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100-709: They rose up against German colonial rule in the Nama War 1903-1906. They were brutally repressed. They inhabit an arid region around Fish River Canyon and the Richtersveld . In 1922 they were involved in the Bondelswarts Rebellion , a revolt against a tax on dogs, which was violently repressed. This Namibia -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Herero and Namaqua genocide The Herero and Nama genocide or Namibian genocide , formerly known also as

200-503: A 1993 film , are about a white boy encountering a wandering San and his wife, and how the San's life and survival skills save the white teenagers' lives in a journey across the desert. James A. Michener 's The Covenant (1980), is a work of historical fiction centered on South Africa. The first section of the book concerns a San community's journey set roughly in 13,000 BC. In Wilbur Smith 's novel The Burning Shore (an instalment in

300-556: A "desperate surprise attack". The timing of their attack was carefully planned. After successfully asking a large Herero clan to surrender their weapons, Governor Leutwein was convinced that they and the rest of the native population were essentially pacified and so withdrew half of the German troops stationed in the colony. Led by Chief Samuel Maharero , the Herero surrounded Okahandja and cut railroad and telegraph links to Windhoek ,

400-708: A 1997 conference in Cape Town on "Khoisan Identities and Cultural Heritage" organized by the University of the Western Cape . The term San is now standard in South African, and used officially in the blazon of the national coat-of-arms . The "South African San Council" representing San communities in South Africa was established as part of WIMSA in 2001. The term Basarwa (singular Mosarwa )

500-501: A Bushman (2002) on the murder of San tracker Optel Rooi by South African police; The Will To Survive (2009), which covers the history and situation of San communities in southern Africa today; and My Land is My Dignity (2009) on the San's epic land rights struggle in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve . A documentary on San hunting entitled, The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story (2000), directed by Damon and Craig Foster . This

600-402: A German Protestant bishop, describing the event as "the first genocide of the 20th century". In May 2021, the German government issued an official statement in which it said that Germany "apologizes and bows before the descendants of the victims. Today, more than 100 years later, Germany asks for forgiveness for the sins of their forefathers. It is not possible to undo what has been done. But

700-464: A German trader named Dietrich was walking from his homestead to the nearby town of Omaruru to buy a new horse. Halfway to Dietrich's destination, a wagon carrying the son of a Herero chief, his wife, and their son stopped by. In a common courtesy in Hereroland, the chief's son offered Dietrich a ride. That night, however, Dietrich got very drunk and after everyone was asleep, he attempted to rape

800-418: A Kalahari San group's first encounter with an artifact from the outside world (a Coca-Cola bottle). By the time this movie was made, the ǃKung had recently been forced into sedentary villages, and the San hired as actors were confused by the instructions to act out inaccurate exaggerations of their almost abandoned hunting and gathering life. " Eh Hee " by Dave Matthews Band was written as an evocation of

900-512: A crime that the German judges and prosecutors were reluctant to punish. In 1890 Maharero's son, Samuel , signed a great deal of land over to the Germans in return for helping him to ascend to the Ovaherero throne, and to subsequently be established as paramount chief. German involvement in ethnic fighting ended in tenuous peace in 1894. In that year, Theodor Leutwein became governor of

1000-410: A feeling of resentment towards the Germans on the part of the Herero people, which escalated to hopelessness when they saw that German officials were sympathetic to the moneylenders who were about to lose what they were owed. Racial tension was also at play. The German settlers often referred to black Africans as "baboons" and treated them with contempt. One missionary reported: "The real cause of

1100-487: A hunter is able to obtain enough food, he can afford to have a second wife as well. Villages range in sturdiness from nightly rain shelters in the warm spring (when people move constantly in search of budding greens), to formalized rings, wherein people congregate in the dry season around permanent waterholes. Early spring is the hardest season: a hot dry period following the cool, dry winter. Most plants still are dead or dormant, and supplies of autumn nuts are exhausted. Meat

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1200-508: A new wave of Europeans into the area. Historian Horst Drechsler states that there was discussion of the possibility of establishing and placing the Herero in native reserves and that this was further proof of the German colonists' sense of ownership over the land. Drechsler illustrates the gap between the rights of a European and an African; the Reichskolonialbund (German Colonial League) held that, in regards to legal matters,

1300-414: A protection treaty on 21 October 1885 with Imperial Germany 's colonial governor Heinrich Ernst Göring (father of Hermann Göring ) but did not cede the land of the Herero. This treaty was renounced in 1888 due to lack of German support against Witbooi but it was reinstated in 1890. The Herero leaders repeatedly complained about violation of this treaty, as Herero women and girls were raped by Germans ,

1400-675: A rabble of 'half-naked savages.' Cries in the Reichstag , and from the Kaiser himself, for total eradication of the Hereros grew strident. When a leading member of the Social Democratic Party pointed out that the Hereros were as human as any German and possessed immortal souls, he was howled down by the entire conservative side of the legislature." Leutwein was forced to request reinforcements and an experienced officer from

1500-533: A railway line and set up reservations where they would be concentrated. The Herero had already ceded more than a quarter of their 130,000 km (50,000 sq mi) territory to German colonists by 1903, before the Otavi railway line running from the African coast to inland German settlements was completed. Completion of this line would have made the German colonies much more accessible and would have ushered

1600-545: A root saa "picking up from the ground" + plural -n in the Haiǁom dialect . "Bushmen" is the older cover term, but "San" was widely adopted in the West by the late 1990s. The term Bushmen , from 17th-century Dutch Bosjesmans , is still used by others and to self-identify, but is now considered pejorative or derogatory by many South Africans. In 2008, the use of boesman (the modern Afrikaans equivalent of "Bushman") in

1700-541: A slow-acting arrow poison produced by beetle larvae of the genus Diamphidia . A set of tools almost identical to that used by the modern San and dating to 42,000 BC was discovered at Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal in 2012. In 2006, what is thought to be the world's oldest ritual is interpreted as evidence which would make the San culture the oldest still practiced culture today. Historical evidence shows that certain San communities have always lived in

1800-589: A study published in March 2011, Brenna Henn and colleagues found that the ǂKhomani San, as well as the Sandawe and Hadza peoples of Tanzania , were the most genetically diverse of any living humans studied. This high degree of genetic diversity hints at the origin of anatomically modern humans . A 2008 study suggested that the San may have been isolated from other original ancestral groups for as much as 50,000 to 100,000 years and later rejoined, re-integrating into

1900-512: A treatment which, during the uprising, was regularly extended to German soldiers and civilians, "We came across a few Khoisan whom of course we killed. I myself helped to kill one of them. First we cut off his ears, saying, 'You will never hear Herero cattle lowing.' Then we cut off his nose, saying, 'Never again shall you smell Herero cattle.' And then we cut off his lips, saying, 'You shall never again taste Herero cattle.' And finally we cut his throat." According to Robert Gaudi, "Leutwein knew that

2000-430: A wealth of information in anthropology and genetics . One broad study of African genetic diversity , completed in 2009, found that the genetic diversity of the San was among the top five of all 121 sampled populations. Certain San groups are one of 14 known extant "ancestral population clusters"; that is, "groups of populations with common genetic ancestry, who share ethnicity and similarities in both their culture and

2100-740: A year later. Driven by a lifelong fascination with this "vanished tribe," Van der Post published a 1958 book about this expedition, entitled The Lost World of the Kalahari. It was to be his most famous book. In 1961, he published The Heart of the Hunter, a narrative which he admits in the introduction uses two previous works of stories and mythology as "a sort of Stone Age Bible," namely Specimens of Bushman Folklore ' (1911), collected by Wilhelm H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd , and Dorothea Bleek 's Mantis and His Friend. Van der Post's work brought indigenous African cultures to millions of people around

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2200-509: Is now Namibia were the San and the Khoekhoe . Herero, who speak a Bantu language , were originally a group of cattle herders who migrated into what is now Namibia during the mid-18th century. The Herero seized vast swathes of the arable upper plateaus which were ideal for cattle grazing. Agricultural duties, which were minimal, were assigned to enslaved Khoisan and Bushmen . Over the rest of

2300-401: Is particularly important in the dry months when wildlife cannot range far from the receding waters. Women gather fruit, berries, tubers, bush onions, and other plant materials for the band's consumption. Ostrich eggs are gathered, and the empty shells are used as water containers. Insects provide perhaps 10% of animal proteins consumed, most often during the dry season. Depending on location,

2400-479: Is used for the San collectively in Botswana. The term is a Bantu ( Tswana ) word meaning "those who do not rear cattle", that is, equivalent to Khoekhoe Saan . The mo-/ba- noun class prefixes are used for people; the older variant Masarwa , with the le-/ma- prefixes used for disreputable people and animals, is offensive and was changed at independence. In Angola, they are sometimes referred to as mucancalas , or bosquímanos (a Portuguese adaptation of

2500-718: The Die Burger newspaper was brought before the Equality Court . The San Council testified that it had no objection to its use in a positive context, and the court ruled that the use of the term was not derogatory. The San refer to themselves as their individual nations, such as ǃKung (also spelled ǃXuun , including the Juǀʼhoansi ), ǀXam , Nǁnǂe (part of the ǂKhomani), Kxoe (Khwe and ǁAni), Haiǁom , Ncoakhoe , Tshuwau , Gǁana and Gǀui (ǀGwi) , etc. Representatives of San peoples in 2003 stated their preference for

2600-722: The Boxer Rebellion . The Kaiser took it as a personal insult from a people he viewed as racially inferior, all the more because of his obsession with the " Yellow Peril ". On 27 July 1900, the Kaiser gave the infamous Hunnenrede (Hun speech) in Bremerhaven to German soldiers being sent to Imperial China , ordering them to show the Boxers no mercy and to behave like Attila 's Huns . General von Trotha had served in China, and

2700-510: The Dutch term for "Bushmen"). The terms Amasili and Batwa are sometimes used for them in Zimbabwe . The San are also referred to as Batwa by Xhosa people and as Baroa by Sotho people . The Bantu term Batwa refers to any foraging tribesmen and as such overlaps with the terminology used for the "Pygmoid" Southern Twa of South-Central Africa. The hunter-gatherer San are among

2800-578: The Herero Wars that began in 1904. Major Theodor Leutwein , the Governor of German South West Africa , was well aware of the effect of the German colonial rule on Hereros. He later wrote: "The Hereros from early years were a freedom-loving people, courageous and proud beyond measure. On the one hand, there was the progressive extension of German rule over them, and on the other their own sufferings increasing from year to year." In January 1903,

2900-645: The Herero and Namaqua genocide , was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment which was waged against the Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama in German South West Africa (now Namibia ) by the German Empire . It was the first genocide to begin in the 20th century, occurring between 1904 and 1908. In January 1904, the Herero people, who were led by Samuel Maharero , and

3000-474: The Herero people in 1904 is strikingly similar to the language he had used about the Chinese Boxers in 1900. However, the Kaiser denied, together with Chancellor von Bülow, von Trotha's request to quickly quell the rebellion. No written order by Wilhelm II ordering or authorising genocide has survived. In February 1945 an Allied bombing raid destroyed the building housing all of the documents of

3100-536: The Kalahari were first brought to the globalized world's attention in the 1950s by South African author Laurens van der Post . Van der Post grew up in South Africa, and had a respectful lifelong fascination with native African cultures. In 1955, he was commissioned by the BBC to go to the Kalahari desert with a film crew in search of the San. The filmed material was turned into a very popular six-part television documentary

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3200-599: The Khoe , Tuu , and Kxʼa language families, and can be defined as a people only in contrast to neighboring pastoralists such as the Khoekhoe and descendants of more recent waves of immigration such as the Bantu , Europeans , and Asians . In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San, making it the country with the highest proportion of San people at 2.8%. 71,201 San people were enumerated in Namibia in 2023, making it

3300-639: The Prussian Army from the Imperial period. Despite this fact, surviving documents indicate that Trotha used the same tactics in Namibia that he had used in China, only on a much vaster scale. It is also known that throughout the genocide Trotha sent regular reports to both the General Staff and to the Kaiser. Historian Jeremy-Sarkin Hughes believes that regardless of whether or not a written order

3400-498: The "principal human rights concern" of that country. The San kinship system reflects their history as traditionally small mobile foraging bands. San kinship is similar to Inuit kinship , which uses the same set of terms as in European cultures but adds a name rule and an age rule for determining what terms to use. The age rule resolves any confusion arising from kinship terms, as the older of two people always decides what to call

3500-474: The 1870s, the last San of the Cape were hunted to extinction, while other San were able to survive. The South African government used to issue licenses for people to hunt the San, with the last one being reportedly issued in Namibia in 1936. From the 1950s through to the 1990s, San communities switched to farming because of government-mandated modernization programs. Despite the lifestyle changes, they have provided

3600-643: The 18th century, the Herero slowly drove the Khoisan into the dry, rugged hills to the south and east. The Hereros were a pastoral people whose entire way of life centred on their cattle. The Herero language , while limited in its vocabulary for most areas, contains more than a thousand words for the colours and markings of cattle. The Hereros were content to live in peace as long as their cattle were safe and well-pastured, but became formidable warriors when their cattle were threatened. According to Robert Gaudi, "The newcomers, much taller and more fiercely warlike than

3700-558: The African tribes with streams of blood and streams of gold." General von Trotha stated his proposed solution to end the resistance of the Herero people in a letter, before the Battle of Waterberg : I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this was not possible by tactical measures, have to be expelled from the country ... This will be possible if the water-holes from Grootfontein to Gobabis are occupied. The constant movement of our troops will enable us to find

3800-464: The British authorities. To prevent them from returning, Trotha ordered the desert to be sealed off. German patrols later found skeletons around holes 13 m (43 ft) deep that had been dug in a vain attempt to find water. Some sources also state that the German colonial army systematically poisoned desert water wells. Maherero and 500–1,500 men crossed the Kalahari into Bechuanaland where he

3900-564: The First People, published in 2006, are two of them. John Marshall and Adrienne Miesmer documented the lives of the ǃKung San people between the 1950s and 1978 in Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman. This film, the account of a woman who grew up while the San lived as autonomous hunter-gatherers, but who later was forced into a dependent life in the government-created community at Tsumkwe, shows how

4000-554: The German government in Berlin . Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha was appointed commander-in-chief ( German : Oberbefehlshaber ) of South West Africa, arriving with an expeditionary force of 10,000 troops on 11 June. Meanwhile, Leutwein was subordinate to the civilian Colonial Department of the Prussian Foreign Office, which was supported by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow , while General Trotha reported to

4100-538: The Germans set off in pursuit of the rest, and all those found by the wayside and in the sandveld were shot down and bayoneted to death. The mass of the Herero men were unarmed and thus unable to offer resistance. They were just trying to get away with their cattle. A portion of the Herero escaped the Germans and went to the Omaheke Desert , hoping to reach British Bechuanaland ; fewer than 1,000 Herero managed to reach Bechuanaland, where they were granted asylum by

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4200-458: The Germans, only to suffer a similar fate. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama were killed in the genocide. The first phase of the genocide was characterized by widespread death from starvation and dehydration, due to the prevention of the Herero from leaving the Namib desert by German forces. Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were imprisoned in concentration camps , where

4300-548: The Nama people, who were led by Captain Hendrik Witbooi , rebelled against German colonial rule . On 12 January 1904, they killed more than 100 German settlers in the area of Okahandja . In August 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Ovaherero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke , where most of them died of dehydration . In October, the Nama people also rebelled against

4400-539: The San consume 18 to 104 species, including grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, and termites. Women's traditional gathering gear is simple and effective: a hide sling, a blanket, a cloak called a kaross to carry foodstuffs, firewood, smaller bags, a digging stick, and perhaps, a smaller version of the kaross to carry a baby. Men, and presumably women when they accompany them, hunt in long, laborious tracking excursions. They kill their game using bow and arrows and spears tipped in diamphotoxin ,

4500-572: The San occupied the southern shores throughout the eastern shrubland and may have formed a Sangoan continuum from the Red Sea to the Cape of Good Hope . By the end of the 18th century after the arrival of the Dutch, thousands of San had been killed and forced to work for the colonists. The British tried to "civilize" the San and make them adopt a more agricultural lifestyle, but were not successful. By

4600-446: The San people (or Basarwa ), was conquered during colonization. Loss of land and access to natural resources continued after Botswana's independence. The San have been particularly affected by encroachment by majority peoples and non-indigenous farmers onto their traditional land. Government policies from the 1970s transferred a significant area of traditionally San land to majority agro-pastoralist tribes and white settlers Much of

4700-833: The South African San Council and the South African San Institute. This benefit-sharing agreement is one of the first to give royalties to the holders of traditional knowledge used for drug sales. The terms of the agreement are contentious, because of their apparent lack of adherence to the Bonn Guidelines on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing, as outlined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The San have yet to profit from this agreement, as P57 has still not yet been legally developed and marketed. The San of

4800-532: The World (2005) compares San cave paintings from 200 years ago to Paleolithic European paintings that are 14,000 years old. Because of their similarities, the San works may illustrate the reasons for ancient cave paintings. The presenter Nigel Spivey draws largely on the work of Professor David Lewis-Williams , whose PhD was entitled "Believing and Seeing: Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings". Lewis-Williams draws parallels with prehistoric art around

4900-697: The active ingredient in the Hoodia plant, p57 (glycoside), to be used as a pharmaceutical drug for dieting. Once this patent was brought to the attention of the San, a benefit-sharing agreement was reached between them and the CSIR in 2003. This would award royalties to the San for the benefits of their indigenous knowledge. During the case, the San people were represented and assisted by the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA),

5000-402: The bitterness among the Hereros toward the Germans is without question the fact that the average German looks down upon the natives as being about on the same level as the higher primates ('baboon' being their favourite term for the natives) and treat them like animals. The settler holds that the native has a right to exist only in so far as he is useful to the white man. This sense of contempt led

5100-609: The book follows these markers throughout the world, demonstrating that all of humankind can be traced back to the African continent (see Recent African origin of modern humans , the so-called "out of Africa" hypothesis). The BBC's The Life of Mammals (2003) series includes video footage of an indigenous San of the Kalahari desert undertaking a persistence hunt of a kudu through harsh desert conditions. It provides an illustration of how early man may have pursued and captured prey with minimal weaponry. The BBC series How Art Made

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5200-539: The colonial capital. Maharero then issued a manifesto in which he forbade his troops to kill any Englishmen, Boers, uninvolved peoples, women and children in general, or German missionaries. The Herero revolts catalysed a separate revolt and attack on Fort Namutoni in the north of the country a few weeks later by the Ondonga . A Herero warrior interviewed by German authorities in 1895 had described his people's traditional way of dealing with suspected cattle rustlers ,

5300-669: The country with the second highest proportion of San people at 2.4%. In Khoekhoegowab , the term "San" has a long vowel and is spelled Sān . It is an exonym meaning "foragers" and is used in a derogatory manner to describe people too poor to have cattle. Based on observation of lifestyle, this term has been applied to speakers of three distinct language families living between the Okavango River in Botswana and Etosha National Park in northwestern Namibia , extending up into southern Angola ; central peoples of most of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Zambia and Zimbabwe ; and

5400-537: The desert regions of the Kalahari; however, eventually nearly all other San communities in southern Africa were forced into this region. The Kalahari San remained in poverty where their richer neighbours denied them rights to the land. Before long, in both Botswana and Namibia, they found their territory drastically reduced. Various Y chromosome studies show that the San carry some of the most divergent (earliest branching) human Y-chromosome haplogroups . These haplogroups are specific sub-groups of haplogroups A and B ,

5500-424: The early phases of European colonization, tens of thousands of Khoekhoe and San peoples lost their lives as a result of genocide, murder, physical mistreatment, and disease. There were cases of “Bushman hunting” in which commandos (mobile paramilitary units or posses) sought to dispatch San and Khoekhoe in various parts of Southern Africa." Much aboriginal people 's land in Botswana, including land occupied by

5600-489: The few Europeans who encountered Herero tribesmen in the early days regarded them as the region's 'natural aristocrats. ' " By the time of the Scramble for Africa , the area which was occupied by the Herero was known as Damaraland . The Nama were pastorals and traders and lived to the south of the Herero. In 1883, Adolf Lüderitz , a German merchant, purchased a stretch of coast near Lüderitz Bay (Angra Pequena) from

5700-401: The foraging San collectively. It was coined by Leonhard Schulze in the 1920s and popularized by Isaac Schapera in 1930. Anthropological use of San was detached from the compound Khoisan , as it has been reported that the exonym San is perceived as a pejorative in parts of the central Kalahari. By the late 1990s, the term San was used generally by the people themselves. The adoption of

5800-450: The gathering of food, but sometimes also partake in hunting. Water is important in San life. During long droughts, they make use of sip wells in order to collect water. To make a sip well, a San scrapes a deep hole where the sand is damp, and inserts a long hollow grass stem into the hole. An empty ostrich egg is used to collect the water. Water is sucked into the straw from the sand, into the mouth, and then travels down another straw into

5900-667: The government's policy regarding land tended to favor the dominant Tswana peoples over the minority San and Bakgalagadi . Loss of land is a major contributor to the problems facing Botswana's indigenous people, including especially the San's eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve . The government of Botswana decided to relocate all of those living within the reserve to settlements outside it. Harassment of residents, dismantling of infrastructure, and bans on hunting appear to have been used to induce residents to leave. The government has denied that any of

6000-460: The governments throughout Southern Africa to respect and reconstitute the ancestral land-rights of all San. John Marshall, the son of Harvard anthropologist Lorna Marshall , documented the lives of San in the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia over a period spanning more than 50-years. His early film The Hunters, shows a giraffe hunt. A Kalahari Family (2002) is a series documenting 50 years in

6100-441: The ground, unable to go on, German soldiers killed men, women, and children. Jan Cloete, acting as a guide for the Germans, witnessed the atrocities committed by the German troops and deposed the following statement: I was present when the Herero were defeated in a battle in the vicinity of Waterberg. After the battle all men, women, and children who fell into German hands, wounded or otherwise, were mercilessly put to death. Then

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6200-496: The habit of borrowing money from colonist moneylenders at extreme interest rates (see usury ). For a long time, much of this debt went uncollected and accumulated, as most Herero had no means to pay. To correct this growing problem, Governor Leutwein decreed with good intentions that all debts not paid within the next year would be voided. In the absence of hard cash, traders often seized cattle, or whatever objects of value they could get their hands on, as collateral . This fostered

6300-410: The indigenous Khoisan people, were possessed of the fierceness that comes from basing one's way of life on a single source: everything they valued, all wealth and personal happiness, had to do with cattle. Regarding the care and protection of their herds, the Herero showed themselves utterly merciless, and far more 'savage' than the Khoisan had ever been. Because of their dominant ways and elegant bearing,

6400-400: The lives of the Juǀʼhoansi of Southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. Marshall was a vocal proponent of the San cause throughout his life. His sister Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote several books and numerous articles about the San, based in part on her experiences living with these people when their culture was still intact. The Harmless People, published in 1959, and The Old Way: A Story of

6500-425: The lives of the ǃKung people , who lived for millennia as hunter gatherers, were forever changed when they were forced onto a reservation too small to support them. South African film-maker Richard Wicksteed has produced a number of documentaries on San culture, history and present situation; these include In God's Places / Iindawo ZikaThixo (1995) on the San cultural legacy in the southern Drakensberg; Death of

6600-497: The majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion. In 1985, the United Nations ' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South West Africa , and therefore one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. In 2004, the German government recognised the events in what a German minister qualified as an "apology" but ruled out financial compensation for

6700-430: The military German General Staff , which was supported by Emperor Wilhelm II . Leutwein wanted to defeat the most determined Herero rebels and negotiate a surrender with the remainder to achieve a political settlement. Trotha, however, planned to crush the native resistance through military force. He stated that: My intimate knowledge of many central African nations (Bantu and others) has everywhere convinced me of

6800-495: The murder "aroused extraordinary interest in Hereroland, especially since the murdered woman had been the wife of the son of a Chief and the daughter of another. Everywhere the question was asked: Have White people the right to shoot native women?" Governor Leutwein intervened. He had the Public Prosecutor appeal Dietrich's acquittal, a second trial took place (before the colony's supreme court), and this time Dietrich

6900-524: The music and culture of the San. In a story told to the Radio City audience (an edited version of which appears on the DVD version of Live at Radio City ), Matthews recalls hearing the music of the San and, upon asking his guide what the words to their songs were, being told that "there are no words to these songs, because these songs, we've been singing since before people had words." He goes on to describe

7000-556: The native Herero and Nama peoples and to subjugate them as slave laborers. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Resentment brewed among the native populations over their loss of status and property to German ranchers arriving in South West Africa, and the dismantling of traditional political hierarchies. Previously ruling tribes were reduced to the same status as the other tribes they had previously ruled over and enslaved. This resentment contributed to

7100-579: The necessity that the Negro does not respect treaties but only brute force. By late spring of 1904, German troops were pouring into the colony. In August 1904, the main Herero forces were surrounded and crushed at the Battle of Waterberg . In 1900, Kaiser Wilhelm II had been enraged by the killing of Baron Clemens von Ketteler , the Imperial German minister plenipotentiary in Beijing , during

7200-460: The oldest cultures on Earth, and are thought to be descended from the first inhabitants of what is now Botswana and South Africa. The historical presence of the San in Botswana is particularly evident in northern Botswana's Tsodilo Hills region. San were traditionally semi-nomadic , moving seasonally within certain defined areas based on the availability of resources such as water, game animals , and edible plants. Peoples related to or similar to

7300-457: The open," and rejected Leutwein's offers of peace. One missionary wrote, "The Germans are filled with fearful hate. I must really call it a blood thirst against the Hereros. One hears nothing but talk of 'cleaning up,' 'executing,' 'shooting down to the last man,' 'no pardon,' etc." According to Robert Gaudi, "The Germans suffered more than defeat in the early months of 1904; they suffered humiliation, their brilliant modern army unable to defeat

7400-426: The ostrich egg. Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they had hereditary chiefs , their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves by consensus , with women treated as relative equals in decision making. San economy was a gift economy , based on giving each other gifts regularly rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services. Most San are monogamous , but if

7500-510: The properties of their languages". Despite some positive aspects of government development programs reported by members of San and Bakgalagadi communities in Botswana, many have spoken of a consistent sense of exclusion from government decision-making processes, and many San and Bakgalagadi have alleged experiencing ethnic discrimination on the part of the government. The United States Department of State described ongoing discrimination against San, or Basarwa , people in Botswana in 2013 as

7600-488: The reigning chief. The terms of the purchase were fraudulent, but the German government nonetheless established a protectorate over it. At that time, it was the only overseas German territory deemed suitable for European settlement. Chief of the neighbouring Herero, Maharero rose to power by uniting all the Herero. Faced with repeated attacks by the Khowesin, a clan of the Khoekhoe under Hendrik Witbooi , he signed

7700-484: The relocation was forced. A legal battle followed. The relocation policy may have been intended to facilitate diamond mining by Gem Diamonds within the reserve. Hoodia gordonii , used by the San, was patented by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1998, for its presumed appetite suppressing quality. A licence was granted to Phytopharm , for development of

7800-622: The rest of the human gene pool. A DNA study of fully sequenced genomes, published in September 2016, showed that the ancestors of today's San hunter-gatherers began to diverge from other human populations in Africa about 200,000 years ago and were fully isolated by 100,000 years ago. According to professors Robert K. Hitchcock, Wayne A. Babchuk, " In 1652, when Europeans established a full-time presence in Southern Africa, there were some 300,000 San and 600,000 Khoekhoe in Southern Africa. During

7900-468: The settlers to commit violence against the Hereros." The contempt manifested itself particularly in the concubinage of native women. In a practice referred to in Südwesterdeutsch as Verkafferung , native women were taken by male European traders and ranchers both willingly and by force. In 1903, the Hereros saw an opportunity to revolt. At that time, there was a distant Khoisan tribe in

8000-491: The small groups of this nation who have moved backwards and destroy them gradually. Trotha's troops defeated 3,000–5,000 Herero combatants at the Battle of Waterberg on 11–12 August 1904 but were unable to encircle and annihilate the retreating survivors. The pursuing German forces prevented groups of Herero from breaking from the main body of the fleeing force and pushed them further into the desert. As exhausted Herero fell to

8100-470: The song as his "homage to meeting... the most advanced people on the planet." In Peter Godwin 's biography When A Crocodile Eats the Sun , he mentions his time spent with the San for an assignment. His title comes from the San's belief that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun. Laurens van der Post 's two novels, A Story Like The Wind (1972) and its sequel, A Far Off Place (1974), made into

8200-607: The south called the Bondelzwarts , who resisted German demands to register their guns. The Bondelzwarts engaged in a firefight with the German authorities which led to three Germans killed and a fourth wounded. The situation deteriorated further, and the governor of the Herero colony, Major Theodor Leutwein, went south to take personal command, leaving almost no troops in the north. The Herero revolted in early 1904, killing between 123 and 150 German settlers, as well as seven Boers and three women, in what Nils Ole Oermann calls

8300-465: The southern people in the central Kalahari towards the Molopo River , who are the last remnant of the previously extensive indigenous peoples of southern Africa. The designations "Bushmen" and "San" are both exonyms . The San have no collective word for themselves in their own languages. "San" comes from a derogatory Khoekhoe word used to refer to foragers without cattle or other wealth, from

8400-419: The suffering, inhumanity and pain inflicted on the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children by Germany during the war in what is today Namibia must not be forgotten. It must serve as a warning against racism and genocide." Furthermore, the German government agreed to pay €1.1 billion over 30 years to fund projects in communities that were impacted by the genocide. The original inhabitants of what

8500-578: The term was preceded by a number of meetings held in the 1990s where delegates debated on the adoption of a collective term. These meetings included the Common Access to Development Conference organized by the Government of Botswana held in Gaborone in 1993, the 1996 inaugural Annual General Meeting of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) held in Namibia, and

8600-542: The territory, which underwent a period of rapid development, while the German government sent the Schutztruppe (imperial colonial troops) to pacify the region. Both German colonial authorities and European settlers envisioned a predominantly white "new African Germany," wherein the native populations would be put onto reservations and their land distributed among settlers and companies. Under German colonial rule, colonists were encouraged to seize land and cattle from

8700-489: The testimony of seven Africans was equivalent to that of a colonist. According to Bridgman, there were racial tensions underlying these developments; the average German colonist viewed native Africans as a lowly source of cheap labour, and others welcomed their extermination. A new policy on debt collection , enforced in November 1903, also played a role in the uprising. For many years, the Herero population had fallen in

8800-436: The two earliest branches on the human Y-chromosome tree . Mitochondrial DNA studies also provide evidence that the San carry high frequencies of the earliest haplogroup branches in the human mitochondrial DNA tree. This DNA is inherited only from one's mother. The most divergent (earliest branching) mitochondrial haplogroup, L0d , has been identified at its highest frequencies in the southern African San groups. In

8900-582: The use of such individual group names, where possible, over the use of the collective term San . Adoption of the Khoekhoe term San in Western anthropology dates to the 1970s, and this remains the standard term in English-language ethnographic literature, although some authors later switched back to using the name Bushmen . The compound Khoisan is used to refer to the pastoralist Khoi and

9000-482: The victims' descendants. In July 2015, the German government and the speaker of the Bundestag officially called the events a "genocide"; however, it refused to consider reparations at that time. Despite this, the last batch of skulls and other remains of slaughtered tribesmen which were taken to Germany to promote racial superiority were taken back to Namibia in 2018, with Petra Bosse-Huber  [ de ] ,

9100-524: The wife of the chief's son. When she resisted, Dietrich shot her dead. When he was tried for murder in Windhoek , Dietrich denied attempting to rape his victim. He alleged that he awoke thinking the camp was under attack and fired blindly into the darkness. The killing of the Herero woman, he claimed, was an unfortunate accident. The court acquitted him, alleging that Dietrich was suffering from "tropical fever" and temporary insanity . According to Leutwein,

9200-462: The world for the first time, but some people disparaged it as part of the subjective view of a European in the 1950s and 1960s, stating that he branded the San as simple "children of Nature" or even "mystical ecologists." In 1992 by John Perrot and team published the book "Bush for the Bushman" – a "desperate plea" on behalf of the aboriginal San addressing the international community and calling on

9300-530: The world, linking in shamanic ritual and trance states. A 1969 film, Lost in the Desert , features a small boy, stranded in the desert, who encounters a group of wandering San. They help him and then abandon him as a result of a misunderstanding created by the lack of a common language and culture. The film was directed by Jamie Uys , who returned to the San a decade later with The Gods Must Be Crazy , which proved to be an international hit. This comedy portrays

9400-544: The wrath of the German Empire was about to fall on them and hoped to soften the blow. He sent desperate messages to Chief Samuel Maherero in hopes of negotiating an end to the war. In this, Leutwein acted on his own, heedless of the prevailing mood in Germany, which called for bloody revenge." The Hereros, however, were emboldened by their success and had come to believe that, "the Germans were too cowardly to fight in

9500-539: The younger. Relatively few names circulate (approximately 35 names per sex), and each child is named after a grandparent or another relative, but never their parents. Children have no social duties besides playing, and leisure is very important to San of all ages. Large amounts of time are spent in conversation, joking, music, and sacred dances. Women may be leaders of their own family groups. They may also make important family and group decisions and claim ownership of water holes and foraging areas. Women are mainly involved in

9600-510: Was accepted as a vassal of the Batswana chief Sekgoma . San people The San peoples (also Saan ), or Bushmen , are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana , Namibia , Angola , Zambia , Zimbabwe , Lesotho , and South Africa . The San speak, or their ancestors spoke, languages of

9700-481: Was chosen in 1904 to command the expedition to German South West Africa precisely because of his record in China. In 1904, the Kaiser was furious by the latest revolt in his colonial empire by a people whom he also viewed as inferior, and took the Herero rebellion as a personal insult, just as he had viewed the Boxers' assassination of Baron von Ketteler. The tactless and bloodthirsty language that Wilhelm II used about

9800-476: Was found guilty of manslaughter and imprisoned. The move prompted violent objections of German settlers who considered Leutwein a " race traitor ". In 1903, some of the Nama clans rose in revolt under the leadership of Hendrik Witbooi . A number of factors led the Herero to join them in January 1904. One of the major issues was land rights. In 1903 the Herero learned of a plan to divide their territory with

9900-459: Was given, the Kaiser must have given General von Trotha verbal orders. According to Hughes, the fact that Trotha was decorated and not court-martialed after the genocide became public knowledge lends support to the thesis that he was acting under orders. General von Trotha commented: "I know the tribes of Africa…. They are all alike. They only respond to force. It was and is my policy to use force with terrorism and even brutality. I shall annihilate

10000-532: Was reviewed by Lawrence Van Gelder for the New York Times , who said that the film "constitutes an act of preservation and a requiem." Spencer Wells 's 2003 book The Journey of Man —in connection with National Geographic 's Genographic Project —discusses a genetic analysis of the San and asserts their genetic markers were the first ones to split from those of the ancestors of the bulk of other Homo sapiens sapiens. The PBS documentary based on

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