Otjikoto Lake is the smaller of only two permanent natural lakes in Namibia . It is a sinkhole lake that was created by a collapsing karst cave. It is located 20 kilometres (12 mi) north-west of Tsumeb and only 100 meters from the main road B1 . The lake was declared a national monument in 1972.
118-488: The diameter of the lake is 102 metres (335 ft); its depth is supposedly more than 91.44 meters, according to scans. According to a Namibian tourism information organisation, "the depth varies from sixty two meters at the side to one hundred meters in the center - and in some places leading off from the side - depths of one hundred meters have been recorded", while an article in the Allgemeine Zeitung explains
236-503: 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
354-677: A Marxist–Leninist one-party state . It embarked on an ambitious programme of nationalisation , and the domestic private sector was essentially abolished. Privately owned enterprises were nationalised and incorporated into a single umbrella of state-owned enterprises known as Unidades Economicas Estatais (UEE). Under the MPLA, Angola experienced a significant degree of modern industrialisation . However, corruption and graft also increased and public resources were either allocated inefficiently or simply embezzled by officials for personal enrichment. The ruling party survived an attempted coup d'état by
472-708: 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 )
590-501: 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
708-418: 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
826-477: A camp in Damba , where 26% died. Under colonial law, black Angolans were forbidden from forming political parties or labour unions. The first nationalist movements did not take root until after World War II , spearheaded by a largely Westernised and Portuguese-speaking urban class, which included many mestiços . During the early 1960s they were joined by other associations stemming from ad hoc labour activism in
944-487: 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
1062-465: A power base among a large expatriate community from related families, clans, and traditions. People on both sides of the border spoke mutually intelligible dialects and enjoyed shared ties to the historical Kingdom of Kongo. Though as foreigners skilled Angolans could not take advantage of Mobutu Sese Seko 's state employment programme, some found work as middlemen for the absentee owners of various lucrative private ventures. The migrants eventually formed
1180-649: A precedent for the bitter factional strife which would later ignite the Angolan Civil War . Throughout the war of independence, the three rival nationalist movements were severely hampered by political and military factionalism, as well as their inability to unite guerrilla efforts against the Portuguese. Between 1961 and 1975 the MPLA, UNITA, and the FNLA competed for influence in the Angolan population and
1298-601: A result of protective tariffs , leading to increased development, and a wave of new Portuguese immigrants. Between 1939 and 1943, Portuguese army operations against the Mucubal, who they accused of rebellion and cattle-thieving, resulted in hundreds of Mucubal killed. During the campaign, 3,529 were taken prisoner, 20% of whom were women and children, and imprisoned in concentration camps. Many died in captivity from undernourishment, violence and forced labor. Around 600 were sent to Sao Tome and Principe . Hundreds were also sent to
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#17327911150051416-545: 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
1534-583: A skirmish in the Moxico province . UNITA and the MPLA consented to the Luena Memorandum of Understanding in April; UNITA agreed to give up its armed wing. With the elections in 2008 and 2012 , an MPLA-ruled dominant-party system emerged, with UNITA and the FNLA as opposition parties. Angola has a serious humanitarian crisis; the result of the prolonged war, of the abundance of minefields , and
1652-541: 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
1770-589: 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
1888-418: A thousand Cuban soldiers in the country. They were kept supplied by a massive airbridge carried out with Soviet aircraft. The persistent buildup of Cuban and Soviet military aid allowed the MPLA to drive its opponents from Luanda and blunt an abortive intervention by Zairean and South African troops, which had deployed in a belated attempt to assist the FNLA and UNITA. The FNLA was largely annihilated after
2006-430: 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
2124-740: 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
2242-445: Is around 53% of the total land area, equivalent to 66,607,380 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, down from 79,262,780 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 65,800,190 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 807,200 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 40% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 3% of
2360-401: 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,
2478-789: Is the seventh-largest country in Africa . It is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Angola has an exclave province, the province of Cabinda , that borders the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and most populous city is Luanda . Angola has been inhabited since
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#17327911150052596-479: 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
2714-718: 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
2832-534: The Atlantic slave trade continued until after Brazil's independence in the 1820s. Despite Portugal's territorial claims in Angola, its control over much of the country's vast interior was minimal. In the 16th century Portugal gained control of the coast through a series of treaties and wars. Life for European colonists was difficult and progress was slow. John Iliffe notes that "Portuguese records of Angola from
2950-487: The Courtneys of Africa book series ), the San people are portrayed through two major characters, O'wa and H'ani; Smith describes the San's struggles, history, and beliefs in great detail. Angola Angola , officially the Republic of Angola , is a country on the west- central coast of Southern Africa . It is the second-largest Lusophone ( Portuguese-speaking ) country in both total area and population and
3068-510: 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
3186-536: 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
3304-564: 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 the country with the second highest proportion of San people at 2.4%. In Khoekhoegowab ,
3422-521: The Kwanza River in the south. The Portuguese established their primary early trading post at Soyo , which is now the northernmost city in Angola apart from the Cabinda exclave . Paulo Dias de Novais founded São Paulo de Loanda ( Luanda ) in 1575 with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela was fortified in 1587 and became a township in 1617. An authoritarian state,
3540-539: The Maoist -oriented Communist Organisation of Angola (OCA) in 1977, which was suppressed after a series of bloody political purges left thousands of OCA supporters dead. The MPLA abandoned its former Marxist ideology at its third party congress in 1990, and declared social democracy to be its new platform. Angola subsequently became a member of the International Monetary Fund ; restrictions on
3658-550: The Mbunda Kingdom in the east. The Portuguese began colonising the coast in the 16th century. Kongo fought three wars against the Portuguese, ending in the Portuguese conquest of Ndongo. The banning of the slave trade in the 19th century severely disrupted Kongo's undiversified economic system and European settlers gradually began to establish their presence in the interior of the region. The Portuguese colony that became Angola did not achieve its present borders until
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3776-536: The Paleolithic Age . After the Bantu expansion reached the region, states were formed by the 13th century and organised into confederations. The Kingdom of Kongo ascended to achieve hegemony among the other kingdoms from the 14th century. Portuguese explorers established relations with Kongo in 1483. To the south were the kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba , with the Ovimbundu kingdoms further south, and
3894-558: The Republic of the Congo , and Gabon . It established trade routes with other city-states and civilisations up and down the coast of southwestern and western Africa. Its traders even reached Great Zimbabwe and the Mutapa Empire , although the kingdom engaged in little or no trans-oceanic trade. To its south lay the Kingdom of Ndongo , from which the area of the later Portuguese colony was sometimes known as Dongo . Next to that
4012-788: The Soviet Union and Cuba ; the insurgent National Union for the Total Independence of Angola , an originally Maoist and later anti-communist group supported by the United States and South Africa ; the militant organization National Liberation Front of Angola , backed by Zaire ; and the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda seeking the independence of the Cabinda exclave, also backed by Zaire. Since
4130-630: The United Arab Republic . The MPLA attempted to move its headquarters from Conakry to Léopoldville in October 1961, renewing efforts to create a common front with the FNLA, then known as the Union of Angolan Peoples (UPA) and its leader Holden Roberto . Roberto turned down the offer. When the MPLA first attempted to insert its own insurgents into Angola, the cadres were ambushed and annihilated by UPA partisans on Roberto's orders—setting
4248-465: The highlands , between the Kwanza and Lucala rivers, was nominally a possession of the Kingdom of Kongo . But in the 16th century it was seeking greater independence. Modern Angola was populated predominantly by nomadic Khoi and San peoples prior to the first Bantu migrations . The Khoi and San peoples were hunter-gatherers , rather than practicing pastoralism or cultivation of crops. In
4366-498: 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
4484-723: The 16th century show that a great famine occurred on average every seventy years; accompanied by epidemic disease, it might kill one-third or one-half of the population, destroying the demographic growth of a generation and forcing colonists back into the river valleys". During the Portuguese Restoration War , the Dutch West India Company occupied the principal settlement of Luanda in 1641, using alliances with local peoples to carry out attacks against Portuguese holdings elsewhere. A fleet under Salvador de Sá retook Luanda in 1648; reconquest of
4602-474: 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
4720-578: The Atlantic Ocean. Thus, at Soyo , at the mouth of the Congo River , the average annual temperature is about 26 °C, but it is under 16 °C at Huambo on the temperate central plateau. The coolest months are July and August (in the middle of the dry season), when frost may sometimes form at higher altitudes. The Angolan government is composed of three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The executive branch of
4838-547: The Congo to the south. Angola has a favorable coastline for maritime trade, with four natural harbors: Luanda, Lobito, Moçâmedes, and Porto Alexandre. These natural indentations contrast with Africa's typical coastline of rocky cliffs and deep bays. Angola's capital, Luanda , lies on the Atlantic coast in the northwest of the country. Angola had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 8.35/10, ranking it 23rd globally out of 172 countries. In Angola forest cover
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4956-658: The FNLA began massing large numbers of troops in northern Angola in an attempt to gain military superiority. Meanwhile, the MPLA began securing control of Luanda, a traditional Ambundu stronghold. Sporadic violence broke out in Luanda over the next few months after the FNLA attacked the MPLA's political headquarters in March 1975. The fighting intensified with street clashes in April and May, and UNITA became involved after over two hundred of its members were massacred by an MPLA contingent that June. An upswing in Soviet arms shipments to
5074-474: The FNLA with the intention of making a bid for political power upon their envisaged return to Angola. A largely Ovimbundu guerrilla initiative against the Portuguese in central Angola from 1966 was spearheaded by Jonas Savimbi and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). It remained handicapped by its geographic remoteness from friendly borders, the ethnic fragmentation of
5192-564: 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
5310-456: The Kingdom of Kongo after the death of António I. Much of the stability and access to iron ore and charcoal necessary for gunsmiths to maintain the arms industry was disrupted. From then on, in this period almost every Kongolese citizen was in danger of being enslaved. Many Kongolese subjects were adroit in making guns, and they were enslaved to have their skills available to colonists in
5428-427: The Kingdom of Kongo was highly centralised around its monarch and controlled neighbouring states as vassals . It had a strong economy, based on the industries of copper , ivory , salt , hides , and, to a lesser extent, slaves . The transition from a feudal system of slavery to a capitalist one with Portugal would prove crucial to the history of the Kingdom of Kongo. As relations between Kongo and Portugal grew in
5546-506: The MPLA and its rivals accepted material assistance from the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China , the former harboured strong anti-imperialist views and was openly critical of the United States and its support for Portugal. This allowed it to win important ground on the diplomatic front, soliciting support from nonaligned governments in Morocco , Ghana , Guinea , Mali , and
5664-644: The MPLA influenced a decision by the Central Intelligence Agency to likewise provide substantial covert aid to the FNLA and UNITA. In August 1975, the MPLA requested direct assistance from the Soviet Union in the form of ground troops. The Soviets declined, offering to send advisers but no troops; however, Cuba was more forthcoming and in late September dispatched nearly five hundred combat personnel to Angola, along with sophisticated weaponry and supplies. By independence, there were over
5782-580: The New World, where they worked as blacksmiths, ironworkers, and charcoal makers. The Portuguese established several other settlements, forts and trading posts along the Angolan coast, principally trading in Angolan slaves for plantations . Local slave dealers provided a large number of slaves for the Portuguese Empire , usually in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe. This part of
5900-773: The Ovimbundu, and the isolation of peasants on European plantations where they had little opportunity to mobilise. During the late 1950s, the rise of the Marxist–Leninist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the east and Dembos hills north of Luanda came to hold special significance. Formed as a coalition resistance movement by the Angolan Communist Party , the organisation's leadership remained predominantly Ambundu and courted public sector workers in Luanda . Although both
6018-662: The Portuguese depended on assistance from the British Royal Navy and what became known as the Blockade of Africa to enforce their ban on the slave trade. This coincided with a series of renewed military expeditions into the bush. By the mid-nineteenth century Portugal had established its dominion as far north as the Congo River and as far south as Mossâmedes . Until the late 1880s, Portugal entertained proposals to link Angola with its colony in Mozambique but
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#17327911150056136-539: 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 ,
6254-572: 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
6372-446: 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
6490-833: 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
6608-532: 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
6726-697: 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),
6844-489: The authoritarian system and the aristocracy. If several villagers were deemed guilty of a crime, it became relatively common for the whole village to be enslaved. The resulting chaos and internal conflict from Garcia II's reign would lead into that of his son and successor, António I . He was killed in 1665 by Portuguese at the Battle of Mbwila 1665, together with a substantial proportion of the aristocracy. The colonists were expanding their power. War broke out more widely in
6962-555: 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
7080-479: The brokering of a ceasefire pending negotiations for Angolan independence. Encouraged by the Organisation of African Unity , Holden Roberto, Jonas Savimbi, and MPLA chairman Agostinho Neto met in Mombasa in early January 1975 and agreed to form a coalition government. This was ratified by the Alvor Agreement later that month, which called for general elections and set the country's independence date for 11 November 1975. All three factions, however, followed up on
7198-424: The ceasefire by taking advantage of the gradual Portuguese withdrawal to seize various strategic positions, acquire more arms, and enlarge their militant forces. The rapid influx of weapons from numerous external sources, especially the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as the escalation of tensions between the nationalist parties, fueled a new outbreak of hostilities. With tacit American and Zairean support
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#17327911150057316-772: The continued political agitation in favour of the independence of the exclave of Cabinda (carried out in the context of the protracted Cabinda conflict by the FLEC ). While most of the internally displaced have now squatted around the capital, in musseques ( shanty towns ) the general situation for Angolans remains desperate. A drought in 2016 caused the worst food crisis in Southern Africa in 25 years, affecting 1.4 million people across seven of Angola's eighteen provinces. Food prices rose and acute malnutrition rates doubled, impacting over 95,000 children. José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down as President of Angola after 38 years in 2017, being peacefully succeeded by João Lourenço , Santos' chosen successor. Some members of
7434-420: The decisive Battle of Quifangondo , although UNITA managed to withdraw its civil officials and militia from Luanda and seek sanctuary in the southern provinces. From there, Savimbi continued to mount a determined insurgent campaign against the MPLA. Between 1975 and 1991, the MPLA implemented an economic and political system based on the principles of scientific socialism , incorporating central planning and
7552-459: The depth problem: "the lake tapers into a lateral cave system making it impossible to determine its exact depth, estimated to be in access ( sic ) of 142 meters." The lake was known to the San under the name Gaisis ("ugly"). When the Herero moved into the area, they named it Otjikoto ( Otjiherero : "deep hole"). Namibia's Oshikoto Region , in which the lake is situated, is an alternative spelling of Otjikoto and derives its name from that of
7670-537: 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 ,
7788-473: The dos Santos family were later linked to high levels of corruption. In July 2022, ex-president José Eduardo dos Santos died in Spain. In August 2022, the ruling party, MPLA, won another majority and President Lourenço won a second five-year term in the election . However, the election was the tightest in Angola's history. At 1,246,700 km (481,400 sq mi), Angola is the world's twenty-second largest country – comparable in size to Mali, or twice
7906-466: The early 16th century, trade between the kingdoms also increased. Most of the trade was in palm cloth, copper, and ivory, but also increasing numbers of slaves. Kongo exported few slaves, and its slave market had remained internal. But, following the development of a successful sugar-growing colony after Portuguese settlement of São Tomé , Kongo became a major source of slaves for the island's traders and plantations. Correspondence by King Afonso documents
8024-417: The early 20th century and experienced the strong resistance from the native groups such as the Cuamato, the Kwanyama , and the Mbunda . After a protracted anti-colonial struggle (1961–1974), Angola achieved independence in 1975 as a one-party Republic , but the country descended into a devastating civil war the same year, between the ruling People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by
8142-424: 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
8260-414: The end of the civil war in 2002, Angola has emerged as a relatively stable constitutional republic , and its economy is among the fastest-growing in the world, with China , the European Union , and the United States being the country's largest investment and trade partners. However, the economic growth is highly uneven, with most of the nation's wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small part of
8378-418: The fighting between the Portuguese government and local forces, supported to varying degrees by the Portuguese Communist Party . The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) recruited from Bakongo refugees in Zaire . Benefiting from particularly favourable political circumstances in Léopoldville , and especially from a common border with Zaire, Angolan political exiles were able to build up
8496-407: The first millennium BC, they were displaced by Bantu peoples arriving from the north, most of whom likely originated in what is today northwestern Nigeria and southern Niger . Bantu speakers introduced the cultivation of bananas and taro , as well as maintenance of large cattle herds, to Angola's central highlands and the Luanda plain. Due to a number of inhibiting geographic factors throughout
8614-401: 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
8732-462: The forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership . Like the rest of tropical Africa, Angola experiences distinct, alternating rainy and dry seasons. In the north, the rainy season may last for as long as seven months—usually from September to April, with perhaps a brief slackening in January or February. In
8850-450: 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
8968-674: The government is composed of the President, the vice-presidents and the Council of Ministers. The legislative branch comprises a 220-seat unicameral legislature, the National Assembly of Angola , elected from multi-member province-wide and nationwide constituencies using party-list proportional representation . For decades, political power has been concentrated in the presidency. After 38 years of rule, in 2017 President dos Santos stepped down from MPLA leadership. The leader of
9086-667: 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
9204-460: 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
9322-482: The inroads from Luanda and Benguela were very limited. Hamstrung by a series of political upheavals in the early 1800s, Portugal was slow to mount a large scale annexation of Angolan territory. The slave trade was abolished in Angola in 1836, and in 1854 the colonial government freed all its existing slaves. Four years later, a more progressive administration appointed by Portugal abolished slavery altogether. However, these decrees remained largely unenforceable, and
9440-497: The international community. The Soviet Union and Cuba became especially sympathetic towards the MPLA and supplied that party with arms, ammunition, funding, and training. They also backed UNITA militants until it became clear that the latter was at irreconcilable odds with the MPLA. The collapse of Portugal's Estado Novo government following the 1974 Carnation Revolution suspended all Portuguese military activity in Africa and
9558-588: The kingdom was due to the salient issue of the slave trade, which had become an increasingly violent struggle. There was a constant need for slaves for the kings and queens to sell in exchange for foreign commodities, the absence of which would prevent them from having any influence with European powers such as Portugal and eventually the Dutch Republic . Kongolese kings needed this influence to garner support from European powers for quelling internal rebellions. The situation became increasingly complicated during
9676-516: The lake in 1911 and collected several hitherto unknown species of plants, among them grass of the genus Rottboellia . Tilapia guinasana , a species of cichlid fish which naturally was only found in Otjikoto's sister lake, Lake Guinas , was introduced to Otjikoto Lake. The claim that Lake Guinas is connected to Lake Otjikoto by caves is frequently made but not proven as yet. Bushmen The San peoples (also Saan ), or Bushmen , are
9794-525: The lake. The first Europeans to discover the lake were Francis Galton and Carl Johan Andersson , who during their search for Lake Ngami came upon Otjikoto Lake in 1851. The lake was a dumping ground for German Schutztruppe during World War I ; in June 1915 German troops dumped war materials in the lake before surrendering to stop the South African and British troops from using them. Most of
9912-539: The larger pieces have been recovered and are displayed in the Tsumeb Museum , but at least two cannons, along with quantities of ammunition, are still in the lake and can be viewed with a special diving permit. According to legend, the Germans also dumped a sealed safe into the lake. The search for it and the 6 million gold marks it is said to contain has as yet not been successful. Botanist Kurt Dinter visited
10030-400: 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
10148-425: 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
10266-694: The market economy were also reduced in an attempt to draw foreign investment. By May 1991 it reached a peace agreement with UNITA, the Bicesse Accords , which scheduled new general elections for September 1992. When the MPLA secured a major electoral victory, UNITA objected to the results of both the presidential and legislative vote count and returned to war. Following the election, the Halloween massacre occurred from 30 October to 1 November, where MPLA forces killed thousands of UNITA supporters. On 22 February 2002, government troops killed Savimbi in
10384-501: 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 the Khoe , Tuu , and Kxʼa language families, and can be defined as a people only in contrast to neighboring pastoralists such as
10502-524: 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
10620-507: The national currency of nzimbu shells , which could be traded for slaves. These could be sold to gain international currency. As the slave trade was the only commodity in which Europeans were interested in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Kongo economy was unable to diversify or later industrialise outside of sectors in which slavery was involved, such as the arms industry . The increased production and sale of guns within
10738-460: 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
10856-426: 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
10974-681: The population as most Angolans have a low standard of living ; life expectancy is among the lowest in the world , while infant mortality is among the highest . Angola is a member of the United Nations , African Union , the Community of Portuguese Language Countries , and the Southern African Development Community . As of 2023 , the Angolan population is estimated at 37.2 million. Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese influence, namely
11092-526: The power of the monarchy. He also established a royal monopoly on some trade. To govern the growing slave trade, Afonso and several Portuguese kings claimed a joint monopoly on the external slave trade. The slave trade increasingly became Kongo's primary, and arguably sole, economic sector . A major obstacle for the Kingdom of Kongo was that slaves were the only commodity for which the European powers were willing to trade. Kongo lacked an effective international currency . Kongolese nobles could buy slaves with
11210-561: The predominance of the Portuguese language and of the Catholic Church , intermingled with a variety of indigenous customs and traditions. The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial name Reino de Angola ('Kingdom of Angola'), which appeared as early as Paulo Dias de Novais 's 1571 charter. The toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title ngola , held by the kings of Ndongo and Matamba . Ndongo in
11328-510: 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
11446-413: The purchase and sale of slaves within the country. His accounts also detail which slaves captured in war were given or sold to Portuguese merchants. Afonso continued to expand the kingdom of Kongo into the 1540s, expanding its borders to the south and east. The expansion of Kongo's population, coupled with Afonso's earlier religious reforms, allowed the ruler to centralize power in his capital and increase
11564-484: 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
11682-569: 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
11800-468: The rest of the territory was completed by 1650. New treaties with the Kongo were signed in 1649; others with Njinga 's Kingdom of Matamba and Ndongo followed in 1656. The conquest of Pungo Andongo in 1671 was the last major Portuguese expansion from Luanda, as attempts to invade Kongo in 1670 and Matamba in 1681 failed. Colonial outposts also expanded inward from Benguela, but until the late 19th century
11918-496: The rule of Garcia II , who needed the assistance of the Dutch military to drive out the Portuguese from Luanda , in spite of the fact that Portugal was Kongo's primary slave trading partner. By the early 17th century, the supply of foreign slaves captured by the Kongolese externally was waning. The government began to approve the enslavement of freeborn Kongolese citizens for relatively minor infractions, nearly any disobeying of
12036-460: The rural workforce. Portugal's refusal to address increasing Angolan demands for self-determination provoked an armed conflict, which erupted in 1961 with the Baixa de Cassanje revolt and gradually evolved into a protracted war of independence that persisted for the next twelve years. Throughout the conflict, three militant nationalist movements with their own partisan guerrilla wings emerged from
12154-493: The size of France or of Texas. It lies mostly between latitudes 4° and 18°S , and longitudes 12° and 24°E . Angola borders Namibia to the south, Zambia to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north-east and the South Atlantic Ocean to the west. The coastal exclave of Cabinda in the north has borders with the Republic of the Congo to the north and with the Democratic Republic of
12272-470: 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
12390-464: The south, the rainy season begins later, in November, and lasts until about February. The dry season ( cacimbo ) is often characterized by a heavy morning mist. In general, precipitation is higher in the north, but at any latitude it is greater in the interior than along the coast and increases with altitude. Temperatures fall with distance from the equator and with altitude and tend to rise closer to
12508-465: 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
12626-576: 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
12744-578: 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
12862-399: The territory of Angola, namely harshly traversable land, hot/humid climate, and a plethora of deadly diseases, intermingling of pre-colonial tribes in Angola had been rare. After settlement of the migrants, a number of political entities developed. The best-known of these was the Kingdom of Kongo , based in Angola. It extended northward to what are now the Democratic Republic of the Congo ,
12980-436: 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
13098-582: 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
13216-518: The winning party at the parliamentary elections in August 2017 would become the next president of Angola. The MPLA selected the former Defense Minister João Lourenço as Santos' chosen successor. In what has been described as a political purge to cement his power and reduce the influence of the Dos Santos family, Lourenço subsequently sacked the chief of the national police, Ambrósio de Lemos, and
13334-462: 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
13452-530: 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
13570-539: 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
13688-475: Was blocked by British and Belgian opposition. In this period, the Portuguese came up against different forms of armed resistance from various peoples in Angola. The Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 set the colony's borders, delineating the boundaries of Portuguese claims in Angola, although many details were unresolved until the 1920s. Trade between Portugal and its African territories rapidly increased as
13806-532: 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
13924-409: Was the Kingdom of Matamba . The lesser Kingdom of Kakongo to the north was later a vassal of the Kingdom of Kongo. The people in all of these states spoke Kikongo as a common language. Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão reached the area in 1484. The previous year, the Portuguese had established relations with the Kingdom of Kongo , which stretched at the time from modern Gabon in the north to
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