing scene seems to describe ritual performance with elements of participation. The dancing scene also implies a communal ritual of an initiatory dance for the girls, involving the whole community through music (provided by the necklaces-as-dancing rattles), with father ’Gagen, the men, the mantis and mother ’Ga (the older woman and co-instigator with their father, of the proceedings), looking on. From the primal scene with the single couple, Darkness and Night, the action moves to a community, presumably seated around a fire, with music and dancing and alert audience participation. The effect of the dancing girls on the community is suggested: Many people came from far away to look in wonder at the beautiful dance of the three young girls. But the young men were wary of the three girls because they viewed the three dancers as witches. The three did not worry themselves too much about this, because they were happy where they were. 26

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

It is rather enigmatic where these people in the audience “from far away” suddenly came from, in this myth of origin. Are we not dealing here with a myth of origin of the “ougeslag”, the ancient, first people? Further procreation (beyond the three daughters) had presumably not yet taken place. Here there is an inexplicable breach in the myth. Or are these people ‘animal people’, like the mantis, yet to be described? The presence of a community of “[m]any people” signals a puzzling break between episode one (the first couple and their daughters alone) and the communal ritual of the initiatory dance. Also part of this enigma is the reference to the “young men” twice in the last part of the narration: first as members of the audience and then as the three personified sons of the mantis (Wind Bird, Fire Dancer and Rain Bull). Are the first “young men” the same as the three Mantis sons? Or are they other young men, who happen to be in the audience of people who have come from afar for this event? This is not clear. That the people are looking on “in wonder”, suggests an element of transportation to a new dimension by the rhythmic rattling music, the alluring dance, and probably the burning of aromatic fumes, plus the expectancy of the ritual. The young men are “wary” of the three dancers, as they have concluded (judging from the effect of the dancing and music on everyone there), that they are in the presence of three witches (‘toorhekse’ – literally “witches empowered with magic”). That this effect was brought about through the rhythmical music of the rattles and the literally en-trancing ritual of the female dance, suggests a novel experience for the onlookers, akin to the birth of music, dance and the communal ritual. Implied in the association of these nubile young girls with the single word ‘witches’, is the religious dimension of the shaman (or in archaic terms ‘sorcerer’). Also suggested is their roles in protecting the future wellbeing of the /Xam community’s milieu and lifestyle. (The three girls, and their roles in the early race, are vaguely reminiscent of the three Fates in Greek mythology that controlled life from birth to death). Within a larger comparative framework, necklaces also feature prominently in the myths and societies of indigenous people, described as valuable objects of exchange in the work of Marcel Mauss’s The Gift (Mauss 1980:7,9,21,95 & 97) and Branislav Malinowski’s The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (of special importance is the Gumakarakedakeda or ‘Monitor Lizard on the Road’ necklace, fabulously long, that affords the wearer special powers, in an origin myth of the Kula – Malinowski 1922:322‑4). The zoological, botanical and geographical references, and the /Xam words sprinkled throughout these narratives, suggest a later community of /Xam hunter-gatherers wondering about the origin of the world around them (perhaps around a fire at night, after a successful hunt), about the springbok, tortoises, baboons, stars, moon and waterholes. What features centrally in these myths are the earliest forms of human culture: necklaces, dancing rattles, fire, belief in magic and sorcery or shamanism. 27

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

Paul Pettit commented that symbols are “ways of engaging with the world”, and based on Peircean semiotics, he states that the symbolism is derived from the context, so that “context is all-important” (Pettit in Henshilwood 2011:142). This context is missing in Bleek & Lloyd’s narrative, ‘The Mantis Assumes the Form of a Hartebeest’, but provided in Von Wielligh’s /Xam creation myth, ‘Nag en duisternis en hulle drie dogters’ (‘Night and Darkness and Their Three Daughters’). Additionally, two volumes of other myths follow, all of them connected to and based on the first myth collected by Von Wielligh. They all cohere in a singular fashion and function as resurrection of a hunter-gatherer world now no longer extant in the Northern Cape (along with red-listed and extinct flora and fauna, such as the world’s smallest tortoise, the padlopertjie, and the quagga). In the origin myths of Bleek and Lloyd, this coherence is mostly missing, and they tend to be fragments for which the context is often provided in the recordings of Von Wielligh. Yet these /Xam myths collected by Von Wielligh nonetheless demand repeated reading, and reading as a web, with interlinked elements to and fro between different myths, before their full significance starts emerging. To most contemporary readers a necklace is simply a piece of adornment. Growing up is simply a natural process without much ritual involved. Not so in a /Xam community, as confirmed in Low’s contemporary Khoisan research (Low 2014:354‑359). During a first reading most readers will probably not notice the importance of the necklaces and what they are made of, plus their linked function as amulets against future want, nor as musical instruments in the dance. Once this is noticed, the finely spun web of linked mythological material starts cohering and achieving its full significance. Modern readers might also not be conscious of the /Xam ritual of marking a girl’s menarche (separation in a hut near water, ochre in the water and on the body). Hidden under the words ‘necklace’ and ‘grown-up’ (in ‘When the three girls had grown-up’) lie cultural layers mostly unsuspected by the contemporary reader. The same with the enigmatic hunting episode linked to /Kaggen. Without a comparative reading against the context of the Bleek and Lloyd archive, this episode might remain puzzling to the reader. Even in the title, Boesman-Stories, there is hidden a similar, easy cultural misunderstanding. These are not stories as we know them in a literate culture. In the /Xam oral tradition, ‘stories’ or kukummi function as entertainment around the fire, but also importantly as survival information (on the habits of wild animals as prey, dangers in the wilderness) – the stories function as news, as scientific, factual knowledge (about the nature of wild plants, where to dig them, how to dig them, and which are poisonous and which edible), and give insight into the nature of people, imparting of survival lessons when amongst others, and about humanity’s strange and wanton ways. The original function of kukummi was thus much more than trivial entertainment. They 28

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

“enabled the most successful behavioural alternatives to be transmitted” (Wilson in Henshilwood 2011:138). Without successful social interaction, any individual of this early community would have a much lower chance of a survival in a dangerous wilderness inhabited by lions, elephants, snakes, and poisonous insects and plants. Remarkable in Von Wielligh’s collection as a whole is the parallelism between the stories connected to each of the daughters. As pointed out before, their names are not provided in the first myth (‘Night and Darkness and their three daughters’). This narrating technique functions as an important method of deferral, building tension into the web of tales (almost like a serial). In the /Xam myth recorded by Von Wielligh the narrator uses the historic present, thus reflecting something of the immediacy called up in a lively, interactive oral performance situation within the /Xam community. Through the use of the historic present, narratives would then suggest a sense of events as immediate, as if happening at that time, carried through further in the rich tapestry of dialogue, typical of most /Xam myths recorded by Von Wielligh, as well as Bleek & Lloyd. All this is lost when translating them into the past tense in English, where the historic present22 offends some users (Shariatmadari 2014. 28 July). Which tenses would be used in /Xam oral narration within their own community and in /Xam can only be guessed at today23, but judging from the Afrikaans narration and the structure of the myths, most of them consist of an introduction in the past tense (‘In the old days there was only darkness’), followed by one or more lively episodes narrated in the present tense (“Toe [...] neem die moeder klein skilpadjies” – literally, ‘then the mother takes small tortoises’), with a conclusion in one or two paragraphs, again in the past tense (‘It was a land of plenty’). The same changes from past to present tense are evident in the ‘Porcupine and Bat’ tale (Von Wielligh vol. II 1920:142‑150). The background section in the introduction is given in past tense, which then suddenly changes into present tense in the last most entertaining session after the transmogrification of the malnourished step children into animals have taken place. Feasibly this is where any /Xam performance situation would really have come alive, with the immediacy of the story telling in the present tense. Upon closer scrutiny the historic present is used in the English translation of a few /Xam myths in Specimens of Bushman folklore (1911), for instance in a seminal section of ‘The Mantis Assumes the Form of a Hartebeest’ (told to Bleek by //Kabbo), where the first indication of supernatural behaviour is shown by the supposedly dead hartebeest head: “the hartebeest’s head (by turning a little) removes the thong from the hartebeest’s eye” (1911:5‑7). The four paragraphs in historic present are surrounded on either side by much longer passages in the past tense. This difference in tenses within the same narrative lifts out and accentuates the aberrant passage as of high importance. Similar use of the historic present appears in the two lyrical concluding 29

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pages of ‘The Sun and the Children’: “The Sun comes, the darkness goes away […] The Sun is here, all the earth is bright; the Sun is here, the people walk while the place is light, the earth […] is light” (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:51‑53), as at the beginning and elsewhere in ‘Habits of the Bat and the Porcupine’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:247). All three of these narratives have mythical qualities. Yet they are presented with many others, mostly utilising the past tense. It would take close scrutiny of the original /Xam to establish whether this use of historic present in only some of the myths is due to the idiosyncratic choice of the translator at the time of translation, or perhaps a mistranslation (whether Bleek or Lloyd, or whether based on a better knowledge of /Xam at a later stage). But even then, the slow dictation by the /Xam informants to Wilhelm Bleek or Lucy Lloyd, as well as the narratives told to Von Wielligh, could not nearly simulate the lively story-telling performance situation amongst the /Xam.

•

There are further narratives in the first volume collected by Von Wielligh that stand out as remarkable, such as ‘Echo’ (Von Wielligh 1919:311‑40): The man who first discovered Music was called Speelman [literally ‘the man who plays’, i.e. ‘Player man’ or minstrel]. He made different trumpets for himself from the horns of game. From whistling reeds he made a flute. String for string instruments he made from the intestines of game animals. He also did not lack a drum. He stretched a springbok skin, from which the hair had been removed, over a pot. Speelman could play and sing so beautifully. He tried to find someone who could sing as well as he could, but failed to find such a person. People then tell him that in the ravines there lives a beautiful young woman, who is able to sing just as beautifully as he could, and that her name is Echo.

The precise description of the indigenous musical instruments and the effect of music on the hearers are described as being a weapon in the wilderness in the following tale: He wanders so far into the ravines and mountains that he eventually lands up in the heart of the wilderness. There he gets lost. So, Speelman ends up in that wilderness. There is no shortage of voices now. Echo still makes herself heard, but there is also the roaring of Lions, the crying of Hyenas, the howling of Jackals and the barking of Baboons – not to mention the ‘hoo-hoo-ing’ of Owls. For the first time, Speelman feels distressed. He then makes a plan to get back. But which way is now back? He starts wandering and loses his way. First he meets a tribe of Baboons. Their old leader asks Speelman what he is doing on their land. The female Baboons call out: “Cut off his legs and give these to us so that we can also walk upright.” The Baboon children shout out: “Cut off his head, then we can play ball with it because it looks like it cannot break.” 30

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

Speelman gingerly walks backwards until he comes to a tree and as swiftly as a cat he climbs into it. The leaders of the Baboons charge the tree, but Speelman takes his large horn-trumpet and blows so hard that the ravine echoes from the sound. The Baboon children start crying so loudly that it seems as if the mountains would fall down. The female Baboons flee after their children and run after the others over the ridge. Then Speelman climbs out of the tree and flees. He forges his way past Leopards, Hyenas and Jackals, all of whom threaten to devour him. But they do not dare touch him when he plays on his musical instruments. (Von Wielligh 1919: 37‑38; my italics)

This /Xam myth presents a view of the origin of music as an interaction between Echo, the daughter of Mountains (with her endless repetitions of sound in the mountain ravines) and the ‘Player man’ through the strength of his beautiful voice and his playing on those original musical instruments that, like the necklaces, have been made from natural material found in the environment. In ‘The Fire and the ’Nu-feast’ (Von Wielligh 1919:49‑52), Fire, the husband of Plains (in a later myth called “Dancer Fireman” because of his dancing ability), teaches the people how to make fire from two pieces of wood: On a certain occasion there was a lot of game and bush food. The people of that time then had a big feast. A lot of people came to that feast and dance – there was no shortage of fun and food. Dancer was also there, but because he did not display light on his body nobody recognised him as the Fireman. But after they had eaten and danced for a while, he said to the people that he would teach them how to make fire. He took a piece of soft wood and made a hollow cavity in it, then laid the wood on the ground and put wood shavings in the hollow cavity. Then he took finely rubbed grass and placed it near the wood. He took a thinner and harder stick and spun it fast between his two flat hands. The wood shavings burst into flames and then the fine grass also caught alight. He blew on it and then a flame appeared. He placed fine wood on the burning grass and then thicker pieces of wood and then on top of that thick stumps. And soon there was a huge fire. The people were dumbstruck and they sang and danced around that fire that gave so much light and warmth. (Von Wielligh 1919:50‑51)

The myth makes clear that up to this point food had been eaten raw. In this tale, the pleasure of cooked food is discovered, together with the use of fire. Thereafter he organises the fire as the central communal place, with three proscribed circles around it, each of them a fixed milieu for certain activities: Dancer drew a wide ring around the fire and told them to bring the food inside the ring so that it can be braaied [grilled]. Because before then, all food was eaten 31

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raw, just as the Lion, Leopard, Hyena, Jackal and Dog still do today, because these animals are also people of the early race who had changed themselves into animals. The people tasted that cooked meat was tastier than raw meat. From that day on food was always braaied and cooked. On the outside of the ring where the food is being braaied, Dancer draws another circle, so that people can dance, sing and make music in this circle. Outside those two rings is the outer world where people could do as they wished. (Von Wielligh 1919:51; my italics)

The importance of the dance as a “shared activity and the feeling of community” is brought about through “interpersonal synchrony” (Biesele 1975:13), focused on here as a circular setting around a fire. The fire is also seen as the source of the heat “required to heat up the n/um or power” for the curers, the medicine men (Biesele 1975:13‑14). The /Xam myth collected by Von Wielligh ends with the following statement: “From then on festivals were held and the ’Nu dance was established” (Von Wielligh 1919:52). This concept of ’Nu one finds in Dorothea Bleek’s dictionary under the gloss ‘-/nu’ for sorcerer in the very last sentence: “a medicine man he is, a sorcerer he is, one [man]” (DF Bleek 1956:350). This festival, transcribed by Von Wielligh as ’Nu, correlates, therefore, with the ‘n/um’ of the Ju/’hoansi as transcribed by Biesele in 1975, while ‘-/nu, /nu’ is defined by Bleek as “a word signifying dead, departed, spirit” when used by the /Xam (DF Bleek 1956:350). In her earlier dictionary of 1929, Comparative Vocabularies of Bushman languages, she gives the /Xam word for a medicine man as ‘!geiten’; only under the northern Bushman language does she list the term ‘-/nu k’au’ as used in the 1956 dictionary (DF Bleek 1929:57). An 1875 narrative told by Dia!kwain to Lucy Lloyd describes the power of the ancestral sorcerers, “who could be approached for help by the living” (Hollmann 2004:256‑258). Following this tale by Dia!kwain on the ancestral spirits or the ‘/nu:!ke’, Hollmann remarks in a note that “the categories between ‘old people’, ‘spirit people’ and ‘dead people” seem to blur into each other […] Spirit people, however, seem to be the most powerful of all and their assistance is asked, or begged for” (Hollmann 2004:258). The entomological knowledge of the behaviour of rare insects illustrated in the myth on the origin of lightning and thunder clouds given in ‘Dampertjie en Spuitertjie’ (‘Shooter/Smoker and Pisser’, Von Wielligh 1919:171‑176) proves about their insect knowledge what Alan Barnard says of the Bushman knowledge of plants, that they “know the names, uses, locations and seasonality of literally hundreds of plants” (Barnard 2012:148). This intimate, intricate knowledge is turned into myths of origin while at the same time relaying precise information about the behaviour of insects and animals, an astounding feat. Barnard states that the /Xam had one of the “richest mythologies 32

The /Xam archive recorded by GR von Wielligh

ever recorded” (Barnard 2012:7) and that mythology “requires language to a much greater extent than do simple matters of basic communication”; it is in this “greater linguistic complexity that is required from mythological thought” that the “golden age of hunter-gatherer symbolism” is to be found (Barnard 2012:146‑7). Ritual, dance and music are central to this mythology, as is clear from Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive; though much smaller than the Bleek and Lloyd archive, it is, perhaps, easier to see whole, though it is not less complex. On the question of when language evolved, it is clear that rituals (such as the communal initiatory dance of the three maidens, and the ‘Fire and the ’Nu festival’) use nonverbal language (gestures, the dance, tone and rhythm in music) to communicate. Yet the central dimension or element of recursion24 that underlies complex modern language is clearly present in the various myths that make up this mythology. Figure 4 (the family tree of the ancient race) illustrates the recursive patterning, in the cycles of three myths around Plains, Mountains and Water. This is typical of mythology: Myth finds the roots of timelessness in time – and therefore ends up dealing […] with repetition, variation, and recursion. Myths, like other stories, have beginnings, middles, and ends, but a mythology usually does not. The end of myth is routinely attached, through other myths to its own beginning. (Herbert 2002:792)

The intricate patterns of myths in a mythological ‘web’ (as I have called it in this analysis), with its themes and variations, Lévi-Strauss compared to a symphony, as it is “impossible to understand a myth as a continuous sequence”: We have to apprehend it as a totality and discover that the basic meaning of the myth is not conveyed by the sequence of events but […] by bundles of events […] we have to read the myth more or less as we would read an orchestral score […] not only from left to right, but at the same time vertically, from top to bottom. (Lévi-Strauss 1978:44‑45)

He connects the reading of mythology to the experience of an intricate piece of music, such as a symphony. It has to be experienced or read. When Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive is read comparatively with the Bleek and Lloyd archive (plus the rich comparative corpus of knowledge on the Khoi and Bushman traditions, as well as the indigenous myths of other hunter-gatherers and First People), it offers much unexplored terrain of mythological and scientific interest. Hopefully the English translation of Von Wielligh’s four volumes of Bushman Stories (in preparation) will open up this long neglected archive for wider consideration.

33

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

Figure 6

34

Gideon von Wielligh, circa 1883.

2 GR von Wielligh’s life and work What remains behind in the memory of contemporaries, in documents and the literary statements of a human being? How was his being in the world mirrored […]? [If ] one gathers also the slightest, often overlooked circumstances and orders them into a coherent whole, then there appears, out of the many, often minute mosaic pieces and splinters, a panorama of a life and its working […] there rises here a biography, which in its immediacy is more provocative than any fictional life story.1 (from the preface to a 1957 biography of Von Kleist; my translation) — Helmut Sembdner

Introduction

A

search for the missing diaries of around 1880‑1884 in which GR von Wielligh might have recorded his collected Boesman-stories (which translates as ‘Bushman Stories’), published in four volumes in 1919‑1921, led to archival research and a reconstruction of the author’s life. The assumption of such ‘missing diaries’ is based upon knowledge of his writing methodology and the genesis of his other anthropological works, Dierestories (‘Animal Stories’) in 1917‑1922, Jakob Platjie in 1918 and Langs die Lebombo (‘Beside the Lebombo’) in 1923. All three works were first serialised and afterwards collected and published based on diaries kept in the field.2 This assumption was also based on the quick successive dates of his twenty published works, 1917‑1925,3 that followed on from his earlier journalistic output, from 1876 to 1906. This output would have been humanly impossible if written from scratch, even more so with Von Wielligh’s severely restricted eyesight. Von Wielligh’s writing career, from journalism in the late 19th century to books in the early 20th century, runs parallel to the development of Afrikaans from a mainly spoken language around 1876 into an officially recognised and standardised written language in 1925. The half-century that spans his life and work, is the source of much misunderstanding of both the man and his work. As a man born in 1859, he was formed by the 19th century and its values. Most of his work, except for the five long-forgotten novels written between 1920 and 1924,4 was thus conceived and written decades before first publishing in 1917. This explains his use of archaic racial terminology that is now offensive (especially so in Langs die Lebombo, but to a lesser degree also in Boesman-Stories). Two seminal literary texts often quoted from by 35

A Necklace of Springbok Ears

him, and which preoccupied him throughout his life, were John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), the latter translated by him in 1920 and often republished as an Afrikaans children’s book.5 These texts seem to encapsulate the essence of the man – the romantic (conscious of loss and the past), and the survivalist (looking to the future). The older man lived with the memories of the untamed lost paradise he knew in his youth and working life, and attempted to revive this through his writings. In a romantic epistolary dalliance as an old, half-blind man in 1928, he quoted Milton to his young correspondent in what might be construed as a half-hearted attempt at flirtation: “They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way.” 6 Yet the wilderness is where he was most at home, camping there for months on end, braving the dangers of tsetse fly and wild animals, while getting to know local people of the area, amongst them the Bushmen, Khoi and Swazi. At home from 1885 to 1898 on their estate at Villieria in Pretoria were his children and wife, Bettie (née Elizabeth de Villiers, daughter of one of the first professors in music at the Cape, Jan S de Villiers, and great granddaughter of the first professor in theology, GWA van der Lingen). She was a highly educated musician who loved nothing better than to play Chopin on the piano at dusk.7 (In 1905, she and her sister, Nancy de Villiers, started the South African Conservatorium of Music in Stellenbosch.)8 The Von Wielligh couple separated in August 1899 and were divorced in 1904. It would be difficult to imagine a greater polarisation between the natural milieus and interests of two partners in marriage.

•

A life reconstructed Much like other notable men from South Africa’s colonial past who made their mark – such as Andrew Geddes Bain (1797‑1864), Thomas Pringle (1789‑1834) and Georges William Stow (1822‑1882) – Gideon Retief von Wielligh (1859‑1932) was a man of many parts. A land surveyor by profession, he was also an amateur botanist and zoologist, anthropologist and folklorist, journalist as well as author of at least twenty books (both fiction and non-fiction, in many editions). In the 19th century, large parts of South Africa – its indigenous people, the landscape with its fossils, mountains, rocks and caves, flora and fauna – were still mostly unknown by Westerners. This gave literate men of inquisitive bent, such as Bain, Pringle, Stow and Von Wielligh (all in the habit of keeping diaries and notebooks of what they observed), the opportunity to make their mark in fields tangentially linked to their official tasks. 36

GR von Wielligh’s life and work

Bain (transport driver, military man, farmer and road-builder) discovered fossils, taught himself geology from Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1837), and subsequently identified a new fossil, the dicynodon (the so-called ‘Blinkwater monster’). He eventually formulated the lacustrine theory, envisioning the Karoo as an erstwhile lake, after discovering freshwater fossils near Beaufort West in the Karoo: “Suddenly a flood of light burst on my astonished imagination. Could the immense space have formerly been a great lake?” (Bain xxix: 1949). In 1851 and 1857 he published monographs on South African geology. Pringle (gentleman settler farmer, minor Romantic poet, pro-abolition journalist) started a press in Cape Town and became the ‘father of South African English poetry’. Stow started as a jack-of-all-trades (teacher, clerk, farmer, trader, diamond dealer), but after extensive contact with indigenous people, he wrote The Native Races of South Africa (completed in 1882; published in 1905), seeing the Bushmen as the earliest Southern African race. In literary and folklorist circles, Von Wielligh is now best known for his recordings of /Xam narratives (1919‑1921) and Khoi animal tales (1907). Yet he is also still known for his scientific contributions. Botanical and ethno-medical studies of indigenous South African plants often quote his contribution to the Agricultural Journal on the habitat, healing lore and cultivation of buchu.9 Kruger claimed that a flowering plant had been named after him, Agapanthus Wiellighii, while he also contributed specimens of various species of scarce lizards to the Pretoria museum (Kruger 1945:27). Ethnoastronomers have recently recovered the value of his /Xam material.10 And in the face of the growing concern about increasing water scarcity in South Africa, it is remarkable that as early as 1913‑14 he regularly expressed concern in his writings in the Agricultural Journal on the same topic, making various suggestions. As a land surveyor, he played a major role in the late 19th century, mapping the country and its borders, and introducing new technology into the approach to surveying methodology.11 His innovative approach as a young man to the late-19th century methods of land surveying still features prominently: Von Wielligh was energetic and idealistic, and as a Cape Afrikaner he was especially welcome to the self-consciously Boer government of the post-1884 ZAR. Von Wielligh had arrived in the Republic only in 1883, but he saw immediately the immense benefit of a rigorous trigonometrical survey of the country for settling questions of land and locality – in short, arranging and correcting the geographical archive of the state, and correcting the poor practices of individuals. His first task was to produce a comprehensive recapitulation of the land situation – grants, inspections, and surveys alike – for the Volksraad that may very well have been modelled upon the blue books that laid out compelling case for survey reform in the Cape Colony in the 1870s, and which would have been wellknown to von Wielligh. In making his case, von Wielligh fixed on the problems of poor inspections so rife in the 1870s and before, and their unsuitability for planning further grants, accurately assaying state resources, or compiling maps 37

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[…] Von Wielligh, in the days following the passage of the new law, asked Cape Astronomer Royal David Gill12 to be the technical advisor to the anticipated project. (Braun 2008:256‑257; my italics)

Large swathes of Von Wielligh’s life remain obscure. This is true for all published biographical detail on him, even in articles of the last few years.13 The same information about Von Wielligh is therefore mostly repeated in the few overviews of him, giving rise to a stereotypical character that mostly emphasises the young man involved in the Afrikaans language struggles of the late 19th-century Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Association of Real Afrikaners), the later author of a highly contested oeuvre mostly dismissed as second rate, and subsequently a pitiful, half-blind and impoverished old man eking out his last days while writing feverishly with one eye and a magnifying glass. JC Steyn gives a broader overview of the writer’s life (Steyn 2009:72‑73), but one still based mostly on published material. Biographical details of Von Wielligh are thin on the ground and often contain clashes in terms of dates and facts, which is puzzling. The challenge for the author was to break out of this closed circle of reshuffled material.14 Combined with a search for the elusive Von Wielligh diaries behind the book of Bushman stories, in order to prove the originality of his /Xam narratives, and that they were indeed self-recorded and based on his own knowledge of the people and their customs, the author turned up archival and forgotten sources that helped to fill out many of the enigmatic gaps in his story. The Biographical database of Southern African Science has an entry on Von Wielligh that focuses on his contributions as scientist: Gideon R. von Wielligh (sometimes Van Wielligh), surveyor and early popular writer in Afrikaans, was the son of Nikolaas von Wielligh and his wife Martha M. Retief. He was educated privately and at the Paarl Gymnasium. In 1879 he passed the examination for the Certificate of proficiency in the theory of land surveying of the University of the Cape of Good Hope and the next year was admitted as a government land surveyor in the Cape Colony. He was admitted to practice as a land surveyor in the South African Republic (Transvaal) in 1883 and the next year was appointed surveyor-general of the territory, succeeding G.P. Moodie. He held this post until 1895, when Johan F.B. Rissik succeeded him. During the Anglo-Boer War (1899‑1902) Von Wielligh was commissioner in charge of the British prisoners of war at Waterval, north of Pretoria, and later was interned at Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) by the British. After the war he was again admitted to practice as a land surveyor in what was then the Transvaal Colony, on 8 August 1902. Subsequently he became a member of the Institute of Land Surveyors of the Transvaal. Von Wielligh was married to Elizabeth de Villiers, with whom he had six children, of whom three sons and a daughter survived. He joined the Genootskap 38

GR von Wielligh’s life and work

van Regte Afrikaners in 1876 and from then until 1891 wrote for Die Afrikaanse Patriot and later for Ons Klyntji (1896‑1906), Ons Taal (1907‑1909) and other Afrikaans periodicals. In 1903 he visited Maputo again to collect astronomical instruments that had belonged to the government of the South African Republic. While attending a carnival there, lime was thrown in his eyes, leaving him with severely impaired sight. He appears to have left the Transvaal Colony shortly afterwards, and by 1909 was living in Paarl. In spite of his misfortune he continued to write.15

For most of his life Von Wielligh bestrode the wild, unknown areas of South Africa, the ‘gramadoelas’.16 The little known areas of his life are the formative early childhood and youth (1859‑1878), and the Transvaal period of 1883 to 1903. Both of these periods are particularly important for understanding the value of his /Xam folklore and narratives, and they clearly demonstrate two things: 1) Von Wielligh’s intimate and encyclopaedic knowledge of the land, its indigenous people and their oral traditions; and, 2) how this knowledge was gained through a close relationship from early childhood onwards with significant others, mostly older men who were his tutors or models in various fields. Many of these older men were male relations: his forefather, Nikolaus, who left Germany for the Cape and travelled through the country with Peter Kolbe (also known as Kolbe) from 1705 to 1708; his eccentric and rich grandfather, Nicolaas, who spoke Malay-Portuguese to some of his slaves; and his Great Trek uncle, Piet Retief. Then there were leading colonial figures: President Paul Kruger; the hunter and legendary figure, Abel Erasmus; and the young Winston Churchill as war journalist and escapee of a Boer prisoner-of-war camp. Indigenous male ‘tutors’ central to his life and writing were from the /Xam (Henk [Hendrik] Boesman, most notably, with whom he grew up on the family farm and, during 1882, Old Bles in Calvinia) and Khoi cultures ( Jannewarie, also a worker on the childhood farm, Vrije Guns). He was rooted in the knowledge gained from these men. His familiarity with the cosmology of the /Xam (as well as the Khoi and Swazi cultures) comes from this rootedness. It would not be going too far to say that he was a student of these white /Xam and Khoi ‘master elders’ who shared their customs, beliefs and knowledge of the land, its flora and fauna, so illustrating their ways in the world, such as forging into the wilderness and living in the veld, as well as their acculturated ways with people of other races. He was clearly a polymath with a special gift for acquiring languages: there are nine languages and their cultures at the heart of his life and work. In most of these he was either totally at home (Afrikaans, Dutch, English), or he had some knowledge of them (German, Portuguese, /Xam, Khoi, Swazi and Malay-Portuguese). Afrikaans was often the lingua franca for /Xam and Khoi people (in which they had acquired total fluency, or bilingualism, through a steady acculturation to travellers, burghers at the Cape and trekboer farmers (farmers who travelled with ox-wagons into the interior 39

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in search of new land). This common language facilitated fluent communication and prevented misunderstandings. The German, Nikolaus von Wielligh (1682‑1743), a forefather of GR von Wielligh, was born six generations before him in Hamburg. He came to the Cape in 1705 as an officer of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC), and as Peter Kolb’s assistant. Kolb’s encyclopaedic work, Caput Bonae Spei Hodiernum (1719),17 introduced a new scientific discourse at the Cape (Huigen 2007:35), and shifted the stereotypical view of the indigenous people as abject (primitive, lesser) beings, which had held sway in the travel and scientific literature before. Kolb’s attempt was the first to break with this negative view through acute observation and interaction with the people. This sympathetic image of the Khoi and the Bushmen was used, amongst others, by Rousseau in his Discours sur l’inégalité (1755), as an empirical basis for his image of the noble savage. Kolb’s work is systematically divided into three parts: on nature, on the indigenous people, and on the colonial society at the Cape (Huigen 2007:30 & 40). In 1712, Kolb suddenly became blind, was treated (maltreated, rather) to no avail at the Cape with a necklace of horsehair, brews of Spanish fly and worse, before he had to resign as secretary of the VOC, a post he had held since 1705. Only after proper medical attention in BadenBaden, did he regain his sight a year later. A few years thereafter, he wrote his book of 900 folio pages, having to rely partly on his memory as some of his notes had gone missing (Huigen 2007:37). The central elements in Von Wielligh’s life were: language (both orality and the written word); different cultures and their ways; and travel (most of his life comprises journeying or reconnoitring unknown areas and getting to know unknown cultures, with their different languages). The Kolb ‘backstory’18 links Von Wielligh via his forefather obliquely to the Kolb project. The story of Kolb’s pioneering travels into South Africa was presumably part of the Von Wielligh family’s oral history, due to his forefather’s presence in the supporting party. There are interesting parallels between Kolb and Von Wielligh: their acute observation and sympathetic interaction with the indigenous people; their loss of carefully kept notebooks; and both authors experienced periods of temporary blindness prior to the writing of their final texts. (Von Wielligh’s Boesman-Stories as his seminal text is the reference point here.)

•

A small literary biography of Von Wielligh appeared in 1945, entitled Oue goud (‘Old Gold’). It is based on and contains the author’s personal ‘backstory’, as narrated by himself to an adoring young author in their correspondence over a period of seven years. From her seventeenth year, the author Nellie Serfontein (1908‑1990, later Kruger, a Free State cousin of Dot Serfontein, the mother of the poet Antjie Krog), 40

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corresponded with Von Wielligh. The correspondence dates from 1925 to 1931, just before he died. His frenetic writing fever of the previous seven years (1917‑1924) had abated, perhaps because of old age, but no doubt also due to an increasing number of manuscripts being rejected (although he cites the official reason in a letter to JJ Smith as “the struggling publishing concerns”).19 In June 1925 he was working on a manuscript entitled Staatmakers (of Persoonlikheid en invloed) (‘Stalwarts, or Personality and Influence’) (letter to Serfontein 21 June 1925). A year later, on 12 March 1926, he tells her that he has completed the manuscript of Liefde en huwelik (‘Love and Marriage’), based on thirty articles on the topic in the agricultural journal Landbouweekblad. Apparently they had letters streaming in from young and old, asking his advice on matters of love relationships, but none of these manuscripts made their way into print, although he claimed that “up to 30,000 read these articles on a weekly basis” (letter to Serfontein, 12 March 1926). No longer a Robinson Crusoe of the wilderness (1870‑1899), he had now metamorphosed into an ‘agony uncle’ (1926). Serfontein, the young love interest, fittingly edited the manuscript of Liefde en huwelik for him. But it was to no avail, as both of these manuscripts were returned to the author as ‘unpublishable’ by May 1926 (“the first time this happened in my writing career […] the publishers prefer adventure stories that may be prescribed”) (letter to Serfontein, 6 May 1928). There was an almost fifty-year age gap between the two correspondents. She wrote to him as an aspiring fledgling writer, later as an intimate epistolary friend (and even, for a while, his declared love interest, whom he had fleetingly considered as a possible marriage partner, if not for the age gap). Oue goud is a short, naïve and somewhat hagiographic biography of Von Wielligh. But its main value lies in that it is based on the letters in which the older author gave his admirer considerable insight into his life story, the genesis of his works, the conditions under which he wrote, and his methodology in working from notebooks and/or diaries. The small book thus draws extensively on Von Wielligh’s own version of his life and work, as he would want it remembered. As a land surveyor, he travelled to far-flung places in South Africa, working there for extended periods of time: Many of the things you read in my books, I experienced myself […] My work took me all over our country. I had the opportunity like few others to get to know the people and the conditions they lived under. Luckily I realised this, so that every day I wrote down in my diary every important event and everything important I observed. Later I could use this most fruitfully in my work. (Von Wielligh in Kruger 1945:17; my translation)

Although Kruger thus stresses that he had systematically and continually, since his youth, kept diaries and recorded daily events therein, only the following diaries have so far been located in South African archives: those that pertain to his regional 41

Figure 7 GR von Wielligh 1890-91, (front right) and Abel Erasmus (front left)  “Comissão de Delimitação de Fronteira de Lourenço Marques 1890-91” Arcquivo Científico Tropical (digital repository: PT-AHU_Col.PRA.ID25178). Photographers: Alfredo Freire Andrade, Elvino Mezzena, José António Matheus Serrano

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Afrikaans vocabulary records (based on his land-surveying trips through most of South Africa’s then remote regions, 1870‑1899) and the diaries and notebooks about the establishment of the ZAR20 borders with Mozambique and Swaziland from 1886 to 1899 (describing long reconnoitring and surveying trips along the Lebombo mountains and into Mozambique). The language diaries and papers are housed in the Documentary Centre of the University of Stellenbosch in the JJ Smith holdings, while the frontier delimitation diaries are held in the National Archives in Pretoria. The rest of his diaries or notebooks from the years 1870‑1902 – specifically those pertaining to the four volumes of Boesman-Stories – have not been found in the archives. Here the story takes a strange twist. Officially, Von Wielligh always maintained that the damage to his books, drawings, manuscripts and library was caused during the South African War (1899‑1902); British soldiers had invaded and ransacked his vacant homestead on Villieria, his farm outside Pretoria. The papers were in an old trunk, locked away in an outside room. “Unhappily, his drawings, together with his books and manuscripts, were ruined by the English military during 1901” (Smith 1919:187; my translation). Yet archival research reveals that on 11 March 1898 he had a large case, weighing 170lbs, sent by railway from Klerksdorp to his address in Pretoria. This contained “documents, letters, books, accounting books, veld books, general plans, maps, receipts, bank accounts – information relating back to 1880. Total value: £3,028.” He never received the case, and sued the railway company; “the goods had burnt out in the holding hall at Kazerne station, Johannesburg”, they acknowledged. It was a total loss of all his treasured possessions through an accident and, therefore, probably futile to pursue a costly court case. On 25 March he withdrew his case, which had been due to be heard in the high court on 12 April 1899.21 The date 1880 (in the above description of the goods contained in his large case in 1898) refers to the precise date on which Von Wielligh had started working as newly qualified young land surveyor in the Bushmanland area, with his home base in Calvinia. If diaries for his /Xam narratives were to be found anywhere, it is most likely that in 1898 they would have been stored in that burnt-out shed at the Johannesburg Kazerne station. The lost diaries had probably gone up in cinders in the accidental fire at the station’s holding hall in March 1898, more than a year before the war broke out. The fact that the burnt-out container included material and books dating as far back as 1880, suggests that in the container he had placed for transport all of his treasured possessions (documents, diaries and land surveying tools), dating back to the beginning of his working life, almost twenty years before. The most likely circumstance would have been that this happened around the beginning of 1898, when his wife and their four children left the Transvaal permanently for the Cape. The content of the large case suggests the breaking up of a long-standing household where they had all lived, probably at Villieria near Pretoria, later sold as town plots. 43

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So the trail for the lost /Xam diaries (relating to the period 1880‑1882 on which the Bushman stories are based) comes to a dead end in the burnt-out case – tantalisingly close, but for that fire… No British soldiers anywhere to be seen.

•

A chronological overview based on archival material clarifies the ups and downs in the Von Wielligh ‘backstory’. Von Wielligh had lived since childhood with the people whose stories he collected. He grew up on the farm, Vrije Guns, near Paarl (Piet Retief, one of the Great Trek leaders, was an uncle on his mother’s side). From the age of six, Gideon von Wielligh worked as ‘touleier’ (leader) of the oxen on his father’s farm during ploughing times from sunrise. Here, he heard daily Jackal and Wolf stories which Jannewarie, the Khoi driver, told him during their breaks. At night, by the fire, he heard Bushman stories from old Hendrik Boesman, the goatherd: From his sixth year, he had to be on the land as leader of the oxen. [...] By four in the afternoon, when everyone was very tired, old January, the driver, who was a very compassionate old Khoi man, told Jackal and Wolf stories. Gideon enjoyed it so much that he forgot his tiredness and carried on working. In this way, from a very young age, he became interested in beautiful stories. He also did not forget them easily like other children. At night, on the built-up hearth, next to the fire, old Hendrik would sit and tell the children stories. He was the old goatherd and he knew the Agterveld ‘like his little pinkie’ [like the back of his hand], as he used to say. (Kruger 1945:24; my translation)22

Until he was eleven years old, the Dutch ex-sailor, Jan Balt, schooled Gideon von Wielligh at home. He excelled in mathematics and drawing. His grandfather, Nicolaas van Wielligh (1780‑1867), of the farm Leeuwedans (‘Lion Dance’) in Koeberg (Von Wielligh 1918:139), had been “one of the wealthiest farmers in the Malmesbury district”, with thirty-five slaves at the time of emancipation in 1834 (Dooling 1999:232). He still spoke Malaysian-Portuguese to his unilingual slaves, as did his Afrikaans worker (“that he had learnt from the slaves”) and another slave woman (Von Wielligh 1918:141). GR von Wielligh seems to have inherited from his grandfather the knack of learning languages, as he later spoke Swazi (Von Wielligh 1923:56) and knew some /Xam (Von Wielligh 1919). Yet there also seemed to be a propensity in the family to fall on hard times, as both his grandfather, his father and he himself were eventually brought to financial ruin. In 1870, the young Gideon and his younger brother went with their father on a sixmonth trading expedition through Bushmanland to obtain oxen. Upon completing his formal schooling in Paarl, and training as a land surveyor at the fledgling University of Cape Town, he worked as a trainee land surveyor in the Karoo, Eastern Cape and the 44

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Free State. Upon the successful completion of his final land-surveying examination, he worked with Calvinia as his base in Bushmanland (1880‑1883). In August 1883, President Paul Kruger appointed him as land surveyor of the Transvaal. Kruger was consciously importing bright, young, university-trained ‘Cape Dutch’ men as officials to his republic and Von Wielligh impressed with the new methods that he applied to land surveying.23 From 1884 to June 1895, Von Wielligh was Surveyor General of the South African Republic, or Transvaal (see note 20). After the discovery of gold in the Transvaal in 1882, Von Wielligh, like many of his contemporaries, became a very prosperous man. Much speculation with property was rife amongst the burghers. He bought a farm, Villieria (today a suburb), outside Pretoria, where his wife and five children24 lived while he went on long land-surveying trips, camping for months on end in the wilderness. Together with his youngest brother, Piet Retief von Wielligh, he invested in the development of Warmbad in the Waterberg. (The name is Afrikaans for the natural hot-water baths. Today it is called Bela-Bela, from the Sotho and Tswana for ‘boiling water’.) On this property, leased by the Von Wiellighs from the Transvaal government, his brother later erected bungalows and rented them to visitors seeking healing in the naturally hot spring waters. For fifteen years, Von Wielligh, or his brother, never paid (or had to pay), the quitrent. Eventually in 1890, the money was demanded from him. It came to £17,000.25 If one compares this with the salary of the lowest-paid Member of Parliament in 1893, the secretary Mr JHM Kock, which was £1,150 per annum in 1893,26 it is clear that Von Wielligh was already over his head in debt. This was 1890, five years before a commission of enquiry against him. In the end, Von Wielligh’s financial downfall appears to have been at least in part caused by this business venture with his brother at Warmbad, although there are many indications that none of his financial affairs were in particularly good order. On another property (most likely his Villieria farm) he had a bond with the government, and later took out a second one.27 In June 1895 he was forced to resign after accusations of time, job and financial mismanagement.28 These accusations do not seem totally unfounded, judging from archival material, but political motives probably played the major role in the case against him, made in July 1894 by Carl Jeppe and RH Loveday. In 1895, the Transvaal republic was in turmoil, with the uitlander (‘outsider’ or ‘foreigner’) problem. Kruger and his Conservatives were increasingly under siege by the Progressives (of whom Loveday was one of the earliest Members of Parliament), who wanted to clean up corruption, maladministration, and the “parochial ways of Kruger’s government.” Before resigning, Surveyor General Von Wielligh was one of the chief officials in the Transvaal.29 Historians state how, after 1895, “Kruger made impressive progress with administration reform.”30 45

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Paul Kruger and his government faced serious outside threats, focused mostly on their repositories of gold. The Jameson Raid of 1896 was one such unsuccessful attack, yet it was indicative of the turmoil in the region. The area was increasingly invaded by international elements and prised open to public gaze by the global interest in the mineral rich country. The discovery of gold fascinated outsiders and drew them magnetically into its borders. No doubt, a further stimulus for international interest lay in the numerous trips Kruger and his leading men made on official business to the courts and governments of Great Britain and Europe during the last two decades of the 19th century.

Figure 8 First page of a letter written by GR von Wielligh on 15 July 1895, addressing Loveday and Jeppe’s accusations levelled against him.

After his forced resignation 13 June 1895, Von Wielligh’s circumstances deteriorated sharply, both in his private life and in his financial circumstances. In a 1909 petition to the Transvaal department (written about his financial predicament, in high official mode and in the third person), he describes his situation after losing his post as Surveyor General in 1895: 46

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[He] retained the office of Staatmeter Generaal in control of the Trigonometrical Survey and the demarcations of the boundary lines. He was furthermore vested with two other permanent commissions concerning Swazieland and Zambaans country, the latter two being of a confidential nature.31

Figure 9 13 October 1895. Telegram by Von Wielligh, desperate for work from the ZAR government.

Figure 10 1896 telegram sent to President Paul Kruger about demarcation of Swaziland border. Figure 11 Letter of 1 May 1896, written from Paarl, enquiring whether ZAR government still needs his service to demarcation of the borders.

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Nowhere else in any archival or official ZAR documents is there any evidence of Von Wielligh ever having had or retained the official position of Staatmeter Generaal (‘State Surveyor General’). Could this be a desperate but imaginative attempt to strengthen his case? Staatmeter Generaal was a position he had envisioned in 1883 when redesigning the surveying laws for the ZAR, but they were never accepted as law due to the financial restraints of the fledgling state (Braun 2014:224).

Figure 12 (above left) Letter of 11 June 1897 by Von Wielligh, requiring an answer about a job application he had made earlier. Figure 13 (above right) Letter of 6 May 1898 by Von Wielligh to ZAR surveyor general, requesting compensation for horses, mules and equipment lost through the tsetse fly "in the hot season".

As a last resort, he tried farming, which turned into a total disaster.32 Official accounts of Von Wielligh’s life sketch a picture of a present-day Job, with everything he possesses turning to ashes in front of him. In Oue goud, Nellie Kruger similarly clusters together in a short timeframe all of the disasters that overtook her adored subject, including the Warmbad debt issue. Yet the enforced repayment of the Warmbad rental debt had already occurred in 1890, five years before the commission of enquiry into his conduct as Surveyor General, followed by his subsequent enforced resignation. Only 48

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in 1898 did his wife and children leave him, after his farming flopped and a child died in a storm. Thus a myth of Von Wielligh as a Job figure, smitten by God and losing all through no fault of his own, was born and has continued to this day. Archival evidence points in the direction of poor financial management and a lack of proper attention to his official affairs while he was off in the wilderness surveying. Von Wielligh states in his letter of defence against the accusations against him that he was never called before this commission, and it never gave him a chance to defend himself. The commission was held behind his back.33 Was there some scandal, too, much in the public eye and in the media that triggered this enforced resignation? Von Wielligh was one of the high officials in the Kruger administration, and most likely benefited from the very lenient or, some would say, corrupt financial administration that typified the Kruger government. Yet archival research indicates that from early on in the Transvaal he ran up large debts (the long-overdue rental on the Warmbad concern, and two government bonds on his Villieria property). Facts indicate that by the early 1890s he seemed to have lost his original ideals and ambitions as a young, visionary surveyor. This was largely due to the lack of support from the government for his 1883 proposal, “a rigorous trigonometrical survey of the country for settling questions of land and locality”, propounded in the form of the General Survey Law (No.2) of 1884, which sought “to reform the entire survey establishment in the ZAR.” State frugality “ruled a trigonometrical survey out completely by 1886” (Braun 2015:224‑225). Once the energetic young man’s vision and ideals proved unacceptable to the powers that be during the 1880s, he most likely gradually lost interest and started neglecting his official duties during the early 1890s. This status quo is suggested by Lyndsay Braun: “The setbacks for his scheme of rigorous overall control, however, may have helped to distance his interest in the day-to-day operation of his office” (Braun 2015:228). SB Melvill also implies it, in a telegram of congratulation to his successor JFB Rissik on 16 June 1895: “you have, as all know, for years been virtually holding the appointment” (quoted in Braun 2015:228). Von Wielligh describes in his guide to bee cultivation of 1909 that during 1894‑1895 he was heavily involved in keeping bees and the lucrative weekly delivery of his bottled honey to two agents in Pretoria and Johannesburg (Von Wielligh 1909:23). For many years he and his brother ran the Warmbad resort north of Pretoria, while he also had to oversee the upkeep of his Villieria farm, just outside Pretoria. In between all these involvements, he surveyed land and went on months’ long surveying expeditions to the ZAR border with Swaziland and Mozambique (1886‑1899), when not surveying elsewhere as duty commanded. Von Wielligh was a very busy man indeed, and clearly the administration of the Surveyor General’s office might very well have been the last 49

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on his list of things to attend to, especially (as he might have thought) when left in the hands of his able and energetic assistant, Johann Rissik. He resigned in June 1895 and was replaced by Rissik. Countless letters to the government failed to change the state of affairs, and from this point on his narrative takes a downward spiral in terms of finances and personal relationships. In June 1898, three years later, his wife and children left and returned to Paarl, in the Boland where she grew up. His one remaining source of income, and chief outstanding project on behalf of the politically beleaguered ZAR, was finalising the border issues with Mozambique and Swaziland. In 1888, he had been appointed by the Transvaal government on this border commission,34 as the main Transvaal negotiator with the leaders of the two affected regions. This project continued on contract, and upon instructions from time to time by government, with agreed fees, at a much lower rate than he received while still in service as Surveyor General, accompanied, initially, with much haggling over fees from his side.35 He remained involved in the border project until October 1899. Just before the war broke out, he had desperately applied for a variety of jobs, all without success. It was as if all of his applications fell on deaf ears. The rapidity with which he shot off applications indicates the desperate need he had for financial security.36 It was not forthcoming. In October 1899, the Anglo-Boer war broke out. Von Wielligh was sighted in Swaziland, where he warned the population to flee: McCarthy took his convoy down to Balekane where it would meet the old wagon road to the Bay. It took a week to reach the Lubombo37 range where representatives of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek and the Portuguese government were conferring on the undetermined boundary line. The ZAR’s surveyor-general, G R von Wielligh, visited the camp and quietly warned McCarthy that he was still on land claimed by the ZAR and that it would be prudent to move into acknowledged Portuguese territory. McCarthy had left Pigg’s Peak just in time; soon after his departure, Boer officials arrested the mine’s cyanide manager and two other miners. ( Jones 1999:1)

After this last warning in Swaziland in early October 1899, his world would never be the same. It was the end of the 19th century, of Paul Kruger and his world. In 1883, when Kruger became president, the income of the Transvaal republic had been £40,000 per annum. By the late ’90s, subsequent to the discovery of gold a decade earlier, it had risen to more than £4 million per annum. The conservative Boers were brutally yanked into the new world of modernity and capitalism. Kruger and his people, with Von Wielligh as one of the erstwhile bright young men shaping the new free republic between 1883 and 1895, had had their day.

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During the war (1899‑1901), Von Wielligh served in the relatively lowly position of quartermaster to British prisoners of war at Waterval,38 and later in Pretoria. The 3,000 British prisoners in the Pretoria camp were set free on 6 June 1900, by war correspondent, Winston Churchill.39 Churchill himself had escaped six months earlier, supposedly by “swimming the mighty Apies river.” Von Wielligh was now in British hands, as was Pretoria, and bored with the passivity of his first week as British a captive. Strangely, the Boer forces were allowed to withdraw by train and other vehicles that streamed out of the town.40 He decided to escape and join a nearby Boer commando. He left Pretoria, climbing through the fence surrounding the town.41 Bedraggled he had to return a few nights later, prevented from continuing his journey by an intuitive, paranormal sensing of danger in the shape of two ‘spirit guides’, who later evaporated into thin air, once they had shown him a safe route back into town. It later turned out that the Northumberland Fusiliers had kept guard at night outside Pretoria, and would have shot any Boers who attempted to escape the city confines to flee into the veld.42 For the next two years he seems to have been in British captivity; whether or not he remained under house arrest in Pretoria or was sent to the Lourenco Marques camp ( June 1900 to mid-1902) with other Boer captives, as has been suggested,43 is not totally clear. Some sources (Nienaber 1961:11) indicate that the blinding at the carnival episode happened in 1902. His own version suggests it happened in 1903. Once the peace treaty was signed at Vereeniging on 31 May 1902, he was allowed to return to Villieria, his farm outside Pretoria. He recalls what he found at the plundered farmhouse after the war: I transcribed my notes from my pocket books into a large book. This book with many other valuable documents was confiscated by English troops during the Second War of Freedom44 together with my whole library; and never did I see that property again. After the declaration of peace, we were allowed to go to the farm. In an outbuilding I found a large steel trunk that had been broken open. Upon opening it and searching around, I found to my great joy a leather purse in a secret corner, filled with money; it made me so happy that I still had a few pounds with which to buy furniture that I did not attend to the other articles – what remained, simply had no monetary value. (Von Wielligh 1925:121; my translation)

Some time after his return to the farm, probably at the end of 1902 or the beginning of 1903, Von Wielligh left for Lourenco Marques to retrieve land-surveying instruments (“astronomical instruments”) that had belonged to the erstwhile Republic; they had been taken there for safekeeping during the war. According to Von Wielligh, while he was an onlooker at a carnival in LM in 1903, he lost his sight through a freak accident.45 Someone – perhaps the jealous husband of a lover, according to family lore46 – threw lime in his face. A local Portuguese doctor tried to treat the lime grit 51

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under his eyelids with silver nitrate,47 known as helsteen, literally ‘hell stone’. (He gave the doctor’s name in a letter he wrote to Nellie, but only the first letter of the name – “Dr Q” – remained after someone, probably Nellie herself upon donation of the letters, had erased it.) This blinded him totally. During a lengthy hospitalisation in Cape Town in 1904, medical treatment by a Dr Wood restored a third of the vision in one eye. Subsequently, he could read or write only “five letters at a time” with the help of the thick lens of a strong magnifying glass and with his face inches away from the text (Von Wielligh in Kruger 1945:18). Also in 1904, the acrimony and an irreconcilable rift between him and his embittered wife ended in their divorce on 15 April 1904: The Court found defendant in default and found in favour of the plaintiff and grants judgement for the plaintiff for decree of restitution of conjugal rights and orders defendant to return or receive plaintiff on or before 1st day of April 1904, or to show cause, failing which show cause why on 15 April the bonds of marriage shall not be dissolved. Served on EJH von Wielligh, music teacher of Stellenbosch. By reason of her unlawful and malicious desertion since the end of Aug 1899 she be ordered to return to her husband Gideon Retief von Wielligh, residing at Clanwilliam, failing which by reason of her desertion she be declared to have forfeited her half share in community of property. Gideon Retief von Wielligh, Land Surveyor by profession, now resident in Clanwilliam gave following statement: I previously lived in the Transvaal where I was Surveyor General. In 1899 we lived in Stellenbosch. I left defendant in that year to go to the Transvaal and never cohabited with her after that. I was in the Tvl. shortly before the war and remained there for sometime afterwards, then I came to Cape Town. My eyes were bad and I wanted to have them attended to by certain doctors. I went to hospital. Whilst I was there I asked defendant to come to me. I sent 4 telegrams. On the 18th day after I arrived she came to see me. She said she did not like married life any more and wanted to leave me altogether. I know of no reason for her wishing to leave me. We had no quarrels. She is a sickly woman. I am prepared to live with her if she comes back. My eyes are bad and therefore I cannot follow my profession. I possess nothing. I went to see defendant at Stellenbosch and asked her several times to return to me. I went into her room and prayed her to return. She would not have me sleeping in the same room. I had to stay in a hotel. I asked her to come to the hotel to have her meals with me. She did not come. I do not ask for a division of the estate. There is no estate to divide. I cannot take charge of the children. I am willing to leave them with defendant. The eldest is 16 and the youngest 10.

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I want a divorce because she absolutely does not want me. I offered to hire a house at Stellenbosch where we could live together but she refused arrangement. Plaintiff Gideon Retief von Wielligh / Defendant Elizabeth Johanna Hendrika von Wielligh (born de Villiers).48 (my italics)

This document is quoted at length because it offers precise details of the Von Wielligh backstory, how he perceived his situation at his lowest ebb in 1904. Very little is known about the period between the blinding episode in Lourenco Marques and when he settled in the Transvaal in 1912 (until his death in 1932). He seems to have mostly lived with his family, first in Clanwilliam until 1907, with his aged father, who died there in that year. It is not clear where he resided during the four years before he went to the Transvaal. This was probably in Paarl, where his ex-wife’s family (she was the daughter of Professor Jan de Villiers, a professor of music) were important pillars

Figure 14 5 June 1909 petition by GR von Wielligh for pecuniary assistance from the Transvaal Parliament.

of the society. Von Wielligh had now lost his wife and children, he had no income, he was nearly blind and could no longer work. Given the serious societal upheaval and the poverty in South Africa after the Anglo-Boer War, it is unlikely that he met with any success in spite of his repeated petitions for financial aid. In 1912, he was given a home by his youngest brother, Piet von Wielligh, who lived with his wife on a farm outside Hendrina in the Transvaal. At this time he re-found 53

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his abandoned steel trunk of 1902, old and rusted (“die ou verroeste trommel”) – a fitting metaphor perhaps also for the beleaguered owner of the trunk: Making huge demands on my weak eyesight, I trailed through my notes in the old rusted trunk and came upon scattered material that enabled me to start on Animal Tales and Bushman Stories and also Our Colloquial Language with fresh courage.49 (my translation)

Von Wielligh, the free spirit, who had explored and lived in the roughest of unexplored wildernesses for large periods of his life (1870‑1899), was now more or less house bound. He dedicated himself to writing full time, probably the only activity that remained open to him. For the last two decades of his life, his world consisted largely of a single room in his brother’s farmhouse, with board and lodging. Outings were few – with the monthly Communion service a high point for the social interaction it afforded.50 Here he wrote thousands of pages of letters, to many correspondents, on a wide variety of topics in which he was well versed: botany, linguistics, agricultural land use, lexicography, literature (and that hated species, the literary critic) and many more. He also produced the majority of his books with very restricted sight in one eye, between 1912 and 1925. From 1926 until his death in 1932, he stopped publishing, probably partly because of ill health and partly because of a vicious dismissal of him as a writer by the literary critic, PC Schoonees.51 His publishers had also started returning his lastest manuscripts, as he admitted to Nellie Serfontein in their correspondence. His writing career had lasted almost half a century, since his 1876 debut in Die Afrikaanse patriot (‘The Afrikaans Patriot’). Von Wielligh’s letters to Nellie Serfontein began as advice from an established and respected author to a seventeen year old with aspirations to become a writer. Today these letters give insight into the aged Von Wielligh’s psyche and story.52 He advises Nellie to keep notebooks to record all that she notices, for later in life, as he did: “Why I made so many notes in my youth, I did not know then. Now I am gathering the fruits thereof.” From this advice one can deduce that he kept copious notebooks throughout his life, which is corroborated by the surviving diaries and notebooks in the South African National Archives (on land surveying, see Braun 2008:287), and by Nellie’s references to Von Wielligh’s diaries and papers as well as other archival holdings. Gradually, the conversation becomes more intimate. The aged author confesses his loneliness on 22 July 1927. Less than a year later, on 6 May 1928, he offers a confession of his love for the young Nellie, and reveals that he has pondered the possibility of marriage to her, but realises the impracticality of it because of the large age gap and, no doubt, his total lack of financial means, plus his looming failure as an author; he confesses that “two of my manuscripts were sent back” (Von Wielligh letter to Serfontein, 6 May 1928:2). 54

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In 1932, Gideon Retief von Wielligh died, causing hardly a ripple. He left seven pounds and seventeen shillings in the bank, no will and no estate. His children had had their surname changed to Von Willich (sometimes Von Willingh is used) by their mother after the divorce. On the face of it, he dies without heirs. Yet his name lives on today in botany, astronomy, folklore studies and children’s books, and as a contributor of various lemmas to the many volumes of the incomplete Afrikaans dictionary, the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse taal. Under her married surname of Kruger, Nellie Serfontein53 published her now all-but-forgotten monograph, Oue goud, in 1945, thirteen years after Von Wielligh’s death. According to her introduction, she met Von Wielligh (along with her whole family) at a national festival (‘Dingaansfees’ – the festival of Dingaan) on 15 December 1926. (The correspondence with him had started around 1925). The small 78-page book is dedicated in thankful memory to the old author, through whom a “love for books and the Afrikaans language was planted in our hearts”.54 It also implied, perhaps, a love for the old author. Having straddled the world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Von Wielligh had known many a lost South African paradise. As a tough survivalist, he wrote extensively about the First People and the plentiful animal species he came across. Reading his forgotten works today, in a 21st century beleaguered by traffic congestion, the threats of climate change and the extinction of species, offers one tantalising glimpses into the conditions of yore and the ways of indigenous people, with animals as plentiful as “the water of the sea” (Bleek 1956:165).

Von Wielligh’s writing

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Between 1876 (at the age of seventeen) and the mid-1920s (as an elderly man), Von Wielligh had contributed regularly to available Afrikaans journals, starting out in the fledgling Die Afrikaanse Patriot, proceeding later to Ons Klyntji and Onse Taal, and finally, in the early twentieth century in Die Brandwag, Die Landbouweekblad and De Huisgenoot (after 1977, Die Huisgenoot). In these pages appeared early versions of Jakob Platjie, Dierestories and towards the end of his life, serialised chapters from Ons geselstaal and Langs die Lebombo, amongst other contributions. The four volumes of Boesman-Stories (1919‑1921) seem to be the first new work by the author, not published or serialised anywhere else. The focus in this monograph is mainly on the /Xam anthropological and folkloristic material. Apart from the /Xam and Khoi tales, Von Wielligh’s literary oeuvre is today severely dated. At the time of their publication in the early 20th century, his works had little literary appeal for the more sophisticated reader, such as critic PC Schoonees. Yet they were popular amongst the less discerning, prescribed at school and reprinted time and again: 55

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Anthropological writing and folklore

Dire Storiis (1907) Dierestories (1917‑1922; still in print) Boesman-Stories (1919‑1921; reprinted in two volumes, 2009 and 2011) Scientific/agricultural

By’e teelt (1909) Fiction

Jakob Platjie (1918) Staan jou man (1920) Huis en veld (1921) Nimrod Seeling (1921) Ghwennie Barnveld (1922) Die vrouens van Vrindenburg (1924)

Fictional autobiography (with anthropological and folkloristic content)

Langs die Lebombo (1923)

On Afrikaans language, dialects and regional language

Eerste skrywers (1918) Baanbrekerswerk (1925) Ons geselstaal (1925) Translation

Robinson Crusoë (1920) by Daniel Defoe

That Von Wielligh started publishing in the last quarter of the 19th century had repercussions for his style and literary techniques. As a writer of fiction, he reveals a 19th-century sensibility that is naïve and unsophisticated. Looking at the genesis of his works in journal publication and in serialised form between 1876 and 1918, it is not surprising. He begins writing when there were hardly any written Afrikaans texts in print. The language was mainly used for spoken communication, except for single, mostly political or satirical, texts printed sporadically between 1795 and 1875.55 In 1869 Sheik Abu Bakr Effendi56 published his Afrikaans translation of the Muslim religious text, Bayan al-Dîn (1869). This book was written in Arabic, and the translation intended for use by the Cape Town Muslim community. No rules existed for Afrikaans spelling or grammar at the time. By contrast, Wilhelm Bleek had already standardised an orthography for /Xam when Von Wielligh started writing. After his death, Lucy Lloyd continued recording /Xam texts according to this orthography and Bleek’s understanding of its grammar. Von Wielligh’s Afrikaans spelling changes radically from his first print publication in 1876 through each 56

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Figure 15 (left) Dire storiis 1907 Figure 16 (above) Ons Klyntji June 1896, with Von Wielligh's first chapter of Jakob Plattji

successive decade as the language steadily lays down a standardised spelling and grammar. (Half of the effect of Jakob Platjie when serialised in Ons Klyntji before the 20th century was the strange effect on expression of the phonetic spelling and the cumbersome feel of the language. Judging this text by 21st-century standards is to do it an injustice, and to de-historicise it completely.) The development of Von Wielligh’s style and spelling, his grammar and expression, demonstrate the development of a new language from its beginnings as a written medium to the point in the 1920s when a degree of standardisation has been achieved. The Afrikaans author’s idiosyncratic spelling and grammar, and his naïve 19th-century narrative style, is less of a problem in those works recording narratives from the Khoi and /Xam oral tradition, as his style has its origin in its own Afrikaans orality, which moved slowly into the written mode during his life. The official languages of church and education were Dutch and English when he was born in 1859; that lasted until the end of the 19th century. It was not until the second or third decade of the 20th century that this began to change, as the language was only officially recognised in 1925, with the first Afrikaans Bible printed in 1933. Von Wielligh’s style thus grew slowly and organically out of what was an oral language.57 Simplicity of vocabulary, a certain naïveté in the mode of narration, and the use of repetition and parallelism are inherent in the oral tradition. These works, the Khoi animal tales and the 57

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/Xam narratives recorded by Von Wielligh, have mythopoeic elements not present elsewhere in his writing. These, no doubt, stem from myths of origin told to him by his /Xam informants and are clearly not from his own imagination (if one scans all of his published works for signs of such an imagination) – they have a vitality and even a freshness of style that is not found in any of his now out-dated, outmoded and unread novels. Remarkable aspects of his oeuvre are, however, hidden away in two texts in particular, Langs die Lebombo (1923) and Ons geselstaal (1925), as well as in his reworking and translation in 1919 of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, two hundred years after the original novel. In his fictionalised autobiography, Langs die Lebombo, Von Wielligh traces his own story in describing the life of his protagonist, with one large difference

Figure 17 Excerpt from Langs die Lebombo (Beside the Lebombo) 1923, page 54, illustrating Von Wielligh’s musical ear, combined with the pioneer’s (today incomprehensible) instinct to kill that which he seeks to study.

– he changes the setting in the Boland of the Western Cape of his own earlier life to that of the old ZAR, the Transvaal of Paul Kruger. In its descriptions of the state and development of the northernmost province of the Union, the first part of the novel is historical as much as it is an adventure, while at the same time it is autobiographically

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based on the contours of his own youth (travelling into the wilderness, hunting, meeting indigenous people, seeing plentiful game). The interest for the anthropologist, ethnographer and folklorist lies, however, in the middle section. This fourth section (1923:12‑213) concentrates on Swazi customs, beliefs, culture and life. Here is irrefutable evidence of Von Wielligh’s strong ethnographic, anthropological and folkloristic interests and pursuits throughout his career as land surveyor, and wherever he travelled or stayed in various previously unsettled parts of southern Africa. He studies the land, the flora and fauna, as well as interacting culturally and bonding with the indigenous peoples of each specific region, taking copious notes of their customs, beliefs and culture, and then incorporating that into his writing when the occasion arises, in order to preserve this knowledge. Thus, at the end of chapter 23 one reads of Swazi beliefs to do with inclement weather: If someone breaks the nest of a hamerkop, then he or his hut or village is doomed to be hit by lightning [...] thunder is a large bird, that lives far out on the ocean; with their wings they take all the clouds with them, the clap of thunder is the noise that the bird makes with his wings, and lightning is the excreta of this enormous bird. (1923:139; my translation)

Within a comparative context, it is striking that the different cultures all share with the /Xam a belief in the supernatural powers of the hamerkop.58 In Zulu oral tradition there is a similar association with the prophetic powers of this bird (evoked in Opperman’s Ringdans van die hamerkoppe/Circle dance of the hamerkop birds, 1956). In Von Wielligh the hamerkop is a daughter of /Kaggen and shares his powers of transmogrification (Von Wielligh 1919:19). The wind, one of /Kaggen’s sons, is transformed by the trickster father into a ‘wind bird’ who has the power to produce dangerous whirlwinds. That acculturation took place between Khoi, Bushmen and Nguni (such as the Zulu, Xhosa and Swazi) cultures is by now well established (Elphick, Prins, Mda). Thus a reading of traditional cultures, customs and beliefs within a comparative framework across linguistic divides is richly rewarding. In Von Wielligh’s oeuvre it is clear from many comments in the margins that he had such a comparative overview, especially of /Xam, Khoi and Swazi beliefs, and particularly with regard to natural phenomena. He gained much of this knowledge while in intimate contact with Khoi, /Xam and Swazi in the wilderness, working as a land surveyor and establishing the borders of Swaziland. One of the earliest comments on his anthropological and folkloristic interests appeared in August 1900 in Ons Klyntji (an Afrikaans weekly published between 1896 and 1906). He observes how folktales reflect a people’s character (“folks-storiis is ’n afspiegeling fan di folkskarakter”) and how the storytelling of the Khoi, Bushman and African oral traditions differ (Von Wielligh 1900:156). In the narratives of the Bushmen and Khoi, he finds no references to a higher being, to spirits, or of any influence outside the natural world, 59

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while in those of the Nguni peoples there exists, according to his distinction, a strong framework of references to such a higher power, and also to spirits of the deceased, as well as to mountain spirits, river spirits, and the like. Folktales in the various African languages of South Africa show the practice of bringing offerings to these spirits, and these spirits are understood to easily influence the run of everyday life. Dire-Storiis (1907), later republished and extended to four volumes as Dierestories (1917‑1922, and still in print), consists of Khoi folktales about animals, while BoesmanStories (1919‑1921), compiled during an overlapping period, contains narratives by the /Xam (volumes I and II) and information about them (volumes III and IV). Of these eight slim volumes, my concern is with the latter four. The reception history of Boesman-Stories is plagued with difficulty and misunderstanding. Although today’s reader cannot but be struck by the freshness and expressiveness of the language used in the original 1919‑1921 editions (both in the myths of origin and animal tales in volumes I and II, as well as in the narratives of Old Bles and other /Xam and Boer informants and recorders in volumes III and IV), some early Afrikaans readers, especially the leading critic, PC Schoonees59 (1922), more or less dismissed them as worthless ‘literature’. Almost a century later, Boesman-Stories was republished (2009 & 2011), but unfortunately somewhat de-historicised (due to political sensitivity to the vocabulary used in places) and also stripped of the traditional folkloristic numbering

Figure 18 First editions Boesman Stories, volumes I–III (1919-1921)

of each tale. The mythology contained in the first volume was translated into German as Die Sterne sind glühende Kohlen und Asche (2005). A German translation in manuscript format by Heinrich Vedder (1876‑1972), erstwhile missionary and Bushman researcher in the then South West Africa, exists at the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt.60 About fifty of the /Xam narratives that Von Wielligh recorded were 60

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included in Sigrid Schmidt’s authoritative A Catalogue of Khoisan Folktales of Southern Africa, volumes 1 & 2 (1989, reprinted and revised 2013a). The Von Wielligh material is voluminous, intricately presented, and fairly chaotic, especially in the last two volumes. Dates are only embedded here and there, and often have to be deduced. Most of the Bushmanland narratives in the last two volumes (III and IV) refer to the period 1795‑1846; the main narrator, with six stories, is Old Bles, followed by Old Uncle Jan Visser, and Rondelyf. A few other narratives are set during the period 1850‑1883; their main narrators are Rondelyf, Old Hans, Henk Visagie and Old Uncle Andries B. Three Transvaal narratives, narrated by Uncle Thys B in 1884, refer to the Chrissiesmeer area and the Vaalpens, or //Xegwi Bushmen. They date to the start of the period when Von Wielligh was based there as a land surveyor. The time frames of the first two volumes are fairly simple. The foreword to volume 1 (dated 1918) offers a reconstruction of the trading trip into Bushmanland in 1870 with his father and family; the party included the goatherd, Outa Bamboes, and his wife. Nocturnal storytelling at the kookskerm (a sheltered cooking hearth next to the outspanned ox-wagon) serves as a preamble to fifty narratives and folktales in which are depicted, one by one, in a fairly coherent cosmology, the mythology, beliefs and customs of the /Xam as recorded by the author. These tales deal with the origin of the world, the relationship between primordial man and nature, tales about the origin of the moon, the sun and stars, plus animal tales in a world where animals talk, and man and animal are still interchangeable. Except for Von Wielligh’s preface to volume I, dated 1918, the prefaces to the other three volumes are dated 1919, which implies that he completed the manuscript of his Bushman stories in one haul, during 1918 and 1919. For some reason, the four volumes were published in following years; the first edition of volume I appeared in 1919, volume II in 1920, while both volumes III and IV were only published in 1921. These forewords or prefaces are of particular importance as they shed light on Von Wielligh’s methodology and the context in which he recorded the /Xam narratives, perhaps none more so than the June 1919 postscript added to the volume II: When I had already completed this Volume short of a few stories, Dr WHI Bleek’s Specimens of Bushmen Folklore came into my hands. This book appeared incomplete after his death, and his sister in law, Miss Lucy C Lloyd, managed to get the work published with great difficulty. Dr Geo McCall Theal wrote a very important introduction to it. However, Dr Bleek wrote his work with quite another purpose. He studied the different South African languages; but when a favourable occasion offered itself to devote his attention to the Bushman language, he did more than many others would have done, to leave off first his first work. He turned from his first work – A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, to which his high reputation is bound – first to learn the Bushman language, and then to share his 61

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knowledge with others. For those who want to learn the language of the Bushmen, Dr Bleek’s book will be very useful. In paging through and reading Bushmen Folklore I was struck by the great similarity of the stories handed on by him and me. Because how is it possible that a wild human race could have spread their folktales so wide and preserved it so well? But upon closer investigation, it transpired that Dr Bleek and myself collected our material at about the same time in the same area – only, except that he had a few Bushmen from up-country near Central Africa and I had one of the Transvaal Bushmen – and this caused the similarity. (Von Wielligh 1919: my translation)

For some strange reason, later researchers doubt Von Wielligh’s word that he first obtained a copy of Bleek and Lloyd’s Specimens of Bushmen Folklore (1911) eight years after it appeared. However, knowing his life circumstances makes this statement plausible. He was destitute after being released from the British concentration camp in Lourenco Marques at the end of the Anglo-Boer war in 1902. Returning from his plundered farm Villieria, outside Pretoria, to Lourenco Marques to fetch land surveying astronomical instruments, he was blinded at a carnival in 1902 or 1903. Hospitalised during 1904 in Cape Town, he regained a third of his sight in one eye. During his divorce proceedings in 1904, he declared himself penniless and without any estate. He lived with his father (or, perhaps, a step-brother) in Clanwilliam from 1904 until his father died in 1907. Thereafter, he desperately kept applying for a state pension (1909, 1910, 1911), apparently to no avail. In 1912, his youngest brother gave him board and lodging for the next twenty years, until his death in 1932. But before taking him in, his brother made it adamantly clear that he would not stand surety for any of Von Wielligh’s debts. From the attitude of his brother, it would seem clear that not even Von Wielligh’s close family members trusted him with financial matters. Lack of financial finesse and control of his own finances were also probably part of the reason why he was forced to resign as surveyor-general in June 1895. He had run up debts of £17,000. The other reasons given by his accusers were inaccuracy in surveying plots, and taking too long to complete tasks in the field. The picture that emerges from these allegations is of a man who was none too precise, to whom practical detail did not matter too much, a man not fully in control of his time, money or detailed measurements in the field. A man always influenced strongly by the call of the wilderness, his ‘lost paradise’. For these reasons, he lost his career and, eventually, his wife and children (since he could not support them). He was totally destitute in 1904. Von Wielligh had no prospects. (His life must have seemed over, and it was eight years later, after settling on his brother’s farm, that he started publishing new material with, in 1917, the extended Animal stories in four volumes.) Would such a desperate man, reliant on the grace of his last remaining close family members, without assets, 62

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without an income, without a home, with hardly any sight left, be buying expensive books such as Specimens of Bushmen Specimens by Bleek and Lloyd in 1911? Not knowing where his next bed or food would come from? I think not. Is it likely that he never came across a copy of the book before June 1919? Certainly. He was licking his wounds after an unpleasant divorce, trying to come to terms with the loss of his sight and his children, and thinking of ways to earn a penny. He had to re-orientate himself totally at this point as he was unable to practise his career due to restricted sight. He was learning to live with severe physical disability, austere financial circumstances and no home of his own. That he eventually found a new identity is clear from the new flurry of books that followed soon upon his settling in the Transvaal in 1912, with numerous titles published between 1917 and 1925.

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Bushman Stories The material in all four volumes is strangely presented, ordered around narrative cores. What Von Wielligh offers, relates to both the mythological pre-historical time of /Xam creation myths, and the historical and colonial period of 1785‑1884. This last historical period, as presented here, mostly describes a peaceful world, especially in the memories of one remarkable old informant, Old Father Bles or Outa Bles. ‘Outa’ has, in many eyes, become a pejorative term, but in fact it is a compound word from ‘ou’ and ‘ta’, combining Afrikaans for ‘old’ and /Xam for ‘father’. Dorothea Bleek’s 1956 dictionary states that ‘tata’ in /Xam means ‘father’: “tata”, n. my father. (SI  –  HvV: “SI” = /Xam, Southern Bushman group of languages, previously called Cape Bushman language, now extinct).

Example sentences given are: (a) “tataken kan + kakka ke…” – my father used to say to me, (b) we (Bushmen) say “ibbo”, my father, we say “I o: a”, our father, while the children who are lately there are those who say “tata”, comes from the Boers, (c) “tata-gu” – my father and mother.

A hundred years ago, and up to the 1950s and early 1960s, this was a term of respect for an older man, used on farms and by small children of all colours. A variation and synonym for grandfather, ‘ta se ta’, is also used in Eugène Marais’s ‘Klein Riet-alleen-indie-roerkuil’ (‘Little Reed-alone-in-the-whirlpool’), from Dwaalstories, 1927. Jacques Coetzee’s English translation is entitled The Rain Bull and other Tales from the San (2007: all English excerpts are taken from this text). Presumably, Marais recorded these narratives from Old Hans, a Masele from the Waterberg, acculturated with the Sotho. This group was also known as the Vaalpens Boesmans. As did the Matabele 63

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of Mashonaland and other groups, they “feared a god whom they name Ngwali” 61 (“Nagali” in this tale). They made offerings to Ngwali “for connexion between Ngwali and the outer world” according to Frazer in The Golden Bough. This suggests the world of spirits, the supernatural world. No offerings were made in Masele mythology. Ngwali/Ngali seems partially to have taken the place of /Kaggen in /Xam mythology. The whole tale of ‘Little Reed-alone-in-the-whirlpool’ is shaped by the trickster games of the Ngali (homophone for Ngwali, as given by Frazer), leading him away from his given quest to search for help by the intervention of supernatural shapeshifting apparitions sent by Nagali to waylay him, using the form of a dancing girl, a competing athlete and a crocodile disguised as a tree stump in the river he has to cross: Die eerste boodskapdraer by Gammadoekies was die geel Boesmantjie Riet-alleenin-die-roerkuil. Sy ta se ta, ou Heitsi-Eibib, het hom so genoem toe hy nog in die dra-vel sit. Hy kon so vinnig hol dat die stofwarreltjies onder sy hakskene uitdraai; en as hy reg-reg uithaal, dan word hy nes ’n vaal strepie in die middel van die wapad. En toe kom die groot gevaar by Gammadoekies. Ou Heitsi-Eibib het in die nag kajuitraad belê, want die nood het gedruk […] (The first message bearer at Gammadoekies was the little yellow Bushman Reed-alone-in-the-whirlpool. His ta’s ta, old Heitsi-Eibib, gave him the name when he was stil sitting in the carrying-skin. He could run so fast that dust whirled underneath his heels; and when he gave his all, he became just a little dot in the middle of the track. And then the great danger came to Gammadoekies. Old Heitsi-Eibib called a council in the middle of the night, for the need was pressing.)

Compare the use of ‘oupa’ in the story’s conclusion, in contrast to the synonymous ‘ta se ta’ (‘ta’s ta) at the beginning: En hy spring weer weg en begint weer op sy voorkop slaan, en hy onthou weer HeitsiEibib se boodskap, en hy skiet die nag in. En voor hom siet hy die groot vuur, en hy stuit tussen hulle net met kom van die rooidag, en hy begint sy boodskap opsê. Maar eer hy halfpad was, gryp hulle hom en toe gewaar hy dat hy weer terug is in Gammadoekies, en dis sy einste oupa wat hom aan die linkerbeen beet het. En Heitsi-Eibib sê vir ou Klipdas-Eenoog: “Ons moet hom stywer span as die snaar van die groot ramkie!” En daar het hulle die vuurtjie doodgemaak van Riet-alleen-in-die-roerkuil. (And he set off and once again began to beat his forehead, and he remembered Heitsi-Eibib’s message again, and he dashed off into the night. And in front of him he saw the great fire, and he stopped among them just as the day dawned red, and he started reciting his message. But before he was halfway, they seized him

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and then he saw that he was back at Gammadoekies, and that it was his very own grandfather who had him by the left leg. And Heitsi-Eibib said to old Klipdas-One-eye, “We must stretch him tighter than the string of the great ramkie!”)62 (Marais 1927/2007)

Old Bles (circa 1785‑1890) is a very aged /Xam man (“hoogs bejaard”, vol. IV 1921:180) when Von Wielligh meets him twice in 1882. With each visit, he stays with the twenty-three-year-old land surveyor in Calvinia for a couple of days. The old man then narrates his life story from childhood to old age, while also, in between, offering general information on the beliefs and education of Bushmen. Von Wielligh gathered six narratives from him: 1 2 3 4 5 6

‘Do Bushmen Fight Against Each Other?’ (Von Wielligh 1921b:75‑80) ‘How a Leopard Was Master Over Us’ (Von Wielligh 1921b:171‑181) ‘The Wrong Ostrich’ (Von Wielligh 1921b:82‑92) ‘Bushman Education’ (Von Wielligh 1921b:165‑169) ‘More About Supernatural Belief ’ (Von Wielligh 1921b:156‑162) ‘The Cutting of the Fluitjiesriet’ (‘whistling reed’ or common reed; Phragmites mauritiana) (Von Wielligh 1921b:180‑184) His autobiography starts with a reference to sailing ships at the Cape, “[when] the English arrived in this country”, presumably in 1795: 63 “When the English arrived in this country, I was as big as this (he indicated with his hand, making him about ten years of age). Bushmen who had run away from Cape Town, brought the tidings of the English ships. We then hardly understood anything about such matters. I was born in the Roggeveld Mountains, but when the runaway Bushmen reached us, we were in the Cederberg and later in the area near Ceres. Then there were still many wild animals in the mountains, which enabled us to stalk the antelope until we were close-up. With all the moving around there, I was growing up and still know what had happened in those days. When I think back, it is like the day of yesterday to me. “In those days lovely rains fell in our mountains, but in the Karoo it was still very dry. Then all the wild animals moved into our mountain veld, and then came the Bushmen of the Moordenaars Karoo and the Great Karoo, all of them moving into our mountains. And just how it came about, was never clear to me, however, quarrels developed between us Mountain Bushmen and the Karoo Bushmen. And there was even talk of shooting one another.” (Von Wielligh 1921b:77‑78; transl. DW Gouws)

He describes his group’s movements from the Roggeveld Mountains, to escape drought, through the Cederberg and the area south of Bushmanland when he was young. Descriptions of hunter-gathering activities in the wilderness as a boy (including a riveting story about the tackling of a ‘tiger’, or leopard) and young man come to an 65

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end when he is accidentally shot by a passing farmer, while wearing an ostrich disguise on a hunting trip. He is taken to the farmer’s land where, after his recuperation, he works for him until he eventually returns to Bushmanland via Calvinia (seeking out his old friends) before preparing to die. This is where he stays twice with the young Von Wielligh, who records his life history. Old Bles’s reported age was around a hundred, and the long historical timeline of his narratives encompassed 1795‑1882. By way of comparison, Bleek and Lloyd’s informants encompassed shorter time periods: “Dia!kwain was born around 1845, just when the settler presence in the area became more intense, while //Kabbo [the eldest Bleek & Lloyd informant, was] born around 1815 […]” (Bank 2006:260). This does not, as Bank would like it, preclude violent interactions of the /Xam with trekboers and settlers, as by 1770 “unprecedented hostilities” had broken out “along the length and breadth of the frontier zone” (Penn 1995:196). It was mostly the ability to communicate that brought more peaceful and friendly co-existence, with fluency in /Xam on the trekboer side, from as early as 1809: Interpreters may be easily procured among the farmers and their servants, in the Roggeveld particularly, where the families of the Fishers and the Coetzees speak their language, and are personally acquainted with a great number of them. (Collins 1809 in Theal 1960/1834:38)

He was a child when their group heard the news from three runaway Bushmen that the first Englishmen had arrived in 1795. He had lived the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while at the same time some of his contemporaries, such as his eldest brother were working on farms. It was on this Tulbagh farm that his brother learnt “to speak the language of the white people” (Von Wielligh 1921b:170). His group was trading leopard and jackal skins for knives and other goods with farmers. This clearly indicates a measure of peaceful coexistence and some acculturation, linguistically at least: “When I was a child, a number of young Bushmen worked for the people. They definitely were not enslaved. Some of them had deserted their masters and told us what was going on at the farms. Thus my eldest brother also felt like going to work on a farm for a little while. The farm was situated yonder at the other mountains (the mountains at Tulbagh). He then learnt to speak the language of the white people, and his master and mistress were very kind to him. “One day he asked permission from his master to look up his father and mother and to visit them for a short while. The old master knew if he would not say yes, my brother would go off in any case, so he agreed that my brother could leave. When he arrived at our place, he had brought along really fancy things, like pocketknives, iron hoops for making harpoons for our arrows, and a cold chisel to chip the iron into shape. However, what we were the most glad about, was about the two dogs he had brought with him, as these dogs were part of his wages for the work at his old master. We worked a long time for dogs. 66

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“He then told us that there lived a man near the farm of his old master, who was a pedlar. This master had said he must bring some leopard and jackal skins, and he would trade it – for in those days money had no value for us Bushmen. “We young Bushmen were really happy to hear this, because we already had various leopard skins and jackal skins for bartering. But now the two dogs could help us catch even more jackals. And at this they were very smart. “After a while we had a good many skins that we could exchange for knives, tinder-boxes and flints, beads and a few small axes. The stuff my brother had brought, really meant a lot to us, as we now worked so much easier. The striving was to get hold of more leopard and jackal skins. Our old folk helped us to catch, but they wanted to have nothing to do with taking it away. They were very frightened of the white people, therefore my eldest brother, who knew the place, and another Bushman went to barter the skins.” (Von Wielligh 1921b:170‑174; transl. DW Gouws)

They manage to trap a female leopard in a pit with a piece of a dead quagga, which they had killed in a hunt: “There were many leopards in the Roggeveld and Bokveld Mountains in those days. We knew how to ensnare them or catch them in pitfalls. Look, my little master, it’s not anybody’s job to catch a leopard in a pitfall. The animal’s smell is too sensitive, and he is very, very cautious to stay away from dangerous places. But we knew well what kind of a pit to prepare. At the bottom of the pit we planted long, pointy wooden pegs, with points as hard and sharp as an awl’s. We applied the same poison to these points as we were using on our arrows. Thus, even if he were only wounded slightly, the poison would kill him off. And then, on top of the pitfall one has to know how to arrange the soil and grass and to sprinkle it with blood, and behind it we must place the piece of meat on a bone.” (Von Wielligh 1921b:174; transl. DW Gouws)

While they are preoccupied with the trapped female, the male leopard attacks them, kills one of them, and chases the others into a tree, where they spend the whole day before help arrives: “That he did not immediately come after us, was because after he had killed our friend, he tackled our skin karosses, ripping them to pieces. He stayed there next to our dead mate and the dead female. He was hungry and began eating the corpse. At first we kept him in check by making a noise and shouting, but later on it was of no use, because he was too hungry and so he had his fill of the corpse. After he had stuffed himself, he went to lie down in the shade underneath a big bush to watch over the corpse and the dead female.” (Von Wielligh 1921b:178; transl. DW Gouws)

He ends with the statement: “for a whole day the leopard was master over us” (von Wielligh 1921b:170). This graphic narrative also offers insight into the bartering 67

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nature of the relationship between trekboers and hunter-gatherers. That the ‘old folk’, unlike the youngsters, do not wish to interact with the farmers is significant. This possibly refers to their greater knowledge of the historically violent interactions between trekboers and Bushmen of which the historian Nigel Penn has written. These events occurred in previous decades, with “unprecedented hostilities along the length and breadth of the frontier zone” in 1770, the Roggeveld rebellion of 1772, and in 1774 the General Commando, a “government-approved system of colonial domination”, with further uprisings in 1787 and 1788 (Penn 2005:112, 178, 196, 216, 251). If my chronological reconstruction of Old Bles’s life history is correct, he was a young boy of about ten to fourteen around 1795‑1799. This is the period in which Gerrit Visser (one of the ‘Fishers’ of Collin’s report in 1809) was fluent in /Xam (Penn 2005:243) and in which the ‘open’ frontier zone, characterised by a rough balance of power between two or more societies competing for land and resources, started closing (Penn 1995:31). The balance began to tip in favour of the trekboers. The life story of Bles straddles these changing conditions – moving from hunting and gathering, whilst also bartering with trekboers (who clearly were part of the landscape of his boyhood and youth), to Karoo farmworker in later life. The third narrative, ‘The Wrong Ostrich’, elucidates how this move occurred. The story contains detailed information about the influence of the weather on hunting practice (rain unravels the entwined sinew strings on a bow, strong wind has adverse effects on flying arrows) and customs at a time when there were still many lions, leopards and ‘wolves’ (a South African colloquialism for hyenas) roaming in the wilderness: “In earlier days the wild beasts were a very grave danger for us. Nobody would ever dare to walk around alone in the veld after or just before sundown, because then it is the time for lions, leopards and wolves to appear from their shelters. Then they feel quite hungry and start hunting around. We always have to be mindful to be back home at that time and to see to it that our fires are burning, so that we are ready, in case they would want to attack us, to fend them off with burning logs. They really are fond of following our tracks, especially when we have shot something, or are carrying meat to our yard and we have left a trail of drops of blood on the ground as far as we’ve been walking. Or they can also smell the meat and blood at our yards from far away. Then they come sniffing about. “In the morning or during the day a lion wouldn’t easily molest you, particularly if the sun is very hot that day. But then, it does happen that you, all of a sudden, chance upon his body, then he feels alarmed, thinking that you have come to look him up. In such instances he will get his body ready to charge at you. Sometimes during the day he will seize the chance if his hunting went wrong the previous night. “Once it happened that I was hard pressed by a young male lion. I was stalking a hartebeest, standing in the shade of a tree, busy chasing away some flies. The young male lion was out on the same business as I. When we noticed each 68

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other, barely twenty paces separated us. He had a change of plan and picked me out instead of the buck. Now, the old Bushmen had told me – I was only a young Bushman then – that should you remove your stalking cap from your head, and grip it between your jaws so that the hollow end would show towards the front resembling the wide open mouth of something, no lion would jump at you. So, there was no other way out for me – because that day I surely would become death’s child. Quickly I pulled the stalking cap from my head and gripped it tightly between my teeth, growled loudly and stood up on all fours, ready to attack the lion. This sight must have horrified him: he started, staggered backwards, and, while walking away, looked back at me every now and then. When he was at a safe distance, he bolted away without looking back, and disappeared behind the stony ridge. But I can assure you [...] it demands courage and guts to stand up and confront a lion like that.” (Von Wielligh 1921b:82‑92)

The tale ends with a description of how he obtained his nickname, ‘Bles’ (the one with a bald patch in his hair; or, alternatively, the one who was wounded, with ‘blesseer’ or ‘bles’, a regional word for being wounded, sporting an old wound). When hunting as a young man in an ‘ostrich suit’, his head was scraped and he was knocked unconscious by a bullet from a farmer who mistook him for an ostrich. The farmer tries in vain to revive him, and then takes the insensible young Bushman along to his Karoo farm. This is how his life as a hunter-gatherer ended. Yet he survives, with a bald patch as reminder in his hair, bearing the memory of his previous life marked on his skull forever as a reminder. The description of the anonymous farmer sounds remarkably similar to an episode in the life story of Piet Retief, a great-uncle of Von Wielligh on his mother’s side (the farmer first moves to the district of Grahamstown, and then later joins the Great Trek and goes across the Orange River into what became the Free State). Bles remained behind in the Karoo: “After that I spent my life in the Karoo, and now I come, before I die, to behold my part of the world once again, and then I want to return to my children” (Von Wielligh 1921b:91). Thus the aged man with the scarred head returns in 1882 to Bushmanland and the haunts of his boyhood and youth. En route via Calvinia, he meets by chance with the young Von Wielligh sitting on his verandah in the heat of a summer evening. He gives the aged traveller food and a place to sleep, so as to rest awhile before continuing his trip to seek out old friends. They talk. Old Bles narrates his life experiences contained in the first three narratives listed above, and later continues on his journey by foot. The young land surveyor goes surveying in the Agter-Hantam, the area above Calvinia. What and whom Bles found during this visit is narrated as the end of his life story together with his perspective on the future of his people: “I went to look up my old friends. Those who did not move away, are dead; and those I met, are the young Bushmen, who mostly grew up with the (white) 69

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people; and they know very little about the old days. So it is clear that our original old group of real Bushmen are now slowly dying away and those that remain, will later be unable to speak our language. The only thing I could discover for you of the old days, are the following stories [...] (Von Wielligh 1921b:156)

Thereupon follows information about “kouhoutjies”64 (‘medicine sticks’, the hard parts of a ground fig of the Sceletium family, archaic colloquial name ‘Hotnotsvytjies’, or of an indigenous wild plum tree, the Pappae capensis). Supernatural powers are attributed to the kouhoutjies according to information supplied to Old Bles: “Before going to the digging place for rooiklip,65 we would go to one of our sorcerers to ask for kouhoutjies to bite on, so that we could see the old sorcerers, but they would then not see us” (Von Wielligh 1921b:160). These ‘medicine sticks’ obtained from the medicine men have supernatural power. In another tale, ‘Mother lion and the children’ (no. 39 in volume II) these “houtjies” (little pieces of wood) are obtained from a sorcerer and given to the children by “the most courageous of the Bushmen.” These abducted Bushmen children are all suffering under a magic spell of the old lioness, which has made them forget their real parents. After chewing on the houtjies, “their previous consciousness returned” (Von Wielligh 1920:111). These magic ‘small pieces of wood’ are also linked to the sourcing of red ochre stone. Red ochre, the colour of blood, is ground and then used in rituals, for staining skin blankets (karosses) and bodies, such as at first menarche (also strewn on water to appease the Rain ox), and for rock paintings. Rooiklip was thus a highly prized possession due to its manifold uses and supernatural applications. It was bartered between groups when not available in the immediate vicinity, mostly in mountainous areas. An old woman who met Bles on his visit to Bushmanland in 1882, told him that her husband had been a magician or sorcerer, and on one of his red ochre-fetching expeditions with two friends, their progress with the excavation of ochre was hampered by sorcerers in the shape of, first, a shrieking white-tailed sparrow, later an aggressive male baboon, and then three snakes. All these sorcerers-in-the-shape-of-animals they had to kill before they could get home with their bags full of the red ochre stone that they had dug from the mountain (Von Wielligh 1921b:161‑162). Bles sees this tale as an illustration of the difficult life of Bushmen: “[E]verything a Bushman wants, he gets with great difficulty, and yet we are and remain an upbeat people” (Von Wielligh 1921b:162). Against the backdrop of history, this is a rather ironical statement. Further insights into the lifestyle, customs and characteristics of his people are given in a very bland narrative, ‘A Bushman’s education’ (Von Wielligh 1921b:164‑169). The information is attributed to Bles, although it is a dreary overview, and contains nothing of the vitality and direct dialogue of the previous ones. The Old Bles narratives are of particular importance in the Von Wielligh archive, firstly because of the informant’s reported age, providing insight into a long period, and 70

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secondly because of the detailed insight they offer into the hunter-gatherer lifestyle he experienced as a young boy and youth before becoming acculturated into the trekboer culture as a farmworker. That he freely gave this information in conversational mode with a young Von Wielligh imparts an upbeat and lively atmosphere to the tales – an old man telling his life stories and experiences with verve and colourful detail to a much younger man, in a language they are both proficient in. The rest of the ‘new’ Von Wielligh material deals mostly with general information from fully acculturated (or ‘tame’, as they were called colloquially, in contrast to the hunter-gatherers who were still ‘wild’) /Xam informants working or living on Bushmanland farms: details of making paint, poison, bows and arrows, descriptions of rock art, and the like. There are also narratives about conflict and commandos against Bushman hunter-gatherers (or ‘wild /Xam’), from 1850 onwards. The worst of the commando episodes are described in full in Von Wielligh (probably told by his informant in 1897), related by a man who was then the sixteen-year-old son of a field cornet, “Veldkornet B”. His name is hidden behind this initial – could it be Willem Burger? He was a deposed field cornet in 1794, who went to “shoot eland” with the Gous brothers “far beyond the Sak river”, according to Penn (2005:197). This episode takes place between Namies and the Great or Orange River. But most of these /Xam escaped. Ten died, while one was taken captive, and became part of the field cornet’s household. The Von Wielligh material is complicated because not only did he interview /Xam and farmers (trekboers) himself, but he also collected material in volumes III and IV from three different correspondents: Emmanuel de Roubaix (a teacher in Roggeland, Nieuwoudtville, who was also a writer of three books containing rather inconsequential Bushmanland stories);66 Mr W.A. van Zijl (of the farm Klein-Breipaal or Brypaal, Kenhardt); and the Reverend W.S. Röhrich (minister from 1897 to 1908 in Namaqualand, which included a large part of Bushmanland, where he was based first at Garies and later at Bowedorp, Kamieskroon).67 The Reverend Röhrich’s main informants were Old Uncle Jan Visser, one of the first trekboers in Bushmanland68 and Rondelyf, a /Xam worker on his farm called Gare-se-berg. Old Jan Visser and his large family farmed with livestock at the wells of Nammies or Namies, where he sometimes had to contend with live stock theft from ‘wild Bushmen’.69 They recorded information and experiences as told to them by old people, /Xam and boers alike, that the correspondents sent on to Von Wielligh. He acknowledges this material (by name and date, and with recorder plus informer) wherever utilised in the third and fourth volumes of his Bushman stories. For these last two volumes, Von Wielligh thus worked both with recorders (who wrote down the oral stories and information of informants), and directly with various informants in the veld or on farms, while surveying in 1880. In his last two texts there are thus the author, Von 71

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Wielligh; direct informants, who he interviewed; and informants whose material he gained from his recorders, via their written records of interviews with informants, in Bushmanland. (Three narratives are based on Transvaal information, either from an informant, or experienced himself when he started working there in 1883 as land surveyor of the ZAR.)

•

In 1870, Von Wielligh, then eleven years old, accompanied his father on a trip to Namaqualand, Bushmanland and the upper Karoo. Here he became acquainted with the /Xam, for whom the writing was already on the wall. Their hunter-gatherer way of life was gravely threatened by the arrival of colonists and the subsequent Bushman commandos, as well as by the ever-increasing loss of food sources, formerly in such abundance, due to hunting activities of the Boers. Von Wielligh’s intimate knowledge of the /Xam has its origin in this period. Between 1876 and 1878 he worked as surveyor in the Karoo, heartland of the Karoo Bushmen, while from 1880 to 1883 he was based as a land surveyor in Calvinia, a recently settled village in the Hantam region, home to the Cederberg Mountain Bushmen and, to the south, the Roggeveld Mountain Bushmen. His surveying work takes him for extended periods into Bushmanland, the vast area from Calvinia to the Gariep (also known as Great or Orange) River, sweeping across Brandvlei, Van Wyksvlei and Kenhardt, right across Verneukpan where the engraved Brink Hills rise (heartland of Plains or Vlakte Bushmen, of Bleek and Lloyd’s main informant and teacher, //Kabbo, and other /Xam informants). Von Wielligh’s /Xam informants are also encountered in Bushmanland, although precisely how widely spread the home of the various groups might have been is not clear. The Cederberg mountains were clearly inhabited by Mountain Bushmen, judging from the concentration of rock paintings there. The Knersvlakte (‘the plains of gnashing of teeth’) was most likely also the home to groups of Plains Bushmen. In addition to the Mountain and Plains Bushmen, the Grass Bushmen inhabited the Upper Karoo (home of Xaa-ttin, father of Dia!kwain, another important informant of Bleek and Lloyd). Wilhelm Bleek (1827‑1875) trained at the University of Bonn as a linguist with Lepsius, one of the most famous linguists of the time. We are indebted to the scientific and scholarly work of Bleek, for the orthography of /Xam as written language, and also for the strict scientific approach adhered to by him and Lucy Lloyd in their recording of the /Xam narrations, begun in 1870 as a parallel text of /Xam mirrored by English translation. Lucy Lloyd (1834‑1913) had a lifelong dedication to Bleek’s /Xam project, even after his premature death in 1875. She eventually found an editor for their collected work under the title Specimens of Bushmen folklore. The Bleek and Lloyd archive has been well researched, and is today well known, with an online 72

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Kakamas Neilersdrif

Keimoes

Upington

Bosduif H Gras boesmans/ Grass bushmen

Katkop Rietfontein pan

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Commissioner salt pan

Krommaag (Khoi murdered Bushmen shepherds) Dwaggas soutpan

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GR von Wielligh’s life and work

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Figure 19 Main places of interest in Von Wielligh’s Boesman-Stories (volumes I–IV) in 19thcentury Bushmanland. Cartographer: John Hall.

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searchable database. The archive has been declared a part of UNESCO’s World Heritage collection.70 The more thrilling aspects of Von Wielligh’s work relate to his intimate knowledge of the wilderness of the then Bushmanland, and the /Xam narratives and mythology he collected there. Due to communication in a communal language, plus a shared knowledge of the flora, fauna and environment in which both informant and recorder were based, most narratives are strongly contextualised. In the publications of Bleek and Lloyd the narratives often end abruptly, start in medias res, or the significant context is sometimes lacking. Von Wielligh’s knowledge of the wilderness and its flora and fauna overlapped with that of his informants. Admittedly, Boesman-Stories does not give us Von Wielligh’s actual notebooks or diaries to prove the veracity of his book. However, Von Wielligh presents us with particularly valuable oral testimony and history, recounted by both /Xam and Boer narrators, those who had first-hand experience of the events recorded. Often the reader comes across valuable facts in these narrations, not freely available elsewhere, such as: the exact procedure used by the /Xam in Bushmanland to prepare poison from the poison bush, Acokanthera venenata (fam. Apocynaceae) (vol. III); how to fashion a bow from karree wood (Rhus spp.) (vol. III); and the accurate process for manufacturing the pigment used in rock paintings, distilled, step by precise step from the berries of the milkbush together with poison bush (vol. III). Quite remarkable in volumes III and IV is the precision with which Von Wielligh presents his data (see Bushmanland map, Figure 19). His project is precisely localised in the Bushmanland area between 1880 and 1882/1883, with the surveyor’s office in Calvinia as his base in the south, working up towards the Gariep in the north. This is an area intensively traversed by Von Wielligh as a surveyor in the early 1880s (as earlier in 1870 with his father). Much of Von Wielligh’s material in the latter two volumes of Bushman stories comes from information sent to him by the three main recorders (De Roubaix, Van Zijl and Röhrich). They knew the oldest Bushmanland farmers and their workers, information that he used extensively and that he acknowledged. Von Wielligh does this meticulously at the start of each narrative where their written information was used. This extra information concentrates especially on customs and practices, such as the making of poison, of hunting and the making of paint. In these narratives, enlivened by direct speech in dialogue format, he gives detailed references, supplying the place, date and name of his informants in each case. One example will have to suffice of Von Wielligh’s detailed and somewhat convoluted information. It is from the start of no. 68, ‘A Bushman is truly brave’. The story is set at Verneukpan, which is, as the narrator states, a place famous for its mirages.71 74

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His protagonist is the Bushman cattle herder called Rondelyf (the name translates as ‘round body’). Rondelyf recounts the story of suddenly coming across a lion in the grassy veld, and how he outwitted the lion through brave body language and a ‘roaring’ that caused the lion to run away. This tale is couched in so many guarantees by Von Wielligh of the story’s origins that the reader’s mind swirls with all the parties involved well before you get to Rondelyf ’s frightening encounter. From the date of 1859, when we know that Old Uncle Jan Visser was 23 years old, to the then ‘present’, when he tells the story, one deduces that it must have been 1919 when he told De Roubaix about Rondelyf ’s sudden meeting with a lion: Remarks: This story was written down by Mr. E. de Roubaix, as told to him by Old Uncle Jan Visser. Old Uncle Jan Visser – now 83 years old – narrated the following true event: “Sixty years ago I was a youngster of twenty-three and still remember well what I saw, heard and experienced at that age. It was the year 1859. The old world between Calvinia and Great River was still very wild, but covered with grass and flowers; game and dangerous animals were not in short supply either. The overnight place of my father’s cattle was in the heart of old Bushmanland at a great vlei or pan.”

The old man then tells of how his father’s cattle herder, Rondelyf, was on his way to Omdraaivlei, about two hours from Verneukpan, to buy tobacco from a visiting pedlar or hawker (“smous”) standing at Omdraaivlei with provisions on his ox-wagon: “Almost halfway there a lion stood up just in front of Rondelyf and stood watching him calmly; all the time twitching his tail in the air from one side to the other. Unlucky for him, Rondelyf did not have his bow and arrow with him, neither did he have fire or another weapon. He only had a two-foot long cudgel. “He lowered himself on his heels and kept watching the lion; the lion approached a small distance. He stood upright again and stood looking at the lion; the lion stood still once more; then he lowered himself on his heels again, and again the lion came closer. He stood up once more, which again brought the lion to a standstill. Thus it continued for a while. And when he stood up again, he jumped into the air, gave an enormous shout and hit hard and enthusiastically on his kaross, which he had removed in the meanwhile from his body and held in his hand, and then he stormed towards the lion: the lion took to his heels and thus Rondelyf was liberated of the lion. When he thought it was safe, he sprang back and ran to Verneukpan and came and called my father to shoot the lion.” (Von Wielligh, vol. I 1921:132)

Strange as the behaviour of the lion might seem to the modern reader, it is backed up by more such information contained in Langs die Lebombo (‘Beside the Lebombo’, 1923:37‑42), but set in the wilderness of Swaziland. 75

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The oral testimony of the old gentleman, attesting to the bravery of the Bushmen, is further accentuated by the exactness of the date. Through this practice of recording in writing, and emphasis on the names of informants, dates of recording, as well as dates relating to the events retold, Von Wielligh lays claim to accuracy and a scientific method. The narration has been recorded, the source has been identified, with the name of the person who did the transcribing added. In a similar way, the majority of the subsections in volumes III and IV of Boesman-Stories affirm their factual correctness, even though they offer intensely personal narrations. What we encounter here is oral history, and oral testimony. Likewise nearly every narration in volume IV may be dated and connected with an oral witness. To name a few: dating from 1840, there is Uncle Koos of Calvinia; from 1860, Uncle Gert G (possibly the still living were protected in 1921 by non-disclosure of their surnames); from 1830‑1848, Old Uncle Andries B; from 1884, Uncle Tys B; circa 1785-1890, Uncle Louw P and his wife, Old Father Bles; Heink Visagie, Zooverbij, Calvinia in 1882; and, in 1870 and 1882, Von Wielligh himself in Bushmanland. Most of the incidents occurred between 1840 and 1882, and are told from the various perspectives of farmers, Von Wielligh (then roughly 23 years old) and /Xam individuals. The farmers were usually old men customarily referred to or addressed in their circle as ‘oom’ (‘uncle’). Certain /Xam personalities figure recurrently and prominently in a number of narrations. Outa Bles is the narrator in six long stories. Then we find the unrivalled archer, horseman and stock thief, Bamboes, a central figure in all of Von Wielligh’s documents involving the /Xam: “He was a wellknown Bushman, with the name Bamboo (‘Bamboes’) and in his own way could speak Dutch rather well” (Jakob Platjie, 1918:113; vol. I:3, vol. lV:115‑126). We read of Ruiter (‘Rider’), Rondelyf (‘Round body’), Rondebout (‘Round buttock’), Ertman (‘Meerkat man’, Suricat suricat), Karools and Bantjies, Geswind (‘Speedy’), and Volmink, Vuurmaak (‘Fire maker’) – who survived the ordeal of being smoked out when he hid himself in a cave (vol. lV:39‑49) – Oortjies (‘Small Ears’), Krappies (‘Scratcher’), and Outa Bles (‘Old Father Bald Patch’). Each of them has a distinct personality and is identified by specific traits. The accounts are mainly centred in and around the Cederberg and Calvinia, home ground of the Mountain Bushmen, as well as in Bushmanland itself, home of the Plains Bushmen, and a part of an area inhabited by the Karoo Bushmen, in the Roggeveld region. One also finds a few narrations of the Bushmen from the then Transvaal (now Mpumalanga Province), notably from the Chrissiesmeer area (near Breyten and Ermelo), but also from the Free State Province. As a reader one becomes aware of the strong evocation of a single landscape (Calvinia and the Cederberg, including Bushmanland and its Orange River border) occupied by two cultures (the /Xam and the new arrivals of that century, the trekboers), and 76

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their interactions. Remarkably central, in nearly all of the narratives, is the role and function of language. Both the Boer narrators and /Xam repeatedly stress in their accounts the language used to converse with one another: either Dutch, “die taal van die wit mense” (‘the language of the white people’) (vol. IV) or “Boesmantaal” (vol. IV) (‘language of the Bushmen’). Especially remarkable is the fact that many of the /Xam could speak Afrikaans (Cape Dutch) as a second language, and that as many farmers had a command of the /Xam language, in most cases learned as children. In the narration about a Bushman commando during the early 1840s, Old Uncle Andries B states categorically: “Most of us knew the Bushman language, and could therefore speak with him” (vol. IV). Communication of this fact to the !Xóo (or Ju’/hoan) linguist, Anthony Traill, a decade or so ago, left him astonished. This high degree of bilingualism amongst farmers and Bushmen from fairly early on stands out in the oral histories and testimonies used in Von Wielligh’s last two volumes of Bushman stories, later utilised by Traill for a formidable contribution on factors that led to “the linguistic death of /Xam” (Traill 1996:161‑184). This bilingualism of the /Xam, with Afrikaans as their acquired second language as the result of acculturation with the farmers, constantly hovers under the radar of Bleek and Lloyd’s research. In fact, it is almost buried there. In the song by Ou Jantje, or //Kabbo, from the Strontberg, about his lost tobacco pouch (“Famine it is, Famine it is, Famine is here” 1911:235), Lloyd explains in a footnote that this tobacco pouch was stolen by a hungry dog named ‘Blom’ (Afrikaans for ‘flower’). Also, in DF Bleek’s A Bushman Dictionary (1956) instances occur of translation from various Bushman languages firstly into Afrikaans, and only thereafter into English, suggesting that the Afrikaans explanation/translation was probably offered by the bilingual /Xam informant. For instance under the lemma ‘-//ka’ one finds an entry on ‘bureagen’ for ‘boere’: -//ka, exclamation, excellent! see! SI. (L!). //kà, //kà. Ex: hi //kwa n ka, “-//ka, -//ka” au /xamka #kakken#kakken, bureagen e: /né ta, “maar my magtig, die ding is regte lekker” – they say, “excellent, excellent!” in the Bushman language, the farmers are those who say “but my goodness, the thing is very nice” (1956:547).

In the definition for “//ka” (pronounced differently from the above word), which means “haematite” or red stone, information regarding menstrual rites is provided: “the maiden, she ornaments the spring with red ochre when she becomes a maiden” (1956:547). Many homophonic words are almost desperately transcribed and entered in the Bleek dictionary as well, e.g. “hunkeri” in /Xam for ‘hoendertjie’ (Afrikaans for a small chicken) (1956:65). These lemmas would make no sense whatsoever to anyone unfamiliar with Afrikaans – the familiarity of the sound concepts then jumps out at the reader: hunkeri = hoendertjie = little chicken. Suddenly the de-familiarised word (not 77

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more than a jumble of letters) switches into the very familiar (little chicken). Reading transcribed information given by /Xam informants with an astute Afrikaans ear tuned towards possible homophonic but misspelt concepts often rewards the reader richly with such increases in an understanding of what was originally meant. But it also makes the process of understanding many of the narratives doubly complicated: as if doubly encoded, or ‘seeing through a glass darkly’. The reader has to assume that the informants are strongly bilingual, with Afrikaans as their most familiar second language. When trying to explain concepts or words to Bleek and Lloyd in the interviewing, recording and translating process, they often grasp at Afrikaans explanations, as these are the first source language that comes to their minds. From that point onwards, language of very idiomatic use is often translated. For instance, the phrase, “maar my magtig, die ding is regt[ig] lekker” (‘damn, but this is really good’), is such a resounding idiomatic expression to the Afrikaans ear, that it fully carries the image of a rough boer somewhere in the arid Bushmanland or on a dry farm, delighted at tasting a veld food indicated as edible by a /Xam person. The phrase is an expression of a person suddenly overwhelmed with shared delight at the newly experienced taste of a veldfood delicacy until then not known about or thought of as edible. Thus do we find an undercurrent of Afrikaans terminology and expression just below the surface of the /Xam translations in the Bleek & Lloyd narratives or in the 1956 dictionary; they carry another and richer layer of meaning and significance not yet given the attention it deserves. All of these pointers indicated a missing link between the /Xam language and Afrikaans, mostly unrecognised in the Bleek and Lloyd research. In Bushmen in a Victorian World (2006:35), Andrew Bank mentions that during his 1866 interview with Adam Kleinhardt from the district of Calvinia, Bleek became aware of “four settlers who ‘learnt the Bushman language from Adam Kleinhardt’.” Noticeable in Bleek’s interview, as reflected by Bank, is the absence of the wider social context thoroughly present in Von Wielligh’s book of Bushman stories. The reader becomes involved in Von Wielligh’s narratives and is given an understanding of the social relationships between /Xam and farmers. This is the result of the wellwrought unity of the stories, of specific events and the interaction of constituent social groupings contextualised in their entirety, versus the slightly disembodied feel of Bleek’s narratives. In Bleek’s publications, such as Specimens of Bushmen Folklore (1911), the interactions are mostly totally artificial – one /Xam informant opposite one scientific research worker (Bleek and/or Lloyd) in a cottage in Mowbray, Cape Town, relying on a jarring and jerky word-for-word transcription process. Von Wielligh’s oral testimony, admittedly, is greatly reliant on the subsequent written recording of the narration or recollection. But what we gain instead is a staging of real events for the reader, together with all the detail of places and names, dialogue and spontaneous interaction. Bleek’s informants were out on parole, at least at the start, from the Breakwater prison; Von Wielligh’s informants were free men. 78

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Also remarkable about volumes III and IV of Von Wielligh’s book of Bushman stories are the repeated descriptions of the /Xam’s lifestyle. For instance, a recurring reference in Von Wielligh is made to a hunting method in which the skin of an ostrich is used (vol. IV:88-91). A camouflaged cap was made from the dried head and neck of the ostrich to fool the game animals. The use of “bekruipmusse” (‘stalking caps’) was a common method of hunting according to Von Wielligh’s collected oral testimonies, and the unusual Afrikaans word for the equipment enriches the language with long forgotten indigenous knowledge. A tracing by Stow that shows this hunting method in a rock painting has been the focus of an academic debate over the past decade. The conclusion was eventually reached that Stow’s ‘stalking ostrich’ “copy is, however, almost certainly a fake that he concocted by drawing on illustrations of the supposed San practice in books written by early travellers” (Lewis-Williams 2015:176). However, the Von Wielligh text furnishes a fresh perspective. Shocking, however, is the description of a colonial commando against the Bushmen. If the Boers and the /Xam could speak each other’s languages, why did the massacres happen? How does one salvage this oral tradition as a constituent part of early South African literature while Von Wielligh himself, in his oral reports in volume IV (Von Wielligh 1921:37‑63), provides evidence of how 200 armed farmers were engaged in “a commando against [sixty] Bushmen”, mercilessly hunting them down? This is contained in the oral account by Old Uncle Andries B of a Bushmen hunt that he took part in as a sixteen-year-old boy when he accompanied his father, a field cornet in Namaqualand. The farmers felt that the Bushmen had become impudent, and that the stock theft had to be brought to a halt by catching or shooting them, in line with the military policy on legalised Bushman commandos of the British government of the time. While twenty men took turns to stand guard around the cave in the hill where the /Xam were hiding, with the purpose of forcing them to surrender “met honger en dors” (through hunger and thirst), the rest of the commando, about 180 men, entertained themselves on the plain with various country sports events and barbecues: “But the strangest of the whole business, was the silence prevailing there below the cavity in the rock face. You could not hear a child crying or screaming” (vol. IV, my italics). This informal oral history about hunting, country sports and the telling of stories on the plain while the /Xam in the cave were facing death, concludes with the naïve narrator admitting, after ten /Xam have been killed and one taken captive, that it has been an unpleasant experience: “Because they are also people with intelligence” (Von Wielligh 1921:48). However, the most incomprehensible moment for the reader comes at the end when it becomes clear that “most of us knew the Bushman language” and could therefore communicate with them. One asks oneself why no talking was done at an earlier stage. Why go to the extreme of committing murder? What is not said speaks louder than the words on paper. 79

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The moral problem of the /Xam, who were recognised as humans, who even spoke the same language, but who were often treated like animals, is insurmountable, and one is aware of this paradoxical tension the whole time when rereading Von Wielligh’s Boesman-Stories. Maybe the solution for this moral dilemma could be found in a remark of Edward Said on post-colonial studies: Far from encouraging a sense of aggrieved primal innocence in countries that had repeatedly suffered the ravages of colonialism, I stated over and over again that mythical abstractions such as these were lies, as were the various rhetorics of blame they gave rise to; cultures are too inter-mingled, their contents and histories too interdependent and hybrid, for surgical separation […] (1993:xi)

An indication of Von Wielligh’s own discomfort and affliction at the implications of this murderous and unequal conflict he was putting on record lies in the peculiar fact that he wrote different endings to the stories, depending on where he published them. In Jakob Platjie (1918, but previously published as sketches in Ons Klyntji between 1896 and 1906) the same narration appears about Bamboes (1918:124‑125) who, cornered in a cave, had to fight for his life, as in volume IV of Boesman-Stories. However, the two versions have endings that differ totally from one another. In the Jakob Platjie version “first he calls out that he will surrender himself on condition that his life be spared” and so he becomes the hero of the day – “the next day nobody knows how to handle him, because he is a hero!” – and he gets away without any further punishment. On top of that, he outwits the farmers when he is asked to break in a horse, as in the process, astride the horse, he takes his leave and disappears over the nearest hill and is “until today very much gone.” In the version given in BoesmanStories, titled ‘Rather Die Than Surrender’, he replies that he “will stand up to them until the bitter end.” After the fight, he was dead. How to explain these contradictory outcomes of two stories, identical in all other respects? Seemingly, the ending in which the courageous Bamboes loses his life, implies a possible manipulation of the actual events for the sake of the drift of the title, ‘Rather Die Than Surrender’. Or could this indicate a manipulation of Von Wielligh’s material, thus undermining the veracity of all of his narrations? Could sensationalism, or pushing for some effect, have gained the upper hand in his literary considerations, to the detriment of truth? Who will ever know? This serves, though, to caution the reader not to read without reserve. The bitter truth here might be that the Bushman survives in fiction, but dies in fact. A decade ago astronomers WP Koorts and A Slotegraaf searched for ethnoastronomical knowledge and found such references in Von Wielligh’s BoesmanStories, especially in the /Xam myths about the origin of the moon and the evening star. They were surprised by the accuracy of the observations in the narration of ‘The Morning Star is the Heart of Dawn’, and how the fragment in Bleek and Lloyd about 80

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this star is placed in proper perspective and made comprehensible within the context given by Von Wielligh’s story. Koorts remarks: The explanations of naked-eye observations of one, and possibly two of Jupiter’s Galilean satellites for the Dawn’s Heart Star, seem plausible, but assume that a fair percentage of the /Xam had above-average eyesight […] Since they had this unique legend connected to a particular observation, every /Xam had a perfect motive for attempting to observe the Dawn’s Heart Star for himself. The semidesert conditions where the /Xam lived, provided optimal conditions for this rare observation. (Koorts 2006:7)

The history of the extinct /Xam and their language, their intimate knowledge of the land and its seasons and stars, its water sources, its flora and fauna, their oral tradition and beliefs, are all intimately interwoven. This local knowledge of the /Xam and Khoi (and later, in the north, the Swazi) cultures is what Von Wielligh gleaned from early childhood and from his later exploratory journeys to chart the wilderness as a colonial land surveyor. He preserved it in Afrikaans. Clifford Geertz points out that this type of cultural ‘translation’ aims through both fine-comb observations as well as synoptic characterisations to “present a credible, fleshed-out picture of a human form of life” when these are held together in the mind: [A] simple recasting of others’ ways of putting things in terms of our own ways of putting them […] but displaying the logic of their ways […] in the locutions of ours: a conception which again brings it rather closer to what a critic does to illumine a poem than what an astronomer does to account for a star. (Geertz 2000:10)

In other words, not to be mere “peddlers of singularities”, anthropologists should “contrive to place […] singularities in an informing proximity […] Contextualization is the name of the game” (Geertz 2000:xi). Although Von Wielligh was no more than an amateur anthropologist, his publications on the customs and beliefs of the /Xam, on the Swazi in Langs die Lebombo (1923) and, to a lesser degree, on the Khoi all provide precisely such “informing proximity” and contextualisation. This came about through intimate contact with the people from early childhood to late adulthood. Archival and historical research into Von Wielligh’s life and oeuvre thus answers many questions previously raised about his working methods and the source of his knowledge about the /Xam.

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Evaluating the work On the whole, Von Wielligh’s work has suffered much at the hands of critics, both in his time and subsequently. In retrospect, the negative evaluation of his literary works is probably not far off the mark, although the female robinsonade in Ghwennie Barneveld (1921) is not without interest, as is the young male protagonist’s similarly isolated life in the wilderness among ‘wild’ Bushmen and his education by them in Nimrod Seeling (1920:25‑55). However, there is much that is valuable today in his most long-lived texts, the recording of indigenous knowledge, customs and beliefs of the Swazi in Langs die Lebombo (1923), the Khoi in Dierestories, and of the /Xam in Boesman-Stories. It is somewhat strange, then, that scholars of Bushman studies active in the field of the /Xam archive are so dismissive of the value of this recorded material. The most common attitude is one of suspicion concerning the veracity of his material. The spine of objection seems to include concerns: 1) that the tales are in Afrikaans and related according to Afrikaner aesthetic canons (Biesele 1978, 1983); 2) that Von Wielligh’s intention was to educate poor Afrikaners to read, and that in doing so he remodelled the tales towards didactic ends (Hewitt 1986); 3) that he intended to compose Afrikaans literature and not relate Bushman tales (Schmidt 2013); 4) over suspicions (unmotivated – Lewis-Williams, 1983) about where he obtained his material (Schmidt 2013); and 5) about an accusation that he seems to have “embellished and transformed creations [...] from Specimens” (Schmidt 2013). It is clear that Von Wielligh’s perceived intention, as well as the medium of Afrikaans he used (or is Biesele’s formulation just unfortunate clumsiness?), seriously discredits the value of his /Xam archive.

Von Wielligh declares that he only obtained a copy of Specimens of Bushmen Folklore during 1919 – eight years after publication thereof. He himself is nonplussed by the similarities “of the Stories handed on by me and him” (my italics). The answer he finds concerns the shared geographical area of collecting and that they did it during the same period (“about the same time in the same area”). The period needs investigating: this means that Von Wielligh sees the period 1870‑1883 as “about the same time” as Bleek and Lloyd. This period was from the time he went with his father on a six month long trip into Bushmanland, and the later period, 1880‑1883 when he was stationed in Calvinia as land surveyor and worked mostly to the north and north-east, up to the Gariep, and to the east as far as the Zak river, land that was as yet mostly uncharted – meeting, talking to local people and recording tales and stories told about the /Xam in the region. 82

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He also remarks that his aim in recording a /Xam archive differs from that of Wilhelm Bleek, primarily in his eyes a linguist (Von Wielligh in postscript to volume II, written in June 1919). He does not spell out precisely what his aim is, but clearly it has more to do with the safe-keeping for future generations of the mythology, knowledge and cultural practices of the /Xam. One might add that the special kind of Afrikaans which he heard from informants like Old Bles, and subsequently transcribed, the sociolect of the /Xam of Bushmanland, would clearly have interested him as one of the first generation of authors who wrote Afrikaans. There is no reason to suspect him of not telling the truth. All the facts point towards his statement as the truth. There were notes taken at the time, these notes were dredged up in the old rusted trunk in 1912, and used when he compiled the Boesman-Stories in 1918 and 1919. He was living then in intense isolation, far away from bookshops, libraries or like-minded people who shared any of his interests. Why would he be lying? Why would he have committed plagiarism of Bleek and Lloyd’s material when he had collected his own, which is in many instances different from, and sometimes more detailed and coherent than the Bleek and Lloyd material? Most vocal of critics suspicious of Von Wielligh amongst the Bushman scholars has been Sigrid Schmidt. The overlaps that she documented72 are enough to see the convincing relatedness of the two /Xam archives. But Schmidt views Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive from the perspective of the folklorist pure: The folklorist’s problem is, nevertheless, to what extent this collection represents original material and can be used as the basis for scientific study. Since the volumes were intended primarily to be entertaining literature, they cannot be relied upon for study of style or structure and it is mainly the contents that are of interest. (Schmidt 1982:211)

Thirty years later she uses Von Wielligh myths in her discourse about the /Xam tradition in her 2013b publication,73 but accompanied with a strong and overtly expressed suspicion of plagiarism: Von Wielligh […] claimed to retell what he heard […] But though he sometimes attributed tales to specific narrators and professed to have learned about the Specimens edition only after having finished his manuscript, some of his tales are close adaptations of texts from the Specimens (chapters 3c.2; 6.18). It is conspicuous that 22 of his tales have variants in the Specimens but none in The Mantis and his Friends, which appeared after the publication of the BoesmanStories. A considerable number of his texts seem to me to be embellished and transformed creations based on tales from the Specimens or from motifs he remembered from earlier /Xam performances. He did not intend to write a

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scholarly work on Bushman tales but to compose Afrikaans literature. (Schmidt 2013:12) Von Wielligh published a variant that corresponds to /Han!kasso’s text in a fairly (suspiciously) close way (1921 I, 129‑136; my italics, author’s round brackets in last line). (Schmidt 2013:57)

Strange, this long-standing suspicion, when she makes use of Von Wielligh’s “often illuminating supplement to the Bleek and Lloyd collection”,74 and “underestimated”75 /Xam archive for elucidation and supplementation when needed. Suggestions of plagiarism too readily haunt the heritage of the /Xam oral tradition. Compare the case of Stephen Watson’s accusations of plagiarism against Antjie Krog.76 It is far more interesting, however, to consider the literary embellishments that Schmidt perceives in Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive. (Bleek and Lloyd’s archive is also not without literary embellishments, as researchers have recently started pointing out,77 but that is not the issue here.) The literary aspects of Von Wielligh’s version of the /Xam archive are noticeable for the poetic sparks they lit in many instances, and from which Afrikaans poetry grew in the early 20th century. Jan FE Celliers’ 1908 poem, ‘Die vlakte’ (‘The Plains’),78 seems intimately bound through its title to the /Xam myth of the second daughter of ’Ga and ’Gagen, called exactly by that name: Cradled in the peace of the ages I sleep, unseen, unheard, and quiet and sleepy in my sunny dream, un-awakened, undisturbed [...]79

This poem describes the plains as a sleeping woman, with all of its life “held in her bosom”. One cannot but see the similarity with ’Kaun (Von Wielligh 1920:45): “thus ’Kaun fell asleep and changed into the Plains and she sleeps, sleeps, sleeps on still today [...] Continually the plants [...] send their roots deep into the bosom of the earth, into the bosom of ’Kaun.” Similarly, with Eugène Marais’ ‘The Dance of the Rain’ (‘Die dans van die reën’, 1921) 80 and the /Xam myth of !Khwa: Oh, the dance of our Sister! First she peeps slyly over the mountain top, and her eyes are shy; and she laughs softly. And from afar she beckons with one hand; her bracelets flash and her beads glitter; softly she calls. She tells the winds about the dance

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and invites them to dance, for there is space enough and the wedding-feast is grand. The big game career across the plains, they huddle on the hilltop, they stretch their nostrils wide and they gulp the wind; and they lower their heads to see in the sand her fine footprints. The little people deep in the ground hear the swish of her feet, and they creep closer and sing softly: ‘Our Sister! Our Sister! You have come! You have come!’ And her beads bounce, and her copper circlets shine in the setting of the sun. On her forehead flames the fire-crest of the mountain eagle; she comes down from the heights; she spreads out the grey kaross with arms outstretched; the wind itself is rendered breathless. Oh, the dance of our Sister! 81

The rain, like the plains, is one of the sisters, as envisioned in the /Xam mythology recorded by Von Wielligh. The whole poem is written from the hunter-gatherer perspective, and the personified dancing rain sister wears a necklace, and is clad in a grey kaross (skin blanket). She has an intimate relationship with the wind and the windbird, and is welcomed by the large and small animals (the “grootwild”, ‘large game’, and the “kleinvolk”, ‘small folk’, insects under the ground). Marais’s Dwaalstories (‘Wandering Tales’ or ‘Tales of Trickery’, published in Die Boerevrou in 1921, and in book form in 1927) contains a further handful of what are still memorable poems, all from a hunter-gatherer perspective, such as ‘The Sorceress (‘Die towenares’), that describes an old medicine woman or sorceress who has been chased out of her clan along with her two granddaughters and banished to live alone in isolation. The poem describes the loneliness of isolation in the desert, in contrast to the joys of communal life amongst the people: What becomes of the girl who is always alone? She no longer waits for the hunters to return; She no longer makes fires with black thornwood. The wind blows past her ears; She no longer hears the dancing song; The voice of the storyteller is dead. No one calls to her from afar To talk sweet words. 85

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All she can hear is the voice of the wind And the wind is always mournful Because he’s alone. 82

(Marais 1927; transl. DR Skinner)

Opperman’s ‘Springboks’ (‘Springbokke’, 1963)83 appears much later. In it the animals are depicted in their multitude, dying eventually in the “water of the sea”, a phrase that Bleek’s Bushman Dictionary contains in description of the plenitude of springboks on the plains in earlier times. Two of the earliest Afrikaans landscape poets, Eugène N Marais and Jan FE Celliers, seemingly found their intertexts for envisioning the landscape and its natural phenomenon in Bushmen perspective, as narrated in the /Xam myths, and recorded in Afrikaans early on, mainly by Von Wielligh. JM Coetzee once remarked, “descriptive landscape poetry is rare in Afrikaans”.84 Marais and Celliers were two of the first recognisably individual poets to publish under their own names; they followed the early struggling attempts by anonymous folk poets up to around 1904. Notably, these two pioneer individual poets found inspiration for their landscape poetry in the First People’s mythology, and their mythological envisioning of the landscape, for instance the mountains, plains and rain in female form as ‘sisters’, as we find in ‘Die vlakte’ (‘The Plains’) and ‘Die dans van die reën’ (‘The Dance of the Rain’). These first, faltering steps form the beginning of one particular stream in this new literature – the concrete imaginings of the African landscape as arguably later became the defining dimension in the poetical oeuvres of Wilma Stockenström (1933– ) and DJ Opperman (1914‑1985). In the later fiction of Karel Schoeman (1939– ) there is also a strong consciousness of the absent presence in the landscape of the Khoi and Bushmen. Thus Boesman-Stories, literary embellishments and all, could feasibly be seen as the missing link between /Xam orality and the beginning of one stream of Afrikaans literature.85 Here lies the interface between Bushman oral narratives and written South African literature, an interface that still awaits description, even in the most recent literary history.86 The oral tradition of the Bushmen is mostly tacked on at the beginning in recent South African literary histories,87 before the ‘proper’ literary history gets going, with a huge hiatus left hanging between the ‘orature’ and the ‘literature’: [The] compartmentalization of oral literature in a separate section of its own does little to encourage us to think of orature in tandem with some of the very fine studies of print culture featured in the volume. (Bethlehem 2014:178)

The following chapters explore various aspects of this interface.

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3 //Kabbo and Rooizak’s early South African testimonies N-ka !xoë e //xara-//kam “My place is the Bitterpits” (Specimens of Bushman Folklore, 1911:298)

Stemming from an increase of interest in holocaust literature, “it has been suggested that testimony is the literary – or discursive – mode par excellence of our times” (Felman & Laub 1992:4). Since November 1995, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission started its work under Bishop Desmond Tutu, testimony has become part of the fabric of a South Africa trying to come to grips with its past. About this painfully slow process, a leading South African psychiatrist, Sean Kaliski remarked: “It will take decades, generations, and people will assimilate the truths of this country piece by piece” (Krog 1997:5). //Kabbo and Rooizak’s testimonies can be seen as part of the truths of South Africa’s history. The contending voices and identities encapsulated in these testimonies illustrate something of the historical and sociopolitical tensions in this multicultural community. In 1873, the dictation of a /Xam convict, //Kabbo, was preserved in English and in his home language, /Xam, by the German philologist Wilhelm Bleek in Specimens of Bushmen folklore (1911). The testimony of Rooizak, a Swazi labourer awaiting his death sentence in 1874, was recorded by the missionary Albert Nachtigal in German, and sent to Berlin after his death. A hundred years later Peter Delius found the document in the East Berlin archives and translated it into English. The story of Rooizak’s conversion was annotated by the historian and published as The Conversion: Death Cell Conversations of ‘Rooizak’ and the Missionaries, Lydenburg 1875 (1984). The elderly /Xam man with three names – //Kabbo (meaning ‘dream’), Jantje or /uhiddoro – spent July and August 1873 telling the frail, middle-aged Dr Wilhelm Bleek his life story. After having spent some time in the Breakwater Prison in Cape Town for stock theft, and then almost three years in the Bleek household in the suburb of Mowbray with the sole purpose of dictating as much as he could of the narratives and customs of the almost extinct /Xam, //Kabbo was intent on returning home: “Thou knowest that I sit waiting for the moon to turn back for me, that I may return to my 87

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place” (Bleek & Lloyd, 1911:299). He left a month and a half later for his “place” at Bitterpits near Kenhardt in the North-Western Cape. Two years later, both of them had died. In August 1874, a Swazi migrant labourer called Rooizak was arrested on a farm near Lydenburg in the Northern Transvaal after a fight with a Pedi man called Majan. Majan died in the fight and although Rooizak protested his innocence, claiming that it had been a fair fight, Rooizak was imprisoned. For five months he did hard labour in Lydenburg Prison before the court passed a death sentence in February 1875. For one and a half months he was kept in solitary confinement, awaiting the confirmation of his death sentence by the Executive Council. During this period he tried to hang himself in desperation, but was cut loose: [It] is a terrible thing to be condemned to death and to have to wait so long for execution. I wished to be dead but was stopped. I don’t want to live on like this. I want to die now. (Delius 1984:24-25)

The German missionary Nachtigal started ministering to him, together with a mission convert who spoke Seswati, John Podumu. Nachtigal kept notes of Rooizak’s spiritual development to send to his Berlin headquarters later. On 19 April the sentence was confirmed and after baptising Rooizak at 4am on Thursday 22 April, he was led to the gallows and executed. On a factual level, the life testimonies of //Kabbo and Rooizak might not seem to have much in common except that they both originate from the end of the 19th century. Yet close analysis proves otherwise. They are both colonised subjects under colonial rule, waiting passively (the one to go home, the other for his death) and in the power of their colonisers. In the interim they give their testimonies, locked up intimately with an interlocutor of another culture, speaking a different language – the one a German philologist, the other a German missionary. Both //Kabbo and Rooizak were illiterate. Their testimonies are, however, preserved in written form, after having undergone various processes of translation and mediation. Bleek spoke German and English and was still mastering the /Xam language at the time of dictation.

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In the case of both these testimonies there are interviewers or interlocutors (philologist and missionary) who elicit responses, and who mediate the testimony. In both cases translation into a further language is part of the mediating process. Stemming from an increase of interest in Holocaust literature, “it has been suggested that testimony is the literary – or discursive – mode par excellence of our times” and that “films like Shoah by Claude Lanzmann […] or Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras and Alain Resnais, instruct us in the ways in which testimony 88

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has become a crucial mode of our relation to events of our times” (Felman & Laub 1992:4). With literary studies becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, it is not strange that attention is focusing more on forms of cultural discourse such as testimony where one finds a “superimposition of literature, psychoanalysis and history” or, phrased differently, elements of the historical, the clinical and the poetical (Felman & Laub, 1992:6 and 41). With reference to Holocaust literature Shoshana Felman remarks how The story of survival is, in fact, the incredible narration of the survival of the story, at the crossroads between life and death. (Felman & Laub 1992:44)

This remark is equally applicable to the preservation of the /Xam narratives in the Bleek & Lloyd collections of 1911 and later – even with the cautionary reminder of the inevitable loss that must have occurred between transmission from the oral mode into the written, and the mediation processes that the material must have undergone at the hands of Bleek and Lloyd. Felman and Laub describe the typical conditions of the “testimonial process”: [There] needs to be a bonding, the intimate and total presence of an other – in the position of one who hears. Testimonies are not monologues; they cannot take place in solitude. The witnesses are talking to somebody. (1992:70-71)

The role of memory is foregrounded by testimony. This is essential “in order to address another” and “to appeal to a community” (1992:204). What is normally testified to is a “limit-experience […] whose overwhelming impact constantly puts to the test the limits of the witness and of witnessing” (1992:205). The individual voice of the testifying witness also tends to represent an absent community on whose behalf the testimony is made. Yet it also needs to be stressed that one must be careful to “politicise the fact of trauma and to broaden, even universalise, the perspective of victimhood” because human life itself can be seen as “an endless adaptation to the ‘traumatizing’ […] which persists from birth to death” (Hartman 1995:546). Hartman sees the relevance of trauma theory for literary studies in three elements: (a) the grappling with issues of reality, bodily integrity, and identity (1995:547); (b) it concerns itself with “disturbances of language and mind” that are central to literary preoccupations (1995:548); and (c), the entrance of the new ethical theory “tries to break down the reproductive tyranny of the education system” (1995:549).

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These testimonies can both be read as sites of conflicting cultural values. //Kabbo structures his narrative around a constant juxtaposition of ‘here’ in the Bleek household, where he is forced to do “women’s household work”, and where the others (servants, as well as Bleek family members) do not speak his language, and ‘there’, where he wants to “sit among my fellow men” and listen to stories. Out of this juxtaposition comes his sense of alienation and yearning to end his last days amongst his own people. In Rooizak’s story, his incomprehension of the alien legal system and religious ideas casts the missionary zeal of Nachtigal as an alienating imposition of one culture upon another. Both testimonies have a prison experience as the starting point and cause of trauma. In //Kabbo’s case, he feels as though he is living in exile. Rooizak’s trauma derives from both the fear of his pending execution and the imposition of the evangelising fervour of the missionary, who constantly keeps harping on his sin and his awaiting fate. The narrative, “//Kabbo’s Intended Return Home”, can be read as quintessentially a text expressing the typical psychological characteristics of the exile. He waits for time to pass so that he may go home: “I sit waiting for the moon to turn back for me, that I may return to my place.” In his imagination he travels to his home, so “that I may sitting, listen to the stories which yonder come” (1911:301). Then reality yanks him back to where he is, in Mowbray, feeling alienated: “I do not obtain stories, because I do not visit […] they do not talk my language” (1911:301). This leads him into another fantasy flight to his home and a description of what life is like with his people, the ‘Plains Bushmen’. They go to each other’s huts, where they smoke and tell stories. What //Kabbo is describing, is a sense of joyful and relaxed community, presumably what he misses most in Cape Town. He states, “I feel this is the time when I should sit among my fellow men” (1911:303). As an old man, he longs to be with his own people to share communal life before he dies. Tropes of travelling by road and of movement then take over as he describes the journey that he envisages back to the north. The description ends with his imagined arrival. In the imagined arrival scene, //Kabbo describes himself in the third person, suggesting ‘Entfremdung’ of the self: “He will examine the place […] he may examine the water pits; those at which he drank. He will work, putting the old hut in order” (1911:305). The visualised arrival ends with //Kabbo seeing himself in the third person as an old man (“he grew old with his wife at the place”). Immediately hereafter he launches into a lengthy flashback. Herein he switches back to the immediacy of the first person, and the passage reverberates with vitality as he describes himself:

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I felt that I was still a young man, and that I was fleet in running to shoot […] For, I was fresh for running; I felt that I could, running, catch things. Then, I used to run [and] catch a hare. (1911:309)

After the extended flashback, //Kabbo reverts back to everyday reality, to ‘here’ at Mowbray. He expresses intense determination to depart soon: “I do not again await another moon.” Now he talks about the boots and gun that Bleek promised him, and he is again conscious of his old age and past hardship: [Starvation] was that on account of which I was bound […] For a gun is that which takes care of an old man […] It [the gun] is strong against the wind. It satisfies a man with food in the very middle of the cold. (1911:317)

//Kabbo’s trauma is one of lengthy exile and what he describes in his testimony is the condition of exile, an important theme in South African literature of the apartheid era. The central trope in his narrative is that of the stories and storytelling that he misses, that represent communality and social life among his kin. He juxtaposes two versions of himself: a fleet-footed, hare-chasing young man and an old man faced by starvation unless Bleek can send a gun to help provide for food in his old age. The silence in the text is the period of imprisonment at the Breakwater Prison. The only reference to this ordeal is the euphemistic word “bound” in the phrase “starvation was that on account of which I was bound.” Rooizak’s testimony is even more heavily mediated: initially by Nachtigal, a hundred years later by Delius. When the missionary first visited, he asked how the prisoner was feeling. Rooizak formulates his sense of trauma thus: “I am to be executed unjustly and I am filled with horror at the idea of having to die such a demeaning death” (1984:21). Nachtigal expresses his wish to minister to the needs of Rooizak’s soul. His response is: “I know nothing of this and I feel nothing for it, but I will listen to what you have to say.” It transpires in the conversation that Nachtigal has no interest in or comprehension of the African belief system that Rooizak describes: Their spirits lived on after their deaths. They are here on earth. But they are capricious and have to be placated by sacrifices. (1984:22)

Nachtigal tries to inculcate in Rooizak some concept of his deed as “a grave sin” and that God is like a king who “will forgive”. Rooizak misunderstands the forgiveness and says, “Then help me. I will gladly do anything to escape hanging” (1984:22). Soon after this he tries to hang himself in his cell. The trope of ‘hanging’ thus becomes central in the narrative. But he is discovered and “from this time onwards […] he was chained” (1984:24). On the missionary’s next visit, Rooizak eloquently describes the effects of solitary confinement (a central trope in South African prison literature): 91

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I cannot stand this fear any longer […] I am forced to sit here alone. My solitude tortures me and fills me with despair. Some days I sleep to still my mind but then my nights are spent in waking terror. How can they be so cruel as to keep me waiting so long for my death? (1984:25)

When next visited by John Podumu (Nachtigal is said to be incapacitated by “a bout of savage headaches” 1984:29), Rooizak is exceedingly calm because of a vision that he has had: “I dreamt that I was taken away to a beautiful land where, feeling weak and strange, I sat on an anthill.” He describes how Jesus appeared to him as a “shimmering white person” who greeted him and told him to go back and “behave well” (1984:31), suggesting a traumatised psyche, obsessed with ideas of guilt. Hartman remarks on the relation between trauma and dream that in “literature especially, shock and dreaminess collude. Where there is dream there is (was) trauma” (1995:546). Not content with the peace that has descended over the Swazi prisoner, both Podumu and Nachtigal proceed to badger him so as to test whether his newly professed Christian faith rings true. This hectoring in the name of Christianity seems particularly cruel and seems more like torture than anything else. Upon confirmation of his death penalty, “Rooizak was given alcohol to ease his shock. He became drunk and started to dance as best his chains would allow in the confines of his cell” (1984:40). Later, he “wished death to all whites.” When Nachtigal arrives the next morning, Rooizak consciously introduces racial discrimination into the discussion: “Isn’t it unjust to sentence me to death in my absence? I am treated like this because I am black” (1984:40). The last vestige of resistance in him comes to the fore in the taunting question: “[Why] is God’s word not observed when a white kills a black?” (1984:41). Thereafter, he succumbs to the missionaries’ ministrations and is baptised at dawn on the morning of 22 April. Echoing one of the dignitaries, just before he was killed Rooizak says, “I will soon be in paradise.” The whole traumatic process lasted seven months. Rooizak’s testimony, like //Kabbo’s, thus also entails a long waiting, it entails a journey – but a spiritual journey – from near death through attempted suicide back to life. Through the terror of solitary confinement and back into the momentary release of a vision, and then back to the painful interrogation by the missionaries, until eventually he finds release in death. In the intense dialogue between the Swazi prisoner and the evangelists nothing is more striking than the conflict between their different cultures, different justice systems, different customs and the absolutely powerless situation in which Rooizak finds himself. In spite of the heavily mediated nature of this text, it is still one of the most striking South African testimonies of one man’s trauma and spiritual torture. It also eloquently illustrates intercultural conflict in action.

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“To attack and damage the memory of a people means to attack its roots, put its vitality at risk,” stated Ferrarotti (1994:2). No matter how mediated, or how often translated, in the marginalised testimonies of //Kabbo and Rooizak we find individual memory preserved as part of South Africa’s history and conscience.

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4 A spring song to the uintjieblom he !kaui /k’ a //kwa§ŋ /ne /ha: !k?e a:, he !k?e //kwa§ŋ /ne //ke:n hi: he, o !kaui, i. then the wild onion leaves come out for the people, on account of it (rain), and the people digging feed themselves with the wild onions. (Bleek 1956:414)

Introduction

T

he nature of the preserved /Xam material from the colonial archive is often enigmatic, because so much of the context is missing or not obvious to the reader in the twenty-first century. What might have been factual information in the original context may easily be read or perceived by the contemporary reader as metaphorical, as in the short example quoted in the title (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:230‑231). Firstly, the title of the poem strikes the modern reader as strange – a song sung by a star, and also by ‘Bushman women’. This suggests personification of stars, and an association between stars and women. The whole song comprises only four lines: A song sung by the star !Gaunu, and especially by Bushman women

(Dictated in December 1875 by Dia!kwain, who heard it from his paternal grandmother Ttuobbo-ken !kauk’n) //gárraken !kwaitenttu xa //khou bbérri-ssin? ≠ku-yam kan //kuan a //khou bbérri-ssin. […] A xa //khou bbérri-ssin? ≠ku-yam kan //kuan a //khou bbérri-ssin. (Does the //gárraken flower open? The ≠ku-yam is the one that opens. […] Dost thou open? The ≠ku-yam is the one that opens.)

According to Dorothea Bleek in her Bushmen Dictionary (1956:379), the singing star, Jupiter, seemingly asks of a bystander or onlooker whether the //gárraken flower opens. The //gárraken is an uintjie flower/sand-uintjie/Moraea edulis sp. – a tulip with a blue flower and an edible corm – or bloublommetjie-uintjie/Moraea fugax sp. or 95

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bobbejaanuintjie/Oxalis lupinifolia sp. (Leipoldt 1978 {1930}:137; Coetzee 1977:50). The reply is that it is not the //gárraken that opens but another one, the ≠ku-yam, a kind of Namaqualand daisy. Lucy Lloyd added the following two footnotes to her translation in 1879, four years after the actual dictation in December 1875 and a few months after Bleek’s death in August of the same year: 1 The //gárraken are bulbs; the Bushmen dig them out. 2 Dimorphoteca annua, a daisy-like flower, in blossom at Mowbray in August, 1879. (Bleek & Lloyd 2010 (1911))

This seems to be a spring song, a song by Jupiter, or !Gaunu, expectantly awaiting the first flowers of Namaqualand/Bushmanland, which blossom between July and October each year after the first rains. The close connection with the women and the terrain of their interest is the appearance of new veldkos (‘bush tucker’ in Australian vernacular: food found in the veld). This little /Xam song is not merely a lyrical expression of their admiration for the beauty of new veld flowers. Their botanical knowledge, and the recognition of the species of these newly appearing flowers, will guide the /Xam women to where edible corms reside underground. When life is based on hunting and gathering, spring, with its new bulbs and fruits, is a major event. As the veld changes with the coming of spring, the women sing this seasonal song, presumably as they walk across the veld. Erasmus Smit recorded in his diary how his Bushman congregation took their leave in August 1815 to go to gather ants’ eggs and edible wildflower corms (uintjies), delicacies associated with the coming of spring. Although the /Xam lived temporarily at the mission station at Torenberg, in spring they would return to their huntergatherer lifestyle (Van Vuuren 2001). In his journal inscription in the early spring of 30 August 1815, Smit wrote: Heden morgen Naar den Gods dienst, vervoegde zich alle onze vaste Boschjesmans weder by my aan huis, met verzoek, en te kennen geevende om voor een tyd van ‘t school (zoo als zy het noemen) weg te gaan, met oogmerk om Mieren en uientjies hun geliefste voedsel dat in deze tyd in meenigte te bekoomen is te vergaaderen, welke spys zy raauw of gebraaden Eeten. (Smit 1956 [1815]:81‑2) This morning after the religious service, all our permanent Bushmen came to me at home, requesting, and indicating that they needed leave from school (as they called it), with the aim of going to gather ants [meaning ants’ eggs] and wildflower corms, their most beloved food, that at this time is particularly abundant, and that they eat raw or roasted. (1956 [1815]:81‑2; my translation)

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Figure 20  The bloublommetjie-uintjie flower, Moraea fugax. Photo: Rosemarie Breuer.

The blue, white and mauve corm-bearing flowers appear in the wet months, between July and October (Van Wyk & Gericke 2007:84), or, according to Leipoldt (1978:137), between August and November. There are numerous archaic Afrikaans words (rarely used today, one would imagine, if at all) utilising uintjie-, such as uintjieyster (implement for digging the corms) and uintjiestyd, described as an important season from a nutrition perspective for the ‘Hottentotten’, as this veldkos is then edible after the rains (Nienaber & Boshoff 1967:665). Poet and famous cook, C Louis Leipoldt, clarifies in Kos vir die kenner that the uintjie or ‘wild onion’ (or wildflower corm), a type of veldkos well known, according to Leipoldt, by ‘our ancestors’, could be one of two species: either Moraea edulis, also called sanduintjie (an edible tulip with a yellow flower), or Oxalis lupinifolia, corms of a kind of sorrel also called Hottentotuintjies (depicted in a painting in the Pretoria National Herbarium – the collector is noted as being CL Leipoldt, Pakhuispas, 1924). Then there are also the bobbebaanjuintjies of the Babiana kind (Leipoldt 1979:86‑87). He states in 1933 that plants with edible corms (uintjies) have become scarce, but once they were normally “available in the spring, from August to November. They are dug out [and] made into separate small bunches, with usually fifty to sixty corms in each bunch. Two bunches are sufficient for a dish” (Leipoldt 1933:135, 137‑8; my 97

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Figure 21 Moraea fugax sp. filicaulis. Watercolour by Dorothy Dodds (1876‑1976).

translation). When stewed with the skin removed, they taste much like chestnuts. They can be boiled, puréed or made into a soup. Edible corms contain starch as well as some “insuline sugar” and are particularly nutritious, according to Leipoldt, a medical doctor and amateur botanist who grew up in Calvinia, where he roamed the veld and collected specimens, often with his friend, the famous botanist Dr Harry Bolus. In another publication, Polfyntjies vir die Proe (Leipoldt 1979:78), Leipoldt writes that in the days of the Dutch East Company the Hantamvolk (understood to be the Bushman and Khoi from around Calvinia) would visit the Cape to dig up wildflower corms. A short essay by Leipoldt on ‘Die egte uintjie’ (which translates as ‘The Real Wildflower Corm’) was published in Polfyntjies vir die Proe (1979:86‑89). The questions in the song are probably either mistranslated or intended to mean, ‘Are the uintjie flowers open already?’ By contrast, ‘Is it the nature of the uintjie flower to open?’ is a rhetorical, if not nonsensical, question to ask of a flower. On first reading one has no idea which flowers the song is referring to. The footnotes by Lucy Lloyd are of partial help only, suggesting that she herself was rather perplexed. There is a need to research this further with the help of the information offered in the bilingual Bushman Dictionary (Bleek 1956) and a good botanical textbook of South African plants. The only other details offered in the short song for possible further understanding is the subtitle, which provides the source of the song: ‘Dia!kwain Heard This From His Paternal Grandmother Ttuobbo-ken !kauk’n’. His grandmother’s song 98

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was based on her knowledge of indigenous flowers and plants and their botanical behaviour, gained while gathering veldkos in her nore, her region, over many years. The ‘song’ contains knowledge offered to the following generations, repeated often, so that it gains a lyrical and song-like quality. The two lines are basically repetitions of related structures, with the verb ‘open’ and the subject ‘flower’ in the central position in both lines, one in the form of a question and one in the form of a firm statement – ‘does X open? ‘Y is the one that opens.’ Quite possibly the song was sung by different women, one (or a few) posing the questions, and the other offering the answers, as they walked through the veld, looking for veldkos, to make the time pass more quickly as they went about their foraging. Reference is made to two flowers, the knowledge of which would have been lost in the mists of an extinct language, had it not been for the efforts of ecologicallyorientated and historically-minded researchers such as Coetzee & Miros (2009), and Van Wyk & Gericke (2007). What is encapsulated in the /Xam song is an old grandmother’s definitive knowledge of flora in her own /Xam language, and what is more specific and unique to a language and a culture than the names of flora, fauna, places and individuals? The South African geography is changing and knowledge is slowly disappearing as places, rivers and dams are being renamed – the slowly acquired names, the names learnt at school, do not survive, therefore the inhabitants no longer know where it has rained or what place is being referred to. In tree, flower and bird books it is mostly English names that are retained. Those who did not grow up with these names are lost – unless they have inherited old books showing the names in their mother tongues. This linguistic conundrum is illustrated admirably by the enigma of this song (more so if read without the footnotes, as it is given in the Kindle version of Specimens of Bushmen Folklore). The song is translated into English, but with the two flower names remaining in the extinct /Xam language, untranslated and almost untranslatable but for the efforts of various researchers. The first such researcher was Lucy Lloyd herself, who could indicate only one of them as similar to the Mowbray ‘daisy-like flower’ of August 1879 – pointed out to her by Dia!kwain, perhaps, at the time of dictation in December 1875. (Notable here is a gap of almost four years between the time of dictation and the time of this footnote, and presumably when the translation was finalised.) The most poetic element in the song is the addressing of the flower by the women and the star: ‘Dost thou open?’ It suggests a world in which flora and human beings were in intimate dialogue with sidereal elements. Herein resides the enigmatic poetic quality of many of these /Xam narratives and fragments, far removed from modern urban living and ideology. A translation of this song into Afrikaans or English, once a fuller understanding had been arrived at, might read as follows: 99

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Does the uintjie flower open? The daisy is the one that is opening. Are you opening? The daisy is open. (Gaan die uintjie blom oop? Die madeliefie is die een wat oopgaan. Gaan jy oop? Die madeliefie is oop.)

The song becomes clear at last: the women (and the star’s) interest is not in the daisy per se, but rather in the hidden edible corm and its as-yet unopened flower, which reveals the whereabouts of the corm when open. After good spring rains, all of the flowers eventually open, so the appearance of the daisies indicates the imminent flowering of the corm-bearing plant, and thus the promise of veldkos comprised of uintjies – a delicacy when roasted or steamed in milk (Leipoldt 1933:135, 137‑8; Claassens 2006:77; Coetzee & Miros 2009:50). The song can also be read as a musical urging of the flower of the corm-bearing plant, the //gárraken, to get a move on and open up, to show the women where to dig so that they might feast on this delicacy of late winter/early spring. This example illustrates the complexity of reading and interpreting the /Xam archive due to the ‘missing links’ embedded in the language. It also admirably illustrates the numerous stumbling blocks for /Xam scholarship of this archive.

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December 1875: conversations between Dia!kwain and Lucy Lloyd Wilhelm Bleek was often ill in 1875, which cast an increasingly dark shadow on the household prior to his death on 15 August. From January 1875, Lucy Lloyd “had effectively taken over the work of collecting” (Bank 2006:232). Dia!kwain was, by then, the only /Xam person in the household, and remained so until he left in March  1876. Bank remarks that it was his impression that Dia!kwain and Lucy Lloyd had ‘a very direct and relatively close relationship’ (Bank 2006:272). He gave the vast majority of his accounts to her personally. Lloyd’s knowledge of /Xam was substantively improved and that must have helped them form a closer bond. They were also comparable in age: Lloyd was then around forty years old and Dia!kwain around thirty (Bank 2006:272). Bank states that the stories of David Hoesar – he uses the non-/Xam name for Dia!kwain – created a sense of a “still-vibrant /Xam culture” (Bank 2006:238). The 100

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/Xam man was informative about musical instruments, the traditional dances of women, and much survival information that had been handed down from elders to young tribal members. The death of Wilhelm Bleek had a profound influence on the remaining household; many of Dia!kwain’s stories dealt with premonitions of death, or with the theme of death. The symbolism of the hamerkop, as a bird auguring death, is but one example; another is the famous moon and hare story about the origin of death (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:56‑65). It would seem, also, that the death of his master prevented him from leaving the household to return to his homeland. In December 1875, Dia!kwain told Lloyd stories about the wrath of shamans when “casting shadows over other people” (Bank 2006:121); about the sorcerer //Kunn; about the burial of his first wife, Mietje; and tales about “birds of ill omen”: the swallow and the //kerri, or locust bird (a transliteration of the Afrikaans sprinkaanvoël), with its long neck like a knobkerrie or cudgel (Bank 2006:266‑9).

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The narrative context of ‘A song sung by the star !Gaunu, and especially by Bushman women’ The section in Specimens of Bushman Folklore that Lloyd chose to title ‘Songs’, at the time she chose material for the publication, is remarkably thin (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:220‑41). This is because most of these songs seem to have been extracted from longer narratives, in the same way that the four lines of the ‘//garraken flower’ song were extracted from a then as-yet-untranslated narrative about !Gaunu, the star. The first star narrative was titled ‘The Great Star !Gaunu, Which, Singing, Named the Stars’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:78‑81). It refers to the porcupine, which sees the receding of these very small Milky Way stars (//Xhwai) as a sign that dawn is approaching (survival and hunting information linked to the stars, which Dia!kwain gleaned from his grandfather, !Xugen-ddi). The second narrative has not been translated in full, according to James: [The] second of the two !Gaunu texts in the /Xam archive – of which only part, being a version of !Gaunu’s song has been published previously. The focus of the text is indeed the song [...] But since the song is of little importance if the occasion of its singing is not appreciated, the poem also gives its context and it draws on the explanatory comments given by the narrator in the note. The occasion of the song’s singing needed careful uncovering since the text is a little jumbled, and at several points it is not clear which character is speaking. ( James 2001:173‑4)

James’s interpretation of this narrative correctly identifies the song of the //garraken flower as one of ‘expectancy, longing and joy’ ( James 2001:174). Perhaps he slightly 101

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over-stresses the mytho-historical associations at the cost of the literal joy of veldkos gathering by hungry women at the advent of spring, with its promise of one of their most favourite foods – the wholesome and tasty wildflower corms. /Han≠kasso’s story of ‘What the Stars Say, and a Prayer to a Star’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911:80‑3) is explicit about the connection between the singing stars (“‘Tsau!’ they say, ‘Tsau! Tsau!’”) and the promise of the coming spring for an easing of their hunger after a long winter: [Thou] shalt take my heart – my heart – with which I am desperately hungry. That I might also be full, like thee […] For, I hunger.

The changing star constellations with which the /Xam were intimately acquainted would have been one of the heralds of seasonal change. There is thus an astrological explanation for aspects of the song. In this way, the flowering of the //garraken and the movement of the stars were phenomena, linked in the /Xam mind, announcing the end of the hunger of winter. It is this need of food that is also the driving force behind the women intensely urging the //garraken flower to reveal the hiding places of one of the hunter-gatherers’ most favourite delicacies, wildflower corms. “Mieren en uientjies hun geliefste voedsel” – ‘Ants and wild onions (or wildflower corms) are their most beloved food’ – wrote the missionary Smit (1956:82) at the beginning of spring in 1815 when his /Xam congregation took their temporary leave from Torenberg, where they were regularly provided with food. James’ “reworking of the principal elements of the second of the two !Gaunu texts in the /Xam archive” (2001:173) in ‘A Song Sung Especially by /Xam Women’ (2001:55-56) unfortunately misses out on the significance of the wildflower corms, the !kaui, hidden underground, below the not-yet-flowering //garraken: “then the wild onion leaves come out for the people, on account of it (rain), and the people digging feed themselves with the wild onions” (Bleek 1956:414). All the edible cormbearing species referred to in the botanical information point to their flowers as being either yellow, blue, white or mauve; not one of them is red, the colour that James chooses for his star that looks like a ‘sprouting flower’ (in the poem created around this second untranslated narrative). In Antjie Krog’s poetical adaptation of ‘A Song Sung by the Star !Gaunu, and Especially by Bushman Women’ she incorrectly assumes that the uintjieblom is a lily flower (Krog 2004:15): does the lily flower open? the daisy is the one that opens do you open? the lily is the one that opens 102

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In sharp contrast to Krog’s incorrect renaming of the veld flower as a “lily flower”, the poet Barend J Toerien (1921-2009), an octogenarian at the time of writing (three decades older than Krog, and also hailing from a Porterville farm near the Cederberg, where the uintjie-gathering custom was still alive), describes in detail the conventions, tools and gathering of uintjies in spring. He remembers how Outa Optat did the seasonal gathering of wildflower corms, providing father and son on their Porterville farm, Steenwerp (near the west coast of South Africa), with this delicacy: Die Uintjie-Eters

My pa en ek had min gemeen behalwe ’n snoeplus vir uintjies. Ons twee het weerskante van die seeppot gesit vol bossies patrysuintjies in die stomende kookwater – uintjies wat Outa Optat heeldag met ’n uintjieyster uitgegraaf het, in gerfies gebondel, saamgevat. Dis die naaste wat ek aan my pa gekom het, die saamweglê aan uitjies direk uit die seeppotte so af-en-toe se lente-aand. Tussen ons het die leë uintjiedoppe tot ’n stapel aangegroei. (The Uintjie Eaters

My father and I had little in common except a weakness for wildflower corms. We’d sit either side of the soap pot filled1 with partridge-uintjie bushes in steaming hot water – ‘wild onions’ that Outa Optat had dug up all day with his uintjie-iron, gathered into small bundles. That was the closest I came to my father, tucking into uintjies together, straight from the pot on the occasional spring evening. Between us, the empty corm husks kept on piling up.) (Toerien 2006:158; translated by HvV & DRS)

The ultimate focus of Toerien’s poem is the lack of intimacy between father and son. Yet the poem offers insight into the gathering (and special implement used), the handling, preparation, and delicacy of feasting on wildflower corms. The farm setting, Steenwerp where Toerien grew up, suggests that the farmhand, Outa Optat, is probably of Bushman descent, possessed of the intimate knowledge of where the plants grow, how to identify them by their flowers, how to dig them out and bind 103

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them in bundles, and what the correct preparation of them is for eating. The farm is near Porterville, about 140 kilometres north of Cape Town, in the Great Winterhoek wilderness area, and known for its many waterfalls, birds and Bushman rock art. That such an uintjie ritual in spring was still extant in the 1920s – perhaps even the 1930s – when the poet was young, and that Outa Optat still had the intimate knowledge of this plant and its whereabouts in the veld, is striking. Almost a century later botanists can find no evidence amongst local communities of the West Coast and Clanwilliam area of such knowledge of either the correct wildflower, or its whereabouts. They surmise that the plant has probably been heavily decimated by development, while the knowledge of its gathering has clearly also died away (Zietsman et al. 2009:27).

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Approaching an extinct indigenous culture: the /Xam colonial archive The intense involvement over the last two decades with the /Xam narratives and their interface with South African – and specifically Afrikaans – literature has given rise to a central question: what is the best approach to an extinct indigenous culture and the transcriptions emanating from orally given narratives and testimonies? This question became increasingly clear at a 2010 conference in Cyprus that profiled indigeneity, as well as through the scholarship dealing with indigenous issues in Canada, Australia and other former Commonwealth countries. It is clear that dealing with extinct oral traditions and cultures is different from postcolonial contexts in which the descendants of indigenous peoples are still alive. In the first case, consultation and interaction is no longer a possibility. In the case of the extinct /Xam, the mediators, interpreters and translators are mostly descendants of the former settlers, the perpetrators of the genocide on the /Xam. This brings with it a whole set of ethical questions that seem insurmountable in the complex postcolonial historical framework, and that are a caution to all scholars: one must proceed with extreme circumspection when dealing with the colonial archive of the /Xam. The instability of an oral tradition, or the ever-shifting and growing nature of its content, open to ‘embroidery’ and ‘colouring in’, as oral narratives by nature are, is not addressed here, but rather the approach to such a corpus. This instability, so different from definitive words captured on a printed page, means that many versions of a narrative exist – as illustrated by a careful study of the recordings by Bleek and Lloyd versus those of Von Wielligh’s – as illustrated, for instance, by Koorts in his study of the /Xam stories dealing with ‘sidereal narratives’ or celestial bodies (Koorts 2006). To regard any of these /Xam narratives as having a ‘definitive’ and ‘fixed’ meaning would clearly not be in accord with the workings of oral tradition. What counts are the general implications of such narratives and myths. They are built around a central 104

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core that is more or less stable, much as are the mediaeval tales of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table; the differences between the French, English and German versions come about through the ‘embroidery’ and ‘colouring in’ of their authors and recorders. The story ‘grows’ organically and in different directions from its origin in France to its later development in Germany. What starts out, in essence, as a courtly romance ends up as a humorous tale. Such is the nature of the oral tradition. The first mistake for a scholar, therefore, would be to ignore the nature of object of their study, the nature of an oral tradition: it is not made of fixed texts, but substantially unstable. Not only that, one must add to the mix the possibility of incorrect translation in places by Lloyd or Bleek. The central question remains: what is the best approach to an extinct indigenous culture? This methodological question, with its accompanying ethical and ideological implications, is posed increasingly by South African scholars in the field of ‘Bushman studies’, such as Anne Solomon (2009) and Moran (2010), with specific reference to the /Xam oral tradition. This extinct culture is mostly known through Bleek and Lloyd’s colonial archive, dating from their transcriptions done between 1870 and 1889, and the continued translation by Lloyd up to her death in 1914. Dorothea Bleek carried on the ‘Bushmen project’ until she died in 1948, followed by the posthumous publication of the lengthy Bushman Dictionary in America in 1956. Whereas the Bleek and Lloyd archive has been assigned world heritage status by UNESCO, we also have the lesser-known Von Wielligh Afrikaans transcriptions from more or less the same period; these are useful in their own right, but particularly where the Bleek and Lloyd narratives are given in a form that is too fragmented to be fully intelligible, particularly with regard to myths of origin of the physical world and the sidereal narratives, according to Koorts & Slotegraaff (2001:12). Ironically, in a theoretical reflection on the ‘oral tradition’ of the extinct /Xam, and the scholarship engaged with it, this oral tradition is accessible only through transcriptions: oral narratives, songs and myths recorded as text. The performative oral within /Xam community context is no longer accessible, has not been recorded, and can never be captured. The emotions of people can only be surmised on observation of related Bushman communities such as the Ju/’hoansi in Namibia. From the transcribed oral text, the interface between the oral tradition and the literate tradition, scholars and writers, dramatists and scientists produce /Xam texts (through, for example, versification, transliteration, translation, interpretation, mediation and amplification) and contribute meaning through different types of reading and interpretation. Oral performance is not accessible to present-day scholars, nor was it available to the first mediators and translators, Bleek and Lloyd in Cape Town, and Von Wielligh further north in Clanwilliam and its surroundings during the same period. The die was cast in the second half of the 19th century and extinction was imminent, so that truly 105

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performative and interactive monolingual/Xam oral tradition became a phenomenon that can only be surmised and imagined by later scholars and interpreters. The process thus moves from, firstly, oral performance within the /Xam community to, secondly, textualised oral text (through mediation of non-/Xam outside scientists/linguists) to, finally, text, taken up in a new context, be that literature or science, as aesthetic artefact or as motivation for scientific hypothesis. What scholars view as /Xam texts today, and tend to view as fixed and final products, is a conundrum – no oral text was ever fixed or final. Its essence was its non-fixity and non-finality, open to the latest narrator for embroidery and ‘colouring in’ with their own interests and slants. When later poets embroider and ‘colour in’ with their own perspectives, they are mixing a prime principle of the oral with the written tradition. Stephen Watson2 and Antjie Krog3 are clear examples of latter-day writers using /Xam fragments by reshaping them in to ‘poems’ (hybrids of the source texts and the writers’ own creative additions). In 2006, a storm blew up in the literary community when Watson suggested that Krog’s text in part constituted a plagiarising of his earlier publications. That is not an argument of interest here. The longer view, however, raises questions about the actions of both of them and all others in their use of the archives. It is all part of longer-running, more complex set of rows about ownership, origin and use. Acts undertaken by the scholar or creative writer in this progress from orality to textuality are translation (and, in the early colonial phases, also mediation) and reading. Neither the translation nor the reading acts are innocent – both involve interpretation, the assignment of significance and semiotic context(s). As Riffaterre has shown, there are different ways of reading, such as intertextual reading, close reading, metaphoric reading or literal reading (there is “l’ensemble des réactions possibles du lecteur au texte”, in other words there is a whole spectrum of possible reactions from a reader to a text – Riffaterre 1979:9). In the case of the last fragments of the /Xam narrators’ transcribed oral texts, intertextuality is an inescapable aspect of the reading process. The ideal reader of /Xam texts needs to be fully informed of South African prehistory, colonial history, the political context, anthropological and archaeological studies, know /Xam rock art, as well as a plethora of studies pertaining to mythology and religion. These fields, as well as a thorough knowledge of all known /Xam ‘textualised oral records’, plus the many publications on the related, still extant Ju/’hoansi of Namibia, are all intertexts that would shape an ideal intertextual reading of /Xam texts. But what Anne Solomon has alerted us to (2009:26) is that the time has arrived for a ‘literary turn’ in /Xam scholarship – a carefully astute consciousness of how we read these fragile texts of an extinct people, and what we interpret.

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Extinct /Xam orality and culture At the end of the 19th century, early South African scientists, linguists and observers recorded more (Bleek & Lloyd:1870‑1889) or less (Von Wielligh:1870‑1883) meticulously and scientifically what they could from the last of the indigenous /Xam Bushmen informants still alive in the northern Cape region of South Africa. In postcolonial times, the /Xam collection of myths, narratives and poems has been declared part of the UNESCO World Heritage. In 2009, rock art expert Anne Solomon identified a hiatus in what has been called ‘Bushman studies’, in that hitherto mostly anthropological (that is, shamanistic) and archaeological interpretations were forthcoming of the narratives and fragments of narratives left over from this erstwhile rich culture. More meticulous literary readings (exploring the nuances of words, metaphors and rhetorical devices utilised in the language) are still often lacking in the attempted recovery of the full meaning of this culture. From the traumatic period of the late 19th century until today, when there are no longer any /Xam-language speakers, recuperation of this aspect of South African heritage is demanding new methodologies and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue against the ‘flattening’ and equalising pressure of ever greater globalisation upon the existing South African cultural landscape. Some approaches accentuate the trauma of colonial interaction and stress divisiveness, whereas alternative, more nuanced, literary approaches offer recovery and reconciliatory aspects for contemporary South African society. Solomon states that a careful intertextual reading of texts in relation to each other is essential in establishing the ‘meanings’ of the /Xam testimonies. She proposes that this may be achieved through the identification of, for instance, the rhetorical devices utilised: With the attention to reading that is central to literary approaches, literary scholars may contribute to understanding the /Xam materials by critically examining readings of ‘original meanings’ in tandem with exploring literary qualities. (Solomon 2009:38)

It is clear that the ‘literary turn’ evident in postcolonial studies has also reached the study of indigenous /Xam testimonies, as formulated by Solomon. She calls for an “attention to reading that is central to literary approaches” in order to “critically [examine] readings of ‘original meanings’ in tandem with exploring literary qualities”, since ‘original meanings’ are crucial to debates over recuperations and appropriations of indigenous literature. These readings are fundamental for assessing the re-workings of the /Xam testimonies (Solomon 2009:38). Three problems arise. What is the ‘original meaning’ in a mediated and translated text from an oral tradition? What is or was the role of translation? Furthermore, what exactly is to be understood by ‘literary reading’? 107

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Clearly, textualised reading is essential, based on an informed interdisciplinary context (of the /Xam history, religion, ideology and politics). And ‘original meaning’ is problematic where the testimonies and narratives were recorded through translation. Translation and what it entails and signifies, the methodology or ways of reading, and the concept of the ‘original meaning’ of the testimonies, are significantly important elements in the process of interacting with the /Xam narratives. Not a single /Xam speaker survives to aid in this process. The only remnants left are the Bleek and Lloyd colonial archive, the recordings of Von Wielligh (based on the verbal accounts of /Xam and farmers living around Calvinia and in the northwestern Cape, the area from which the Bleek & Lloyd informants originated), plus the tenuous link with the everfading rock art on cave walls in Southern Africa. Emanating from the consciousness of these extinct people, it is clear that their rock art, oral tradition and narratives come from one people’s ideological view of the world. What precisely these links are or what the significance is, still escapes scholars, although David Lewis-Williams (2002) and John Parkington (2003:97), among others, have put forward various more or less persuasive hypotheses. An overview of the approaches to the indigenous culture and testimony of the /Xam confronts one with a widely disparate body of work. Starting from Bleek and Lloyd’s Collection of thousands of pages from the 19th century, with the /Xam texts on the left-hand side, accompanied by a parallel text in literal, often stilted Victorian English on the right-hand side, the heavy mediation and censoring of scatological and lugubrious elements have been adequately commented upon. Many poets have reworked poetic testimonies and songs into their own collections, versifying the texts and elaborating on them. Following on from those of Roger Hewitt, who discovered this neglected material in the 1970s at the University of Cape Town, scholars of rock art (pre-eminently David Lewis-Williams), archaeologists, historians and anthropologists have been engaging with the material in a wide-range of approaches, but most of it has involved screening the material for factuality, for scientific purposes. Studies in the field have proliferated over the past two decades; more recently, work by literary scholars. Creative writers have engaged with the material over many genres, ever since the first publication of Specimens of Bushman Folklore in 1911 (Marais, Krige, Markowitz, Watson, Krog and others). These creative reworkings and appropriations are marked by a whole spectrum of ideological interpretations, ranging from early romanticising and exoticising to, more recently, identification of the /Xam’s valuable indigenous knowledge of astronomy (Koorts & Slotegraaff 2006) and water preservation in arid conditions (Workman 2009). During the past decades, more of the material originally recorded, translated and compiled by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd has been published, notably the whole archive with annotated index on the web, and Skotnes (2007), as well as David Lewis108

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Williams (2004), Alan James (2001), Deacon & Foster (2005) and others. Historians, linguists, archaeologists, specialists in rock art and anthropologists all ‘utilise’ the Bleek and Lloyd colonial /Xam archive in the name of science. Poets, novelists and dramatists appropriate the material and incorporate the myths in their creative works. At the end of the first decade of the 21th century, much revision of the terrain and the methodology has been done at a meta-level, as illustrated by the recent writings of Solomon (2009), Moran (2010) and Wessels (2010). What has become clear is that ‘bland’, ‘cold’, close readings can never suffice, not where there is such wide-ranging and complex interdisciplinary knowledge at play, which is essential for a proper understanding of the context, the implications of the style of writing, and the lifestyle described. Of relevance are both the intra-textuality between the various texts recorded and translated by Bleek and Lloyd, and their intertextuality with historical, anthropological and archaeological texts. There is also a need for comparative and intertextual readings of the material together with the recordings of other authors, such as Von Wielligh’s Boesmanstories (1919‑1921) and Marais’ Dwaalstories en ander vertellings (1927). At the interface with orality, South African literature is replete with a wide spectrum of recorded indigenous knowledge emanating from contact with the /Xam, albeit never with such crisp scientific methodology as that imposed by Wilhelm Bleek at the start of the Cape Town-based project – and albeit widely spread over many oeuvres.

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Conclusion The ‘literary turn’ in /Xam studies calls for meticulous, careful and, above all, contextual rereading of this vast body of work, spread over many volumes; a rereading that is intertextual, interdisciplinary and conscious of its own interpretative and mediative nature. This small excursion into the uintjie-song, and the full interdisciplinary context thereof, makes adamantly clear how interdisciplinary study can bring about a fuller understanding of indigenous knowledge and culture.

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5 The Bushman in our consciousness Introduction In De Indiaan in ons bewustzijn. De ontmoeting van de Oude met de Nieuwe wereld (which translates as ‘The Indian In Our Consciousness. The Meeting of the Old and New Worlds’, 1986), Ton Lemaire accentuates the fact that in the process of describing other cultures, researchers simultaneously also reveal their views of their own culture: It appears as if we, whenever we attempt to determine the nature of Indian cultures, inevitably really – whether we are wanting to or not – are also at the same time occupying ourselves with a discussion of economic, political and ideological dimensions of our own culture. (Ton Lemaire, 1986, my translation)

Thus, Lévi-Strauss’s study of the South American inhabitants of tropical forests, Tristes Tropiques, offers a remarkable insight into his aversion to aspects of French ‘civilisation’. Taking Lemaire’s insight as a point of departure, this chapter focuses specifically on Afrikaans poetry and what it reveals of the ideological perspective of the poets when creatively engaging with Bushman orality and culture. South African history is characterised by a long colonial history of guerrilla warfare between the Bushmen and Cape Dutch settlers. (Afrikaans gradually developed from Cape Dutch.) This long conflict ended in what some scholars have described as genocide of the indigenous people. Between 1701 and 1792 the violence between these two groups had not shown any sign of abatement (Theal, 1888). By means of the notorious commando system instituted by the government these “true aborigines” and “sole proprietors of the country” (Stow, 1905) were eventually pushed off their earlier hunting terrains, and taken into bondage or annihilated (Van der Merwe, 1937; Penn, 1995). Against this backdrop of violent colonial history, the focus of numerous Afrikaans poems written between 1896 and 2002 on the Bushmen and their culture, acquires a rather ironical bearing. Perhaps the answer to why the Bushmen are still a subject of guilt as well as fascination to Afrikaans poets, is also partially answered at the end of Karel Schoeman’s novel, Verkenning (which translates as ‘Reconnaissance’, 1996). When the elegiac voice of the last surviving Bushman woman, living as captive servant amongst white farmers – 111

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strangers to her – finally takes over from the male focaliser at the end of the novel, it is hard not to read into it the ideological identification of the author. Reminiscing on her lost world of the early 1800s, from her bed under the farmer’s kitchen table, this nameless character’s indirect interior monologue clearly suggests a consciousness in the 20th century Afrikaans author of the imminent destruction and sealed fate of his language and his culture.

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1 Pringle, Neser and Du Toit: Enlightenment ideas versus colonising attitudes Long before MH Neser and DP du Toit’s poetical debate of 1896 in Ons Klyntji between a fictionalised ‘last Bushman’ and a white man, the liberal Christian-humanist Thomas Pringle (1789‑1834) published his defiant ‘Song of the Wild Bushman’ in 1825. He presented the Bushman as “lord of the Desert Land” who refused to surrender in the face of the odds, fighting the encroaching settlers: Thus I am lord of the Desert Land, And will not leave my bounds, To crouch beneath the Christian’s hand, And kennel with his hounds: To be a hound, and watch the flocks, For the brown Serpent of the Rocks His den doth yet retain. (Pereira & Chapman, 1989:11-12.  Originally in African Poems, 1834)

In ‘The Bushman’, written in sonnet form, he suggests that the conflict ends with the death of the Bushman in his […] secret lair, Surrounded […by] echoes [of ] the thundering gun, And the wild shriek of anguish and despair!  (Pereira & Chapman, 1989:69)

By the time Neser and Du Toit were engaged in their poetical debate, the discovery of gold and diamonds had recently occurred, the interior was purportedly ‘tamed’ and industrialisation was well under way. ‘Di Klaagliid fan di laaste Boesman’ (‘The Lament of the Last Bushman’) by Neser corresponds with the idea of dejection in Pringle’s sonnet. He introduces the reader to a last desperate survivor of the anticolonisation struggle: “Myn hele nasi’s uitgeroei,/ Ek is die laaste een” (“My whole 112

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nation has been destroyed/ I am the last one”). The narrator reflects on former good times, its demise and the loss of land, relatives and animals for the hunters. What remains, is an occupied country that’s worth nothing (“niks meer werd”). Suicide is his last option: “Daar stroom di Grootrifiir, en nou/ Neem hy my sé toe weg!” (“There flows the Great River, and now/ It takes me away to the sea!”). Pheiffer has convincingly pointed out that Neser never attempted “to represent or to imitate the language” of the Bushmen. It is much more a literary-articulated “condemnation of the colonial conqueror’s unsympathetic and remorseless behaviour towards a wild group of nature’s people and towards defenceless animals and the flora of the region” (Pheiffer in Coetzee et al., 1988:137). Neser’s liberal-humanist strain corresponds closely to the ideological viewpoint of Pringle as regards the Bushmen and their extirpation. That Neser wrote in Afrikaans renders the poem even more striking, given the extermination commandos of the then very recent past. The crassness of DP du Toit’s polemic ‘Antwoord fan di Duusman an di Boesman’ (‘Reply of the White Man to the Bushman’) is obvious: “Jou hééle nasi’s uitgeroei/ Ek is daarom so bly” (“Your whole nation has been wiped out/ I am so happy about that”). Du Toit represents the so-called forces of civilisation: “Di flaktes het toen woes gelê,/ En nou is dit bebou” (“Then the plains were lying waste,/ And now they are tilled and built up” – English translations by myself, unless stated otherwise). Against the background of the post-1994 political changes, and especially mindful of the burning land issues, his provocative colonialist attitude appears to be filled with irony: Di wiil het nou gedraai. Ons boer met wingerdstok, met graan, en fé, Hiir fan di Kaap tot an di Sambesé Ons het nou frede, ons het rus, Nou kan ons saai en maai. […] Laat trek mar na di sé! (The wheel has now turned. We farm with vineyard, corn and cattle, Here from the Cape to the Zambezi We have peace now, we have rest, Now we can sow and reap […] So move on to the sea!)

Pheiffer (1988:138) has drawn attention to the fact that the poem by Du Toit “offers no trace of any nuanced view” and that “the white narrator assumes an accusatory, superior attitude […including] typical white, racist prejudices.” The stereotype of the callous Afrikaans supremacist as the colonial position is affirmed in this poem. The poem by Neser is more nuanced, even prophetic on an ecological level: 113

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Ons bome en bos, waar ons so trots op was, Is weg, jy siin nou net karro en harde gras […] di land is niks meer werd. Daar’s niks as plaag op plaag. (‘Our trees and bush, our former pride, Are gone, only barrenness and coarse grass remain [… ] this land is now worth nothing There is nothing but pest upon pest’.)

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2 Leipoldt (1880-1947) and Marais (1871-1936): negative stereotyping and the exotic other Leipoldt’s long poem, ‘In ou Booi se pondok’ (‘In Old Booi’s Shack’) appeared after the disruption of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), which had ushered in the 20th century in South Africa. It runs to almost five pages in the Collected Poems of Leipoldt (1980:16-21) and was eventually published in 1911.1 The white narrator’s monologue, addressing Old Booi, raises the matter of the old farm labourer’s huntergatherer ancestry. In the poem, Leipoldt’s reflection on the nature of Old Booi’s people stems from around the turn of the 19th century. In the Leipoldt biography (Kannemeyer 1999:61), Old Booi is portrayed as extremely old, an avid gardener of sweet pears and tasty cabbages who the poet (1884-1892) often visited as a youngster to listen to his stories of the past. In much the same storytelling situation that Von Wielligh describes when he was a child, the storytelling happens around Old Booi’s fire, while drinking ‘gho’ coffee, made from wild almond beans, brewed by Old Booi.2 The old man’s father was a Bushman. What the poem does not clarify, but the biography makes clear, is that the speaker in the poem is the voice of a young person, probably in his teenage years. The Leipoldt family arrived in Clanwilliam in 1884, when he was almost four years old and left to his own devices for much of the time while his beloved missionary-pastor father was visiting his various congregation members on farms far out in the district. His emotionally distant mother suffered from inherited psychological instability and had sporadic outbursts of vicious temper. By his mother’s decree he was schooled at home, yet he lacked a stable home environment and was left very much to his own devices. Most of this time he spent collecting plants, animals and stones in the veld. In 1895, at the age of fifteen, he was allowed to go on a botany collecting expedition through Namaqualand and Bushmanland with the team of German botanist, Rudolf Schlechter. At night, he listened to the adults

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reading Goethe and Schiller, or discussing world history and the habits of insects (Kannemeyer 1999:89-90). The young colonial speaker in the poem in part indirectly reflects the late-19thcentury ideological perceptions of the Bushmen, gained from the people around him in that small rural village of Clanwilliam near the Cederberg range, erstwhile home of the /Xam. On the subject of ideological perspective, Robert Gordon offers insight into the ‘politics of labelling Bushmen’: When we were lounging with a smug sense of ethnocentric superiority in the Victorian era, we saw Bushmen as the epitome of savagery. But later, in the turmoil of the 1960s, when students were asking serious questions about the nature of Western society, social scientists reified the egalitarianism and generosity of the Bushmen, virtues seen to be seriously lacking in Western society. Bushmen became the signifier, a romance with alterity; if Bushmen did not exist, we would surely have invented them [...] what has intrigued recent commentators on Bushmen, is how dramatically their image has changed over the past few decades from that of ‘brutal savages’ to ‘harmless people’ [...] or in the case of Namibian Bushmen, within the space of sixty years from ‘vermin’ to ‘beautiful people’ [...] the changing image appears to be more the product of the increased alienation/urbanisation of the writer than a portrayal of the actual situation [...] the stereotypes held by farmers on the frontier zone have not changed that much. (Gordon, 2000:250252; my italics)

The main narrative in ‘Ou Booi’ is a description of an extremely cold winter’s night on which the young white speaker finds refuge in the aged man’s shack, next to his warm hearth. He asks to hear stories from the old man of olden times, pondering whether or not it was better to be alive then. The main theme from beginning to end is humanity’s pain and suffering throughout history (“life seems so bitter, and the future equally sour”). The possible causes of the demise of a whole people are considered, such as the fact that the /Xam are becoming extinct: “Are we to be blamed that these people/ perished like grass?” and “Is it God’s will/ that a nation should die, or only Nature’s whim?” These questions are abandoned as the night gets colder, and the old man is bid goodnight (Leipoldt 1980/:20). (It is likely that this poem is based on a visit to the old man after Leipoldt had returned in 1895 from his Bushmanland trip with Schlechter and his team, when he was fresh from the consciousness-raising discussions he was exposed to on world history. The poem was written sometime between 1895 and 1897, when he was only sixteen or seventeen years old.) Yet, when asking after Old Booi’s Bushman father, the speaker also offers a negative stereotype, stressing his physical unattractiveness (“not good-looking/ With a behind that overflows/ like a sagging mattress”) and his bad qualities (“shifty and a no-good”). The speaker accentuates the fact that the Bushman belongs to the species of Homo 115

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sapiens (Leipoldt, 1980:20), which by implication indicates the nature of colonial discourse at the time. An elegiac tone accompanies the realisation of their becoming extinct, and a suggestion of the Boers’ complicity in their fate is implied: Is dit ons skuld dat dié volkies Is vergaan soos droё gras? [...] Is dit God die Heer se wil Dat ’n nasie uit sal sterwe, Of maar die Natuur se gril? (Are we to be blamed that these folk Have perished like dry grass? [...] Is it the Lord God’s will For a people to die out, Or simply Nature’s whim?)

The nonchalance with which the fact is accepted of ‘a whole people disappearing’ as being either religiously or ecologically determined excludes the culpability of the collective Afrikaans ‘we’: Maar wat lol ons met die Boesmans, Wat tog almal heidens was? Hulle moes maar self geweet het Om hul toekoms op te pas. (But why should we bother with the Bushmen, Who were heathens to a man? They themselves should have known To look after their future.)

We are the white Christians, they the dark heathens, and with this equation historical complicity was wiped from the table. From a historical context this stanza contains considerable irony about the Afrikaners, whose future a century later seems equally precarious, as suggested through Rosa van Lier’s perspective in ‘Kinders van die Mantis, gemasker’ (‘Children of Mantis, Disguised’). This 1986 poem is dedicated to Von Wielligh and Karel Schoeman: ons groet in stom verbasing die steentyd mite-mens Mán, van die Khoi-San. Ons groet ons broer in die kring van die vuur. 116

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Sal óns toekoms sy dans voltooi in die sterre-uur? (we hail in dumb surprise the Stone-Age myth-man Man, of the Khoi-San. We hail our brother in the circle of the fire. Will our future complete its dance in the starlit hour?)

(Van Lier, 1986:14)

Involved from 1906 to 1916 in natural historical research in the remote Waterberg region of the Transvaal, Eugène Marais published his Dwaalstories (‘Wandering Tales’) in Die Boervrou (1921) and later 1927 as Dwaalstories en ander vertellings (‘Wandering Tales and Other Stories’). What is striking about his introduction to the collection is the cultural sensitivity of his perception when he describes their oral tradition thus: “Bushman language and literature – a literature of absent letters.” In this original introduction, reprinted in Versamelde werke II (Marais, 1984b:1285-1287), and including a 1913 pencil drawing by Erich Mayer of the raconteur, “Old Hendrik, the roaming Bushman who appeared every now and then on the farm Rietfontein”, Marais emphasises the fact that he has heard “the wandering tales in their original form from him.” The collection was reprinted twice in its original format, the last time in 1937. According to the publisher Koos Human, in a personal communication to Hennie Aucamp, the altered text that was published in 1959 had been edited by J du P Scholtz.3 Many illustrations and a glossary of Bushman words were omitted from the 1959 edition and replaced by Katrine Harries’ illustrations. The title was reduced to Dwaalstories, and the book contained only four Bushman stories (a fifth had been left out). In all likelihood, based on its textual history and genesis, these poems and narrations are to a lesser extent of Marais’ making and to a greater degree exemplify a (mediated) syncretic Bushman indigenous oral tradition. A decisive clue to the origin of the stories lies in the name ‘Nagali’ for the trickster who sends her underlings to waylay the fast young runner, Little Reed, the protagonist in the first story, ‘Klein Riet-alleen-in-die-Roerkuil’. Ngali or Ngwali (Frazer 1920:394), a higher being with supernatural powers, was central to indigenous belief systems in the Transvaal, especially amongst Sesotho and hybrid Bushmen groups, such as the Masele or Vaalpense (people of mixed Bushman and Black descent) living there (see detail in chapter 2 under ‘Bushman stories, page 63). In the poems ‘Hart-van-die-Dagbreek’ (‘Heart-of-the-Dawn’), ‘Die dans van die reёn’ (‘The Dance of the Rain’), ‘Die woestynlewerkie’ (‘The Little Desert Lark’) and ‘Die 117

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towenares’ (‘The Sorceress’) the world view of the now extinct hunter-gatherers comes across with an exceptional poetical impact. ‘Die towenares’ especially, became one of the most influential poems in the Afrikaans canon, when Merwe Scholtz focused on it in his 1950 dissertation, Sistematiese verslag van ’n stilistiese analise (Eugène Marais: “Die towenares”) (‘A Systematic Report On a Stylistic Analysis: {Eugène Marais: ‘The Sorceress’}), and also through the modernised recreation thereof by DJ Opperman in his poem, ‘Pandora’, in Dolosse (1963). An intertext of ‘Die dans van die reёn’, apparently previously unnoticed, may be found in the manuscript of Die siel van die mier (1938) (The Soul of the White Ant). In his dissertation, ‘’n Ondersoek na die aard van en opvattings oor Eugène N Marais se wetenskaplike prosa’ (2001) (‘An Investigation Into the Nature of and Opinions Concerning the Scientific Prose of Eugène N Marais’), Johannes Lodewyk Marais explains how the interdisciplinary activities of Marais acted upon one another. The passage in the manuscript describes the reaction in nature to the flight of termites after rain has fallen in central Africa, as observed by Marais (1984a:56, my italics): Within a few minutes the surface of the earth is alive; insects and animals come storming along to the feast. From deep within the earth frogs, snakes, agamas and lizards come crawling. How all of them receive the tidings, I know not. Even the tortoise wakes up and emerges rushing forward. All manner of insects and bugs – giant crickets, beetles, earwigs, spiders, scorpions, are teeming in the grass. Everyone has received an invitation to the huge meal.

The idea of a special occasion (“feast,” “huge meal”) appears in Marais’ poem as the farmyard ‘wedding’ to which each and every one has been invited by his or her sister, the rain. The roused insects are given poetical form in “die kleinvolk diep onder die grond” (“the small folk from deep underground”) who can hear “die sleep/ van haar voete” (“the dragging/ of her feet”) approaching as they begin to sing softly. That here we are clearly not dealing with a randomly chosen topic for poetical treatment, but with particular observed imagery from nature, is corroborated by the intertext with all its natural historical detail from the manuscript of Die siel van die mier. When reading the remainder of Marais’ fictional oeuvre, though, the reader is involuntarily struck by the way it differs radically from the character of Dwaalstories. The other stories in his oeuvre are mainly realistic, portraying a naïve form of characterisation, missing the enigmatic poetical or fantasy element of Dwaalstories, as well as being inclined toward the ephemeral. Van Melle pointed out this anomaly as early as 1953: There is [...] reason to believe that the stories have not been significantly altered by Marais, as it seems unlikely to me that he could have done that without it being detected during an attentive reading. That he could have composed these narrations himself, seems even more implausible to me, because Marais was not an artist capable

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of writing great prose, and the two narrations at hand are so masterful, that I doubt whether he ever could have been able to produce stories of such high artistic merit. (The stories I am referring to are ‘Klein Riet-alleen-in-die-Roerkuil’, and ‘Die Reёnbul’ {Van Melle, 1953:41; my italics})

3 Opperman: internalisation and common humanity DH Steenberg convincingly demonstrated that Opperman used ‘Die towenares’ by Marais as ur text in ‘Pandora’: Pandora

Wat maak die vrou wat ’n uil baar? Sy wag nie meer vir die koms van haar man nie, Sy skakel nie meer die wit emaljestoof aan nie. Die foon lui tevergeefs; Sy hoor nie meer die ander kinders nie; Saans is haar vervolgverhaal dood. Niemand glimlag in die huis meer nie Om mooi woorde te praat. Sy hoor net die stem van dié kind alleen… ‘Moet ek hom bring na my bors Of met klam watte versmoor?’ (Pandora

What does the woman do who gives birth to an owl? She no longer waits for her husband to arrive, She no longer turns on the white enamel stove. The phone rings in vain; She no longer hears the other children; In the evening her radio serial is dead. No one smiles in the house anymore When saying kind words. She only hears the voice of this child… “Should I take him to my breast or smother him with moist cotton wool?”)

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Wat word van die meisie wat altyd alleen bly? Sy wag nie meer vir die kom van die jagters nie; Sy maak nie meer die vuur van swart-doringhout nie. Die wind waai verby haar ore; Sy hoor nie meer die danslied nie; Die stem van die storieverteller is dood. G’neen roep haar van ver nie Om mooi woorde te praat. Sy hoor net die stem van die wind alleen. En die wind treur altyd Om hy alleen is. (The Sorceress

What becomes of the girl who is always alone? She no longer waits for the hunters to return; She no longer makes fires with black thornwood. The wind blows past her ears; She no longer hears the dancing song; The voice of the storyteller is dead. No one calls to her from afar To talk sweet words. All she can hear is the voice of the wind. And the wind is always mournful Because he’s alone.)

It was suggested by Steenberg that by using the title ‘Pandora’ Opperman was contrasting antique Greek civilisation with the ‘primitive’ South African milieu. His poem carries “an intense reflection on mankind’s fate in contrast to the pointedly grim contents and serious tone of ‘Die towenares’. According to Steenberg, in ‘Pandora’ one finds a view of “man’s ironical participation in his own downfall” (Steenberg, 1969:68-69). And so this text is linked to the mounting cultural pessimism in the Opperman oeuvre of the time. Compare the idea in ‘Vuurbees’ (‘Fire Bull’) of man as both skilled creator and dangerous destroyer. It is also noticeable that the position of the Bushmen in Opperman’s parodic reworking no longer constitutes the Bushman as ‘other’ in opposition to ‘us’; rather, via an internalisation of the data and a modernising of the position of the Bushman girl in her eventual loneliness, it presents a levelling and identification of the two situations. ‘Ecce homo’ (‘behold the man’) emerges as the message through the intertextual connection between these two poems.

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At this point, for the first time ever in Afrikaans poetry, one finds the complete dissolution of the intense ethnographic focus on the Bushman as ‘other.’ However, it could also be argued that Marais had already succeeded in ‘The sorceress’ to postulate the situation of the girl’s loneliness as a universal condition humaine. But Marais still placed her within particular natural surroundings and a primitive sphere. Opperman completes the circle by modernising the milieu. A few years earlier, in ‘Oud-digter’ (‘Old poet’) (in Blom en baaierd 1956:39), Opperman utilised similar material to portray the frustrations of writer’s block: Die panne is nie opgedroog. Die spoor van die grootwild het ek ’n rukkie net verloor en leef intussen van die enkel reël wat springend ritsel om die oog en oor. (The pans have not dried up. Tracks of the big game are only briefly lost surviving now on the single line that rustling, twitches between eye and ear.)

Although the title suggests writer’s block in an old poet unable to write, the ending suggests the visions of a shaman (“seeing that which they cannot see”), experiencing hallucinations (“mirages/over my Kalahari’s of white paper”). The poet is equated with an old hunter-gatherer and shaman stoking an evil fire, turning steadily more frenzied from smoking “wilde-dagga” (Leonotus leonurus).4 In the practice of shamanism, substances that induce euphoria, and monotonous music and dancing, are well-known aids with which to achieve an altered state of consciousness, and through which the spiritual world may be reached. Ironically, the narrator calls himself an old poet, a has-been. He lacks inspiration and visions for writing again. The title strongly suggests an autobiographical element, and like the shaman reaching out to the spiritual domain aided by the lion’s tale or wild marijuana, Opperman’s excessive alcohol consumption as a euphoric was no secret. In contrast to the title, the final stanza carries another view: Doller […] dan sterker as die jongeres gespier, sien ek wat hulle nie kan sien: die koel rivier die gemsbok en die reënvoël […] opgeefselend oor my Kalahari’s wit papier. (More frenzied […] then stronger than the muscled youth, I see what they can’t see: the cool river, the tall oryx and the rain bird […] like mirages over my Kalahari’s white paper.) 121

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Entrancement, concomitant with hallucinations and visions, certainly did occur in the mind of the “old/ex-poet”. His “white paper” will soon be covered with images, like the shaman with his hallucinations of river, oryx and rain bird. According to the shamanistic theory of Lewis-Williams (2002) about Bushman rock art, the artist would paint his pictures afterwards, once he had returned from the state of trance: images of visions from the spiritual domain painted on the rock face. Opperman’s experience of writer’s block (eventually giving way to inspiration) is utilised as a basic material, with the Bushman images as a ‘vehicle’, the raw material for metaphorising. In a way that parallels the shaman, the poet-narrator gives permanence to his visions on paper in verse form. Opperman internalised knowledge of Bushman culture and shamanism and used it for his own purposes. This poem also calls to mind ‘Die dans van die reёn’ (‘The Dance of the Rain’) by Marais (through the intense thirst – hallucinating a “cool river” in the desert). A subtle intertextual dialogue with his predecessor is discernible, but in a poem deepening down into the essence of the autobiographical subject’s own writerly, Western apprehensions. This process of internalisation is also noticeable in Opperman’s quatrain, ‘Skutter’ (‘Archer’), from Engel uit die klip (‘An Angel Out of Stone’, 1950): Ons sien ’n eland stadig nader kom maar wei as trop rustig met hom; dan tref ’n pyl en weet ons weer die dood wei tussen ons vermom. (We see an eland slowly coming closer but grazing with the tranquil herd then an arrow strikes and again we know that death is grazing, disguised among us.)

4 Common humanity, art for art’s sake, historiography and trance Ernst van Heerden, Boerneef, Barend J Toerien, Lucas Malan, Johan van Wyk and Hennie Aucamp have all written poems on Bushman rock art, the rock art being the one sign and constant reminder in the Southern African landscape of the absent Bushmen, their disappearance brought about through the process of colonial history. In Van Heerden’s ‘Die jagter’ (‘The Hunter’) in Die klop (which translates as ‘The Knock’) (1961:18), he links the modern “violent period” to two fixed, visual

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representations of violence, a painting of an English fox hunt and a Bushman rock painting inside a cave: ek loop van vlaktes na berge, en in ’n grot met opgetrekte skouerskaal staan ek by wande waar grotesk die leёrskare van vroeёr tyd ontplooi: geel mensies, elande, ’n wit volstruis, en ’n gifpylreёn in oker-rooi; ek grabbel in vlermuismis en snuffel waar die luiperdruik nog vars is […] (I walk from plains to mountains, and in a cave with bare shoulders raised I stand at rock faces where grotesquely the host of an earlier time is deployed: small yellow people, eland, a white ostrich, and a rain of poisoned arrows in ochre-red; I scramble in bat droppings and sniff the fresh smell of leopards […])

The poem concludes with a reference to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle: Later [...] [...] met die lem van tande ontbloot, gevaarlik-snel sal ek my eie spoor oor alle hindernisse bloedhond-seker agtervolg. (Later [...] [...] with the blade of fangs bared, dangerously fast and bloodhound-sure, against all obstacles I will track my own spoor.) 123

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Through the action of tracking the speaker identifies himself with “the host of an earlier time,” although his tracking is enigmatically and paradoxically focused on his “own spoor”. Apparently the tracking down of oneself also suggests a universalised view of humanity: the instigator of violence and war is one and the same species suffering the consequences. The poem’s motto, from the poet Roland Holst, confirms this interpretation: “zal de jager prooi worden?” (“will the hunter become the hunted?”). In this universalising linking of the “host of an earlier time” to modern times, Van Heerden connects with Opperman’s similar literary technique. In ‘By Stompiesfontein’ (‘At Stompiesfontein’), Boerneef (1897-1967)5 describes the hard work of traversing a pass over Swartrug mountain. He is seemingly unimpressed by the rather rough, naively executed Stompiesfontein rock paintings,6 close to this mountain pass between Ceres and the Tankwa Karoo: By Stompiesfontein op Swartrug in ’n grot het Boesmans geteken soos Boesmans maar teken ’n pêruiter waens pêre en mense tog wat virie oog op Stompiesfontein mooi skillerasies vir Stompiesfontein maar vir Hotom se Steilte te inskottelvrot jy moet gedamasseer wees jy moet versukkereer wees wejy in jou hartenharspan wejy nou goed hoe jy moet wees vir hierie Hotom se hotagterkry annersonie ou boeta annersonie jong … jy? (In a cave on Swartrug at Stompiesfontein Bushmen drew as Bushmen always draw a horseman wagons horses and people so, something for the eye at Stompiesfontein pretty paintings for Stompiesfontein but not strong enough for Hotom’s Hill for which you must be dressed for which you must be insured do you know in your brains do you know now how good you should be for this Hotom’s Hill of suffering otherwise brother otherwise mate … you will?) 

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The focus of the poem is the strength, the real muscle power, required to negotiate the steep incline, trekking with sheep and wagon, over these passes and over Hotom’s Hill. The two steepest passes are Katbakkies and Skittery. This last pass, Skittery, literally means the pass where your bowels will open with fear, from which the hidden expletive is derived, hiding just before the question mark at the end of the poem (‘shit’). On a metaphysical level this struggle could be read as an image of man’s troublesome course through life. However, his description of the painting is important because of the fact that the initial meeting of Bushmen and settlers had been captured here on the rock face. The subject of the painting carries semiotic references to the invasion of the Bushmen domain by the settlers, and the revolutionary passage of time: “a horseman wagons horses and people”.

Figure 22 Stompiesfontein rock paintings. Photo: Claus Riding.

Boerneef ’s ideological view of the rock art is disparaging (“Bushmen drew as Bushmen always draw”) and clearly the site does not impress him; rather, the speaker is focused on the strength required and the sheer physical endurance necessary to ascend the extremely steep slope for the yearly sheep trek to spend the winter in the Tankwa Karoo. His remark suggests a familiarity with these rock paintings as a part of the Cederberg landscape, and an accepting, unreflecting casualness about the artists. His focus is the ‘here and now’ of the farm inhabitant’s struggle against nature. Worth 125

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noting, however, is that he writes about the Bushmen in a way that suggests the hunter-gatherers are still around and making drawings: “Bushmen drew as Bushmen always draw”. Of a different order with regard to rock art is the poem by Barend Toerien (1921-2009) published in 1963, ‘Grot naby Winterhoek’ (‘Cave near Winterhoek’). The title refers to the picturesque cave above a large mountain pool with a natural waterfall situated in The Hell near Porterville. He dedicated the poem to his one-time mountaineering friends, Jan Rabie and Ken Parker. In the first three stanzas the poem describes a series of Bushman paintings situated in this natural amphitheatre (ironically named ‘The Hell’). In reality, it is a truly paradisal place, especially because it is very difficult to negotiate the extremely steep rock incline at its only point of entry and exit: ’n Olifant oorheers die toneel; bokke vlug in allerhande houdinge; maar hul hoekige bokspringe is weg van die mensies, witgeel. Want jagters staan klaar met hul boё, hul kokers tot oorlopens vol; albei kante gereed vir hul rol en passe in pastorale oorloё. Die mans staan selfs wipperig driebeen, die vroutjies se tuitborste dreig, al gryns agter hul ’n groot krygsman vanuit ’n bobbejaankopbeen. (An elephant dominates the scene; antelopes flee in all sorts of ways; but their angular leaps are away from the white-yellow, little people. For hunters stand ready with their bows, their quivers full to overflowing; both sides are prepared for their roles and parts in a pastoral war. The men stand restlessly three-legged, the pointed breasts of the little women are a threat, though behind them a great warrior grimaces from inside the skull of a baboon.)

The final stanza suggests the narrator’s theoretical view of rock art: Geskiedenis staan hier te lees, Deur ’n klein geel hand neergeskryf: 126

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Ons diere en ons is verdryf, maar só was dit eens gewees. (History is here to be read, written down by a small yellow hand: we and our animals were driven out, yet this is how it once was).

This interpretation stands in sharp contrast to Boerneef ’s casual acceptance of the “pretty paintings” (drawn “as Bushmen always draw”). For Boerneef ’s speaker the rock art site is a part of the landscape, and their artists’ presence enduring, but for Toerien the rock art site evokes a history of annihilation (“we and our animals were driven out”). The poem implies the death of a people, and spells it out: History is here to be read, written down by a small yellow hand:

In the final lines the extinct /Xam are speaking: we and our animals were driven out, but this is how it once was.

Through this technique of giving a voice to the First People, the Afrikaans speaker quite obviously presents us with his own interpretation of the rock paintings. David Lewis-Williams’ survey of the various approaches to rock art (2002) is captivating. At first, the explanation for rock art was based on “aesthetic sensibility” or “art for art’s sake” (such as Boerneef ’s narrator), then “totemism and sympathetic magic” (to paint an eland has a symbolic purpose, that of hunters obtaining supernatural power over the eland in order to ensure a successful hunt). The structuralist approach is based on binary oppositions (male/female, life/death). However, Lewis-Williams (2002:67) references Gombrich, the art historian: Gombrich has pointed out, pictures have the power to move, but they in fact convey very little information: because people read pictures in different ways images always remain semantically equivocal [...] So whilst the Upper Palaeolithic images may have sometimes functioned as mnemonics, their capacity to store or convey information was limited. (2002:67; my italics)

Lewis-Williams holds that “we need to explain art in social terms – how it functioned in society, not simply how it promoted survival” (2002:67). According to his wellknown trance theory, rock art is a concrete by-product of shamanistic visionary trances, tangible instances that reveal the proximity of the spirit domain: “[The] locus of the spirit world [was] built above ground” (2002:286). The paintings, therefore, are the result of the entire metaphysical-social plexus of a community and proof of their 127

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contact with the supernatural. Rock art mostly does not function as historiography; rather, the paintings provide a distinct semiotic pointer to the in absentia presence of the exterminated /Xam. Lucas Malan sees rock art as historiographical in Kaartehuis (1990) (‘House of Cards’): Klipskrif 2

Voorgangers op hierdie kontinent het naas kalbas en elandvel ook klip gebruik om te formeer: gevang in aardpastel, ’n tafereel van jagparty en wydingsritueel rondom ’n vuur. Sonderlinge kontingent is dié figure uit ’n veerpenseel wat dansend ’n geskiedenis beskryf. Maar nog vreemder was die insident toe daar in Brandberg se distrik ’n vrou van heelwat ligtere pigment die boog opneem en teen die klip met skrede soos Penthesilea s’n die swaar graniet net ligvoets prik […] (Rock-Writing 2

Predecessors on this continent aside of the gourd and eland hide also used stone to shape: captured in earthen pastel, a picture of a hunting-party and ritual of purification around a fire. Singularly contingent are these figures from an artist’s feather brush describing history through dance. But still stranger was the incident when in the Brandberg district a woman of much paler pigment took up her bow and against the stone with strides like that of Penthesilea lightly pierced the heavy granite […])

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Unlike Toerien’s narrator, who speaks in a romanticising way of the “white-yellow, little people” and their diminutive “little women”, the narrator in ‘Rock-Writing 2’ calls them “Predecessors on this continent”. However, though ostensibly less patronising, this description enfeebles the historical context, as both Bushmen and settlers were present during the same era (from the 17th century to the end of the 19th century). Malan also regards the rock art as a description of “history,” but sadly his information in the second stanza is quite erroneous: the “White Lady of the Brandberg,” as the Abbé Henri Breuil called the painting in the 1940’s, happens to be neither female nor white, as was shown by subsequent research. .

In ‘History lesson’ by George Weideman (1988:14-15) (in Uit hierdie grys verblyf, which translates as ‘From This Grey Sojourn’), the narrator expresses uncertainty about the function of rock art: in veelbewoё tye, word gesê, was “Boesmans” volop hier. bosjesmannen. soos karoobossies. soos kareebome. soos elande, deur voorsate geteken of gegrif tot elke dier wat ten dode opgeskryf was, pryk teen asgrou wande, ter nagedagtenis of bloot ter stawing. of om te versier. wie weet? al wat geskiedenis wou leer, of wat ek kan onthou, of wat in gedenkboeke staan, was dat hul diewe was; ook: hul vermoё om, nes kamele, dagreise uit te hou teen dors, om dan, bekoms gedrink uit kakamas se kuile en sloepe, die rooftog dansend in oёnskou te neem. g’n verwantskap met jan konterdans. gedigte is verhewe bo die werklikheid, het literatore my geleer, en basta. vandag nog is – uit reisjoernale – die “klein geel mensies” ewe seer aan my bekend as jagters en nomads, hoogstens kuriosa, burleske prentjies van voor- en agterstewe [...] (in turbulent times, it is said, ‘Bushmen’ were common here. bosjesmannen. like karoo bushes. like karee trees. like the eland, sketched or engraved by ancestors until every animal signed up for death, standing out on ashen grey walls, in memory or merely as confirmation. or to decorate. who knows? all we can learn from history, or what I can remember, or printed in commemorative volumes, is that they were thieves; also: their ability, like camels, to endure thirst on daylong trips and to then, with bellies filled from the pools and gullies of kakamas, celebrate their raid as they danced. 129

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no kinship with jan konterdans. poetry is exalted above reality, literary scholars taught me, and that’s that. even today – from travel journals – the ‘little yellow people’ are known to me as much as hunters and nomads, curiosa at best, burlesque pictures of full-frontals and behinds [...])

Three possible functions of rock art are formulated (“in memory”; “as confirmation”; “to decorate”) but the brief series ends in uncertainty: “who knows?” The poem ends, after a lengthy poetical survey of myths and misconceptions regarding the Bushmen, with Bushman mythology itself: êrens met die vlug het bidsprinkaan vir maan uit die oog verloor. en maan is nou nog soek. (somewhere during the flight praying mantis lost sight of moon. and moon has been missing ever since.)

These closing lines, written from the perspective and milieu of the Bushmen, are peculiarly effective, and attain metaphysical power, in contrast to the preceding discourse of pejorative misconceptions. In ‘Boesmans teken pylskerp’ (‘Bushmen Draw Arrow-Sharp’) by Johan van Wyk (1978:28) one finds an art-historical catalogue of paintings representing food and drink, commencing with the Bushmen: Boesmans teken pylskerp teen grotmure die bokke van hul drome. In die Rococo lê fisante en hase aan die voete van die jagter [...] (Bushmen draw the arrowsharp buck of their dreams on cave walls. During the Rococo pheasant and rabbits lay at the feet of the hunter [...])

It is clear that Van Wyk was acquainted with Lewis-Williams’ shamanistic theory on the origin of rock art: “Bushmen draw the arrow-/ sharp buck of their dreams”. These visual hallucinations of animals are called “zoopsia” (Lewis-Williams, 2002:272). As in Opperman’s ‘Pandora’ and ‘Oud-digter’, the Bushman dream-buck of Van Wyk are also part of the condition humaine, expressed in the prayer of the final line: “Give us today our daily bread.” Van Wyk also makes no ethnographical distinction between the hunter-gatherers (as other) and ‘us’, but treats everything human portrayed in 130

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painting on an equal level. Thus, he indirectly emphasises Lewis-Williams’s perspective regarding Palaeolithic art: [...] they created a new kind of society, a new set of social distinctions. Socially altered consciousness, cosmology, religion, political influence and image-making (the forerunner of ‘art’) all came together in the sort of society that we consider fully modern. (Lewis-Williams 2002:285)

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5 Re-creations ‘in search of lost time’: Fouché, Deacon, Riekert and Müller In the work of many Afrikaans poets one finds a re-creation of ‘lost time’ through a simulated voice or specific description. Thus, there is Abraham Fouché’s Boesmanverse (1972, “with pen drawings by Townley Johnson”) as well as Weeskinders van die hemelgod. Boesmanverse (‘Orphans of the Sky God. Bushman Poems’) (1967, with a glossary). Striking in Boesmanverse is Fouché’s (1972:25) ‘Sterwenslied van die kraanvoёl’ (‘Swan Song of the Blue Crane’): Dit was ’n sonblink splinterklip wat in my skeur toe die vlam spring, my hele lyf vol gate steek en my bene in my breek. Ek roep jou, Ghoerob, Ek roep, roep Ghoerob! Dit is donkerder as nag. (It was a glittering stone splinter that tore into me as the flame jumped, my whole body pierced with holes and within, my bones broken. I call you, Ghoerob, I call, call Ghoerob! This is darker than night.)

This poem plays with the /Xam concept of a specific adapted language spoken by each animal species, in which the consonants are shifted, or extra consonants are added to fit the shape of each animal’s mouth or beak (Bleek & Lloyd, 1936:163-199). This type of onomatopoeia is unknown of in any Western language. 131

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Donald Riekert (Heuning uit die swarthaak, 1986; Halfmens, 1990; Wensbeen, 1995), Deacon (Sand uit die son, 1989; Die predikasies van Jacob Oerson, 1993) and Petra Müller (My plek se naam is Waterval, 1987) also wrote a number of Bushman poems, often by representing fictional figures. Especially ingenious, and humorous every now and then, is the sequence ‘Volopkos’ (‘Food in abundance’) by Petra Müller, in My plek se naam is Waterval (‘The Name of My Place Is Waterfall’): Witbooi Tooren (die man van Rook) het die wind gesien teen die middagskyn van die berg, by Haarfontein Witbooi Tooren (die man van Rook) het die wind geterg met ’n kibbiestok, met ’n klip gegooi en huis toe gehol toe die wind vertoorn begin te tol daar woon ’n kwaaiman-dwarrelwind by die skoorsteengat van Haarfontein hy soek hy soek hy brom hy skoor wat het hy aldag daar verloor? hy soek vir Witbooi Tooren

(dis Tooren daar – hy’s lankal af hy anhou in die sterre draf ) […]

{Witbooi Tooren (the man of Smoke) saw the wind against the noontide shine from the mountain, at Haarfontein Witbooi Tooren (the man of Smoke) teased the wind with a kibbi stick, threw a stone at him 132

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and bolted home when the angry wind spun round and round a bad-tempered whirlwind-man lives at the chimney mouth of Haarfontein he searches he searches he grumbles he squabbles what was he always losing there? he’s looking for Witbooi Tooren

(it’s Tooren there – he’s long gone he keeps on trotting among the stars)} […] 

(Müller 1987:116-122)

The poem is remarkable as it offers flashes of imaginative identification with the vanished /Xam. Bleek’s principal informant, //Kabbo, also known as Jantje Toorn, the “man of Smoke”, was probably also a shaman. Müller writes an original new poem that is playful (depicting //Kabbo’s imagined teasing of a personified whirlwind), has a striking rhythm and concrete natural images. The particular achievement of this poem is the skilful word choice and register, difficult to achieve in translation.

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6 Stockenström: the Bushman artist as creator and destroyer In 1976, Wilma Stockenström published ‘Die eland’ (‘The Eland’) in Van vergetelheid en van glans, which translates as ‘Of Oblivion and of Shine’): Dat die klein-klein handjie se aanraak die eland laat opspring en rooi en vaal draf dit is die wonder wat hom voltrek in die grot geel vinger rooi klei dit is die wonder die eland lewend geraak op die wand van klip die groot geel mensie en die klein bruin eland die groot oker dier staan op uit die stof en bekyk die lewe gelate geverf uit die bek van die grot by die bak ghwarriebos menseskepsel loop uit uit die bakkrans 133

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uit na die vaal trop doer teen die vlak om die wind te skep en die kort pyl te skiet om die bok te skep met die horings swart en die buik so vaalrooiskurf teen die vaalplatklip en die sterk pote en die stomp stert en die riffelkwakkie dit is die wonder wat hom voltrek as die pyl in die hand wat hand bly kwas word hand wat die klip laat leef hand wat laat leef lewende hand doop in slang en gifbol se gif die pyl en span die boog breed soos die horison na die teiken geteken teen die groot-groot lug. (That the tiny little hand’s touch allows red and grey eland to jump up and trot that is the miracle accomplished in this cave yellow finger, red clay, that is the miracle eland brought to life on a rock wall the large yellow little person and the small brown eland the great ochre animal rises from the dust and surveys life patiently painted beyond the cave mouth, by the shapely gwarrie bush a human creature walks out from the overhang out to the faint herd far away on the plain to use the wind and shoot a short arrow to take the buck with black horns and a scruffy grey-red belly on pale, flat stone, and strong hooves, short tail and a dewlap this is the miracle that unfolds when the arrow in the hand that stays a hand, becomes a brush the hand that brings the stone to life the hand that enlivens the living hand

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dips the arrow into snake and poison-bush poison and draws the bow as broad as the horizon aimed at the sign made on the immense sky.)

The intense literary debate triggered by this poem, was even followed by a resourceful meta-interpretation of interpretations (Wiehahn’s ‘Die interpretasie van ’n interpretasie’ in Coetzee et al., 1988:173-184). Stockenström follows much the same ideological approach as that in Opperman’s ‘Pandora’, namely an awareness of the Bushman, not unlike modern man, as creator and destroyer at one and the same time. That she wrote her poem specifically on the eland is significant, as the eland was a closely associated animal for many Bushmen groups (see Patricia Vinnicombe’s People of the Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of Their Life and Thought, 1976). The totem, according to Dixon-Kennedy, is the symbol of: [...] the clan or individual’s theriomorphic ancestors (those having animal form), and as such represents the metaphorical expression of man’s relationship to his fellows and to the rest of the world. The totem is sacred to those concerned and they are forbidden to eat or desecrate it [...] it acted as a symbol of the people or as commemoration of the dead. (1996:247)

Dixon-Kennedy was writing on the Indo-Americans. The Bushmen, on the other hand, certainly enjoyed the meat of the eland, and, therefore, did not hold the totemic convictions of their North American peers. To try and establish the eland as totem of some Bushman groups would be a questionable effort. But, clearly, ‘Die eland’ could be read as shorthand or code for the Bushmen (and, ultimately, for Homo sapiens). Hence (and due to the predilection for eland in numerous rock paintings) we could probably trace the explanation for the high frequency of eland poems in Afrikaans. The enigmatic quality of the Stockenström poem lies in the delicate interweaving and interchange of small/large, life/death, associated with Zen thought. A structuralist approach to rock art, based on binary oppositions, is probably implied here. From a wider perspective, it is remarkable that both ‘Vuurbees’ (‘Fire Bull’) by Opperman, and Van Wyk Louw’s ‘Groot ode’ (‘Great Ode’) function as intertexts for Stockenström’s positing of man as creator and destroyer via looking at prehistoric rock art. These three poets tend to share a point of view that negates any vestige of the ethnic uniqueness of this particular grouping of prehistoric people; the Bushmen are regarded as representatives of Homo sapiens and the peculiar features of this species as such (artists, demolishers; controllers of its universe, but also destroyers thereof ). Maybe the most significant poem, ultimately, on prehistoric man is NP van Wyk Louw’s ‘Groot ode’, although situated in Europe, in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux, 135

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it was written in Afrikaans. By way of suggestion (via the intertexts of Opperman and Stockenström), this is the major song of praise or ode on man’s essence, on the Bushmen-as-representatives-of-mankind, and their elegiac passing away.

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7 Translation, Versification and Reworking: appropriation or restitution A separate trend in South African poetry is ‘translation’ or ‘versification’, a creative reworking of basic material from the oral tradition of the Bushmen stories, myths and songs. In 1959, an enthusiastic Uys Krige translated the /Xam’s ‘Prayer to the young moon’ giving recitations of it to great acclaim while on a Carnegie grant visit to the USA. (See his description of a journey to the Drakensberg, with, amongst others, Walter Battiss, in Na die Maluti’s.) Antjie Krog’s volume of translated indigenous poetry, Met woorde soos met kerse (2002) (which translates as ‘With Words as with Candles’) prominently opens with /Xam versions in Chapter 1, based on texts in the Bleek and Lloyd Collection. In her handling of the /Xam texts, Krog comes across as notably nonchalant: notice, for instance, the erroneous use of Dia!kwain’s name as the original source of the text ‘Boesman-voorgevoelens’ (2002:37) (‘Bushman Premonitions’) instead of naming //Kabbo, who was Bleek and Lloyd’s principal co-worker. (Other errors include her assertion that no one knows any longer how to pronounce the /Xam sounds, despite Lloyd having included clear phonetic guidelines in the Preface to the 1911 Specimens of Bushmen Folklore.) Krog, however, joins the constantly progressive utilising of the /Xam culture by poets of later years, such as Stephen Watson (1991), Alan James (2001) and others. In contrast to Eugène Marais’ (1985:4) clear factual statement in 1927 that a “Bushman language and literature – a literature without letters!” certainly does exist, this method ostensibly resembles a phase in the process of neo-colonialism. Whenever one of these publications appears, there is a creative toying with definitions around the exact nature of the later text: representations, mediations, literary versions, or simply ‘versions’, and quite often it is strongly suggested that the reader will be facing new ‘poems’. In every case the name of the later poet happens to be printed prominently on the cover, while the name of the original /Xam individual has been either omitted, or relegated to an inconspicuous position in the book. A remark that could be made therefore about this tendency, would be to aver that respect for the cultural legacy of the exterminated is sorely lacking where the text of any of the original narrators has been misrepresented and corrupted, which, as is 136

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apparent from Specimens of Bushmen Folklore, commands a literary significance and can boast of an allure that is all of its own. In ‘The Hermeneutic Motion’, an essay on translation, George Steiner (1999:189190) argues convincingly, however, that the act of translation also functions as an act of restitution: To take a source-text as worth translating is to dignify it immediately and to involve it in a dynamic of magnification [...] The motion of transfer and paraphrase enlarges the stature of the original [...] the latter is left more prestigious [...] the echo enriches [...] Some translations edge us away from the canvas, others bring us close.

Looked at in this way, the rewriting and reworking of /Xam Bushman material could be considered as acts of restitution, by which the stature of the original is being magnified, whether it distances the reader from the canvas, or draws her in.

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6 The Namibian oeuvre of Piet van Rooyen Bushmen became the signifier; a romance with alterity. If Bushmen did not exist, we would surely have invented them. The image of the “wild” aborigine or Bushman is not so much an image from the past as an image of the past [...]  Gordon & Douglas – The Bushman Myth  (2nd revised edition, 2000) My retrogression from well set up elephant hunter to white-skinned Bushman was insignificant. [...] Would I be able to translate myself soberly across the told tale, getting back to a dull, decent farmer’s life in the shortest possible time, or would I weaken and in a fit of boredom set out down a new path, implicate myself in a new life, perhaps the life of the white Bushman that had been hinting itself to me? JM Coetzee – Dusklands Yesterday I was a Bushman, but today I am something else.  Heinz, J-M & Lee, M – Namkwa: Life Among the Bushmen

Introduction

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etween 1994 and 2001 the Afrikaans writer Piet van Rooyen published three novels and an autobiographical work in which the Ju/’hoan Bushmen1 of Namibia are central figures: either as the community among which he did developmental work in Agter ’n eland aan (which translates as ‘Following an Eland’), or as characters in a novel. Since this focus in his work has, according to him, now been concluded (Van Rooyen 19/12/01:6), I shall discuss the four texts together, leaving aside his two early volumes of poetry, Draak op die erf (‘Dragon in the Yard’) in 1973 and Rondom ’n boorvuur (‘Around a Stick-drill Fire’2) in 1983, which also contain some Bushman material.

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Loss of Ju/’hoansi culture and mythology The autobiographical Agter ’n eland aan provides insight into the author’s experience of and perspective on the Namibian Ju/’hoan (formerly known as the !Kung). He 139

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worked from 1990 to 1991 for the Nyae-Nyae Development Foundation in the northeast of Namibia. His main task, ultimately unsuccessful, was to assist with the establishment of cattle farming among the Ju/’hoan in the Nyae-Nyae conservancy. His colleagues at the time were the anthropologists Megan Biesele and Claire Ritchie, as well as the linguist Patrick Dickens, who had devoted their lives to developmental work among the Ju/’hoan. There he learned in intimate detail about the living space and traditional culture of the uprooted Ju/’hoan, and about the relative bleakness of their situation. Agter ’n eland aan contains many of the facts and raw material from which the three later novels were derived and out of which they were creatively built. An intertextual reading of the autobiographical text with the fictional oeuvre is, therefore, illuminating. Paul Chapman, the Bushman farmer whose life served as an inspiration for Die spoorsnyer (The Tracker), worked closely with the author at that time (see several photographs of him in the book). Of particular importance is the insight into different approaches to the Bushmen, especially the two extremes of idealism on display: that of the largely foreign development workers assisting with literacy, health care and agricultural projects, and the romanticising of the Bushmen by ordinary people: Die idee wat baie mense van die Boesmans het, is dat die meeste van hulle nog iewers in die uitspansels van die Kalahari bedrewe en rustig van jag en versamel leef en dat hierdie mense in hul oeroue leefwyse in volkome afsondering van die beskawing kan en wil aanhou leef. Die Boesmans word dikwels vereenselwig met ’n simbool, ’n soort kultuur waarna die moderne mens nostalgies terugverlang as ’n verlore gedeelte van sy eie verlede, ’n volkome eenheid met die natuur. Die mense kan en wil nie glo dat die soort leefwyse in sy konkrete vorm, die Boesmans, besig is om te verdwyn nie. Soos arm mense televisiesages kyk om hul in te verbeel in die lewe van die rykes, so wil die moderne mens die “Boesman-kultuur” as ’n lewende oorblyfsel van sy verlore natuurverlede, nie laat uitsterf nie. (1995:55; my emphasis) The idea that many people have of the Bushman is that most of them are still active somewhere in the outer reaches of the Kalahari, living peacefully as huntergatherers, and that these people can and wish to continue living in their age-old way of life in complete isolation from civilisation. Bushmen are often associated with a symbol, a sort of culture for which modern man yearns nostalgically as a lost part of his own past, a perfect unity with nature. People cannot and will not believe that the sort of life led by the Bushmen is disappearing in its concrete form. Just as poor people look at television sagas to vicariously experience the life of the rich, in the same way modern man does not want to allow ‘Bushman culture’ as a living vestige of a lost past in nature to die out. (my translation and italics)

As a scientist, Van Rooyen was thoroughly aware of the dangers of romanticising the Bushman as a primordial archetype. As an author, however, Van Rooyen did not shy away from exploiting this view for his own creative purposes (“Bushman” as a symbol 140

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of all that modern man has “lost in himself ” – 1994:55). The appeal of his novels in part probably lies in this aspect of his work: for readers caught in the uniformity of a modern global society, it is easy to identify with such romanticising as a way of escaping from a world overwhelmed by materialism and technology. Such fiction plays on the modern person’s yearning for a pristine primordial state, and on nostalgia for an unspoiled natural environment. Together with this, the allure of Van Rooyen’s novels also derives from the location of the narratives in a rural Southern African milieu, away from urban existence. They take place in thinly populated parts of Namibia (Die spoorsnyer, Die olifantjagters {‘The Elephant Hunters’} and Gif {‘Poison’}), Southern Angola (Die olifantjagters) and Botswana (Gif). Van Rooyen includes detailed descriptions of local landscapes (the desert, the bush, the Aha mountains, the Tsodilo hills), allowing the novels to transport the reader to exciting and dangerous parts of Africa. These specific milieus are co-role players in the creation of the tension in the fictive worlds of the novels: death is often a strong protagonist in the form of thirst in the desert, the dangers of wild animals, of losing direction and getting lost. The narrator and main focaliser in each case is a white male protagonist (the writer in Die spoorsnyer, the development worker in Die olifantjagters and Boet Reitz as an endurance horseman in Gif ). Bushmen as well as white people form part of an intimate group living together for a time in isolation in a dangerous landscape. From time to time, they travel somewhere for a purpose: on the spoor through the desert of absconded Bushmen farm workers (Die spoorsnyer); following a legendary elephant, Maxamesi, to unmapped regions (Die olifantjagters); or searching over hill and dale for diamonds (Gif ). In both Die spoorsnyer and Gif, all of the characters die; in Die olifantjagters, only the narrator and /Asa survive. Describing the novels in this way makes it sound as though we are dealing with Boy’s Own adventures. Together with a description of the intimate interaction between white protagonists and Bushmen, both those who have become acculturated and those who are ‘wild’, the reader also obtains historical and socio-political information about the Ju/’hoan Bushmen and their culture (trance dancing, tracking, mythology, stories, and Namibian anecdotes about interaction between the Bushmen and white pioneers). The focus often falls on the interaction between the white protagonist and the Bushman characters. The fact that this interaction has a kind of intimacy resembling the interplay between ego (white protagonist) and alter-ego (Bushman protagonist), provides a psychological complexity as well as a shift towards transculturation – which I understand to mean a changing of culture, a growing acculturation – in this case not that of the Bushman into white culture, but vice versa. The protagonist in Die spoorsnyer, Paul Chapman (erstwhile hunter-gatherer), becomes a successful cattle farmer. He is then literally ‘caught between two cultures’.  The white 141

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narrator, and main focaliser, is a spectator and admirer of Paul’s Bushman knowledge, his skill as a tracker, even if it is now used against Paul’s own people. In the next novel, Die olifantjagters, the development worker is in part forced to adopt a Bushman lifestyle in the bundu when the elephant hunt goes wrong and he becomes involved in an intimate sexual relationship with the wordless /Asa. He rises metaphorically in the Bushman lifestyle. During their four-month-long trek, Boet Reitz in Gif is ‘initiated’ by Maria into the ways of surviving in the wilderness. There is a discernible line of progression in the growing involvement of each successive protagonist: from spectator-admirer, via someone becoming involved, to the cry of Boet Reitz in the desert: “Ek is Boesman” (“I am a Bushman”) (2001a:189). The psychological complexity, a philosophically metaphorical element (“die mens op sy lewenspad deur woestyne en oor berge” ‘man on his life’s journey through deserts and over mountains’, à la Bunyan) and, in Gif, a psychoanalytical tendency, are all factors that bring ambiguity and layers of meaning to the novels, contrary to what is suggested at first sight by the surface structure of African adventure and suspense story in journeying through the landscape.

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The connection with a literary tradition Cultural interaction between Afrikaans authors and the Bushmen found expression before Van Rooyen in a distinct literary tradition, extending from (among others) works in prose by GR von Wielligh, Eugène Marais, the Hobson brothers and Sangiro, to the oeuvres of PJ Schoeman, JJ van der Post, Willem Kotzé and Dolf van Niekerk. In Afrikaans poetry the list is much longer, beginning with Neser and Du Toit’s polemics in Ons Klyntji of 1896. Beyond that, further diverse materials are found, such as missionary writings like the Toornberg diary of Erasmus Smit. Von Wielligh did ‘field work’ between 1870 and 1880 in the Calvinia District (at Katkop3 from which Bleek and Lloyd’s informants had also come). Marais produced literary adaptations, though it is not clear to what extent his Dwaalstories are mediated adaptations, and to what extent the enigmatic poetic qualities are a direct reflection of the original narratives.4 Animal and hunting stories provide the framework of the Hobson and Sangiro tales. PJ Schoeman reflects a distinctive anthropological and sociopolitical focus (accordingly, his stories are less fictional since they are adaptations of his anthropological field notes). JJ van der Post exploits the youth and adventure story genre. The Bushman novels of Willem Kotzé link up with the same genre. Dolf van Niekerk’s Koms van die hyreën, (‘The coming of the he-rain’5) on the other hand, possesses more literary and aesthetic qualities. 142

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Against this background, it would seem that the work of Piet van Rooyen is, on the one hand, an extension of the line running through Von Wielligh and PJ Schoeman (with the anthropological focus, as is clear in Van Rooyen’s autobiographical Agter ’n eland aan and in Die spoorsnyer); on the other hand, it is also part of a more literary tradition, beginning with Marais and continuing up to Van Niekerk (Van Vuuren 1996:49-56). What is added to the ‘Bushman’ books is the metaphorical substructure, with philosophical and psychoanalytical themes. In addition, there is clearly a generic relationship with the ‘literature of survival and adventure’, as is also evidenced in the work of JJ van der Post, who focuses on strong men of action.

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Van Rooyen’s Bushman oeuvre Both Die spoorsnyer6 and Gif end in death. In Die olifantjagters, only the narrator and the woman, /Asa, are alive at the end. All the other characters die, as do all the characters in the other two novels as well. These texts are far from being pure adventure stories. Die spoorsnyer deals with the tracking down of a small group of runaway Bushman farm workers who want to return to their so-called ‘wild’ state. The acculturated Bushman, Paul Chapman, tracks them through the desert, together with a white sergeant and a writer. However, they are left to their fate when he is wounded by a poisoned arrow and certain death is their lot. Gif also ends with death by a poisoned arrow: this time, the death of the main character and storyteller, Boet Reitz, adventurer and horseman. In Die olifantjagters, Bell Huger, the “elephant hunter”, dies by his own hand – in line with his earlier declaration that “a violent death […] is a good death” – like Paul and Boet in the other two novels. In both the elephant hunting story and the last novel it is suggested that the journeys are also a movement into the past. The main character in Die olifantjagters declares: “Ons het lankal oer geraak” (“We have long become primordial”) (p.196, my emphasis and italics). In Gif, we read: “niks keer ons nou meer om die verlede in te ry nie” (“nothing is stopping us now from riding into the past”) (p.48, my emphasis and italics). The enigmatic process of becoming “primordial” (a new creation) implies also the gradual loss or stripping away of values and accoutrements of (western) civilisation. The murdered farm Bushman, Thomas, is still buried, for example, in the desert as the “laaste ritueel van beskaafdheid” (“a last ritual of civilisation”) (2001a:174). (It is also clearly suggested that such a journey back into the ‘primitive time’ of the ‘aboriginal people’ can only be temporary.) In reading this together with Gif it would appear to me that these two novels present only a temporary shaking off of white civilisation by the narrators (the development worker in Die olifantjagters and Boet Reitz in Gif). This process is linked with moving back in time – against the historical 143

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course of development. On the one hand, it is connected with awareness that the lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer is over, as is also the era of adventurers, big-game hunters and explorers. The imaginary, fictional journeys described in the novels are subtly recognised as flights of fancy with phrases such as “we became primordial” and “ride into the past”. These phrases suggest a typically postmodern subversion of the mimetic credibility of the texts. In this regard they closely agree with the metatextual comments in Die spoorsnyer where the ‘author’ character frequently wonders how his editor will react to the text and refers at the outset to the “sewe oor-en-weer vermakerige geeste” (‘the seven spirits teasing each other’) (1994:17) – a clear allusion to the element of fantasy in the fiction (Van Vuuren 1996:52). Particularly in Die spoorsnyer and Gif there is, besides the realistic story line, also a metaphorical richness of characters, landscape, and action. The I-narrator tends towards identification with the Bushman life style. Twice in Gif he declares, “I am a Bushman” (2001a:189). Within the psychoanalytical framework of Gif one cannot interpret this statement by the main character as just the raving of a hallucinating westerner in the desert. To be a ‘Bushman’ is also to attain an intensely desired state, freed from what is considered to be the unnecessary ‘baggage’ of the modern westerner. In the reception of Van Rooyen’s work, attention was given mostly to the realistic story lines, together with references to their symbolic interpretation. However, it seems to me as if Gif opens up possibilities for a more meaningful reading of his work, especially as regards the constant focus throughout on the Bushman culture and way of life, together with its psychoanalytical richness. In a certain sense, questions already raised in the earlier Bushman novels are brought to a head in this book, such as the growing identification of white protagonists with a Bushman counterpart. Shane Moran convincingly argues that the imagined journey into the past, back to a primordial beginning, is a precarious intellectual construct. An ethic of nostalgia for origins of archaic and natural innocence, haunts even the acceptance of contaminated origins […and…] is also a search for a common root or bridge over the painful abyss of colonialist mediation [...] [H]ow far can this project hope to avoid [...] reappropriating the other to the propriety of the natural? (1995:23-24; my italics)

Together with reappropriation, he also highlights the dangers of a metaphorical view of the Bushman “[which] runs the risk of succumbing to an ethnocentric trope of white mythology – seeing the primitive as metaphorical (Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages)” (1995:23-25). The danger to which he refers is the sweeping aside of the victims and their descendants in a process of recolonisation, reappropriation and expunging of the socio-historical context. Lyotard refers to two related language procedures employed in the discourse of power: firstly, the communally directed, 144

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conservative mythical narrative, typical of traditional communities, with a backwardlooking orientation towards an ‘origin’; and, secondly, the emancipatory narrative, or a metanarrative that is oriented towards the future (1987:107). Of importance in this connection is not the content of the narratives as such, but rather their pragmatic interpretation (Lyotard, 1987:109); in other words, one must ask what implicit ideological perspective is presented by the narratives – in this instance the Bushman trilogy of Van Rooyen? My hypothesis is that this triptych of novels suggests a conservative mythical narrative, oriented towards a primordial human and ideal ‘origin’. The following elements figure as an ideological point of departure: (a) a cultural pessimism about contemporary western society and the ideal of the white male protagonist; (b) the idea of stripping the self (of materialistic encumbrances); and (c) a literal paring down by the repeated testing of physical endurance within a masculine discourse (tracker, elephant hunter, long-distance horseman, explorer and adventurer). This narrative, spread over three novels, is supported by a metaphorical substructure derived from Bushman culture, in which stereotypical perceptions of the Bushmen as ‘primitive people’ (self-sufficient, rugged children of nature, without materialistic rapacity) serve as metaphors in the fictional world for the ideal being sought, away from the western individual-materialistic way of living. There is an implied irony (and paradox at the heart of the oeuvre) in that it is white protagonists who initiate the process, who are the chief role players in the action, both physically and psychologically, and in that their idealised stripping processes take place in the framework of a traditional Bushman way of life that has been irretrievably lost. On the one hand, this speaks of supposed acculturation and transculturation (the white man calls out, “I am a Bushman”) while, on the other hand, the stripping away can only take place within imaginary journeys into the past, back to a primitive beginning, which makes the whole process sur erasure – swept away as an impossibility, something that cannot be attained, a creative sleight of hand. A recent article by Van Rooyen on Namibian literature before independence and the work of Doc Immelman (2001b:21-39)7 also offers some insight into the younger author’s views on, and relationship with, the country and its people: Namibië as omgewing waarbinne literatuur ontstaan, bied unieke moontlikhede aan die skrywer van fiksie. Die besondere natuurlike omgewing van die land en die uitgestrektheid, ongeskondenheid en dorheid daarvan het ’n eiesoortige invloed op die inwoners, op die skrywer en op sy karakters en lei die leser in ’n eiesoortige, dikwels onbekende en soms werklikheidsvreemde wêreld in. (2001b:22; my emphasis) Namibia, as a setting in which literature develops, presents unique opportunities to the writer of fiction. The peculiar natural environment of the country and 145

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its spaciousness, inviolateness and aridity have a distinctive influence on the inhabitants, on the writer and on his characters, and lead the reader into a distinctive, often unknown and sometimes alien world. (my translation and italics)

This exotic view of the Namibian landscape as a “sometimes alien world” is also typical of the descriptions of place in Van Rooyen’s novels, in which specific geographical evocations of landscape and spatial influence are striking structural elements that play a definitive role in the course of the narrative. The comments on border fiction that Van Rooyen quotes approvingly are also riveting as keys to certain aspects of his work. In this way he refers to Dana Nelson’s remark about two trends in border fiction: on the one hand, the trend towards realism (landscape descriptions and versions of conflict situations between invaders and the indigenous people) and, on the other hand, the trend towards romanticising as “’n ideologiese instrument waardeur die historiese en kulturele moraliteit, die skuld of onskuld van die indringer mee aangespreek word” (“an ideological instrument whereby historical and cultural morality, the guilt or innocence of the invader is addressed” (Nelson 1992:39): In dié sin is die betekenis van hierdie romans aanduibaar as pogings om die ervaring van die vreemde, die Ander, in die oor-grens situasie te mitologiseer en te simboliseer […] (quoted in Van Rooyen, 2001b:26) In this sense the meaning of these novels is clearly an attempt to mythologise and symbolise the experiencing of the strange, the Other, in the cross-border situation […] (my translation)

In interviews, however, Van Rooyen often emphasises that he “has no guilt”, just as the concept of guilt “is foreign to the Bushman”. The concept of the historical collective guilt of the Afrikaner, to which Antjie Krog clearly subscribes in Country of my skull, is therefore one that Van Rooyen does not share. How, then, should one understand Van Rooyen’s technique of romanticising the Bushman as metaphorical substructure in his oeuvre? The progression of white protagonists through the triptych, from spectator to physical and sexual initiation when Boet Reitz ultimately asserts, “I am a Bushman”, hints at the implicit ideological level at a turnabout process in the civilising project of colonial times. The ideal of bringing civilisation, as attempted by missionaries and pioneers (with the accompanying destruction of indigenous culture and beliefs), is inverted here (white man intensely seeks to ‘become a Bushman’). In this sense the Van Rooyen trilogy describes an ideological reckoning with the past and can even be characterised in Lyotard’s terms as an emancipatory narrative. The nature of the metaphorical role assigned to the Bushman in the trilogy requires clarification. In all four of Van Rooyen’s texts, novels as well as autobiographical work, there are four types of character: ‘wild’ and ‘tame’ (acculturated) Bushman, alongside two kinds of white character: sergeant and writer in Die spoorsnyer; elephant hunter 146

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and development worker among the Bushmen in Die olifantjagters; and old farmer and adventurer in Gif. The four groups of characters represent various stages of cultural and technological development. The first two are: the ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherers (with an extensive and unique cosmology and knowledge of nature) and the acculturated farm workers, such as the shaman, the two girls and Paul Chapman in Die spoorsnyer (on the cutting edge between two cultures, knowing about nature and their mythology, but also about the western way of life and influence of Christian religion). Pitted against them are white representatives of western ‘civilisation’. The third group includes the sergeant, elephant hunter and the old farmers, typical colonial figures and relics of an earlier age. Their perspective differs from that of the male protagonist, who represents the fourth group, and who becomes increasingly involved with being a ‘Bushman’ in each novel. Members of the third group question neither their position (or culture or status) as ‘authority’ figures, nor the implications of their actions as people in authority over the Bushmen. The white male protagonists in each of the novels, however, do indeed do this. Having a sensitivity towards cultural differences, they weigh up western values against those of traditional Bushman culture and find the latter to be a more attractive option, even an ideal to be striven for, while the value system of their own culture is regarded as stifling and to be rejected. The elephant hunter, in the light of his marriage with /Asa, is a possible exception. His description of her in terms of womanhood is particularly unsympathetic. Nevertheless, this relationship probably serves as an example for the development worker character of another possible existence, a different experience of sexuality than that which has thus far been known to him, as illustrated by the subsequent development in intrigue. What is, however, more compelling than this categorisation is the nature of the intercultural relationships. In all three of the novels, the white protagonist has a particularly intimate relationship with a Bushman character from whom he ‘learns’: Paul Chapman as master tracker and expedition leader in Die spoorsnyer; /Asa as lover and saviour from the desert in Die olifantjagters; and Maria as ‘counsellor’ (understood as adviser and direction giver, wise primordial mother and key to survival in the desert) in Gif. These relationships are the postcolonial ‘markers’ in the novels, and clearly show the difference from colonial texts. Referring to cultural pessimism about the state of western civilisation, Lévi-Strauss, in Tristes Tropiques, makes the following observation about anthropologists and their admiration for foreign societies: the value he attaches to foreign societies – and which appears to be higher in proportion as the society is more foreign – has no independent foundation; it is a function of his disdain for, and occasionally hostility towards, the customs prevailing in his native setting […] the anthropologist appears respectful to the 147

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point of conservatism as soon as he is dealing with a society different from his own. (1955:383; my italics)

The greater the disdain for the person’s own society and culture, the greater the value attached to the foreign lifestyle and culture. This observation seems apposite, particularly when regarding the last two Bushman novels of Van Rooyen, with their clearly embedded cultural pessimism towards western society. If these novels are indeed read as romanticising the Bushman, the reader is confronted by an implied cul-de-sac: the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle no longer exists, it has been overtaken by ‘civilisation’, the hunting fields have been swallowed up by development: “The image of the ‘wild’ aborigine or Bushman is not so much an image from the past as an image of the past [...]” (Gordon & Douglas 2000:251). That lifestyle and space exist only in the ‘remembrance of things past’ – in the imagination and old anthropological textbooks. In Gif, the clear rejection of modern western society is emphasised time and again: “wat het ek werklik gehad wat ek kan verloor – ’n vervelig geworde lewe […]?” (“what did I really have that I can lose – a life that has become boring […]?”) (2001a:37), wonders Boet Reitz; “die mure van ’n alledaagse bestaan sluk my maar net weer die ou beperkings in” (“the walls of a mundane existence once again enclose me inside their old limitations”) (2001a:35). Material possessions and technological knowledge are dismissed with the negative remark: “wat het ons nou meer as die Boesmans van die veld [?]” (“what more do we have than do the Bushmen of the veld [?]”) (2001a:172). If the ‘civilised’, western life of the white main character’s world is unbearable to him, and the traditional way of life of the hunter-gatherer no longer exists, then escaping into the imagination, back into the past, is the only way out. Viewed in this way, the conclusion of both Die spoorsnyer and Gif, which end in the death of all the characters, is the inevitable termination of these fictive events and lives. There is no other logical possibility: adventures in the unspoilt wilderness, as undertaken by the colonial travellers of old, are no longer possible, except as journeys through time via the imagination or old texts in which the ‘real Africa’ still exists as a “hunter’s paradise, dream, nightmare, white adversary, treasure guardian, timeless” (2001a:152). The Bushman characters are symbols, like Maria in Gif, “with enough primitive blood to carry for us the keys of the desert” (2001a:172 ), or /Asa, in Die olifantjagters, who with her intimate knowledge of the veld can survive in the wilderness, “as [in] ancient times” (2001a:153). The same function is fulfilled by Paul Chapman, the ‘tame’ Bushman in Die spoorsnyer: when he is struck by the shaman’s poisoned arrow, death also becomes inevitable for the two white members of the tracking commando: they are lost in the desert without his survival skills.

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The characterisation of women In Die spoorsnyer the two young women in the fleeing group are anonymous, uniform presences, without specific identity. They form the ‘rearguard’ of the fugitives, with the two men, the shaman and the man-with-the-bad-scar more clearly defined figures in die fleeing group. The pursuers consist of three men: the acculturated Bushman, Paul Chapman, and two white men, the writer and the sergeant. The women in Die olifantjagters (Maria) and Gif (/Asa) are strongly defined and characterised as individuals in the foreground of the novel. They are metaphorical representatives of the past, but also ‘vehicles’ or bearers for romanticising the past, the ‘primordial time’. The relationship between the I-narrator and Bushman women is also striking. /Asa in Gif rescues the white development worker from certain death in the desert and leads him back to civilisation (they are the only two survivors of the original hunting party). Both Maria and /Asa are initially seen in a derogatory light, one as a wrinkled old housemaid and the other as a bored, acculturated sex-object, almost an animal: “as sy op hitte is, kan ek nie waag om haar alleen te los nie” (“if she comes on heat, I dare not leave her alone”) (1997:104) declares her German husband, as though talking of an animal. This perspective suggests a fetish with the supposed unbridled sexuality of the foreign unknown ‘other’, to which Robert Young refers as a typical feature of the paradoxical colonial attitude that is a ‘marker’ of racistic bias. 8 In the course of time, the women in Van Rooyen’s oeuvre become metaphorical bearers of ontic knowledge and the ability to survive in the veld. The fact that the I-narrator in Die olifantjagters cannot communicate with /Asa in words and can only ‘have intercourse’ physically, as well as the fact that the relationship is still so romanticised, is, in my opinion, a weakness, an unconvincing aspect of the text. (A male ideal of the literally wordless, ‘brute’ woman?) The figure of /Asa is excessively and exclusively loaded with traditional ‘female’ qualities such as instinct, emotion and irrationality, and above all viewed as a sexual object.9 The wrinkled old housemaid, Maria, is transmogrified in Gif in a magical way into a Mother Africa figure (2001a:11), nurse (2001a:156), counsellor (2001a:198), and bearer of “the keys of the desert” (2001a:172). She seems also to grow younger every day in the eyes of the protagonist (2001a:175). But Maria is sacrificed when the main character finally chooses to save the life of his thoroughbred Arabian mare rather than that of the Bushman woman. At the moment of choosing between woman and mare, the reader is back in the “‘dusklands’ of history” (Attwell 1993:38), with Boet Reitz as representative of the colonising pioneer at the border, confronted by the threatening ‘wild Bushman’. The fact that JM Coetzee had as far back as 1974 parodied this violent colonial confrontation between self and the other in Dusklands, provides a strong intertextual role in the reading of Gif. 149

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The symbolism attached to the figure of Maria is particularly rich. She goes beyond her role as wrinkled housemaid (a ‘serving Martha’) and becomes metaphorically ‘loaded’, firstly by being named Maria (the main holy figure in the Roman Catholic religion, primeval mother) in the context of the novel being transformed syncretistically by Frans from ‘Mother Mary’ into ‘Mother Africa’. The choice of the horse’s life over hers suggests ultimately, however, a levelling of her value as a human being, and specifically as a woman (“indigenous [wo]man as frontier fodder”, one might say as per Dorian Haarhoff ’s perspective on The wild South-West and its frontier myths, 1991:173). The horse is ultimately of greater value to Boet Reitz in the masculine game of tracking Koos Sas. Traditionally, horse and rifle (the two possessions over which Boet Reitz and the Bushman fight to the death) stand as attributes with which the hero, representative of civilisation, confronts the untamed forces in the wilderness.10 All feminine attributes are stripped away, until the self is reduced to a battle for survival against the natural elements and the enemy. All that is left, for which he and Sas fight, are the horse and rifle: symbols of endurance and certain death for the enemy.

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African experience, cultural pessimism and metaphorical substructure This oeuvre suggests an experience of Africa from the precolonial and colonial eras: hunting, travelling, facing dangers such as wild animals and untamed nature, plus combating formidable opponents, because: “almal wil glo dat daar nog iets besonders in Afrika is om dood te maak” (“all want to believe that there is still something special to kill in Africa”) (1997:159). This ‘all’ probably represents mainly the perspective of the big-game hunter. Apparently with the anti-hunting critics in mind, the I-narrator and Bushman-development worker, bitingly observes: Wat is op die ou end meer laakbaar – om te kan sê: ‘Ek het olifant geskiet in Afrika’, of ‘Ek hou ’n troetelboesman aan die lewe’? (1997:48) In the end, what is more blameworthy – to be able to say: ‘I shot an elephant in Africa’ or ‘I am keeping a pet Bushman alive’? (my translation)

The above statement suggests that if elephant hunting as a sport can be criticised it is just as unacceptable to want, like the idealistic development workers among the Bushmen in Nyae-Nyae, to change the previously ‘wild’ Bushman virtually into ‘pets’ (that is, cattle farmers, well-educated people, domesticated people made out of former hunter-gatherers).11 However, the statement is ambiguous and could also mean that the “I” in the first person refers to the speaker, the I-narrator with regard to the last part of the utterance. One could then understand the sentence as the contrasting of two utterances: the European or American big-game hunter who announces boastfully at 150

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home that he has shot an elephant in Africa, as against the I-narrator who admits that he is keeping a “pet Bushman”. “In the end, what is more blameworthy […]?” implies that the speaker is aware that both lifestyles and hobbies can be criticised, that both activities invite criticism. Read in accordance with the second paraphrase, there is a metatextual awareness built into the oeuvre of the precarious vulnerability and exposure to possible criticism of the thematics of the Van Rooyen texts focused on Bushmen (identified with the keeping alive of a ‘pet’ Bushman who has long been sentenced to death, or who has actually already died). This implies an awareness that as writer he is engaging in ‘keeping a pet’ or romanticising and reaching back nostalgically to what has already gone. Bushman knowledge is increasingly used in each succeeding novel as the metaphorical bearer of philosophical ideas about human life in general. In this regard, the Bushmen and their culture, like the animals in totemism, become good to think about; or, in other words, Bushmen are equivocally “goed om mee te dink” (“good to think with”) (Die spoorsnyer, 112). In these novels, Bushmen are bearers helping the thought processes, as well as making it pleasurable or pleasant to philosophise with the help of them and their culture. Compare Lévi-Strauss’s statement about totemism: The animals in totemism cease to be solely or principally creatures which are feared, admired, or envied: their perceptible reality permits the embodiment of ideas and relations conceived by speculative thought on the basis of empirical observations. We can understand, too, that natural species are chosen not because they are “good to eat” but because they are “good to think”. (Totemism, 1963 [1962]:89; my italics)

Phenomena and concepts central to traditional Bushman culture become the bearers of different philosophical ideas in a metaphorical and allegorical framework. As in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, even the landscape becomes a metaphorical bearer (compare the descent in the Drotzky caves, thirst in the desert, diving in the Okavango in Gif, and the reading of tracks in all three novels as markers of absent presences). ‘Tracking’ becomes metaphorically the tracing of the course of a human life12 – “Met al die draaie wat die mens loop, al die paaie wat onder sy voete deurskuif, is daar ooit ’n plek waar hy kan sê: ‘Hiervandaan, van hierdie plek af, is my spore onwegwaaibaar?” (“With all the twists and turns that one takes, all the paths that one follows, is there ever a place where one can say: From now on, from this place, my tracks cannot be blown away?”) (1994:52) – but also of telling stories or writing (see Van Vuuren 1996:49-56). In Die olifantjagters the supposedly unmaterialistic existence of the Bushman is used as a metaphor for the lifestyle of the development worker among the Bushmen: “Ek het geen testament of versekering nie; net my eiewil en my eie bereidwilligheid om die noodlot te tart. Ten minste is ék vry van bagasie” (”I have no last will or insurance; just my own will and my own preparedness to dare fate. At least I am 151

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free of baggage”) (1997:66). Finally, in Gif, Boet Reitz runs away from civilisation like a nomadic Bushman – “na ver plekke” (“to faraway places”) (2001a:32) – away from a life that has become boring (2001a:37), and identifies himself increasingly with the Bushman. He enters completely into his adopted identity when he cries out twice: “I am a Bushman”). At the end of Gif, the white Western ego of Boet Reitz merges with the darker Bushman alter ego of Koos Sas, his follower who cursed him. The curse of Koos Sas is multifaceted, and can be read as reprisal for generations of pursued and massacred Bushmen: “My gif sal julle nooit los nie. Nou het julle die pad vir julleself laat doodloop.” (2001a:66) “My poison will never leave you. Now you have made the road come to an end for yourselves.” (my translation)

The curse can also be interpreted historically within the framework of interaction between settler-farmers and Bushmen, the pioneers and indigenous people. The colonial history of the extinction of the Bushman plays a part in this. The idea of collective guilt resonates by implication in the sound of the words. Through their metaphorical richness and traditional culture, the Bushman becomes the symbol of ‘the other’ in the self. A ‘pet Bushman’ becomes a psychological phenomenon: ‘the Bushman in myself ’. Ton Lemaire criticises this phenomenon in his authoritative cultural-philosophical work, De Indiaan in ons bewustzijn: om door te kunnen dringen tot de indiaan ‘in zich’ moest als het ware de werking van onze geschiedenis te niet worden gedaan […] De nostalgie van sommigen naar de Indiaan van vroeger vergeet dat wat typisch Indiaans lijkt, eigenlijk slechts een voorbijgaande verschijningsvorm is in de geschiedenis van onze relatie met hen […] De Indianen zijn geen fossielen van een ‘tijdloos verleden’, maar maken deel uit van die wereldomvattende processen van verandering die op gang zijn gebracht door het tijdperk van de ontdekkingsreizen. (Tristes Tropiques, 385) (Lemaire, 1986:240 & 242). To be able to penetrate to the Indian ‘in the self ’ the effect of our history should not be discounted […] The nostalgic feeling of some for the extinct Indian forgets that what seems to be typically Indian is only a passing apparition in the history of our relationship with them […] Indians are not fossils of a ‘timeless past’, but constitute one aspect of globally-inclusive processes of change which were brought about through the era of discovery journeys. (my translation)

From Lemaire’s comments it appears that fostering an archetypal Bushman-in-myself (like the parallel ‘Indian in our consciousness’) says more about the westerner’s psychological needs and dissatisfaction with his or her own culture and state of existence than about the imaginary pristine, archetypal Bushmen or Indians. Koos 152

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Sas in Gif was a historical figure, a light-footed, cunning and elusive Bushman, whose skull was displayed in the Montagu Museum for a long time. (David Kramer recently commemorated him in his revue, Die Ballade van Koos Sas, 2000). Boerneef ’s character, Dirk Ligter, who became legendary for his fleet-footed ability to disappear from those pursuing him, is a related kind of figure. Exploiting the archetype confronts the Afrikaans reader directly with history – the skull of Koos Sas, Dirk Ligter and Koos Sas in Gif are all archetypes of the surviving, continuing but legendarily fleet-footed Bushmen at a time when most traditional communities had long been exterminated by boer commandos. The curse of Koos Sas in Gif can be read as representing a collective curse of the Bushmen and their ancestors on account of their extermination. Even if they are still only wordless wraiths in the landscape, their disturbed existence is suggested by the ‘traces’ of Bushman paintings on the widely distributed walls of caves.

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To return to my initial question: why do all the novels, except for Die olifantjagters, end in death? Given the romanticising of the traditional Bushman way of life, which has gone for good, and given the cultural pessimism about western society implicit in the author, it is inevitable. None of the novels offer an opening to the future: yet nothing stops us from taking flights of fancy into the past (Gif, 48) and from declaring, “Ek is Boesman”. But ultimately these remain flights of fancy, with white characters as the focus, back to long-past pre-colonial and early colonial times. The white protagonists can ‘play’ Bushman, but the Bushman stream of consciousness is never explored from the inside. The imagination in the Van Rooyen novels fails at this point. Paul Chapman as narrator is the closest the reader comes to intimate knowledge of a Bushman perspective. If contemporary western civilisation is experienced as untenable, what is the alternative? Death as ending in Die spoorsnyer and Gif (“Ek weet ek het verdrink”, 202) speaks metaphorically of the cul-de-sac, the lack of a viable, contemporary solution, which the creative imagination ultimately confronts in this Bushman trilogy. In Dusklands the protagonist asks: “Would I be able to translate myself soberly across the told tale, getting back to a dull, decent farmer’s life in the shortest possible time?” (1974:105) Only in Die olifantjagters does Van Rooyen succeed in reversing the retrogression to ‘becoming primeval’ and in translating his main character partially back to modern society. In Die spoorsnyer and Gif the white protagonists die as a result of the poison of Bushman arrows. Read metaphorically, the fates of these white characters point to death through a Bushman curse, expressed on behalf of an exterminated collective. They appear also to point to an inability of the creative imagination to move back to the point of departure of the novels, our current modern society, or to any other possibility or form of existence. 153

7 Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais To story is to store memory. The real danger is that we will continue to create the Other in our image only and hear only what we want to hear [...] Is it ever possible to write from a culture that is not our own? Do I not always write from my own culture – the bacteria of values invisible but invidious? Perhaps the main reason for writing about the Beothuk is to assure that the memory of them is not lost, or at least the memory of their genocide, the wanton and cruel destruction of a people who called themselves the People, a symbol for other peoples who have been destroyed, past and present. The author of a narrative about the Beothuk has a peculiar authority because the object of the narrative is lost and silent and cannot interrogate or contest the narratives written and told about them.  (Carl Leggo, 1995)

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Introduction South African literature has a long history of cultural translation or transplantation, specifically from the Bushman oral tradition. The nomenclature for these ‘first people’ remains a bone of contention. In political circles, descendants often seem to prefer – due to sensitivity – the generic term ‘San’. It is however, an abusive word in Khoi language, which means ‘tramp’ or ‘vagabond’. The Namibian Ju’/hoansi use the term ‘Bushmen’, especially when not referring to their own specific group. Scholars such as Robert J Gordon & Stuart S Sholto (The Bushman Myth 2000:4-8, 177) prefer a full rehabilitation of the term ‘Bushman’, as it is clearer. The term ‘San’ is also burdened with racially pejorative overtones in Khoi language. The term ‘Khoisan’, coined in 1928 by L Schultze (Schultze 1928:147‑227), was used inclusively to refer to all descendants of the first indigenous people, herders as well as hunter-gatherers. Generally speaking, in colloquial language, noticeable instability and confusion exist regarding these terms, despite scientific discourse. Whenever a specific group’s name is not available, I have therefore chosen throughout this monograph to use ‘Bushmen’, both for the sake of clarity and in a conscious attempt at the continued recovery of the term. 155

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The migration of what remains of the ‘voice’ of the extinct Bushmen in their partially recorded narratives, myths and remaining fragments of their culture may be traced though all literary genres, but is especially prevalent in poetry, fiction and children’s books. Through an historical overview of the degrees of cultural translation (in all its literary variations), clarity is sought over questions of ethics and aesthetics surrounding the literary practice of cultural appropriation. In 2006, Stephen Watson (1954-2011), accused Antjie Krog of plagiarism in her translated /Xam poetry collection, Die sterre sê ‘tsau’/ The stars say ‘tsau’ (2004a & 2004b). He claimed that she had “lifted the entire concept of her collection” from his Return of the moon (1991).1 The central question here is: how is one to interpret the motivations behind the various migrations of material from Bushmen orality into South African literature? Illegal appropriation? Cultural homage? Seeking for a surmised pristine South African ‘origin’? Falling under the spell of the poetically enigmatic material? Limits to the poet’s own poetic imagination? Questions about motivation are intimately bound up with understanding the process through which the cultural migration comes about. The first narratives found their way into South African texts via first contact and notes on customs and language in travel accounts. Hinrich Lichtenstein (Lichtenstein 1967/1811, 2 volumes), for instance, undertook exploratory journeys into the South African interior in 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806. Early missionaries, such as Erasmus Smit (diaries of 18111815) wrote diaries and reports. Subsequently, there was the compilation of the /Xam archives of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd (published from 1911 onwards) and GR von Wielligh (1919-1921), plus Eugène Marais’s Dwaalstories (1927), which came into existence through his interaction with the Bushmen informants themselves. For Bleek and Lloyd (into English) and Von Wielligh (into Afrikaans), the accent was on coherent translation, though much was unavoidably lost or inadvertently skewed in the translating. In Marais’s case, the eclectic mix and hybridism of the people perceived as ‘Bushmen’ in the Transvaal at the beginning of the 20th century caused the strange syncretic footprints of the ‘wandering tales’ he recorded and reworked into Afrikaans. The second language of all the interviewees, or informants, was Afrikaans at the stage when they were interviewed. This underlined the dire circumstances of their mother tongues at that stage (1875-1921) and the influence of a far-advanced colonisation process, with an accompanying cultural syncreticism taking root amongst the first indigenous people. After these first-tier recorders (Bleek and Lloyd left the major /Xam archive, Von Wielligh a smaller one, and Marais the Transvaal archive), the texts of later authors are mostly founded on much less contact (if any) with informants who had directly experienced and known a hunter-gatherer life style; the later the author, the further away we get from such contact. Direct knowledge of the culture and customs becomes a fading memory in the minds of living descendants in South Africa, often working 156

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais

as farm labourers and mostly only speaking Afrikaans. Artists, poets and fiction writers who utilised Bushman material after the 1930s (the second tier cultural appropriators) mostly utilised material in the first archives, and/or rock paintings, and translated, fictionalised or poeticised the material into new literary texts (or paintings from the likes of Walter Battiss and Cecil Skotnes) in their own literatures (Afrikaans and South African English) and oeuvres (novels, short stories, children’s books and poetry). One of the most explicated methodologies of such a process is that of the poet Stephen Watson in his introduction to Return of the Moon (1991). His methodology is precisely recorded in Pippa Skotnes’s preface to Sound from the thinking strings (1991). She writes: Originally I collected and annotated all the stories that had been fully translated; excluding those that were to long or too repetitive […] Most of the pieces in the first selection were those that centred on one subject or had a recognizable beginning or end. Working closely with Stephen Watson to find those pieces that would make the most successful translations [...] we then chose stories that appeared to offer the most insight into /Xam thought and beliefs, or whose quirkiness gave them special appeal. (Pippa Skotnes 1991:8)

Watson was thus thoroughly immersed as an expert, working as a member of an interdisciplinary team on the UCT-housed Bleek and Lloyd’s /Xam archive on what was to be the first of many subsequent artistic book publications, Sound from the thinking strings. He helped to identify the most suitable shorter narratives, those that would “offer the most insight into /Xam thought and beliefs” and “make [for] the most successful translations”. Only after the larger project was completed in 1991 (although in the same year), did he publish these translations in his own collection, Return of the Moon (The Carrefour Press, 1991). The texts were accompanied with precise archival information about the informants and their narratives. In 2004, Antjie Krog published Afrikaans poetic translations based on Bleek & Lloyd’s English transliterations of the /Xam. Judging from the reception at the time of her Afrikaans collection, Die sterre sê ‘tsau’, the Krog-/Xam texts were their first immersion in /Xam culture and mythology for many contemporary Afrikaans readers. Understandably, it was especially her English translation that must have struck Watson (as South African English poet) as being very similar to his publication of decades before. He suggested that she was “lifting the entire concept of the collection”. Why she or her publishers felt the need to translate the original Afrikaans translations into English, is hard to fathom. Had this not been done, the rationale might simply be seen as introducing the /Xam archive in fresh new translations in Afrikaans, a different South African literature with a different readership to that for which Watson wrote. Krog’s interest in translation had been evident for some time. Invited by him, she translated Nelson Mandela’s autobiography into Afrikaans. Subsequently, she 157

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translated numerous poems from various other (African and /Xam) South African literatures, collected in Met woorde soos met kerse, 2002 (which translates as ‘With Words Like Candles’), carrying prominently on the first pages /Xam versions based on texts in the Bleek & Lloyd collection, so joining the ranks of poets such as Markowitz ({1956} n.d.), Sidney Clouts (1966), Stephen Watson (1991), Alan James (2001) and others. Krog’s /Xam collection was first translated from Afrikaans into Dutch as Liederen van de blaauw kraanvogel, 2003. Here it was received with great acclaim, and was often in great demand at poetry readings, so that in 2009 these texts appeared with a selection of other Krog poems, accompanied by a CD of Krog’s readings, entitled Wat de sterren zeggen (‘What the stars say’).2 In Dutch, as in Afrikaans, her poeticised versions of /Xam narratives thus brought greater international fame, as well as national knowledge and consciousness of these /Xam narratives and beliefs. The local accusation by a contemporary English poet, must therefore have been totally unexpected, coming long after the publication of these translated versions – first into Afrikaans in 2002, then into Dutch in 2003, then further /Xam material added into Afrikaans (2004a), and eventually into English (2004b). From this reception history of Krog’s translations and re-workings it is clear that such translations have various functions, not least conscientising readers in various languages about the fate of an extinct people, and promoting a greater historical knowledge of these erstwhile cultures. Krog’s /Xam versions might be seen as a third tier, further removed from intimate knowledge of the archive than Watson, but her work nonetheless still valuable as homage to the /Xam culture, and the poetical quality of that still often enigmatic material. Far from plagiarism, it might also be said that this multilingual literature of cultural transplantation (including the work of Marais, Krige, Markowitz, Clouts, Watson, Krog, Livingstone and many others) constitutes an archive of later cultures’ interpretations of an extinct tradition. Eugène Marais’ collection of narratives, Dwaalstories (1927), is used as a test case. Accusations of plagiarism tend to become a contentious topic in the media and literary circles, immediately equated with dishonesty (Van Vuuren 2000b). ‘Intellectual property’ refers to the individual’s right over his or her own ideas. Where accusations of plagiarism, like those Stephen Watson levelled at Antjie Krog, are brought to bear on adaptations of material from the oral tradition, the issue becomes something far more complicated. Other examples of intimate imitation, generally known as intertextuality, are to be found in Van Wyk Louw’s Tristia (1962). In the first section of this volume, twentythree poems contain large portions of (uncredited!) translations taken from three historical works: WHG Palm’s Walvisschen en walvischvaart, The History of the Church 158

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by Eusebius (ca 300AD) and Hélene Nolthenius’s Duecento. In addition, there are translations from three anti-fascist novels: Das siebte Kreuz (1942) by Anna Seghers, Alexander Fadejev’s Molodaja Gvardia (1945) and Michael Gordey’s Visa pour Moscou (1952). Most readers found these poems far too opaque, the consequence of Louw’s idiosyncratic practice – open to criticism – of quoting directly and extensively from these relatively obscure sources. With the passage of time, and because Tristia found itself for decades at the centre of attention of Afrikaans literary critics, the source texts gradually came to light. What is fascinating about the examples of intertextuality in Tristia is the fact that no one has ever accused Louw of plagiarism, even though he did not acknowledge his sources. Some of those sources only became known nearly thirty years after publication (e.g. “H. Teresa van Avila flap uit”, in Van Vuuren 1989:9-27). How, then, does Louw’s procedure in Tristia differ from the Marais and Krog examples? What makes this case different? These poems were assessed in accordance with the stature of the poet. Tristia may be seen as of central importance in Van Wyk Louw’s oeuvre. He was, and still is, canonised as one of the most important Afrikaans poets. At the time of its publication in the early sixties, Van Wyk Louw’s reputation was already established as a serious, complex and leading thinker and poet. If, while in the process of unlocking one of the ‘opaque’ poems, a reader happened to hit upon a source text, possibilities other than plagiarism would have come to mind. One’s first conclusion, therefore, is that, generally speaking, accusations of plagiarism are much more easily levelled at young, beginner writers, or weaker, un-established poets, than at a poet of special stature and complexity, whose position in the canon is taken for granted by his contemporaries. The relationship between oral and written literature is complicated because the conventions typical of the two traditions are different. In any oral tradition, convention holds that content is common property, while the art and skill of the narratorperformer are given expression through the idiosyncratic colouring-in of the narrative for an audience of the particular moment (more detail in Van Vuuren 1996). The oral tradition has few adjectives and makes use of the frequent repetition of sentences and phrases. Small changes to the wording provide variation, while parallelism, a concrete vocabulary (Hewitt 1986: 237) and a cyclic rather than a distinctive ending are usually present. Because narrative content is conventionally regarded as common property, one finds multiple variations of the same narratives, each one presented in a slightly different way. In post-Romantic Western literature, a written tradition, originality became highly valued as an aesthetic norm. The two conventions are clearly diametrically opposed to one another. When a siphoning over into the Western literary tradition of contents 159

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belonging to the oral tradition occurs, uncertainty is invariably generated concerning the use made of this material. When modern, Western literary conventions are applied to material borrowed from an older, oral source (and bolstered by a set of totally different conventions), a sense of misgiving cannot but be the usual accompaniment.

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The tradition of absorption from the oral tradition during the colonial period A short excursion into South African literary history provides perspective on this type of absorption of material from the oral tradition. Long before Krog dipped into Bushmen material in her Met woorde soos met kerse (which translates as ‘With Words As With Candles’) (2002), Die sterre sê ‘tsau’ and The stars say ‘tsau’ (2004a & 2004b), a considerable number of Afrikaans and English writers had already availed themselves of elements from the oral culture, either by ‘transplantation’ or by translation into their own oeuvres. Most of the early writers gained their knowledge of these first indigenous people from their own experience and/or from acquaintance with either the Bleek & Lloyd (1911) or the Von Wielligh archive (1919-1921). Children’s books, such as the Bleek & Lloyd material in The mantis and his friends (1924), represent a whole tradition of attempting to adapt Bushmen and Khoi narratives for the purpose of children’s literature. In the early 20th century, Von Wielligh was probably mostly responsible for popularizing the /Xam Bushmen material in Afrikaans literature, and in addition, also brought about a strong manifest awareness of this indigenous culture, which worked its way through to the ethnographically tinted texts of writers like the Hobsons, PJ Schoeman and others. Newspapers of the time show that Bleek & Lloyd’s publication of Specimens of Bushmen folklore in 1911 was a newsworthy and important literary event, causing a stir amongst local readers. According to the introduction to his work, Marais was aware of Bleek & Lloyd’s research. The Bleek & Lloyd project was scientifically motivated, and the rationale underpinning it was an acute consciousness of the need for conservation of a people, a language and a culture that was already in the process of disappearing. Beside these texts, there were early ethnographically inspired or adventure stories by the Hobson brothers (1920s and 1930s), PJ Schoeman (1940s to 1960s), Laurens van der Post (most notably, The Heart of the Hunter, 1961) and JJ van der Post – thirteen youth novels based on his own experience as a runaway child living with the Bushmen in Namibia from 1963 to 1970, Agarob van die duine (which translates as ‘Agarob of the Dunes’, 1963). These books all introduced an awareness of indigenous Bushmen stories and mythologies into readers’ minds. Reception studies of Bleek & Lloyd, as well as Von Wielligh’s writings (Van Vuuren 1995), give an indication that their books 160

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were widely read at the beginning of the 20th century because of their unique content, and what was revealed of the fantastical, nature-aligned mythologies and perspectives of the Bushmen. Even prior to the turn of the century, an extensive literature was available through travel descriptions, scientific documents and missionary writings. In his meticulously researched Verkenningen van Zuid-Afrika (2007) (Knowledge and colonialism, 2009) Siegfried Huigen clarifies to what extent the central topos of representation of the indigenous people (and especially the Bushmen and Khoi) had been created in this literature by European travellers. Until the early 1900s, farmers and their children knew and experienced Bushmen as farmworkers (and nomads who turned up on farms); this played a large part in establishing the representation and knowledge of Bushmen culture and its oral narrations. Much of this knowledge has been recorded in peripheral reminiscence literature, such as in Sangiro’s En die Oranje vloei verby (1951) (‘And the Orange Flows Past’).

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A review of creative practices involving Bushman oral narrations and culture Carl Leggo writes about the extinct Beothuk of Newfoundland: The stories of the Beothuk are not reclaimable [...] they have not spoken for more than 150 years, and they will not speak again. Instead we have the constructed narratives of the descendants of the white European men who exterminated the Beothuk … narratives about the descendants of the white Europeans trying to deal with the guilt of their complicity in the horror of genocide, to explore the heart of darkness that lies at the centre of colonial history, to sing out in new voices convening and echoing and keening the voices of the lost – a kind of mystical and spiritual and other-worldly chorus of voices that refuses to let us sleep peacefully. […] The Beothuk are the silent Other, unattainable, unknown, transcendent, no more than a trace remains. […] In a strange way do the Beothuk have the opportunity to speak in my writing about them […] their voices resurrected in the only way that voices are ever resurrected, in language and the slipping and sliding of language, the unfolding of language, the wild and chaotic oscillation of language? Am I liberating voices or oppressing voices? (Leggo 1995:38-39)

The same situation applies to the /Xam and other Bushmen groups. Cultural transplantation equates chaotic slippages in language, “no single unified ‘voice,’ but a babel of contradictory and conflicting cultural signs” (Finke in Leggo 1995:37). The ethical question that all adapters of Bushman material should ask themselves (especially descendants of those who acted as the oppressors) is whether the adaptation is abetting oppression, or an aid to liberation, as expressed by Leggo. Is it only for the sake of the exotic material and being trendy that the oral culture of the Bushmen is 161

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being adapted for the enhancement of a writer’s own stature? Are stereotypes being established? Or are the dealings with the material handled sensitively?

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South African poets and Bushman material In the course of time the oral traditions of the Bushmen and Khoi were taken up into the system of South African literature. The further one moves away from the mere recording of the oral tradition, the more the relationship changes between the oral and the written. The ‘seam’ or interface between the two is often only noticeable as intertext for the reader already au fait with the culture and mythology of the /Xam. The practice of two artists, Walter Battiss and Cecil Skotnes, was strongly influenced by Bushmen rock art; their paintings abound with Bushmen motifs. Pippa Skotnes (daughter of the artist), published Sound from the thinking strings in 1991, which included Stephen Watson’s modernised verse ‘translations’ of Bleek & Lloyd’s /Xam material. His own book, Return of the Moon, was published some months later with the qualifying subtitle, Versions from the /Xam. Watson’s publication gave rise to questions about the nature of his texts. The book was published under the name of an established poet and in verse form, which gave rise to some misconceptions. Were they supposed to be read as an extension of his poetic oeuvre, or as oral texts translated to writing rendered more accessible, and less repetitive, for a modern audience? Did Watson act as mediator or was he carrying on with his own poetic oeuvre, utilising exotic material from the past? The reception of this book was mainly as if it was a new volume of poetry by the poet, rather than more accessible versions as presented from the outset in Skotnes (1991). Watson himself was not altogether clear as to the nature of these texts. On the back cover and in the introduction one finds, over and over again, a creative negotiation of what the eventual texts were purported to be: representations, mediations, translations, literary versions (leaving the reader in total confusion), often with a powerful suggestion on top of it that one is dealing with ‘new’ poems. In a review at the time, Annie Gagiano referred to “a touch of the cultural trophyhunter in the foregrounding of Watson’s own name and difficulties and skills on the cover of, and in the introduction to this collection” (1992:78). Reacting to Gagiano’s point of view, Rod Mackenzie mentioned Watson’s “re-casting of Bushman accounts into verse,” and called Bleek & Lloyd’s translations “laborious transcriptions [...] which are as dull as dishwater” (1992:11). According to him, Watson had created poetry from “porridgy material” (1992:54). In 1956, the lesser known Markowitz took a similar view in the introduction to his own prose and verse adaptations: 162

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The experts who had done research among the little people had recorded their tales with scientific exactitude, adhering meticulously to the Bushman manner of narration with its endless repetitions and digressions. These, though invaluable to the student, made the stories almost unintelligible and impossible of enjoyment as literature. On the other hand, they lost much of their primitive appeal if related in modern, every-day language. After many experiments I struck what I believe to be tolerable compromise in making the stories easily understood without yet sacrificing too much of their elliptical style. (Markowitz {1956} n.d., Introduction; my italics)

It is clear that what Watson variously called his “versions from the /Xam,” “translations,” “poems” or “imitations” appear in a written literary tradition, in the form of poetry and in English. Because Watson was already known as a poet, there are a number of ways to read Return of the Moon: (a) as an extension of his own poetical oeuvre, and thus part of the corpus of South African English poetry (in fact, Krog’s Die sterre sê ‘tsau’ is similarly read by reviewers and received by book pages as part of Afrikaans poetry); (b) as a rewriting of a neglected part of South African history (a credit also afforded Krog, as a type of radical writerly act of innovation, propagating the inclusivity of the forgotten and the downtrodden); (c) as a neo-romantic, westernising project, as is evident in the writings of Laurens van der Post; (d) from within the framework of oral studies (with the /Xam oral tradition as focus); or, (e) with reference to the archaeological and anthropological studies of Bushmen rock art (understanding the /Xam view of life indirectly also clarifies the enigmatic rock art). Watson’s text was published in a post-colonial, multilingual society. The use of English as the language of the centre pulls the attention of the reader into focus – on an extinct community of ‘first people’ whose language had died. //Kabbo’s name appears on the acknowledgements contents pages, while all three are named on page eight in Watson’s introduction: “Bleek and Lloyd were fortunate, however, in finding outstanding narrators in the three men known as //Kabbo, /Han≠Kasso and Dia!kwain. All my versions in this book are based on their testimony. The strangeness of these names and their spelling has an alienating effect on a reader, as pointed out by Gagiano: “[…] the orthography [warns] us that we cannot even pronounce their names” (1992:54). The allure of this ostranenie or estrangement (Ehrlich[1955] 1980:190), as the Russian formalists called it, is really the essence of a good literary text, rather than those faded and clichéd texts in which the reading process becomes “automatised” (Tynjanov 1977:265). The effect of estrangement causes innovation of the corpus: something every reader and author is after within the convention of Western literature. This certainly spells the essence of literariness, of the basic poetic form.

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George Steiner argued that the act of translating is also an act of restitution: “Some translations edge us away from the canvas, others bring us close” (1999:189-190). The rewriting and remodelling of /Xam and Bushman narratives may be seen as enlarging the stature of the original material. It has to be added that, in the case of /Xam oral narratives, the ‘original’ is beyond our reach, and irretrievably so. All that is left are reports and written recordings of fragmented verbal versions. The normal performance situations among kin are forever gone. Both Von Wielligh and Marais sat down and listened to Bushmen narrators (Von Wielligh as child and as adult), but this is not the normal situation of a storyteller performing in /Xam, surrounded by his own people. It is already light years away from spontaneous interaction between fellow speakers of the same language and culture.

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Fluidity and transplantation from the oral tradition: Marais and his Dwaalstories Dwaalstories (1927) provides an excellent focal point for considering the alleged plagiarism in Krog’s The stars say ‘tsau’/Die sterre sê ‘tsau’ (both 2002), despite nearly a century separating these two publications. Both authors adapted Bushmen material into a new form. Suspicion was cast on them both because of the origin of their material. In the introduction to his Dwaalstories, Eugène Marais says that he heard the stories of Bushmen origin from “Outa Hendrik”, though nothing was written down verbatim or directly as a record of the narrated tales. Apart from Dwaalstories, Marais’ main corpus of short stories in many collections are rather dated and not particularly memorable (except for ‘Diep rivier’ (‘Deep River’), the tragic love story of Juanita Perreira). He was no great prose writer, as Van Melle had already stated in the 1950s (Van Melle 1953:13); nevertheless, his Dwaalstories (also published in English, and partly in German) were masterfully executed. By implication, Van Melle questioned Marais’s authorship of the highly lauded and canonised Dwaalstories. More recently, Stephen Gray let rip with a wild harangue at Marais, the “deft confidence trickster given to duping his devotees”, even claiming that Old Hendrik never existed and “was as fictional” as one of Marais’s many noms de plume (Gray 2013:63 & 65). In his turn, Stephen Watson directly accused Antjie Krog of plagiarism. He stated that her book was “an act of appropriation which is outright theft,” and claimed that, “Krog has quietly filched the whole concept for her book from me” (Watson 2006: 48-61). Yet Krog did what many writers had done before her, including Watson himself: ‘cultural translation’ of /Xam material from the Bleek & Lloyd archive. The list of recorders and adapters of Bushmen narratives is long, starting shortly after 1911 with von Wielligh, Marais, Markowitz, Uys Krige, Jack Cope and, much later, Watson, James and then Krog. (This list is far from complete.) 164

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais

The recording by Eugène Marais of the Dwaalstories is subtler than Von Wielligh’s, with the oral and the written joined together quite seamlessly. Yet its oral origin remains visible in the repetition of patterns (e.g. Riet-alleen being threatened by different avatars of Nagali), and in the place name (Gammadoekies) and names given to characters. Animal and plant names are also used for characters, such as HeitsiEibib, Klein Riet, Rooi Joggom and Ou Klipdas-eenoog (‘Old one-eyed RockRabbit’). Additionally, the cyclic course of the narrations, without distinct endings, is characteristic of oral origins. The enigmatic quality characterising these ‘stories’ springs from the cultural transplantation from the foreign context: the metaphorical naming, the description of its setting and, above all, the embedded verses, which are so conspicuous due to their formal otherness from the body of the stories in their prose context. The title of the volume, Dwaalstories, is also suggestive of the typical cyclical course of oral traditions. By reading only the Bushmen poems, the enigmatic quality is intensified: ‘Hart-van-die-Dagbreek’ (‘Heart-of-the-Dawn’) then becomes reduced to barely more than a puzzling haiku when read outside the context of the ‘Reënbul’ (‘Rain Bull’) story in which it was embedded, as well as ‘Die towenares’ (‘The Sorceress’) from the same story. The title, Dwaalstories (‘Wandering Tales’ or ‘Tales of Getting Lost’), is suggestive of their indigenous origin in the narratives of the centenarian Bushman, Old Hendrik. These are tales of nomadism. His presence on Rietfontein farm in the Waterberg coincided with that of Marais (1906 till sometime in 1916). This aged man’s fulllength figure, digging in the soil, was drawn by the painter Erich Mayer, and an off-print, only of his head, appeared in the first edition of 1927. On December 24, 1916, the farmer wrote to inform Marais “dat outha Henderik dood is”. It is therefore irrefutable that such a man as Old Hendrik had existed, and that he was no figment of Marais fertile imagination, as Stephen Gray seems to suggest in a recent essay (‘Soulbrother Eugène Marais’, 2013). Striking about these tales of wandering in Dwaalstories is how radically different they are from Marais’s normal fictional style. The Afrikaans word embedded in the title, ‘dwaal’, has various connotations and different applications, depending on the context. ‘Hy is in ’n dwaal’, used as a noun, means the person is confused. Used as an intransitive verb, it means to roam, rove, straggle, stray or wander about. When used as an adjective, as in the word ‘dwalend(-e)’, it means errant or truant. One can also use the word in an intransitive verb form, ‘om te verdwaal’, as in to lose one’s way or get lost. Yet the most pertinent usage is probably the words ‘dwaalligte’ (non-existent, imaginary lights ‘of animistic origin’ visible in the open veld) and ‘dwaalstories’, which suggests supernatural activity by exterior supernatural agents. In WAT online, the encyclopaedic Afrikaans dictionary (1926- ), ‘dwaalstories’ are described as “stories that originated in the animal tales of the San, where each animal spoke his own language, and that were translated into Afrikaans. The stories have no clear narrative 165

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threads and little meaning, except for the word sounds, but they stimulate the imagination.” A secondary meaning thereof is “ghost stories or tales of wandering, universally common”. An old Griqua word for dagga is dwaalbos on account of its effect on the mind of the smoker (WAT v.II 1974:398). Dagga (marijuana) comes from the Khoi word ‘daga-b’, also used for wild marihuana or ‘makdagga’ (Leonotis leonurus), common in the South African countryside (WAT online), because of its mild psychoactive properties. Dagga was smoked before or during trance dances in order to reach altered states of consciousness, and to hallucinate. In a similar way in which rock art is intimately connected with shamanism and trance dances according to Lewis-Williams (1981:110), one would also expect that these dwaalstories, stories emanating from the dwaalbos, involve trances and visions. Trance dances and metamorphosis form an integral part of the thematics and contents of dwaalstories. Marais himself suggested in his introduction that dwaalstories used to be an “algemene naam vir ’n sekere soort inheemse sprokie […] en nie sy eie siening nie” (which translates as “general word for a certain kind of indigenous tale, and not of his own envisioning”) (Rousseau 1974:255): ‘Dwaalstories’ of the Bushmen always had a considerable attraction for Afrikaans children. The writer is acquainted with an Afrikaans family Grobler, who had an old Bushman, the old Flip, in their employ [...] He used to be a famous storyteller. He knew the ‘Wolf and Jackal’ saga from A to Z, and innumerable dwaalstories [...] Some of those so-called stories were given in pure rhyme. (Marais [1927] 1964:5)

A decisive clue to the origin of the stories lies in the name ‘Nagali’ for the trickster who sends her underlings to waylay the fast young runner, Little Reed, the protagonist in the first story, ‘Klein Riet-alleen-in-die-Roerkuil’. Ngali or Ngwali (Frazer 1920:394), a higher being with supernatural powers, was central to indigenous belief systems in the Transvaal, especially amongst Sesotho and hybrid Bushmen groups, such as the Masele or ‘Vaalpense’ (as the Boers called this people of mixed Bushman and Black descent of the Waterberg) living there. Yet there is clearly another element at play in these narratives; the ‘wandering tales’ are the syncretic hybridism of the Masele and also the //Xegwi, the last hunter-gatherers of the erstwhile Transvaal in the northern-most province of South Africa. The Masele acculturated with the Sotho-Tswana. They, like the Matabele of Mashonaland, and other groups, “feared a god whom they named Ngwali”,3 called “Nagali” in this tale. They made offerings to him “for connexion between Ngwali and the outer world”. This “outer world”, as Frazer calls it in The Golden Bough, is suggestive of the world of spirits, the supernatural world. In Masele mythology, Ngwali/Ngali seems partially but syncretically (no offerings were made to /Kaggen by the /Xam) to have taken the place of /Kaggen in the mythology of the 166

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/Xam or Cape Bushmen. The tale of ‘Little Reed-in-the-Whirlpool’ is shaped by the trickster games of Nagali (homophone for Ngwali, as given by Frazer). He is diverted from his given quest of searching for help by supernatural shape-shifting apparitions sent by Nagali to waylay him; they take the form of a dancing girl, a competing athlete and a crocodile (disguised as a tree stump in the river he has to cross). These trickster figures cause him to end up exactly where he had begun, as he had lost his way. The //Xegwi refugees had emigrated from far to the south, were of mixed linguistic origin, but bore more resemblance to the Southern Bushmen group (Argyle 1985:1920, quoted in Peters). The Vaalpense, or Masele/Massele, although descended far back from the hunter-gatherers who probably painted the Cradock rock art site on the edge of the Waterberg, near Ellisras (now Lephalale), “are not an homogenous culture […] having incorporated genetic and cultural elements from the surrounding Bantu-speaking farmers” (Peters 2000:62). What is most relevant for understanding the nature of the hybrid and syncretic nature of Dwaalstories is Peters’s foregrounding of the fluidity and dynamism in hunter-gatherer cosmology and religion, which easily incorporated strands of Sotho-Tswana and Nguni cosmology into their own (Peters 2000:70). Peters refers specifically to the narrative of the ‘The song of the rain’ in Dwaalstories as an example of a rainmaking ritual, suggestive of a trance-related ritual (Peters 2000:68). It is certain that the hybrid remnants of hunter-gatherer groups to which Old Hendrik belonged were under intense pressure at the turn of the 19th century as they were squeezed off their hunting grounds: Increased social tensions and competition for natural resources as the area became contested, manifested in the transformation of ritual and social resources to negotiate power relations. The recovered materials and contents of the rock art not only demonstrate changes in the intensity of landscape use, but corresponding changes in the ideational landscape. The flexibility characterizing the organization of hunter-gatherers allowed the occupants [of the western Waterberg] to adapt to changing economic, social and political environments. To survive in the rapidly changing landscape of the final phases the last hunter-gatherers were left no choice but to become integrated and adopt the economic and social practices of the indigenous farming communities. (Van der Ryst 2006:330)

In 2014, a remarkable report of ‘The rain prayer’ of the Bakalanga people in a Botswana magazine attests to the truly syncretic nature of the still wide-spread belief in Ngwali (Ngwali is known as ‘Nagali’ in Outa Hendrik’s first tale, and is referred to as ‘she’ rather than the normal ‘he’) in Southern Africa: “We believe in Ngwali, he is the reason why we still breathe in this world,” she (Ms Ghobe) said. Ngwali is the most powerful god who controls whether or when the rain should fall. According to her there are so
many aspects that can force Ngwali
to gnash his teeth leading to vicious punishment. “He is so powerful that 167

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he can command a crocodile to grind your skeleton, swallow you or eat you alive if you disobey him,” she added. A month before the rain season, messengers referred to as Sangomas are chosen and sent to a hill away from the village to beg for rain. Sangomas are the intermediary between the residents and Ngwali because not anybody can interact with Ngwali. It is believed that on the hill Ngwali responds to the messengers through the voice believed to be that of his messenger […] (Kutlwano vol 52 issues 11&12, 2014:24)

Little Reed’s journey, in the first Dwaalstories tale, is also crossed by a treacherous crocodile in the form of a seemingly innocuous tree-stump, sent by a messenger of Ngali. Clearly the Tswana-Sotho beliefs were incorporated into the cosmology of this tale, as were those of the Zimbabwean people, according to a 2013 report in the Chronicle Zimbabwe, which expresses regret for the modern day neglect of ancient rites, by no longer visiting the shrine of Njelele on the Matobo hills, where Ngwali, the rain god is said to be ensconced in a cave (Dube in Chronicle Zimbabwe 4 November 2013). Far from Marais “sucking it all out of his thumb”, as Stephen Gray would have it (Gray 2013:65), in the undercurrents of Little Reed’s journey in Dwaalstories a whole cosmology of indigenous beliefs of the region is alluded to (Waterberg, Limpopo, Botswana and Zimbabwe). Part of the allure of Marais’s Bushman poems, embedded in the narratives of Dwaalstories, is his use of parallelism and repetition, such as is found in ‘Die towenares’ (‘The Sorceress’): “Sy wag nie meer”, “sy maak nie meer”, “sy hoor nie meer” and “G’n een roep haar van ver” (‘She no longer waits”, “she no longer makes”, “she no longer hears” and “No one calls to her from afar”). These patterns reiterate the oral tradition of the Bushmen, the ultimate origin of the narratives. This also explains why it was written in free verse form forty years before the first real departure from traditional versification in Afrikaans poetry with the publication of Breyten Breytenbach’s Die ysterkoei moet sweet (The iron cow must sweat) in 1964. These negative formulations emphasise what aspects are now absent from the daily life of the girl: the “kom van die jagters” (“for the hunters to return”), the women’s expectant lighting of a fire (preparing to cook an animal that was killed), the sound of a dancing song and of the voice that tells stories. Perhaps also suggested is the voice of a lover, speaking “mooi woorde” (“sweet words”) to her after having “van ver geroep het” (“calls to her from afar”). The absent elements mentioned evoke a bygone huntergatherer lifestyle, typified by successful hunters whose prey the whole community partakes of around the open-air fire, a lover, a storyteller, a fireside feast, communal dancing and singing around the fire. This poem closely reiterates an idea from ‘Diep rivier’. There we read: “ek sien van ver […] ek hoor jou stem as fluistering in ’n droom” (my emphasis) (‘I see from afar […] I hear your voice as a murmuring in a dream’). Both verses more strongly stress the 168

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absence of human togetherness and fellowship: of the importance of loved ones. This melancholy and “groot verlange” (“great longing”) for the absent one is a typifying emotion in much of Marais’ literary work. Though Leipoldt was called the “eensame veelsydige” (“many-sided solitary”) in Nienaber’s biography (1948), Marais himself could be described as ‘eensame sonderling’ (‘solitary eccentric’). This basic emotion is linked to the intense awareness of life’s transience in ‘Skoppensboer’, about the brevity of human life with its pleasures and fun, although in a more naïve fashion, written in mechanical, linked rhymes and couplets, as in the third stanza: Die heerlikheid van vlees en bloed; die hare wat die sonlig vang en weergee in ’n goue gloed: die dagbreek op elk’ sagte wang en oge vol van sterreprag is weerloos teen sy groter mag. Alreeds begint die rimpel sny; oor alles hou die wurm wag en stof en as is al wat bly; Want swart en droef, die hoogste troef oor al wat roer is Skoppensboer. [The joyousness of flesh and blood; sunlight in the hair reflecting in a golden glow: dawn on each soft cheek bright starlight in the eyes powerless against his will. Wrinkles pucker up; the worm awaits us all leaving only dust and ash; For black and sad the highest trump o’er all that stirs is Jack of Spades.]

(trans. HvV)

In spite of its basic allure, this poem now strikes one as being decidedly archaic, sporting a traditional rhyming pattern, a rumbling rhythm and archaic word choices (“oge”, “elk” and “begint”). It is a somewhat dated, adapted French ballad in four stanzas, each ending in a refrain about death or “Skoppensboer” (“the Jack of Spades”). 169

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By contrast, no flat tones and warmed-up poetic devices are detectable in the orally inspired poems. They were written in free verse, with fresh, simple and concrete words chosen, each poem supported by nature imagery and a musicality generated by a repetition of phrases and sounds. ‘Die towenares’ (‘The Sorceress’) is musical through the use of alliteration in “die wind waai verby haar ore” (“the wind blows past her ears”), “die stem van die storieverteller” (“the voice of the storyteller”), and “die wind treur altyd” (“the wind is always mournful”). It is free of a forced rhyming pattern and droning rhythms, and hardly any adjectives are employed, except for “mooi” (“sweet”) in front of “woorde” (“words”). One would presume that the more traditional verse was the older by far, and that the poet could have arrived at the free verse technique only at a later stage. However, both poems stem from the same period. How is this to be explained? Based on an analysis of style, only one possible answer presents itself: the free verse poems spring from a different matrix, not in the first place from the subconscious of Marais, but from another culture, and from dissimilar narrators with whom Marais had become acquainted by listening to the stories, songs and narrations of the aged Hendrik (and probably other Bushmen people) on the Waterberg farm, Rietfontein. A 1913 drawing of him by Erich Mayer is captioned (in translation), “The nomadic Bushman who occasionally turned up at Rietfontein”. According to Marais, he had heard the Dwaalstories in their original form from him (Rousseau in Marais 1984, vol. 2:1286). The story, ‘The Song of the Rain’, contains one of the more upbeat poems ostensibly by Marais, ‘The Dance of the Rain’. It is ascribed to the ‘Song of the fiddler, Jan Konterdans, from the Big Desert’. For a hunter-gatherer existence in the desert, water is rated as the most indispensable necessity for survival, man and beast both being totally dependent on it. Of the eight parts of Customs and Beliefs of the /Xam taken down by Bleek & Lloyd, no less than three deal with aspects of rain: part 4 (‘Omens, wind-making, clouds’), part 5 (‘The rain’) and part 6 (‘Rain-making’) (Bleek & Lloyd in Hollmann 2004: 93-196). Of the 326 pages as printed in Hollmann’s publication of the Bleek & Lloyd collection, 103 narrations deal with rain (about 30%). A further third have to do with animals (baboons, lions and antelopes), and the final third consists of narrations about shamans (previously called ‘sorcerers’). The /Xam cosmology is centred, therefore, around nature, its wild animals – those populating, together with themselves, the hunting fields – and the rain, giver of life to all species. The go-betweens and mediators between life and death, and between drought and abundance, are the shamans, or rainmakers. From the large concentration of customs and beliefs on the subject of rain, the inference can be made just how central rain was to their existence. ‘Die dans van die reën’ (‘The Dance of the Rain’) was a transformative experience for a Bushman, altering his whole world. Rain was seen as being of two kinds: masculine (hard and heavy) and feminine (soft). The north wind was known as the rain wind and mention was made of dead people riding the 170

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais

rain. Young, unmarried women and girls who had to observe silence and had to hide themselves when it rained were also mentioned. Rainmakers had to lead the rainanimal out with great difficulty, using leather thongs, which sometimes snapped on the water-bull’s horns. The thong then vibrated with a “ringing noise” and made a “whirring, buzzing sound” (Hollmann in Bleek & Lloyd 2004:172). In the /Xam’s world, sound was regarded as a significant element of supernatural events. A passage in Die siel van die mier (The Soul of the White Ant), written between 1925 and 1926, but only published in 1934, could serve as scientific intertext for ‘Die dans van die reën’. Where the flight of the termites after the first rains is described, an observation might date from 1902 when Marais was a member of an aborted expedition through Mozambique, and where he had witnessed something similar: Dit is ’n wonderlike natuurstudie om in onbewoonde Midde-Afrika die vlug van die miere te aanskou. Binne ’n paar minute krioel die oppervlakte van die aarde met lewe: insekte en diere storm op die fees toe. Diep uit die aarde kruip paddas, slange, koggelmanders en akkedisse. Hoe hulle almal die tyding kry, weet ek nie. Die skilpad selfs word wakker en kom jaend te voorskyn. Allerlei insekte en ander goggas – reuse-krieke, kewers, oorkruipers, spinnekoppe, skerpioene – wemel deur die gras. Almal het’n uitnodiging gekry na die groot maaltyd. In die water, net onder die oppervlakte, loer en wag talle visse en waterskilpaaie. Uit die bosse sluip jakkalse, katte, meerkatte, ape, bobbejane; selfs die vorstelike tier kom gapend maar geïnteresseerd te voorskyn. Daar is ’n tydelike wapenstilstand – behalwe teen die onfortuinlike vlieënde miere. Dit lyk of hulle moet vlieg, net om te sterwe […] Die nagvalkies, uile en ander nagvoëls sit die fees voort tot in die donkerste ure van die nag. (A wonderful instance for the study of nature in uninhabited Central Africa presents itself when one beholds the flight of these termites. Within a few minutes the surface of the earth is teeming with life; insects and animals come rushing towards the feast. From deep down toads, snakes, agamas and lizards come crawling. How all of them received the message, I do not know. Even the tortoise, awaken, comes racing along. A multitude of insects and other creepy-crawlies – giant crickets, beetles, earwigs, spiders, scorpions – swarms through the grass. Everybody has received an invitation to the huge spread. In the water, barely below the surface, numerous fish and terrapins are lurking and waiting. From the bush sneak jackal, cats, suricates, monkeys, baboons; even the princely leopard puts in an appearance, yawning, though interested. A temporary truce reigns – but not as far as the unfortunate termites are concerned. Fly they must, only to die […] The nightjars, owls and other nocturnal birds continue with the feast into the darkest hours of the night.) (Versamelde werke {‘Collected Works’} 1984 vol I:56; my emphasis/italics)

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Marais’s focus on the veld after rains, in his scientific study of nature, and the Bushmen perspective in ‘Die dans van die reën’ overlap one another almost imperceptibly: the “feast” in White Ant is a “wedding” for Jan Konterdans. The small animals and insects come crawling above ground “from deep down” in White Ant, while the Bushmen perspective is on the surfacing of “die kleinvolk diep onder die grond” (“the small creatures deep underground”) and their “nader kruip” (“creeping closer”). In White Ant Marais views the occurrence in the veld as “’n uitnodiging na die groot maaltyd” (“an invitation to the great mealtime”), while Jan Konterdans is singing about the rain-sister who invited everybody, because “die werf is wyd en die bruilof groot” (“the yard is wide and the wedding so grand”). In the second stanza, Marais slightly loses his grip on the Bushmen perspective when he slides back into standard Afrikaans, and the scientific discourse gains the upper hand: “die grootwild jaag uit die vlakte […] hulle buk om haar fyn spore op die sand te sien” (“The large animals charge across the plain […] they bend to see her delicate tracks on the sand”). But the remainder of the poem is convincing. The success of this poem, still prescribed at school today, and apparently even appreciated by eighteenyear-old students at high school (nearly a century since it was written), could be due to the effect of estrangement caused by the perspective of a different culture. A common occurrence for the urban Westerner has been converted into a festive wedding as experienced by someone living close to nature. In conclusion, amongst the Bushmen poems of Marais, is a song of Nampti, ‘die klein Boesmanmeidjie’ (‘the little Bushman girl’) as Marais calls her in the subtitle of the poem. Firstly, ‘Die woestynlewerkie’ (‘The Desert Lark’) (Rousseau 1984: 1004-1005): Gampta, my vaal sussie, al wat ek in die wêreld het buiten my ou ouma! As jy bo in die lug sing, kan jy al die wonderlike dinge onder sien waar die hasie wegkruip en die steenbokkie sy lêplek maak. En die meide kan jou nie raak nie, want jy is sterker as álmal al is jy swakker as ek. Selfs die bergleeu wat ons bangmaak as hy snags brul, kan jou nie raak nie; ek sal jou oppas, my sussie, tot al jou kleintjies groot is. 172

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais

My vaal sussie, Gampta, ek sien jou! (Gampta, my drab little sister, all that I have in the world except my old grandma! When you sing high up in the sky, you can see all the wonderful things below where the young hare hides and the small steenbok makes its lying-down place. And women cannot touch you, because you are stronger than all of them although you are weaker than me. Even the mountain lion that frightens us when he roars in the night, cannot touch you; I’ll watch over you, my little sister, until all of your fledglings are grown. My drab little sister, Gampta, I see you!)  (trans. DRS & HvV)

The English skylark (and other lark species) is known in vernacular Afrikaans as lewerkie, or with slight variations as lewerikie or leeurikie (orthographically and phonetically associated with ‘lion’ in the Afrikaans word, ‘leeu’) and also lieberkie or liewerikie (association with ‘little darling’). The standard Afrikaans dictionary, the WAT (v.9, 1994:259), describes it as a small, brown songbird (family Alaudidae, esp. genus Mirafra), nesting on the ground, a typically unattractive terrestrial bird. The young yellow-brown girl identifies herself in this song with the small, plain bird, Gampta, naturally camouflaged, and not frightened of a lion. In “Hart-vandie-Dagbreek” (‘Heart-of-the-Dawn’) (Rousseau 1984:10) the relationship deepens, according to the inscription: Hart-van-die-dagbreek Lied van die woestynlewerkie deur die klein Boesmanmeidjie Nampti vertolk “Die Spore van die Hart-van-die-Dagbreek! Lank het ek dit in die dou gesien voor die son dit doodvee; die klein spoortjies van Nampti wat my hart laat sing.” 173

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(Heart-of-the-Dawn Song of the small desert lark as the little Bushman girl Nampti interpreted it “The Footprints of the Heart-of-the-Dawn! I saw them in the dew for a long time before the sun wiped it out the small footprints of Nampti that make my heart sing.”) 

(trans. DRS & HvV)

The verse reminds one of a haiku. Only a single image is repeated through variation: “Die Spore van die Hart-van-die-Dagbreek” (‘The Footprints of the Heart-of-theDawn’). Further on it is described as “die klein spoortjies van Nampti” (“the small footprints of Nampti”). So Nampti is identical to the Heart-of-the-Dawn. Who speaks or sings? It’s the desert lark, the small brown bird. However, the verse seems to be, inclusive of its romantic title, a declaration of love (“wat my hart laat sing”) (“that make my heart sing”). In the previous poem Nampti called this small bird her “little sister”. Here the reader is faced with a seemingly unsolvable conundrum. The answer lies in the /Xam creation myth of the heavenly bodies as recorded by Von Wielligh. These stellar bodies were formerly ‘people’ of the early race. The myth is entitled ‘Die môrester is die Hart van Daeraad’ (‘The morning star is the Heart of Dawn’). We hear about Sun, and his sons, Dawn and Evening-twilight. Wolf ’s daughter was in love with the elder son, Dawn, but then he married another girl from the early race, with whom he had a child. Wolf ’s daughter, spurred on by jealousy, poisoned the termite-rice dish of Dawn’s wife with “die swartagtige sweet wat agter [haar] skouerblaaie sit” (which translates as “the blackish sweat found behind her shoulder blades”) (Von Wielligh 1919:153), so causing all of her jewellery, the rings around her neck, her bracelets and her ankle rings, as well as her kaross and skin-skirt to drop from her body. The clothes and jewellery are simply left on the ground while she is transformed into a wild animal. She felt “dat ek in my harsings gekrink raak. Ek voel ek word ’n verskeurende dier” (“that I was being swivelled in my brain. I felt that I was becoming a carnivorous animal”) (1919:154). Her sister, though, came along early in the morning, before Sunrise, and while Dawn was still busy with “die Sterretjies dof te maak, en dan die blou lug uit te hang” (“dim the little Stars, before hanging out the blue sky”), and brought the baby to her where she took cover in the reeds to feed the child. After her sorcery, Wolf ’s daughter dressed herself in the clothes and jewellery of the jinxed woman, and now pretended to be Dawn’s wife. Then it was time for a ’Ku dance. At the dance, Dawn came to realise what had happened: his wife had been changed into a lioness. He then hurled an assegai at Wolf ’s daughter, who, while fleeing the scene, accidently badly burnt one of her one hind feet 174

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais

when she stepped in the fire. The others at the dance came up with a plan. The next morning they took some goats to lure the lioness, and they all went to the reeds and stood there, behind the sister who was calling out to Dawn’s wife. The lioness appeared and began to eat the one goat. Everybody grabbed her, pinned her down, and with the aid of magic stuff from a goat’s entrails, succeeded in causing her to change back into a human being, after they had first pulled the skin off her body. Only the hair on the tips of her ears was not pulled out at her own request, otherwise she would have been deaf afterwards. She again turned into the beautiful woman she used to be, but soon changed into the big Caracal, that, until today, still has the tufts of long hair on the tips of its ears. Nevertheless, even with this she continued to be the wife of Dawn, for in the end she really was the beautiful woman. (Von Wielligh, v.1,1919:158)

And then: Angered by his daughter’s humiliation, Wolf went during the night and murdered Dawn and proceeded to butcher him: But just as he was slicing into the body, the brilliant Heart flew out of it, shooting up into the sky to become the Morning Star. It was then that he came to fetch his wife, children and grandchildren to live with him on the sunrise-side of the sky. So, the big, bright Morning Star is the Heart of Dawn. (Von Wielligh, v. 1,1919:159)

Marais’s cryptic verse is a fragment containing intertextual references to a mythical past. The ‘sun’ was a person of the early race, like “Heart-of-the-Dawn”. In a version of the same myth in Bleek and Lloyd (‘!Ko-G!nuin-Tara, Wife of Dawn’s-Heart Star, Jupiter’ {1911} 1986:85-98), Bleek explains in a lengthy footnote to that narration, that “Dawn’s-Heart” was Jupiter, and that his daughter’s name was “Dawn’s-Heartchild”: “He calls her ‘my heart,’ he swallows her, then walks alone as the only Dawn’sHeart Star, and, when she is grown up, he spits her out again. She then herself becomes another (female) Dawn’s-Heart, and spits out another Dawn’s-Heart-child, which follows the male and female Dawn’s-Heart” (Bleek in Bleek & Lloyd {1911} 1986:96‑97). There appears to be an endless reproduction of stars represented here – stars that once were people. Nonetheless, an intimate connection between man and the heavenly bodies is made clear, dating from mythical times and the supposed kinship among them all. The most important feature of Marais’ technique in his Bushman poems is that he negotiates the foreign cultural material in a manner different to that of either Bleek & Lloyd or Von Wielligh. Bleek & Lloyd create distance between reader and text with their literal translations, and often, as in this case, the myth appears less coherent, due to the lack of logical transitions in the narration. This fragmenting is most probably partly the result of linguistic misapprehensions, and partly due to the 175

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slow way of interrupted storytelling, due to the researchers’ recording by hand. When one compares the English and Afrikaans texts, Von Wielligh’s text often clarifies connections between fragments, as is clear in ethno-astronomical research (see Koorts 2006, and Koorts and Slotegraaf 2006): These two accounts – the Sun is the Head of Dancer, and the Evening Star is the eye of Dusk – do not appear in any of the standard texts we consulted and thus expand the collection of known /Xam astronarratives. By making the English translation of von Wielligh’s Boesman-stories, where they contain astronomical themes, readily available, we hope that others may find even more material useful for their work. (Koorts and Slotegraaf 2006:4).

The myths relating to the origin of Jupiter and its stars were clarified via the Von Wielligh archive. Koorts and Slotegraaff also include a graph of sources in Bleek & Lloyd, as well as in Von Wielligh, with references to heavenly bodies, providing the exact page numbers. Gradually, the indigenous knowledge of the Bushmen is finding its rightful position in scientific practice. What Marais achieves, however, when he employs Bushmen material in his verse, is something very different. He seems to have internalised the material, and he wrote from within this mythological frame of reference. At least, this is how it appears to be. The same situation, as in the case of the poems, applies to the short narratives in Dwaalstories. Besides the four Dwaalstories (1927) with a Bushmen setting, 63 other stories were collected in Magriet van Laastelus (‘Magriet of Laastelus’, 1922), Die huis van die vier winde (‘House of the Four Winds’, 1933), Die leeus van Magoeba (‘The Lions of Magoeba’, 1934) and, posthumously, Die mielies van Nooitgedacht (‘The Corn of Nooitgedacht’, 1937), Keurverhale (‘Choice Stories’, 1948), Spore in die sand (‘Tracks in the Sand’, 1949) and Laramie die wonderwerker (‘Laramie, the Wonder Worker’, 1950). Juxtaposed with Dwaalstories, most of the other sixty-three realistic narratives seem strikingly outmoded. Hardly one of them retains something of value other than the factual or historical: the prose is simplistic, without any sophisticated technical aspects or aesthetic qualities. They are representative of the type of Afrikaans fiction stemming from the period when they were written at the beginning of the 20th century, when no significant experimental tradition existed in Afrikaans other than narratives in a realistic mode. One should bear in mind here how the first Afrikaans novel, SJ du Toit’s Di Koningin fan Skeba, (which translates as ‘The Queen of Sheba’, 1898) was at the centre of an emotional storm. Just how naïve approaches to Afrikaans literature were at the time is highlighted by the indignant reception of this historical novel; readers found it unacceptable for a cleric to be ‘lying’ until they came to realise it was all fiction and not the truth. Not long before this, between 1882 and 1899, the volk (the Afrikaans community) passionately awaited the installments of ‘Ou Oom 176

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Jan’, or Jan Lion Cachet’s ‘Sewe duiwels en wat hul gedoen het’ (‘Seven Devils and What They Were Up To’), published in Die Patriot and Ons Klyntji. Central to each narrative and its moral lesson, is one of the mortal sins, e.g. ‘The Talk-Devil’ or ‘The Lie-Devil.’ Almost no reading matter was available during this period for Afrikaans-speaking people. And whatever they could find was in essence realistic, didactic or historical. Dwaalstories is miles away from anything offered by Afrikaans literature of the time, as well as from any other fiction by Marais. It is in a class of its own: almost prose poems in terms of the poetics, implicit significance and sophisticated allure. In the introduction to his Dwaalstories, Marais acknowledged the important and unprecedented work of Bleek & Lloyd on the /Xam, as did Von Wielligh (when he chanced upon Specimens of Bushmen folklore, halfway through his second volume). Marais informed the reader that he had heard the dwaalstories from an “old Bushman, outa Hendrik”, but, sadly, never wrote them down “word for word”. A drawing of Hendrik formed the frontispiece in the original edition of Dwaalstories en ander vertellings (1927) but has since been omitted from subsequent editions (in 1959 and 2006) by the publishers, Human & Rousseau. The portrait of Hendrik made in situ by Erich Mayer (see Leon Rousseau 1974:255) is an intrinsic part of the text. By means of this representation, Marais gave recognition to his source, as did Bleek & Lloyd when they acknowledged their respective sources. According to Hennie Aucamp, the reissued version of Dwaalstories by Human & Rousseau, the text generally familiar to Afrikaans readers, deviates from the 1927 first edition of Dwaalstories en ander vertellings because it was ‘purged’ of almost all of Marais’s anthropological footnotes, inter alia a footnote about the pronunciation of a word (personal communication, 8/12/2001). The burning question remains: why was the Human & Rousseau edition ‘purged’, and so dehistoricised? Two of the narratives, ‘Die vaal koestertjie’ (‘The Small Drab Pipit’) and ‘Die reënbul’ (‘The Rain Bull’) bear strong resemblance to certain narratives recorded by Bleek and Lloyd. In ‘Die vaal koestertjie’ Nampti turns into a lion (just like the wife of Dawn in von Wielligh). In Xam mythology shamans had the ability to alter their form. The rubbing in of buchu as a charm was also a well-known ritual among the /Xam. Furthermore, reference is made to a star, called the “female ostrich,” that was “foraging in the big veld with her little ones”. Marais explained in a footnote that this image was a reference to the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, obviously a detail from a Bushmen myth. In its literary reception, Dwaalstories was mainly hailed as Marais’s own original prose, evidence of his creativity, with Van Wyk Louw maintaining that “his old Bushman narrator himself was merely a framework and a fantasy” and that, with those narratives, he “was heading in what was his own literary direction” (1961:115). Only one single literary figure, Ernst Lindenberg, was to raise his doubts about this:

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Was Marais’s ars poetica responsible for his deficiencies (the rigidity of his other poems with their fixed forms in contrast with the free verse of the ‘Bushman poems’), and could he solely by God’s grace sometimes overlook it to write good poems? But what about the “orality principles” “necessary rules regarding form” and “inner articulation” in the Bushman poems? To these questions Cloete still – as well as the whole Afrikaans literary criticism – owes an answer. (Lindenberg 1965:38)

At this time (1950s–1970s), when the intrinsic approach to text criticism was in high fashion in literary criticism, no noticeable attempts were made at reconstruction of the cultural context or the belief systems of the /Xam, which had been made accessible through the work of Bleek & Lloyd as well as von Wielligh, and to which Marais explicitly referred in his introduction. Dwaalstories simply merged seamlessly with Afrikaans literature. The only critic who showed understanding of the material, was the writer JJ van Melle. He had already written an illuminating article in 1953 on Dwaalstories, stating that Marais was not “an artist who could write great prose, and that the three narratives referred to [...] were so masterly that I doubt whether he would ever have been capable of producing narratives of such high artistic value [...] What he did, most probably, was only to elucidate the narrative” (Van Melle 1953:41). Although Marais had extensively acknowledged Bleek and Lloyd in his introduction to Dwaalstories, the narrative content was not known from the narratives recorded by Bleek & Lloyd. Was it possible that his recorded tales were an intimation, or a glimmer, of the Bushmen narratives common to the Waterberg region of the former Northern Transvaal, as heard by Marais when he was staying there? The form of these stories is certainly typical of the oral tradition of the Bushmen (repetition, parallelism, the use of concrete language, a musicality in the use of language, and the particularly un-Western nomenclature for people and places). The cultural frame of reference also clearly indicates a hunter-gatherer milieu, and is suffused with the mental world and point of view of the Bushmen (collective action, subordinate position of an individual relative to the community, as in the narrative about Little Reed). Here we have probably been given the last glimpse of the oral tradition of the syncretised, hybrid Bushmen of the former Waterberg and Northern Transvaal. Why else would he have written about the Bleek & Lloyd project to such an extent, also making it explicitly clear that he had heard the narratives from the mouth of the aged Hendrik? And why else would these narratives differ so much from his other traditional fiction? This seems to be the only logical conclusion to come to: that Marais was reproducing variants of Bushmen oral narratives as they were found in that area. He might have then reworked them into an aesthetically pleasing form. Or not. Exactly how far his adaptation went, or how much was recounted by the old Hendrik, cannot be distinguished now, but the essential differences between these ‘dwaalstories’ and his other traditional narratives are so obvious that, taken on their own, they speak volumes about their origin. Lewis178

Cultural appropriation: Antjie Krog, Stephen Watson, and Eugène Marais

Williams has referred to this situation, stating that, “the art clearly falls into a number of geographical divisions, or [...] regional styles. These ‘styles’ may reflect major linguistic divisions” (2000:7). It is not inconceivable, and indeed quite plausible, that we are dealing with a few specimens of the oral tradition of the Waterberg Bushmen, a hybrid of Masele (‘Vaalpense’) and //Xegwi, plus one Koranna tale, the latter clearly indicated as such, ‘Die lied van die reën’ (‘The Song of the Rain’). Marais’s three other meagre ‘dwaalstories’ might be all that is left of the mythology of the Transvaal Vaalpense and/or //Xegwi.

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Conclusion Stephen Watson’s accusation of plagiarism levelled at Antjie Krog for her procedure in The stars say ‘tsau’ precipitated a long, distasteful and unnecessary controversy. In his introduction to With Uplifted Tongue: Stories, Myths and Fables of the South African Bushmen Told in Their Manner, Arthur Markowitz reflected upon the transposal of the material: “After many experiments I struck what I believe to be a tolerable compromise in making the stories easily understood without yet sacrificing too much of their elliptical style” (Markowitz 1956:10). This “elliptical style” is also at the heart of Dwaalstories (manifested in the enigmatic open spaces in the text), as it is in the Von Wielligh /Xam archive. Any migration of the oral tradition of the Bushmen ultimately equates to a tribute to the poetical vitality still concealed in this material. But looking at the oeuvres of Marais, Watson and Krog, it is also evident that the stature of an established poet is enhanced when drawing from this vital source. In the end material from oral traditions are invariably ‘tapped’ for their vitality by living writers. And the dead cannot speak…

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8 Man as fire beast The odour of mythologies lingers in our modern minds, paleolithic fragments fleck our brains.   (Basil du Toit, from Home Truths)

S

outh African Poet DJ Opperman’s collection of apocalyptic poems in Dolosse (‘Divination Bones’)1 fits seamlessly into the 21st-century’s ‘anthropogenic’ consciousness of humankind’s devastating effect on the natural world and other species. The poem ‘Vuurbees’ (‘Fire Beast’, set in an African cave but linked to European equivalents, presents a culturally pessimistic vision of mankind. The geographical specifics of the setting are unimportant. What the poem does through a minimum of words is to reimagine the first consciousness of cave-dwelling homo sapiens and their life style, followed by a catalogue of the achievements of modern man or ‘civilisation’ through great art works, architecture and space travel. Yet, at the end he brings it right up to an intense moral conscience concerning man’s destruction, through the same creative urge, with apocalyptic inventions such as the atom bomb: Vuurbees

Die buffel ken geen metafisika: hy soek die soetgras en die kuil, hy sal die kalf karnuffel, horings in sy vyand gra, die koei besnuffel, teen hael gaan skuil, maar geen vrae oor môre vra – die buffel ken geen metafisika. Alleen die mens tref in sy swerwe tussen hede, toekoms en verlede die spleet tot grotte van die rede: hy maak ’n mes, ’n vuur, 181

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skep gode, dink aan sterf, prewel gebede en moet beswerend teen ’n muur van sy spelonk die buffel verf; die buffel van die metafisika: die vuurbees in homself volg, buig of bars, enduit sy drif en drome na, en prikkels van die brein word piramides, Laaste Avondmaal, wiel, chroom, projektiele, produkte van atoom, et cetera. En voor sy besete blik besef die enkeling ontsteld hy sal ook nie terugskrik vir die alles-uitwissende slagveld – stukkend lê alreeds die Parthenon en Hirosjima in die bose skoonheid van geweld. Die buffel ken geen metafisika. (Fire Beast

The buffalo knows no metaphysics: he seeks the sweet grass and the waterhole, will rough up calves, maul an enemy with his horns, sniff the cow, shelter from hail, but asks no questions about tomorrow – the buffalo knows no metaphysics. Only man finds in his roaming between present, future and past the narrow crack to caves of reason: makes a knife, 182

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a fire, creates gods, thinks about dying, mumbles prayers and paints on a wall of his cave, driven to exorcise the buffalo; the metaphysical buffalo: the fire beast in himself follows, make or break, his drives and dreams to the last, and sparks in the brain become pyramids, the Last Supper, wheel, chrome, projectiles, products of the atom, et cetera. And before his crazy gaze the individual, bewildered, realises that still he won’t retreat from the all-effacing battlefield – the Parthenon and Hiroshima already lying in ruins in the evil beauty of violence. The buffalo knows no metaphysics.)2 (Dolosse, 1963:9-10; transl. H van Vuuren & DR Skinner)

The “bose skoonheid van geweld” (“evil beauty of violence”) echoes Opperman’s ars poetica as described in the essay ‘Kuns is boos!’ (‘Art is evil!’). In Dolosse, the poet features as a medicine man-cum-shaman, or African ‘sangoma’, who performs acts of divination by throwing the bones, so as to discern the future. What he foresaw for South Africa (shortly after Sharpeville in 1960) and Europe (after an extended European trip in 1957, visiting Pompeii, Mycenae and Carrara, amongst others) was “a cold spiritual hell”. The poet’s reading of the bones and the vision of hell, produced poetry of the highest intensity, although his own catabasis or ‘descent into hell’ started here. The mask of the bone-throwing ‘sangoma’, or augur, is his Africanisation of the “gazer into the crystal ball”, from his darkly apocalyptic 1960 essay ‘Die blik in die toekoms’ (‘The view into the future’) (Opperman 1977:125). The small ‘droppings’ (kuttels, i.e. dry, roundish pellets produced by healthy antelope) of verse collected in Dolosse suggest an intense cultural pessimism. Opperman’s pareddown poems were read in their time as invocatory poems by a “bone-thrower of the 183

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word” (Grové 1959:141). The suggestion that these poems are similar to the bones of a diviner, implies that he was gathering bits and pieces from what was available (like the bits of “very common bone, wood and pebbles of the bone-thrower”, well-known to him as native of Zululand). These he casts in front of him, like poems on paper. Every new ‘throw’ is interpreted for what it could augur in the face of a menacing future. This collection and the title constitute a self-characterisation of the poet’s penultimate late work, from 1963 to 1970. A further renewal, in a totally different vein, followed in his 1979 and final collection, Komas uit ’n bamboesstok (which translates as ‘Comas from a Bamboo Stick’), not under discussion here. The prehistoric cave location of the poem – effected through mentioning a rock painting, and the reference to a “buffalo” and “fire beast”, against the backdrop of the long European tour by the poet and his wife in 1957, evokes a French prehistoric cave-setting such as Lascaux, but one that has been Africanised. Christopher Fynsk’s ‘Lascaux and the question of origins’ offers three different approaches to man’s first “hand on the cave wall” print (“hand aan die wand” is NP van Wyk Louw’s description in his seminal Tristia poem on Altamira, ‘Groot ode’ or ‘Great Ode’), by Leroi-Gourhan, Bataille and Nancy respectively: Man began in the calmly violent silence of a gesture: here, on the wall, the continuity of being was interrupted by the birth of a form, and this form, detached from everything, even detaching the wall from its opaque thickness, gave one to see the strangeness of the being, substance, or animal that traced it, and the strangeness of all being in him. At this man trembled, and this trembling was him. If we are moved, fascinated, and touched in our souls by the images from the caves of our prehistory […] it is not only because of their troubling antiquity, but rather because we sense the emotion that was born with them, this emotion was their very birth: laughter and fear, desire and astonishment in the face of this obviousness, as powerful as the wall of massive rock, according to which the figural contour completes what cannot be completed, finishes the non-finite, and does not thereby withdraw it from the infinite, but quite the contrary, gives it the dizzying space of its presentation without end. (Nancy in Fynsk 2003:14)

The first awareness of a separate identity signified by this imprint – the moment when someone stood back and viewed his own handprint on the cave wall – is poetically inscribed at the very start of NP van Wyk Louw’s ‘Groot ode’ (‘Great Ode’), as the “hand on the wall” (Louw, Tristia, 1962). This “hand on the wall” moment may be described as the first self-objectifying realisation of Homo sapiens. At the same time each individual handprint today resembles a mysterious prehistoric ‘identity card’ from which one may gather whether it belonged to a child, a woman or a disfigured person (perhaps with missing fingers, as in the Gargas cave in the foothills of the Middle Pyrenees, near the French town of Aventignan). 184

Man as fire beast

The buffalo painted on the cave wall in ‘Vuurbees’ is Opperman’s Africanized version of the Neolithic bison. The “fire beast” (or ‘fire ox’) suggests the red aurochs, as found at Lascaux and Altamira. The red colour of the “fire beast” is the colour of red ochre, of blood, energy and the aurochs. The red cow (“la vache rouge”) is symbolic of the divine warm waters, according to the ancient Veda, the incarnation of the fertile potency in certain ‘waters’ (associated with libidinal energy or soma, and psychic power, Guiot-Houdart 2004:157). The theriantropic man-animal, the “fire beast in himself ” (“die vuurbees in homself”) also finds a possible signifier in the therianthropic and flute playing bison-man in the cave of Trois-Frères. The genesis of ‘Vuurbees’ reveals that the introduction by anthropologist-poet Loren Eiseley to a Time-Life International book, The Epic of Man, supplied the spark for the poem (‘Vuurbees’ manuscripts, US – 118.P.D.1:12). This intertext yielded a surprisingly poetic description of the first Darwinian man and his newfound consciousness: Indeed it must have been a narrow crack that man squeezed through when he entered his own mind […] man was not lost totally from reality amidst the glooms of his own powerful imagination. (Eisely 1962:9; my italics)

The most enigmatic element in ‘Fire Beast’ is precisely the beginning of the second stanza: Alleen die mens tref in sy swerwe tussen hede, toekoms en verlede die spleet tot grotte van die rede: (Only man finds in his roaming between present, future and past the narrow crack to caves of reason:) (my emphasis and italics)

Eiseley’s memorable phrase, “it must have been a narrow crack that man squeezed through when he entered his own mind”, is a reference to man’s higher neurological ability to reason and be rational. Rationality differentiates man from all other animals. Another meaning of “reason” hovering above the construct in stanza two might be that the poet sees the cause and clarification of the behaviour of Homo sapiens as lying locked up in the cave, or the cause and explanation for the current status quo lies in the history of the origin of man, there in the first secret place, the cave. Right there was violence, or that is where it all began (the taming of animals, the subjectification of nature by 185

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man, but also the origin of art and the design of hand tools, the start of technology). This central poetic image establishes and renders immediate the watershed moment when man first “squeezed through” “the narrow crack” and discovered the powers of his own mind. It is this insight that Opperman uses as his central metaphor. He concretises the origin of man as entering the “caves/ of reason”. How the concepts of language and rationality are related to the word ‘reason’ is explained by neurologist Jean-Pierre Changeux: The word consciousness […] stems from cum scientia, from which the Latin conscientia was derived, [and] includes “knowledge of the object by the subject” [… and so] consciousness is the highest point on which depends all use of knowledge. […As] there is no limit to the number of definitions [of consciousness, he proposes the restricting of ] oneself to common usage, that of moral consciousness or conscience […] (Changeux 2012:140-1)

Most notable in Changeux’s recent research is his reference to internalised patterns impressed in the brain that are the cause of artistic creativity: “Le creation artistique ne se produit jamais au hasard mais suit des règles innées” (“Artistic creativity is not produced randomly, but follows innate rules”) (Changeux 2013:1). In the poetry of Opperman, a basic pattern reveals itself time and again: the Zulu herdsman of the ‘sacred cattle’ living according to his three passions (earth, woman and God); the white narrator, in ‘Fable of the Speckled Cow’, who is alienated from his black brother through contested ownership of a treasured speckled cow, which results in fratricide; and, in ‘Fire Beast’, the human mind from which issue the two energies of creation and destruction. In ‘Fire Beast’, the threat is completely man-based, human, and originates in the imbalance between his creative and destructive capacities. This generic everyman, Homo sapiens, is neither specifically Western nor African. Man destroys man, and unleashes violence with no end in view, a chain reaction that continues irreversibly. Opperman’s implied ideological perspective boils down to the man-beast as a “freak of evolution, an accidental mutation” (Kannemeyer 1986:385). The poet questions the gains and validity of so-called civilisation and its superior technological advances in the face of violence running riot, producing more and more destruction. In surprising ways, Opperman’s vision embedded in ‘Vuurbees’ of man as the first animal mirrors the /Xam myths of origin and equality with the animals around them, discussed in chapters 1 and 2 of this monograph. Opperman’s internalised view of the history of man linked intimately to the first homo sapiens in the first cave, overthrows erroneous perspectives held of the /Xam Bushmen as belonging to a timeless period without the struggle for survival or violence. The poem is singularly prophetic today. Most striking is the line that runs from Von Wielligh’s recorded /Xam archive to this internalised view of mankind’s history in modernist Afrikaans poetry. 186

Notes Introduction 1 My research began in 1994 with ‘Recent changes in South African literary historiography’ and ‘Forgotten territory: the oral tradition of the /Xam’ (Alternation 1/1 & 1/2). 2 I am thankful for the copyright permission for the cover image, graciously granted by the granddaughter of Professor P R Kirby, Mrs Anthea van Wieringen. The photograph comes from his book, Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa (2013, first pub. 1934).

Chapter 1 1

People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue that a new epoch – informally dubbed the ‘Anthropocene’ – has begun. In a recent paper, ‘The New World of the Anthropocene’, that appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a group of geologists listed more than a half-dozen human-driven processes that are likely to leave a lasting mark on the planet (‘lasting’ means likely to leave traces after tens of millions of years). These include: habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species that are causing widespread extinctions; ocean acidification, which is changing the chemical makeup of the seas; and urbanisation, which is greatly increasing rates of sedimentation and erosion. Human activity, the group wrote, is altering the planet “on a scale comparable with some of the major events of the ancient past. Some of these changes are now seen as permanent, even on a geological time-scale.” (Kolvert 2010:1). The word ‘Anthropocene’ is the invention of Paul Crutzen… (Kolvert 2014:107). 2 An uintjie is any “of numerous edible bulbs esp. the corms of certain Iridasceae including species of Moraea formerly much prized by colonists as well as the indigenous tribes […]” (Branford) 3 The Rosetta project (http://rosettaproject.org/blog/02013/mar/28/newestimates-on-rate-of-language-loss/) 4 We find information about menstruation rites: “the maiden, she ornaments the spring with ‘rooiklip’, when she becomes a maiden”(1956:547). The names of flora and fauna are also frequently given in Afrikaans, for example ‘hamerkop’ for !hi:n (1956:397); the somewhat amusing ‘blenner vlieg’ for ‘blinde vlieg’ (!akka !gaua, 1956:371); ‘blespaard’ (!ai:ten, 1956:371); ‘assbos’ vir !ko-a: (‘a bush used by Europeans for making soap, by Bushmen for stopping earths’ (1956:437); ‘bosluis’ for !k:uiten (1956:451); ‘mierkat’ for xa:ra (1956:257); or with reference to !gaugen, the slightly desperate entry, only in Afrikaans, ‘a plant, Wagembikibos’ (1956:397) 187

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5

6 7 8

9



188

for ‘wag-’n-bietjie-bos’. In addition, there are many homophonic loan words, such as hut-si for ‘hoed’ (1956:65) or hunkeri for ‘hoendertjie’ (D.F. Bleek 1956:65). All these references pointed to a missing link between the /Xam and Afrikaans, which was not made clear anywhere in the Bleek and Lloyd research (Van Vuuren 1995: 27-28). Click notation: Von Wielligh uses an early notation for the prefix-clicks, an apostrophe; for example, the Mantis-trickster figure is ’Kaggen. In quotes from Von Wielligh, that is retained. Elsewhere in my own text, I have used the Bleek-Lloyd notation, i.e. /Kaggen. A minimal reading uses ‘the most basic norms of careful reading’ and differs from attempts to ‘rush to say something ingenious or different’ (Attridge & Staten 2015:5). These geographical names for /Xam groups are well known in the literature. See for instance Banks 2008:32. Southern speckled padloper, or Suidelike klipskilpad, Homopus signatus cafer. This tortoise species is regarded as one of the smallest terrestrial tortoises in the world and could easily fit into the palm of one’s hand. Females, which are larger than the males, attain a carapace length of 95 mm, while males grow to approximately 80 mm. Shell height for females is around 40 mm, while males reach 30 mm. Females (140 g) weigh up to twice as much as males (70 g) (see http://www.reptilepets.co.za/ rp456113.htm). In 1913, Von Wielligh published ‘The culture of the buchu plant’ in a South African agricultural journal; it is much cited by botanists and ethnobotanists to this day (see, for instance, Nortje 2011:141 and De Villiers 2007:3, 6, 26). See also Street & Prinsloo, 2013: Agathosma betulina (Berg.) pillans is a woody shrub, commonly known as buchu. It is endemic to the Western Cape Cederberg region and adapted to dry conditions and can be found on sunny hillsides of rocky sandstone slopes. The Khoi-San word ‘buchu’ is used for any fragrant plant that could be dried and powdered and therefore did not refer to a single species, but today, ‘buchu’ refers to the species A. betulina (round-leaf buchu; ‘bergboegoe’; short buchu) and Agathosma crenulata (oval-leaf buchu; ‘anysboegoe’; long-leaf buchu). Buchu plant material processed into buchu oil, buchu extract, dried buchu leaves, buchu water and powdered buchu are not only used for medicinal and cosmetic purposes, but also as flavouring agents in the food industry. Buchu is highly sought after globally for its essential oils, especially since it has a high content of diosphenol and low content of pulegone. Buchu is an important plant in the Khoi-San tradition and still enjoys a great reputation as a general health tonic, diuretic, and mild urinary antiseptic. The essential oil is a valuable flavouring product and medicinal uses of A. betulina include: as an antispasmodic, an antipyretic, a liniment, a cough remedy, a cold and flu remedy, a diuretic, a treatment of kidney and urinary tract infections, as well for haematuria, prostatitis, cholera, stomach ailments, rheumatism, gout, bruises and as an antiseptic. Tinctures of buchu have a great reputation as general health tonics, in the treatment of stomach aches, as

Notes

10

11

12 13

14 15

a source of aromatic bitters, diuretics and mild urinary antiseptics. The Bushmen lubricated their bodies with aromatic plants mixed with fat to keep their skin soft and moist in the desert climate. The lubrication also served as an antibacterial and antifungal protectant, acted as an insect repellent, a deodorant, and to promote the general well-being of the body by uptake of the aromatic substances through the skin (http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jchem/2013/205048/). The phloem is the innermost layer of the bark on a tree, hence the name, derived from the Greek word φλοιός (phloios), meaning ‘bark’. The phloem is concerned mainly with the transport of soluble organic material made during photosynthesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phloem). “A gourd is a plant of the family Cucurbitaceae, particularly Cucurbita and Lagenaria, or the fruit of the two genera of ‘calabash tree’, Crescentia and Amphitecna. The term refers to a number of species and subspecies, many with hard shells, and some without […] (S)ubspecies of the bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, have been discovered in archaeological sites dating from as early as 13,000 BC. […] Gourds have had numerous uses throughout history, including as tools, musical instruments […] and food. Cultures from arid regions often associated gourds with water, and they appear in many creation myths.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gourd). In 2014, it was discovered that gourds are ‘world-travelling plants’ as the gourds found in the Americas had African DNA and probably washed ashore there via the ocean (Kistler PNAS 111(8) 2014:2937). Zoological information on the inner structure of a springbok’s eye and ear obtained from Dr Gideon Rossouw, Zoology department, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth on 23 February 2015. In 1896, Cronwright-Schreiner probably saw one of the last great springbok treks: “immense herds […] seemingly impelled by some guiding instinct […] nothing but springbok were to be seen for miles upon miles at a stretch. The whole country seemed to move […] one continuous stream […] The ‘boks’ trekked on to the banks of the Orange River, and were drowned by thousands, those behind pushing the front ones into the water. Some few got across, but most were drowned. In the course of a few days the treks seems to melt away. They disappear; nobody knows where they have gone to...I’ve never heard anybody speak of their returning” (CronwrightSchreiner 1925:56-59). TB Davie saw another trek, which ended in the sea: “they even pressed on into the sea, so that a long stretch of the coast in Namibia was piled with their bodies” (Sanderson 1988:263). Amulet [Latin amuletum]: a charm (as an ornament) often inscribed with a magic incantation or symbol to protect the wearer against evil (as disease or witchcraft) or to aid him (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary 1976:40). Known as ‘/khoni-si’ in Ju/’hoan (Mans 1997:24-25). Mans categorizes rattles as idiophones: “[…] the material itself is the sound generator” (Mans 1997:12). “Archaeological evidence for musical activities pre-dates even the earliest-known 189

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cave art […]” (Morley 2014:148), and “[m]usical behaviours could be valuable not only as a means of exploring social interactions, but actually as a vicarious stimulus and exercise of those capacities {…]” (Morley 2014:166). 16 “Formed opposite the sun by the refraction and reflection of the sun’s rays in raindrops, spray or mist” (Webster’s dictionary 1976:954). 17 “[…] an optical effect that is sometimes seen […] in the desert […] that may have the appearance of a pool of water” (Webster’s dictionary 1976:734). 18 However, there are a total of seven rain or water-linked personae myths, comprising 30% of the first volume, more than on any other subject (Waters, Rain Bull, Great Watersnake – daughter of the former – Rainbow, Maid of the Waters, Lightning and, lastly, nr, 24, ‘The animals ask for food and water’.) 19 ‘Dampertjie’ (‘Shooter’) is a Kalahari bombardier beetle, seemingly shooting lightning out of its rear end. “Directly following a heavy thunderstorm […] all the beetles emerge at night and begin courting on the dune surface” (Costa 2006:505). ‘Spuitertjie’ (‘Pisser’), an ‘oogpister’ (literally ‘eye-pisser’), is a genus of the ground beetle family Carabidae that “[…] has a novel way of deterring potential predators. After feeding on a diet of ants the beetle appears to extract the formic acid they produce for their defence and use it for himself. When threatened, the beetle can spray a small jet of this formic acid straight into the eyes and nose of its attacker. The beetle’s distinctive black and white markings act as a warning signal to possible predators and once sprayed they learn not to attempt to eat this beetle” (Attenborough 2009). 20 “[I]n the beginning [there was] an old generation of Bushmen […] He knows the old generation as ‘Chwe-’na-ssho-’ke, who could change themselves into any animal, tree or human being” (Von Wielligh Vol. 111, 1921:43). In Bleek & Lloyd’s orthography, Lucy Lloyd transcribed the name of this old generation in 1873 as !Khwe //na ssho !kui (in the tale of the first /Xam man who brought home a young lion, LewisWilliams 2000:174-205). 21 “The concept of a tree of life has been used in biology, religion, philosophy, and mythology. A tree of life is a common motif in various world theologies, mythologies, and philosophies. It alludes to the interconnection of all life on our planet and serves as a metaphor for common descent in the evolutionary sense […] The tree of life is a metaphor describing the relationship of all life on Earth in an evolutionary context […] The Tree of Life Web Project is an ongoing Internet project containing information about phylogeny and biodiversity, produced by biologists from around the world. Each page contains information about one group of organisms and is organized according to a branched tree-like form, thus showing relationships between organisms and groups of organisms” (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Tree_of_life). 22 ‘Historical or historic present’: “The use of a verb phrase in the present tense to refer to an event that took place in the past. In narratives, the historical present may be used to create an effect of immediacy. In rhetoric, the use of the present tense 190

Notes

to report on events from the past is called translatio temporum (‘transfer of times’). ‘The term translatio is particularly interesting,’ notes Heinrich Plett, ‘because it is also the Latin word for metaphor. It clearly shows that the historical present only exists as an intended topical deviation of the past tense’” (Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture, 2004) (http://grammar.about.com/od/fh/g/histpreterm.htm). 23 “Moods and tenses are formed by placing one or more verbal particles or auxiliaries before the verb in chief […] These particles do not correspond exactly with one mood or tense in English […]” (D.F. Bleek 1928-30:161, quoted in Du Plessis 2014:286; my italics). 24 “The repeated application of a recursive procedure or definition” (http://www. oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/recursion). “Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other, the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematics and computer science, in which it refers to a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. Specifically, this defines an infinite number of instances (function values), using a finite expression that for some instances may refer to other instances, but in such a way that no loop or infinite chain of references can occur. The term is also used more generally to describe a process of repeating objects in a self-similar way” (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursion).

Chapter 2 1

2

3

Was bleibt im Gedächtnis der Zeitgenossen, in Dokumenten und literarisch fixierten Äußerungen von einem Menschen erhalten? Wie spiegelt sich sein Dasein in der Umwelt […] ? [W]enn man auch die unscheinbarsten, oft übersehenen Indizien sammelt und sie in den Zusammenhang einordnet, so ergibt sich aus den vielen, oft winzigen Mosaiksteinen und Splittern das Panorama eines Lebens und Wirkens […] Aus Dokumenten entsteht hier eine Biographie, die in ihrer Unmittelbarkeit erregender als irgendeine romanhafte Lebensdarstellung wirken muss (1957:VIII-IX). Animal stories was first serialised in Ons Klyntji from 1897 onwards, and finally in De Volksstem (Pretoria) in 1905. Langs die Lebombo (1923) was first serialised in Die Landbouweekblad (1919-1923). Jacob Platji (1918) followed the same route of earlier serialisation, from 1986 to 1891 in Ons Klyntji. Two early titles, Diire Storis (1907) and By’e teelt (‘Bee Cultivation’) (1909) appeared in Paarl in print runs of thirty each, both having been serialised before in, respectively, Ons Klyntji and Onse Taal. In January 2015, a copy of Diire Storis was found in the archives of the National Afrikaans Literature Museum, Bloemfontein. UNISA has a copy of By’e teelt (1909).

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19 20

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Staan jou man (‘Be a Man’) in 1920, Huis en veld (‘Home and Country’) in 1921, Nimrod Seeling in 1921, Ghwennie Barneveld in 1922, and Die vrouens van Vrindenburg (‘The Women of Vrindenburg’) in 1924. It is not unthinkable that this Afrikaans translation in abridged format was the text which the “eight or nine years old” JM Coetzee read in 1948 or 1949 in Worcester, perhaps from the library of the Worcester school that he was then attending (see Attwell 2015:148). While Von Wielligh’s robinsonade in Nimrod Seeling (1921) is now forgotten for good reason, Coetzee’s Foe (1986) helped to win him the Nobel Prize for literature. Yet the tentative continuity suggested between these writers, albeit perhaps via an Afrikaans translation of Robinson Crusoe, and later creatively building on the Defoe tradition, is nonetheless an intriguing thought. Letter to Nellie Serfontein 13 October 1926 (NALN 816/97/95/16). Van Blerk 1977:11. Van Blerk 1977:15-19. ‘The culture of the Buchu plant’ (Von Wielligh 1913:80-87). Koorts & Slotegraaff (2001 & 2007). Braun 2008:256-257. “As royal astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope from 1879 to 1907, he photographed the sky within 19° of the south celestial pole in great detail. From these pictures, JC Kapteyn compiled the Cape Photographic Durchmusterung, a catalogue of nearly 500,000 stars.” http://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Gill. Steyn, 2009:68-91, Swart 2009:92-104, Van Coller 2010:101-113 and Lombard 2014:270-291. The information is mostly gained from contributions by authors who wrote in memoriam at the time of Von Wielligh’s death in 1932, especially Gustav Preller and JJ Smith, and some small biographical pieces elsewhere. Plug, C on Von Wielligh in S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science (online) (http://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=3125). Rough country, back veld (Bosman, Van der Merwe & Hiemstra 1972:255). The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, 1731. Carolyn Hamilton coined this term for “the history of the material before it was captured in writing […], [what] form [it took], where […] the material [came] from, what shaped it over time, who was interested in it and why […], [what] the political and other factors that reshaped it over time [were], and [what] provided the motivation for its preservation” (Hamilton 2011:3). Von Wielligh to JJ Smith – 6 April 1920. “The South African Republic (Dutch: Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, ZAR), often referred to as the Transvaal and, sometimes, as the Republic of Transvaal, was an independent and internationally recognised country in Southern Africa from 1852 to 1902.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Republic)

Notes

21 TAB 5/498 4159/1899. 22 ‘Agterveld’, or ‘back veld’, refers to Bushmanland, at that time considered the ‘back of beyond’ when compared to the more civilised world of the Boland (the area of the Western Cape around Cape Town, including Paarl, Stellenbosch and Franschhoek). 23 Braun 2008:256-257. 24 They had six children, two of whom died young. 25 Fifteen years’ rent was outstanding on 8 October 1890, according to archival records of 8 October 1890. (TAB vol. 2554. R13840/90). 26 McKenzie, FA 1899:14. 27 25 February 1886. (TAB R944/86). 28 GR von Wielligh, near Pretoria, asks for copies of the documents containing complaints against him. 15 July 1895.TAB R6952/95. 29 Giliomee 2003:238. 30 Giliomee 2003:237. 31 Petition by G Retief von Wielligh about pecuniary assistance. 1909. TAB vol. 29. PET12/09. 32 Kruger 1945:28. 33 GR von Wielligh asks for copies of his letter dated 15 July 1895. He also asks  for the report on the commission of investigation established thereafter. (TAB R2577/98). 34 GR von Wielligh, secretary of the commission to Swaziland, sends a report on the mission to Swaziland. 11 November 1886. (TAB R5961/86). 35 Von Wielligh, surveyor, now in Johannesburg, asks whether he should go to the Swaziland border. 20 August 1895 (TAB RA2931/95) 36 Archival records 11 June 1897 (TAB CR3168/97), 14 June 1897 (TAB CR3207/97), and on 9 March 1898 an application as consul of the republic in Belgium (TAB RA1444/99). 37 Quoted directly from source. Presumably the name has changed over time. 38 “Proviand commissariaat. Kwartiermeester Von Wielligh vraagt voedsel namens landdrost Pretoria voor krijgsgevangenen te Waterval.” (“Quartermaster Von Wielligh asks for food on behalf of the Pretoria magistrate for prisoners of war at Waterval.”) Document in National Archives of South Africa (TAB KG CR181/99). 39 Pakenham 1988:434. 40 Pakenham 1988:433. 41 Von Wielligh 1926:7. 42 Von Wielligh described his escape and eventual safe return to Pretoria in the Huisgenoot of 8 October 1926 (Von Wielligh 1926:7). 43 PJ Nienaber – profile of Von Wielligh in 1961 edition of Jakob Platjie, page 11. 44 An archaic, local name for the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). 45 Von Wielligh in Kruger 1945:17. 193

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46 Personal communication from Mrs Tess Frost (née Von Willich): “The blinding incident, at least in the version I was told, was done by a jealous husband who objected to GR’s attentions to his wife, and I had also heard it happened in Mozambique. However pure his intentions towards Nellie Serfontein may or may not have been […] he was apparently known as a philanderer” (3 March 2012). 47 Silver salts have antiseptic properties. Until the development and widespread adoption of antibiotics, dilute solutions of AgNO3 used to be dropped into newborn babies‘ eyes at birth to prevent contraction of gonorrhoea from the mother. Eye infections and blindness of newborns was reduced by this method; incorrect dosage, however, could cause blindness in extreme cases. This protection was first used by Credé in 1881. Fused silver nitrate, shaped into sticks, was traditionally called ‘lunar caustic’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_nitrate; my italics). 48 GR von Wielligh versus Elizabeth JH von Wielligh (De Villiers) divorce papers. Cape National Archives. 1904. (KAB CSO 2/1/452 200). 49 Ons geselstaal, 1925a: 52. 50 Von Wielligh letter to Nellie Serfontein, September 21, 1926 (816//77/95/9). 51 Schoonees let loose a satirical and dismissive attack on Von Wielligh’s oeuvre in his Utrecht University doctoral thesis of 1922, slightly softened in the later edition of 1939. 52 Von Wielligh, letters to Nellie Serfontein: NALN: Von Wielligh Documents 816/77/95/1-17). 53 In 1938, Nellie Serfontein married JJ Kruger (1908‑76), chief censor and an “autocratic buffoon” (as the press called him) of the South African Publications Control Board, during its most repressive years (McDonald 2009:52‑61). During his chairmanship, two important literary works of anti-apartheid ideology by mainstream Afrikaans authors were banned: Kennis van die aand (Looking On Darkness), André Brink’s 1974 novel, and Breyten Breytenbach’s 1972 collection, Skryt (an untranslatable neologism, suggesting ‘shout’, ‘shit’, ‘scream’ and ‘fight’ as responses to the torture of political prisoners under the apartheid regime). Through Nellie Kruger (née Serfontein) and her husband, the old colonial world of Von Wielligh is connected to the later apartheid world and the banning of books. Nellie Kruger published a book of folklore (1935), two biographies, two co-edited children’s books and, besides the Von Wielligh hagiography, one on the wife of MT Steyn, the President of the Orange Free State, Rachel Isabella Steyn (1949). Her monograph on women’s tapestries of the Great Trek (1961, new edition in 1988) has had the greatest impact, and has been utilised by feminist authors to illustrate the importance of women’s art and craft for nationalist ideology. See for instance Van der Watt, ‘Art, gender, ideology and Afrikaner Nationalism – a case study’ (2005:94-110). 54 Kruger 1945: dedication. 55 Kannemeyer 1978:33-37. 194

Notes

56 “Sheikh Abu Bakr Effendi (1814‑1880) was an Osmanli qadi who was sent in 1862 by the Ottoman sultan Abdülmecid I at the request of the British Queen Victoria, to the Cape of Good Hope in order to teach and assist the Muslim community of the Cape Malays. […] From 1862 to 1869 Effendi had studied the local language use and then proceeded to compile the book “Bayan-al-Din”. Printed by the Turkish Ministry of Education in Istanbul, it is an interesting and significant part of South Africa’s history, and serves as a valuable reference of the Afrikaans usage during that era in the Islamic neighbourhoods of Cape Town. It gives an invaluable insight into the use of Afrikaans in the so-called ‘Slams’ (slang for Islamic) neighbourhoods of Cape Town in that period. It is also significant, since this community did not have Dutch as mother tongue and were therefore mostly unaffected by its orthography. As such this was the first substantial book ever written and published in Afrikaans, although written in a modified Arabic script where the diacritic signs are used to indicate the pronunciation of Afrikaans. It bears testimony to the slave origins of the language […] Adrianus van Selms, a Dutch scholar and Semitic researcher, published a transliteration in Latin Script of Abu Bakr Effendi’s work in 1979. Since the original work presented spoken Afrikaans without using vowels, van Selms’s biggest task was to decipher which Afrikaans words were being referred to. Effendi had also innovated new Arabic characters for several Afrikaans letters not found in the Arabic alphabet, the letter ‘P’ for example.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_Effendi; my italics). 57 Witness various clumsy first attempts written by all and sundry in the Patriot and Ons Klyntji. 58 Bleek & Lloyd 1911, 1923, 1930‑37 and Von Wielligh, 1919‑1921. 59 Die prosa van die Twede Afrikaanse beweging. 1922. 60 Mathias Guenther. Personal communication, 7 February 2013. 61 Frazer 1920:394 62 HvV: A ramkie is a /Xam musical instrument with strings, similar to a guitar, but made from whatever material is available, often a calabash with sinews for strings, or later on, an old tin drum. Still in use at the turn of the 20th century as referred to in DF Malherbe’s poem ‘Jakob Ontong’ (in Somerdae 1928). 63 The Cape was captured in 1795 after a battle at Muizenberg, then given back to the Dutch for a short period from 1803 to 1806. 64 Probably synonymous with Kougoed. Scientific name: Sceletium tortuosum. Common names: ‘Tortuose fig marigold’ and canna (English); kanna or kauwgoed. Uses: The leaves can be used for treatment of anxiety and depression (http://www. nda.agric.za/docs/Brochures/Medicin.pdf ). The oldest reference found is in Simon van der Stel’s Journal of his expedition to Namaqualand, 1685-6: Sceletium (fam. Aizoaceae), especially S. anatomicum (kanna root), S. expansum and S. tortuosum: “Dit kruyd word by de Namaquaas […] Canna genaamt, ’t is by haar en d’ omleggende volckeren in alsulcken grootaghting, als de betel of areeck by de Jndianen soude connen syn, sy kauwen desselfs stam soo wel als de wortel meest den gehelen dagh over, waar sy 195

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door oock droncken worden, soo dat uyt dit effect, en wegens des selfs angename reuck en cordiale smaack van syne werckingen man Jets voordeligs oordelen en verwagten kan” (which translates as ‘Herb found amongst the Namaquas […] called Canna, in such great standing amongst them and the surrounding people, as the betel or areeck could be amongst the Indians, they even chew the stem as well as the root mostly the whole day, resulting in them becoming drunk, so that from this result and because of its pleasant smell and agreeable taste of its workings, one might expect some positive effect”) (Simon van der Stel’s Journal of his Expedition to Namaqualand, 1685‑6). Contains mesembrine – fig family (Mesembryanthemaceae) and fig-like kougoed (all types of Sceletium): “Die plante [kougoed] bevat ’n verdowingsmiddel, ’n alkaloïed, mesembrien […] dit [word] oral saamgedra en gekou wanneer water skaars is. Dit stomp die gevoel van pyn, honger en dors af…” (which translates as ‘The plants [kougoed] contain a narcotic, an alkaloid, mesembrine […] it is carried around everywhere and chewed when water is scarce. It blunts the feeling of pain, hunger and thirst […]’) (WAT online, my translation). In the northern part of the Cape there is also the ‘kouboom’ (or ‘doppruim’), derived from t’kouboom, as in the Bushman name for Pappea capensis (fam. Sapindaceae), with very hard wood and edible berries. Von Wielligh remarked that the pips of berries were boiled to obtain an oil with which to paint on rock (Von Wielligh 1925:168). ‘Kougoed’ and ‘kouhoutjies’ probably from /Xam word for medicine: “!ka?u:” (D.F. Bleek 1956:413), or “!kau:” (D.F. Bleek 1929:57). The literal meaning of the word ‘kouhoutjies’ would thus be ‘medicine sticks’, with medicine in related SI dialect also called “So/óä” (DF Bleek 1929:57). The better known concept of ‘Kougoed’ would mean ‘medicine things’, and is not necessarily connected to chewing in the first instance, although in Afrikaans ‘kou’ means chewing and naturally indigenous substances with a medicinal effect are taken by mouth, often chewed by the Bushmen for a long-lasting effect, and in this way similar to the chewing of betel by Indians. 65 Red ochre, ground from a stone: “The Nama still make traditional use of traditional pigments and paints; the ingredients and the paints are often kept in traditional containers such as horns, calabashes and tortoise-shells. Red ochre is the most widely used and important pigment; it is used mainly by the women for cosmetic purposes and also for ritual purposes; the medium for making the cosmetic paint is almost always animal fat, frequently the traditional raw, chewed, intestinal fat” (Rudner 1981:173). 66 Boesmanlandse sketse en verhale (‘Bushmanland Sketches and Stories’) (1926), Uit Boesmanland (‘Out of Bushmanland’) (1928), Giel Ool en ander verhale uit Boesmanland (‘Giel Ool and Other Stories from Bushmanland’) (1929). His grandfather had been a Dutch Reformed minister of religion in Calvina (18331843), also serving the Namaqualand and Bushmanland congregation. He was expelled in 1843 for complaints about alcohol misuse, wife beating and adultery (NG congregation of Calvinia, on Wikipedia). No doubt his grandson would have heard tales from him about the old man’s experiences in Bushmanland during the first half of the 19th century. 196

Notes

67 68 69 70 71

Dreyer 1930:42 and Van der Merwe 1947 (3rd ed.):73. Van der Merwe 1947 (3rd ed.):45. Conradie 1909:52-53. The Digital Bleek and Lloyd collection (http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za). Verneukpan is a widespread dry salt pan south of Kenhardt, between Swartkop and Diemansput in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Verneuk is Afrikaans for to trick, mislead, screw or swindle. During the rainy seasons many birds flock to the pans, when they contain water (Wikipedia). 72 Schmidt 1982:211. 73 Schmidt 2013b. South African /Xam Bushman traditions and their relationships to further Khoisan folklore. 74 Roger Hewitt 1986:18. 75 Lewis-Williams 1981:73. 76 This was connected to her anthology, The stars say ‘tsau’: /Xam Poetry of Dia!kwain, Kweiten-ta-//ken, /A!kunta, Han#kass’o, and //Kabbo (2002; see chapter 7 in the present monograph). 77 “Their (quasi-) literal translations from the /Xam often appear to have a ‘poetic’ cadence in English, as when Wilhelm Bleek translates a phrase about the sun, with “red set to the mountain’s back” (WB.IV.554-555), Loughnane, McGranaghan & Güldemann 2014:308. 78 Kannemeyer 1984:228. 79 “Ek slaap in die rus van die eeue gesus,/ongesien, ongehoord, /en dof en loom in my sonnedroom,/ ongewek, ongestoord.” (Opperman 1959:31-34). 80 Kannemeyer, 1984:235. 81 “O die dans van ons Suster!/Eers oor die bergtop loer sy skelm,/en haar oge is skaam;/ en sy lag saggies” (Opperman 1959:27). Translator CJD Harvey in Grové & Harvey 1962:9. 82 Transl. DR Skinner 2016. 83 Opperman 1987:239. 84 Coetzee 1988:174. 85 See the following chapters, 5‑8. 86 Attwell & Attridge (eds.) 2012. 87 The same goes for Michael Chapman’s Southern African Literatures, 1996.

Chapter 4 1

A ‘soap pot’ (seeppot) was the largest inherited pot on old farms, used in previous times for making soap from fat and ‘loogbos’ outside in the yard over an open fire. (Loogbos is an ash bush, which forces the scum to separate.) In the 17th and 18th century 197

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2 3

farmers’ wives had to make their own soap on remote farms. (WAT: loogbossie s.nw.  Ook  loogbos.  Asbos, lime bush, potash (kalium carbonate):  Ons kook van loogbossies boereseep (DJ Opperman: Voëlvry, 1968:52). Vir ’n fyt (is daar) terpentyn of loogas van die loogbossie (wat opgesit kan word) (D Serfontein: Ek, 1972:113).  Stephen Watson, Return of the Moon (Carrefour, 1991, Cape Town), Stephen Watson, Song of the Broken String (Sheep Meadow, 1991, New York). Antjie Krog, The Stars Say ‘Tsau’ (Kwela, 2004, Cape Town).

Chapter 5 In his debut of 1911, Oom Gert vertel en ander gedigte. Pretoria: HAUM. Leipoldt (1980:512) The late Hennie Aucamp alerted me to the discrepancy between the first edition and the 1959 edition. An exception in the reception was Rita Gilfillan’s 1996 Alternation article (‘Dwaalstories – the Stories of a Roaming Bushman; Committed to Paper by a Wandering Boer’), giving an interpretation embedded in her knowledge of the Bushman culture and traditions, rather than from a Western point of view, as was the popular case for many interpreters prior to hers. Especially debatable, though, is her interpretation of ‘Klein Riet-alleen-in-die-Roerkuil’ as a trance experience, and of the “uitspeelstel” (“play-out set”) that most probably must have been some form of musical instrument, a common form of entertainment to shorten the journey of a solitary Bushman on his peregrinations through the wilderness, similar to numerous lonely travellers on foot in Africa since time immemorial (before the availability of more modern equipment that provides music, like the portable radio or other electronic music systems). 4 “Leonotis leonurus, also known as lion’s tail and wild dagga, is a plant species in the Lamiaceae (mint) family […] It is known for its medicinal and mild psychoactive properties. The main psychoactive component of Leonotis leonurus is leonurine” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonotis_leonurus). 5 Pseudonym of IW van der Merwe, born on Boplaas, belonging to the Van der Merwes. Boplaas lies at the foot of the Karoopoort, with its very steep mountain pass. This was once an old sheep-trekking route over the mountain. 6 A depiction of this drawing, in naïve, crude style, is included in Bert Woodhouse’s Bushman Art of Southern Africa (2003:42). A comparison with the sophisticated style of a Drakensberg rock painting of interaction between colonists and Bushmen from Lewis-Williams’ Images of Mystery (2003:119-121) serves to illustrate the different levels of competency of the indigenous artists.

1 2 3

Chapter 6 1

198

For the choice of the terms ‘Bushman’ or Bushmen’, rather than the pejorative and mystifying ‘San’, see Gordon 1992:4-8 and 1997: footnote 1:177.

Notes

2

A ‘boorvuur’ refers to the time-worn practice of making fires by friction, using sticks and natural tinder, one certainly used by the Bushmen. 3 For further information, see my article ‘Die mondelinge tradisie van die /Xam en ’n herlees van Von Wielligh se Boesman-Stories (vier dele, 1919-1921)’, in Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, XXXIII(1), 1995:25-35. 4 Why did the editors of Human & Rousseau feel the need to ‘purge’ the reissued Dwaalstories? 5 The Bushmen believed in a ‘she’ rain (soft and friendly) and a ‘he’ rain (a harsh, hard, unstoppable rain, seemingly continuing forever unless a shaman took some supernatural action) (Hollmann 2004:130). 6 For an extensive discussion of Die spoorsnyer, see my article, ‘“Op die spoor”: Interkulturele wisselwerking tussen Boesman en Afrikaner in resente Afrikaanse prosa’, in Tydskrif vir letterkunde XXXIV (1/2), 1996:49-56. 7 Based on research for an MA dissertation in Afrikaans at the University of Namibia, Windhoek (2001). 8 “Colonialism was always locked into the machine of desire”, 1995:181, and “a supposed black sexual degeneracy and biological inferiority”, 1991:238. 9 It is striking that when this novel was first published none of the male critics showed any trace of criticism of this male utopia – a (Bushman) woman, the wordless object of desire par excellence for the two main male characters (even sexually ‘worked’ in an elephant carcass, within hearing of her own husband). The novel won the M-Net Prize without a single critical voice being raised about the depiction of this Bushman woman as ‘brute’ sex object. 10 The instruments of civilisation, such as the horse and the rifle (HvV: in Doc Immelman’s work), play an important role as part of the equipment of the heroic figure (Van Rooyen 2001:36). 11 The ‘I’ then stands as representative of a statement that could be made by anyone, typical of a bias, an attitude, a preference. 12 The idea of ‘Lebensspuren’ is reflected in the title of Helmut Sembdner’s 1959 biography of Heinrich von Kleist. Sembdner explains the laborious biographical detective work – of investigating the course or ‘road’ of a human life – by means of the striking analogy of ‘tracking’ one’s prey: Was bleibt im Gedächtnis der Zeitgenossen, in Dokumenten und literarisch fixierten Äußerungen von einem Menschen erhalten? Wie spiegelt sich sein Dasein in der Umwelt und wie lässt sich aus den vielfältigen Spiegelungen ein Bild seines Lebens rekonstruieren? Wenn man mit dieser Fragestellung den Spuren nachgeht, die Kleists Leben im Bewusstsein der Zeitgenossen oder in amtlichen Dokumenten hinterlassen hat, wenn man auch die unscheinbarsten, oft übersehenen Indizien sammelt und sie in den Zusammenhang einordnet, so ergibt sich aus den vielen, oft winzigen Mosaiksteinen und Splittern das Panorama eines Lebens und Wirkens, das im Gesamtanblick zu den großartigsten und erschütterndsten Bildern gehört, die das Schicksal gestaltet hat [...] Aus Dokumenten entsteht hier eine Biographie, die in 199

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ihrer Unmittelbarkeit erregender als irgendeine romanhafte Lebensdarstellung wirken muss. (1959:VIII-IX; my emphasis) (What remains of a person in the memory of contemporaries, in documents and fixated literary remarks? How is their being in the world reflected and how is an image of a life to be reconstructed from the multi-fractured reflections? If one traces his footprints with these questions in mind, the life of Kleist as it has been left behind in the consciousness of contemporaries or in official documents, if one gathers also the inconspicuous, often overlooked circumstantial records and orders them in context, what results from the many, often minute and splintered mosaic stones is the panorama of a life and work that in total perspective belongs to the greatest and most harrowing images which fate has shaped […] From documents a biography then appears, which in its immediacy must be more moving than any novelistic biography could feasibly be.) (1959:VIII-IX; my translation and italics)

Chapter 7 1

2 3

Carroll, R 2006. ‘South African author accused of plagiarism’. The Guardian (http:// www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/21/books.southafrica). The allegation of plagiarism from a Ted Hughes essay in Country of my skull, is not attended to here as it is not relevant to the present discussion. Antjie Krog. 2009. Wat de sterren zeggen (http://www.webshopuitgeverijpodium. nl/auteurs/antjie-krog/wat-de-sterren-zeggen.html) Frazer 1920:394

Chapter 8 1 2

200

An untranslateable concept with various meanings (Branford 1980:68): a) the bones used for divination by an indigenous diviner or sangoma; b) mad oxen; c) Merrifield blocks, to protect a harbour or coastline from the ocean; and d) children’s playthings in the past (clay oxen made from knuckle bones). In Afrikaans, the word ‘buffel’ has a figurative meaning (someone who is a brute, uncouth, churlish, rude, or boorish) that has no easy equivalent in English. One of three meanings of buffalo is: ‘die man is ’n buffel’, i.e. someone without finer feelings, who is brutish and prone to violence.

References Ackroyd, Peter. 1984. TS Eliot. London: Hamish Hamilton. Antonites, AJ. 1968. Von Wielligh, Gideon Retief. In: Suid-Afrikaanse biografiese woordeboek I. Cape Town: Nasionale boekhandel: 895‑896. Apps, Peter (Ed.). 1996. Smithers’ Mammals of Southern Africa: a Field Guide. Shrewsbury: Swan Hill Press. Attenborough, David. 2009. Life. Insects. 12 November. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/p0053k64. (Accessed: June 10, 2015). Attwell, David: — 1993. JM Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing. Johannesburg: David Philip. — 2014. JM Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face to Face with Time. Auckland Park: Jacana. Attwell, David & Derek Attridge (Eds.). 2012. The Cambridge History of South African Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aucamp, Hennie. 2003. In die vroegte: herinneringe en refleksies. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Bank, A. 2006. Bushmen in a Victorian World: The Remarkable Story of the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushman Folklore. Cape Town: Double Storey. Bakr, Abu. 1977. Bayan al-Dîn. Barnard, Alan. 2012. Genesis of Symbolic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bethlehem, Louise. 2014. ‘Achieved Professionalism: A Review of The Columbia Guide to South African literature in English and The Cambridge History of South African Literature’. English in Africa 41(1):155‑179. Biesele, Megan: — 1975. ‘Folklore and Ritual of !Kung Hunter-Gatherers’, 2 vols. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. — 1993. Women Like Meat: The Folklore and Foraging Ideology of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University. Bleek, DF (Ed.): — 1929. Comparative Vocabularies of Bushman Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 1956. A Bushman Dictionary. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society. Bleek, WHI & Lloyd, LC (Eds.): — 1911. Specimens of Bushman Folklore. London: George Allen & Company. 201

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221

Index Animals knowledge of: Southern speckled padloper, or Suidelike klipskilpad, Homopus signatus cafer (12, 28); springbuck, Antidorcas marsupialis (springbok) (14); Kalahari bombardier beetle (19, 32, 190); “Oogpister”, a genus of the ground beetle family the Carabidae (19, 190) in narratives: mantis (5-6, 8, 10, 18, 22, 25-27); springbok (5, 16, 20, 22, 27); hamerkop (17, 19, 59, 101); hartebeest (26, 29, 68); dung beetle (15); hyena (15, 30, 31, 68); tortoise (4, 15, 27, 29, 118); baboon (27)

Anthropocene (iv, 187) Astronomical knowledge sidereal narratives (104, 105); see also Plants, use of: uintjie

Bank, Andrew Bushmen in a Victorian World (2006) (78)

Bitterpits (87, 88) Bleek, Wilhelm Specimens of Bushman Folklore (87, 160), narratives: “The Broken String” (15, 25); “The Mantis assumes the form of a hartebeest” (25, 28, 29); “The Sun and the children” (30): “Habits of the bat and the porcupine” (30); “//Kabbo’s intendend return home” (90); “The morning star is the heart of dawn” (80, 117, 174-175)(see also Von Wielligh, Narratives recorded); “A song sung by the star !Gaunu, and especially by Bushman women” (95, 101-102)(see also Interpretation: contextual knowledge, Krog, Antjie: The stars say ‘tsau’); “The Great star !Gaunu, which, singing, named the stars” (101) And Afrikaans (4, 77, 178) Informants: Dia!kwain (25, 32, 66, 72, 95, 98-101, 136, 163); //Kabbo (29, 66, 72, 77, 87, 88, 90-91, 133, 136, 163); Rachel/!Kweiten ta /ken (12); /Han≠kasso (102, 163) Death (61, 72, 96, 100-101)

Boerneef “By Stompiesfontein” [“At Stompiesfontein”] (124)

Bushmen as term (155) (see also San); see also Gordon, Robert, politics of labelling

Bushman folklore characters: /Kaggen (5, 7-8, 12, 17, 18-19, 21, 24-26, 28, 59, 64, 166, 188); !Khwa (8, 16, 20, 22, 84)(see also Marais, Eugène); Ga (4, 6, 26, 84); Gagen (4, 7, 26, 84); Rain bull (16, 22); Watersnake (16, 18-19, 22); Echo (18-19, 30-31); Speelman (30, 31); /Kou (15); /Kaun (15, 20, 84)(see also Celliers, Jan F.E.); !Gaunu (95-96, 101-102)(see also Plants: uintjie) narratives: as kukummi (28); present and past tense, use of (29-30); (see also Interpretation: progress from orality to textuality and Oral tradition)

222

Index

Celliers, Jan F.E. “Die vlakte” [“The plains”] (84, 86)

Changeux, Jean-Pierre Consciousness and rationality (186)

Culture Interaction between Bushmen and trekboers (vi, 66, 68, 71, 76-77); conflict (commandos) (71, 79, 111); transculturation (141, 145); linguistic acculturation (39, 59, 66, 77); language death (2, 77)

Dancing rattles (v-vi, 10, 14-15, 26-27) (see also Symbolic communication) Delius, Peter The conversion. Death cell conversations of ‘Rooizak’ and the missionaries – Lydenburg 1875 (1984) (87) (see also Rooizak)

De Roubaix, Emmanuel (71) Du Toit, D.P. “Antwoord fan di Duusman an di Boesman” (113)

Eiseley, Loren The epic of man (185)

Ethnography ethnographic present (29); ethnographic focus, dissolution of (121) (see Opperman, D.J.; “The sorceress”)

Fouché, Abraham “Sterwenslied van die kraanvoёl” [“Swan song of the blue crane”] (131)

//gárraken (95-96, 100-102) (see also Plants: knowledge of, Uintjie) Geertz, Clifford contextualisation (81)

Gordon, Robert politics of labelling Bushmen (115)(see also, Leipoldt, C.L., : “In ou Booi se pondok” )

Gray, Stephen criticism of Eugène Marais (164, 165, 168)

Immelman, Doc (145) (see also Van Rooyen, Piet: implicit ideological perspective) Interpretation contextual knowledge (99, 106, 109)(see also Bleek, W.H.: narratives, “A song sung by the star !Gaunu, and especially by Bushman women”); and Kindle (99); extinct indigenous culture, how to approach (104-109); ethical and ideological implications (105); progress from orality to textuality (57, 86, 106, 156); ways of reading (106, 108) (see also Solomon, Anne: literary reading); ideal reader (106); intrinsic approach, and Dwaalstories (178)

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A Necklace of Springbok Ears Ju/’hoan (24, 32, 77, 105-106, 139-142, 155) (see also Van Rooyen, Piet. publications: Agter ’n eland aan (Following an Eland))

Jupiter (81, 95-96, 175-176) Kolb(e), Peter (39, 40) Krige, Uys Translation of “Poem to the young moon” (136)

Krog, Antjie The stars say ‘tsau’: /Xam Poetry of Dia!kwain, Kweiten-ta-//ken, /A!kunta, Han#kass’o, and //Kabbo (2002) (156, 157, 160, 163, 164); and accusations of plagiarism (156, 164, 179); Met woorde soos met kerse (2002) [With words as with candles] (136, 158, 160)

Leipoldt, C.L. Polfyntjies vir die Proe (98); “In ou Booi se pondok” (114-115)

Lemaire, Ton De Indiaan in ons bewustzijn (111, 152); see also Van Rooyen, Piet: “the other” in the self

Lewis-Williams, D.W. Rock art, approaches to (108, 122, 127, 130); The mind in the cave (2002) (127)

Lloyd, Lucy Bushman Dictionary (4, 86, 98, 105), and Afrikaans (4, 77)(see also Bank, Andrew); Comparative vocabularies of Bushman languages (32); The Mantis and his friends (3, 83, 160); see also Bleek. W.H.: Specimens of Bushman Folklore

Malan, Lucas “Klipskrif 2” [“Rock-Writing 2”] (128)

Marais, Eugène Dwaalstories [Wandering tales or Tales of confusion] (1927) (v, 63, 85, 109, 117-118, 142, 156, 158, 164-170, 176-179) (see also Gray, Stephen, criticism); “Klein Riet-alleen-in-die-roerkuil” [“Little-Reed-in-the-Whirlpool”] (117, 119, 166); “The dance of the rain” (“Die dans van die reën”, 1921) (84, 86, 117, 122, 170); “The sorceress” [“Die towenares”] (85, 120); “Die woestynlewerkie” [“The desert lark”] (117, 172-173); Hart-van-die-dagbreek [Heart of the Dawn] (117, 165, 173-174)

Moran, Shane reappropriation of other (144)

Müller, Petra “Volopkos” (“Food in abundance”) (132)

Mythology linguistic complexity (33) relationship between nature, man, and animal (26)

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Index

Nachtigal, Albert (87, 88, 90-92) (see also Delius, Peter) Neser, M.H. “Di Klaagliid fan di laaste Boesman” (112)

Opperman, D.J. “Springboks” [“Springbokke”, 1963] (86); “Pandora” (118-120, 130, 135) (see also Marais, Eugène, “The sorceress” [“Die towenares”]); “Vuurbees” (120, 135, 181-182, 185-186); “Ouddigter” [“Old poet”] (121, 130); Dolosse (118, 181, 183); “Heilige beeste” [“Sacred cattle”] (59)

Oral tradition characteristics (28, 59, 105, 165, 168, 178) (see also Interpretation: ideal reader); translation from (107, 155, 179); appropriation of (136, 155, 158-160, 162); conventions (159-160); difference from written literature (104-105); and South African literary historiography (86, 117, 163)

Plants use of: buchu, Agathosma betulina (Berg.) pillans (12, 188); calabashes (“narras”, “bitterpit”, or Acanthosicyos hotrida Welwitschia) (13); bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria (13, 189); kougoed, Sceletium tortuosum (70, 195-196); poison bush, Acokanthera venenata, fam. Apocynaceae (74, 135); uintjie (1, 95-98, 100, 102-104, 187) (see also Leipoldt, C.L.: Polfyntjies vir die Proe); Namaqualand daisy (Dimorphoteca annua) (96)

Pringle, Thomas “Song of the Wild Bushman” (112, 149)

Rooizak (see also Delius, Peter) testimony: alienation (90); sense of trauma (90-92); conflict between European and African belief systems (88, 90, 91)

San (155) Sangiro En die Oranje vloei verby (1951) (161)

Schmidt, Sigrid Khoisan folklore, Catalogue of (3, 61); criticism of Von Wielligh’s /Xam archive (83-84) (see also Von Wielligh, Reception of /Xam material: dismissal by scholars)

Schoeman, Karel Verkenning (1, 111); see also Van Rooyen, Piet: masculine discourse

Serfontein, Nellie correspondence with G.R. Von Wielligh (40-41, 54, 194); Oue goud (40)

Smit, Erasmus (96, 102, 142, 156) Solomon, Anne literary reading (105-107)

Springbok rattles: construction of (v, 13-14, 23, 26); function of (10, 15) trek (24, 189)

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A Necklace of Springbok Ears Stockenström, Wilma “Die eland” [“The eland”] (133, 135)

Symbolic communication necklaces: function of (10, 14-16, 23, 28); Springbok ears (14); taboos (10, 14, 24) meaning of: Peircean semiotics (28); Homo Symbolicus (v, 2, 23) non-verbal language (33); fire (20, 23, 27, 31); recursion (33, 57, 159, 191)

Testimony as contemporary discourse (87-88); and memory (78, 89)

Toerien, Barend J. “Grot naby Winterhoek” [ “Cave near Winterhoek”] (126)

Translation Of /Xam archive (4, 29, 30, 33, 157-158); and oral tradition (105-106, 155, 164); as act of restitution (136-137, 164); (see also Krog, Antjie and Watson, Stephen)

Van Heerden, Ernst “Die jagter” [“The hunter”] (122)

Van Lier, Rosa “Kinders van die Mantis, gemasker” (“Children of Mantis, disguised”) (116)

Van Rooyen, Piet publications: Agter ’n eland aan (Following an Eland) (139-140, 143); Die spoorsnyer (The Tracker) (140-141, 143, 144, 146-149, 151, 153, 155; 199); Die olifantjagters (The Elephant Hunters) (141-143, 147-149, 151, 153); Gif (Venom) (141-144, 147-149, 151-153); implicit ideological perspective (145); border fiction (146); collective guilt (146, 152); difference from colonial texts (147); cultural pessimism (145, 148, 153); escape into the imagination (148, 153); female characters (147, 148, 150); masculine discourse (145); bearers of philosophical ideas (151); “the other” in the self (152)

Von Wielligh, G.R. /Xam archive: comparison with Bleek archive (4, 9, 66, 156) (see also Bank, Andrew and Geertz, Clifford); comparison with own writing (35, 55, 57-58); methodology (35) Life: blindness (51-53); contributions to Afrikaans journals (55-56); death (55); divorce (36, 52); familiarity with the cosmology of the /Xam (39); financial problems (44-45, 53, 62); grandfather, Nicolaas van Wielligh (39, 44); in Anglo-Boer War (50-51, 62); land surveyor (37, 44-45); loss of documents (51); marriage (38); resignation (45); scientific contribution (37-38); wife, Bettie (néé Elizabeth de Villiers) (36, 52); youngest brother, Piet von Wielligh (45, 53) Informants: Hendrik Boesman (39, 44); Ou Bles (61, 63, 65, 68-70, 76, 83); Rondelyf (61, 71, 75, 76); (see also de Roubaix, Emmanuel) Narratives recorded: “Night and Darkness and their three Daughters” (iv, 12, 23, 28-29); “Hyena and his two wives” (15); “Mountains is the eldest daughter” (18); “Plains is the second daughter” (18); “Waters is the youngest daughter” (18); “The animals ask for food and water” (22, 24); “The Wind and the Wind bird” (19); “The Fire and the ’Nu festival” (19, 31, 33); “The Rain bull and the Baboon”; “The Echo” (19); “The Mirage” (19); “The great Watersnake” (19); “The Rainbow”

226

Index

(19); “Porcupine and Bat” (29); “A Bushman is truly brave” (74);”The morning star is the heart of dawn” (80, 174) (see also Bleek, Wilhelm, “The morning star is the heart of dawn”) Publications: By’e teelt (1907) (56, 191); Boesman-Stories [Bushman Stories] (1919-1921) (iii, 24, 28, 35, 40, 43, 55, 60, 74, 80, 83, 86, 176); Dierestories [Animal stories] (1917-1922) (35, 55, 57, 60, 82); Jakob Platjie (1918) (35, 57, 76, 80, 191); Langs die Lebombo (1923) (3, 35, 55, 58, 75, 81-82, 191); Robinson Crusoe (translation) (26, 56, 58, 192); Staan jou man [Be a man] (1920) (56, 192); Huis en veld [Home and country] (1921c) (56, 192); Nimrod Seeling (1921b) (56, 82,192); Ghwennie Barneveld (1922b) (56, 82, 192); Die vrouens van Vrindenburg [Women of Vrindenburg] (1924) (56, 192) Reception of /Xam material: criticism by P.C. Schoonees (54, 55, 60); dismissal by scholars (60, 82, 83)

Van Wyk, Johan “Boesmans teken pylskerp” [“Bushmen draw arrow-sharp”] (130)

Watson, Stephen plagiarism, accusation (156-157) (see also Krog, Antjie: The stars say ‘tsau’/Die sterre sê ‘tsau’); Return of the Moon, possible readings (156, 162-163)

Weideman, George “History lesson” (129)

/Xam Cosmology (vi, 21-22, 39, 170) People (archaic: Cape Bushmen), San (155, 157, 160-161, 167, 186, 199) Language (2, 20, 77-78, 88, 99, 107) (see also Bleek, Wilhelm and Von Wielligh, G.R.) Myths of origin (19, 61, 174, 186)

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