Op-Ed: Khoisan have been overshadowed in the land debate
Contemporary political discourse around the land question barely mentions Khoekhoe and San people. It is absurd to think you can understand land dispossession associated with colonial expansion in South Africa without reflecting on the near extermination of Khoisan people. By RAMABINA MAHAPA.
A key institution used by Dutch-speaking pastoralists to dispossess San people, particularly in the former Cape Colony, of their land during the 18th and 19th centuries was the commando system of voluntary and mostly part-time civilian militia.
There are two books of utmost importance on this subject. One is The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples by Mohamed Adhikari. This book speaks of the way Dutch-speaking civilians organised themselves into para-militia units for the sole purpose of exterminating hunter-gatherer societies in order to dispossess them of their land, as well as to capture surviving individuals, mostly women and children, for their labour.
Adhikari suggests there are structural incompatibilities between commercial stock farming, linked to the globalising and industrialising Western economy, and the mode of production accustomed to hunter-gatherer societies. The continued interactions between commercial stock farming and hunter-gatherers produced dire conditions for hunter-gatherers because of the destruction of resources necessary for their survival.
Adhikari shares in his book that "(h)unter-gatherer communities who resisted settler encroachment have, in addition, been more susceptible to exterminatory violence than other forms of indigenous society. They were despised as the most ‘primitive' of peoples, their way of life an anachronism destined for extinction, and sometimes even seen as deserving of that fate".
In his book, The forgotten Frontier: Colonist & Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18th century, Nigel Penn offers some enlightening details. For Penn: "The military power of the commando system served the essential purpose of enabling the pastoralist economy of the trekboers to expand. Without the ability to appropriate more land, water and grazing for the increasing flocks and herds of its members a pastoralist society is doomed to stagnation or decline." Available research affirms the view that civilians led the genocide against indigenous people in the former Cape Colony. These civilians, who were mostly pastoralists, pro-actively formed para-militia and vigilante groups with expressed purpose of "dealing with the problem" of indigenous people by engaging in acts of collective exterminatory violence.
In colonial settlements where you had a variety of indigenous populations with different mode of subsistence, such as the Cape with hunter-gatherers and agro-pastoral Bantu-speaking groups, hunter-gatherers were more at risk of exterminatory violence. Hunter-gatherers were less likely to be absorbed into the settler economy because of the nature of their society, which made it difficult to exploit their labour.
We learn from the experiences of the Cape San that a key method of dispossession by trekboers was exterminatory expeditions by civilians. Similar exterminatory expeditions were witnessed by other hunter-gathers societies living in the likes of California in the United States and Queensland, Australia. These were undertaken by civilians going out on hunting parties with an intention to indiscriminately kill, without provocation, any indigenous person or groups they came across.
title: koisan have been overshadowed in the land debate
source: msn new
link:https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/editorpicks/op-ed-khoisan-have-been-overshadowed-in-the-land-debate/ar-BBKdOpg?fullscreen=true#image=1
![2018-03-14-op-ed-khoisan-have-been-overshadowed-in-the-land-debate]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBKdR3b.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=570&y=205"} "Daily Maverick/ Leila Dougan")
Contemporary political discourse around the land question barely mentions Khoekhoe and San people. It is absurd to think you can understand land dispossession associated with colonial expansion in South Africa without reflecting on the near extermination of Khoisan people. By RAMABINA MAHAPA.
A key institution used by Dutch-speaking pastoralists to dispossess San people, particularly in the former Cape Colony, of their land during the 18th and 19th centuries was the commando system of voluntary and mostly part-time civilian militia.
There are two books of utmost importance on this subject. One is The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples by Mohamed Adhikari. This book speaks of the way Dutch-speaking civilians organised themselves into para-militia units for the sole purpose of exterminating hunter-gatherer societies in order to dispossess them of their land, as well as to capture surviving individuals, mostly women and children, for their labour.
Adhikari suggests there are structural incompatibilities between commercial stock farming, linked to the globalising and industrialising Western economy, and the mode of production accustomed to hunter-gatherer societies. The continued interactions between commercial stock farming and hunter-gatherers produced dire conditions for hunter-gatherers because of the destruction of resources necessary for their survival.
Adhikari shares in his book that "(h)unter-gatherer communities who resisted settler encroachment have, in addition, been more susceptible to exterminatory violence than other forms of indigenous society. They were despised as the most ‘primitive' of peoples, their way of life an anachronism destined for extinction, and sometimes even seen as deserving of that fate".
In his book, The forgotten Frontier: Colonist & Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18th century, Nigel Penn offers some enlightening details. For Penn: "The military power of the commando system served the essential purpose of enabling the pastoralist economy of the trekboers to expand. Without the ability to appropriate more land, water and grazing for the increasing flocks and herds of its members a pastoralist society is doomed to stagnation or decline." Available research affirms the view that civilians led the genocide against indigenous people in the former Cape Colony. These civilians, who were mostly pastoralists, pro-actively formed para-militia and vigilante groups with expressed purpose of "dealing with the problem" of indigenous people by engaging in acts of collective exterminatory violence.
In colonial settlements where you had a variety of indigenous populations with different mode of subsistence, such as the Cape with hunter-gatherers and agro-pastoral Bantu-speaking groups, hunter-gatherers were more at risk of exterminatory violence. Hunter-gatherers were less likely to be absorbed into the settler economy because of the nature of their society, which made it difficult to exploit their labour.
We learn from the experiences of the Cape San that a key method of dispossession by trekboers was exterminatory expeditions by civilians. Similar exterminatory expeditions were witnessed by other hunter-gathers societies living in the likes of California in the United States and Queensland, Australia. These were undertaken by civilians going out on hunting parties with an intention to indiscriminately kill, without provocation, any indigenous person or groups they came across.
title: koisan have been overshadowed in the land debate
source: msn new
link:https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/editorpicks/op-ed-khoisan-have-been-overshadowed-in-the-land-debate/ar-BBKdOpg?fullscreen=true#image=1
Trekboers did a very horrible thing. This will always affect us although it happened to Khoi-San and hunter gatherers. Like the article and most people need to be told this.
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