As part of my project ‘Animals in Bushman Medicine’, I responded to a number of ≠Khomani, or Sa Bushmen as
they prefer to be known, to their requests to try and come up with an initiative to help them. These Bushmen are
currently living around Welkom, a small settlement near the South African entrance to the Kgalagadi National
Park, that has yet to make it onto any commercial maps. Despite a successful claim to access and indigenous
resource use rights to the park and ownership rights to adjacent land, life remains extremely hard for them, as it
does for most Bushmen.
Working with the appointed assistant to Dawid Kruiper, their traditional leader, I helped develop the idea of an
art project, similar to that carried out in other Bushman contexts. We hoped that perhaps these Bushmen, who
claimed to be skilled and interested in art, might be able to contribute to a now quite mature local and
international Bushman art market, in the same way that members of the Platfontein Khwe and !Xun and the D’
Kar Nharo continue to do so.
I was delighted at the prospect of being able to help my new found friends. At the same time I was very intrigued
to know exactly what they would paint. On the following pages I include the majority of the paintings they
produced. If anyone doubted that these people were Bushmen, in as much as they remain intimately interested
in and responsive to, if not absorbed in, their deeply rural environment, these images should dispel their doubts.
Undoubtedly the way the Sa or ≠Khomani relate to ‘nature’ is complex and highly political and they have long
been wise to the fact that their ‘people in nature’ Bushman identity secures certain advantages, as it bestows
many disadvantages. Nevertheless, these Sa Bushmen exhibit a distinctive relationship to environmental factors
that cannot be easily dismissed, that deserves recognition and should be taken seriously.
Guenther has written on Bushmen artwork (Guenther 1988). These paintings will form the basis of one of my
future articles together with an analysis of meanings and representations in Bushman craft.
Guenther, M, ‘Animals in Bushmen Thought, Myth and Art’, in T. Ingold, D. Riches and J. Woodburn (eds.),
Hunters and Gatherers, 2 (2 vols. Oxford 1988), pp.192-202.
they prefer to be known, to their requests to try and come up with an initiative to help them. These Bushmen are
currently living around Welkom, a small settlement near the South African entrance to the Kgalagadi National
Park, that has yet to make it onto any commercial maps. Despite a successful claim to access and indigenous
resource use rights to the park and ownership rights to adjacent land, life remains extremely hard for them, as it
does for most Bushmen.
Working with the appointed assistant to Dawid Kruiper, their traditional leader, I helped develop the idea of an
art project, similar to that carried out in other Bushman contexts. We hoped that perhaps these Bushmen, who
claimed to be skilled and interested in art, might be able to contribute to a now quite mature local and
international Bushman art market, in the same way that members of the Platfontein Khwe and !Xun and the D’
Kar Nharo continue to do so.
I was delighted at the prospect of being able to help my new found friends. At the same time I was very intrigued
to know exactly what they would paint. On the following pages I include the majority of the paintings they
produced. If anyone doubted that these people were Bushmen, in as much as they remain intimately interested
in and responsive to, if not absorbed in, their deeply rural environment, these images should dispel their doubts.
Undoubtedly the way the Sa or ≠Khomani relate to ‘nature’ is complex and highly political and they have long
been wise to the fact that their ‘people in nature’ Bushman identity secures certain advantages, as it bestows
many disadvantages. Nevertheless, these Sa Bushmen exhibit a distinctive relationship to environmental factors
that cannot be easily dismissed, that deserves recognition and should be taken seriously.
Guenther has written on Bushmen artwork (Guenther 1988). These paintings will form the basis of one of my
future articles together with an analysis of meanings and representations in Bushman craft.
Guenther, M, ‘Animals in Bushmen Thought, Myth and Art’, in T. Ingold, D. Riches and J. Woodburn (eds.),
Hunters and Gatherers, 2 (2 vols. Oxford 1988), pp.192-202.
≠Khomani Bushmen Craft
A gift from ‘Buks’ Kruiper to keep my
LandRover safe: leopard
LandRover safe: leopard
A lion on goat bone with lucky woods
on the necklace
on the necklace
Eland with lucky woods and seed pods
‘the porcupine (centre) is the king of
medicine’
medicine’
© 2009 Chris Hewson Low, All Rights Reserved
