The Bushmen of the Kalahari

I began to be interested in the Bushmen of the Kalahari in the 1970s when reading Laurens Van Der Post's stories A Far Off Place and A Story is Like the Wind, about a friendship between white and Bushmen children. We now know not to believe as fact everything that Van Der Post said (see the biography Storyteller by JDF Jones). The Bushmen (also called the San) have been called a relic of stone age humanity, with interest taken by archaeologists. This is a typical academic gravy train with little substance: they are contemporary people, not museum pieces. That they have suffered at the hands of both white and black is incontrovertible - if you are in doubt, Sandy Gall's The Bushmen of Southern Africa: Slaughter of the Innocent is essential reading. Their hunter-gatherer lifestyle has become virtually impossible today, and their knowledge and skills are in danger of dying out completely.

My current interest is in their spirituality, thanks to an invitation to contribute to the journal Alternation of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa. A link to this paper will be added here when available. This post is to set out the agenda.

Christian missionaries have painted a picture of animistic African tribes worshipping trees and stones and indulging in blood sacrifices. None of this is true of the Bushmen/San so their traditional spirituality is of interest. Fortunately there has been high quality ethnological and anthropological research from the 19th and 20th centuries, preserving information that no longer exists. I am not, as some do, placing these in an evolutionary sequence but allowing the Bushmen the dignity of others trying to see the world through their eyes. If we in the west were stripped of our scientific explanations for things and left to make sense of the land, sea and skies, we would be in a similar position. Their understanding of their environment and the living things within it are based on observation and long communal experience (tradition). For gathering, the women developed an encyclopedic 'ethnobotanical' knowledge of the nature and properties of plants (for food and healing), and their locations and seasons. For hunting, the men had wide understanding of animals and their habits, and some understanding of internal organs from cutting up the bodies. This is the beginnings of a scientific view of their world, as Louis Lieberberg notes in The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science. The sky and stars were invaluable for time keeping and guidance, and they recognised that there were near and far astral bodies and pictured constellations in their own way.

Some things however lie beyond understanding by observation. The weather and especially the rains. Disease, sickness and death. Social discord and jealousy. For this, no natural explanations worked, so they assumed supernatural forces. especially gods in the east and west, with the spirits of the dead living with them and working for them. These gods were not worshipped, just recognized as existing and to some extent feared. One tried not to offend them, and to try to escape their influence. A young person might die because the spirits wanted a new child or wife. Given their lack of knowledge about germs and viruses, this has had explanatory power over the centuries - and they recognize that their attitudes and social customs are those handed down by the old ones.

The trance healing dance gives an illustration of several processes. It is the central social ritual, with some but restricted significance on theology. Those, usually men, who go into trance and heal, recognise that there is an inner power which can rise up, overcome them, and give them special powers. They recognize these powers in many things around them, and they avoid certain foods and certain times. When healing, the tranced man goes from person to person healing them - the benefits are psychological and psychosomatic. Their frequency was about twice a week. When crises are felt - a big family row, for example, this is their solution. In trance the men may see the messengers of the gods, or even the gods, as surrounding the camp, and their duty is to frighten and chase them away, because they bring sickness with them.

It will be interesting to wonder whether better health education will have an impact, and whether the natural/supernatural division will continue afterwards. But it has in the Christian and Muslim worlds, so it probably will. Except the San do not rejoice in the promise of an afterlife, it is, as they see it, just how things are. When they begin to see that there are natural explanations for many of life's mysteries, my guess is that trance dances will still be felt to be socially useful.