PrintAbstract
An overview of the historical factors that led to the formation ofthe 'Secret San' as an ethnic category, is presented. It is argued that the popular notion of an extinct Drakensberg San is too simplistic and indeed incorrect. Many San descendants have taken on a duel ethnic identity as a survival strategy. Some descendants maintain an active association with rock art and have become part of the international First People Movement and other international initiatives initiated by the United Nations and non-governmental organisations. It is argued that the declaration of a UNESCO- acknowledged World Heritage site within the former abode of independent Drakensberg San groups (i.e.the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg World Heritage site) initially received little support from San descendants. However, revised management strategies have seen the facilitation of San descendants' access to rock art in protected areas and the incorporation of indigenous perspectives in heritage management plans. In spite of this, San descendants' perspectives on rock art interpretation have been ignored by researchers who traditionally have utilised the ethnography of San groups spatially removed from the Drakensberg in order to highlight the meaning of the art.
Keywords: Drakensberg, identity, rock paintings, San, shelter, tradition, world heritage site
Introduction
It has become a common euphemism that the Drakensberg San have become extinct, and that the spectacular rock paintings of the mountainous region inhabited by them is the only evidence remaining of their unique and much-celebrated culture. The notion of an extinct Drakensberg San was popularised by popular writers as well as academia for thelargest part of the twentieth century. In fact, during the late 1970s one of the most influential pioneer researchers of the art, the late Patricia Vinnicombe, left the Drakensberg and emigrated to Australia, as that continent still harboured a living tradition relating to rock art. The San rock art of the Drakensberg, it seemed, shared the same fate as prehistoric rock art in other parts of the world, in thatthe original artists (or their immediate descendants) have been presumed extinct for many years. During 2001, I was privileged to work with Patricia Vinnicombe on a film by Peter Amman, called 'Spirits of the rocks'. Once, during the making of the film, Vinnicombe expressed her frustration as a young researcher in the 1960s; during those years it would often appear that some of the rock shelters visited by herhad only relatively 'recently' been abandoned by the Drakensberg San: 'I often felt that I was just one generation too late, I could still sense them in the shelters, often their straw bedding was still visible, but they had already left.'
During the making of the film I introduced Vinnicombe to a third-generation Drakensberg San descendant, Msudukeni Majola, who was also the grandson of the last San rock artist of the !Ga !ne San--a man bythe name of Lindiso. Needless to say, Vinnicombe was delighted and charmed by his presence. We also had the opportunity to spend a night with Msudukeni in a large overhang called Storm Shelter, and to interview him about the paintings left on the rock face by his immediate ancestors and the San group of which he claimed descent. Although his knowledge of the iconographic content of the art was limited, he expressed great concern about the relationship of the rock shelter with the mountain landscape and the continuing role of the 'San spirits of the dead', who he said inhabited the shelter and prominent pools in the immediate environs. The 'spirits of the dead' were not identical to his Nguni neighbours' notions of the ancestral world. Unlike Nguni ancestors, the San 'spirits of the dead' were not venerated, but could be actively manipulated and even controlled by skilled San medicinepeople. In the Xhosa lexicon, those associated with the San rain animal were called abantubomlambo or 'water people'. They were said to exhibit both animal and human qualities, and to be more ancient and more powerful than the 'spirits of the dead' associated with rock shelters (the latter often being the spirits of San people who had died only a few generations ago). Before we could enter the shelter, Msudukeni, who had also been trained as a weather specialist by his mother, Chitiwe, had to inform the 'water people' at a nearby pool of our intention to enter Storm Shelter, which was potentially 'hot' and therefore dangerous. Msudukeni kneeled at the pool, then entered it at a shallow point and splashed water in all directions. While doing this hecontinuously addressed the 'water people', informing them of our intention to enter their sacred abode. Before we entered the shelter, Msudukeni took clay and duckweed which he had obtained from the pool and smeared it on the rock surface adjacent to the rock art, in order to 'cool' the 'spirits of the dead' and make the shelter friendly for its new 'occupants'.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The persistence of such indigenous beliefs relating to the rock art came as a surprise to Patricia Vinnicombe. Her own research on the southern Drakensberg rock art had been heavily influenced by the premise of an extinct Drakensberg San. The perceived absence of a vibrantDrakensberg San ethnography necessitated her to engage with the ethnographies of San groups (such as the/Xam and !Kung) removed in space and time from the prehistoric rock artists of the Drakensberg. In this approach she was not alone, as the skilful and selective use of diverse San ethnographies has become the dominant trend in southern African rock art research.
However, this approach is not un-problematical. Despite the apparent similarity in the belief systems and symbolic expression of various San groups, it remains an unanswered question why the so-called 'traditional' San groups, encountered by anthropologists in the KalahariDesert in the 1950 to 1970s, had neither knowledge of rock art production, nor any significant belief systems relating directly to the few rock art sites in their immediate environs. The !Kung (or Ju/'hoansi) in the immediate environs of the richly painted Tsodilo Hills, forinstance, have no apparent knowledge relating to the meaning of rockart in the region (Taylor 1998: 351-363). This is all the more interesting, as !Kung ethnography is extensively utilised by rock art researchers to highlight shamanistic symbolism in the rock art of the Drakensberg (Lewis-Williams 2003: 28-34). The assumed extinction of the Drakensberg San--a group who produced some paintings as late as the early 1920s (Prins 1994: 181; Blundell 2004: 43)--is rather unfortunate, as the rock art of the region has become the heartland of the present academic understanding of all San rock art on the sub-continent. The dominant shamanistic interpretation of San rock art has mostly been developed with reference to rock art examples in the Drakensberg region (Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004). Due to the assumed extinction of the Drakensberg San it has been rather difficult to test the shamanistic interpretation against the belief systems of contemporary indigenous communities in the immediate environs of the Drakensberg rock art. In spite of this, archaeologists have taken it on upon themselvesto decipher the meaning of the art, and to convey their interpretations to local communities situated in the immediate environs of rock art. The notion that the knowledge systems of contemporary local communities could assist in the interpretation and management of the art has not been explored (Prins 2000).
Brief history of the Drakensberg San
The notion of an extinct Drakensberg San is, to a large extent, based on Kalahari San stereotypes, which have been re-emphasised by thearchaeological construction of San identity in southern Africa. Popular notions of the Drakensberg San are often based on a simple superimposition of postcard Kalahari San constructions against a mountain backdrop. Literature more often than not creates the impression that the Drakensberg San were isolated survivors of the Later Stone Age whocould simply not adapt to a rapidly changing world, and due to forces associated with tribal warfare, colonialism and apartheid, simply disappeared. Rock art researchers and Stone Age archaeologists have often been central to the continued perpetuation of this notion. Their reasons relate to changing theoretical frameworks and the projection of archaeologically construed notions of identity onto present communities (ibid.).
However, the Drakensberg San were by no means a homogenous entity which retreated to a marginalised environment (the Drakensberg) in order to maintain a Later Stone Age and largely unaltered lifestyle. Infact, historical and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that various social and cultural developments took place during the last 8000 years (Mazel 1989); that various San groups transversed the Drakensberg during the historical period (see below); and that the last 2000 years saw the San interacting and intermarrying with various other immigrant groups.
Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers, the presumed ancestors of the Drakensberg San, settled in parts of the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg fromat least 8 000 years ago, and in parts of Lesotho and adjacent areasof the Eastern Cape from at least 20 000 years ago (Mitchell 2002: 137-160; Wright & Mazel 2007: 23-45). In the southern Drakensberg it appears that many of these hunter-gatherers only frequented the high mountains during the summer months, when they followed the large herdsof migratory animals such as zebra, wildebeest, hartebeest and elandinto these parts (Opperman 1987). Hunter-gatherer use of the northern Drakensberg landscape appears to have been more varied (Mazel 1989). Nevertheless, their autonomy remained firmly entrenched until around ca. 1 700 years ago, when the first Bantu-speaking agropastoralistscrossed the Limpopo River in the north and moved towards the easternseaboard in the south. With them they brought cultigens such as millet, sorghum, pennisetum, pumpkins, and beans, as well as domesticatedanimals such as dogs, sheep, goats, and cattle. These new immigrantsmost probably also introduced a new ideology based on ancestor veneration, witchcraft accusations, and an elaborate pollution concept (Hammond-Tooke 1993: 169-184; Whitelaw 1994: 37-50). Unlike the sociallyless complex San, most aspects of their religious outlook would havebeen ritualised (see Hammond-Tooke 1980: 344-359). For almost a millennium, if not longer, Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers would have been exposed to this new religious ideology and would have incorporatedaspects thereof, albeit selectively, into their own worldview (Blundell 2004; Jolly 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Prins 1990, 1991, 1994, 1998). Inaddition, they would have been exposed to a people whose socio-political organisation was based on simple chieftainships (Huffman 2007: 346) rather than the band. All these factors would have contributed tothe way in which some Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers reorganised their world-views in order to cope with changing political realities.
Interestingly, it was during these first few decades of agropastoralist expansion that hunter-gatherers in the Drakensberg produced what has often been described as the highpoint of the rock art tradition, namely the much-celebrated shaded polychrome style (Mazel 2007: 311-319). According to Mazel (ibid.) the period between ca. 2 000 and 1 600 years ago was characterised by great change and flux in the societies of the Drakensberg hunter-gatherers. Perhaps this acute expression of San ritualised creativity occurred as a counter mechanism to rapidly changing demographic and political factors along the eastern seaboard, and helped them maintain a conservative world-view. Similar processes of intensified and 'defensive traditionalism' have been described in various contexts where the status quo of societies has been threatened by new social and political factors (McAllister 1991: 130). However, it did not last very long in the Drakensberg. Mazel could not find any archaeological evidence for hunter-gatherer occupation of the Drakensberg between ca. 1 600 and ca. 1 000 years ago. In fact,he argued that hunter-gatherer groups left the Drakensberg and attached themselves to friendly farmer villages in the low-lying river valleys below an altitude of 1 000 metres (Wright & Maze12007: 46-50). Here they co-existed for at least half a century until the climate changed around 1 000 years ago, and most of these early Bantu-speaking agropastoralists left for the Limpopo Valley where conditions appearedmore favourable (Prins 1996). It is possible that some of these early Bantu-speaking farmers changed their economies and became hunter-gatherers, but archaeological evidence seems to suggest that these Early Iron Age farmers would rather have migrated in order to maintain their lifestyle (ibid.). It is not sure whether those agropastoralists who moved back to the Limpopo basin were followed by the San. However, what is certain is that some hunter-gatherers reoccupied the Drakensberg, where there is ample archaeological evidence of them inhabiting these mountains during the past 1 000 years or so (Wright & Mazel 2007: 48-50). Interestingly, their reoccupation of the Drakensberg also heralded a new painting style that differed from the shaded polychromes of a few centuries earlier. Bichromes and so-called 'blocked-style' paintings succeeded the earlier styles (Swart 2004). Nevertheless, the iconographic content of the art does not appear to have changedsignificantly, with the exception of the introduction of obvious contact period elements such as domesticated animals and immigrant humangroups.
It was also during the period of the reoccupation of the Drakensberg that the first Nguni-speaking farmers arrived along the eastern seaboard. The advent of the Little Ice Age soon after ca. 1 300 AD may have seen some farmers taking on a hunter-gatherer economy--a processthat most probably saw a great deal of interaction and intermarriagebetween the San and Bantu-speaking hunter-gatherers (Whitelaw, in preparation). Hunter-gatherer societies and their immediate descendantsin the environs of the Drakensberg came to be labeled as 'San' or 'Bushmen' by colonists, and later by academics. Linguistic, genetic (Crawhall 2006) and ethnographic (Hammond-Tooke 1998) evidence certainlysuggests that an incredible level of intermarriage and gene flow occurred between Nguni-speakers and San populations in the past. The clicks so prominent in the Xhosa and Zulu languages were borrowed from the San, while individuals from both these groups also have a large percentage of Khoisan gene markers. While the Khoisan genetic contribution to the Nguni and other Bantu-speaking groups is well known (Soodyall & Jenkins 1998), less is known about the negroid genetic contribution to San hunter-gatherers in the Drakensberg. However, historical and archaeological evidence suggest that it would have been extensive. Intermarriage between San and southern Nguni and southern Sotho groups is well attested to in the historical period (Jolly 1996b). It isinteresting that historical records also refer to both yellow and black 'Bushmen' in the Drakensberg (Prins 1999). Potgieter (1955) founda similar distinction amongst//Xegwi San descendants in the 1950s, while I found that this distinction is frequently alluded to by San descendants to this very day. Francis (2007: 84) noted that most San descendants are morphologically indistinguishable from their African neighbours.
There is ample historical evidence that the Drakensberg San society changed in response to the pressures of colonialism during the nineteenth century. For instance, not all San groups encountered by colonists in the Drakensberg had a simple band organisation (i.e. the Kalahari egalitarian San analogy) during historical times. Some groups, such as the amaThola, had a central leadership that was in charge of ahorde consisting of genetically unrelated individuals. Members of the amaThola horde included San, Khoi, runaway slave descendants, and Bantu-speakers. Nevertheless, many of them took on a San identity and most probably also produced rock paintings (Vinnicombe 1976: 73). There is also evidence to suggest that some San groups, such as the !Ga !ne, were actively involved in the production and trade of metal during the historical period (Kingon 1916; Prins 1990). !Ga !ne individuals were often appointed as rainmakers by their Mpondomise neighbours,and intermarriage and assimilation into the society of the latter eventually became the norm (Blundell 2004: 40-45). Again, there is evidence that some !Ga !ne individuals, even during the final years of their assimilation, continued to produce rock paintings (Prins 1994). Bantu-speaking groups such as the Entlangwini, who lived in the foothills of the Drakensberg, adopted a forager existence for periods during the early nineteenth century, and were also called Botwa or aBatwa--a generalised Nguni term for San hunter-gatherers (Francis 2007: 78-102). Clearly, a model that views the Drakensberg San of the historical period as a homogenous Later Stone Age population with a dominant Khoisan genetic affiliation is too simplistic. Rather, it appears that the Drakensberg became one of the last vestiges of various and sometimes unrelated San and other forager groups during the colonial era.Some of these groups and/or individuals may have shared typical Khoisan gene markers, but this was clearly not the norm in all circumstances.
The much-celebrated/Xam, whose ethnography and belief systems havebeen utilised extensively in the interpretation of Drakensberg rock art, never lived in the Drakensberg. In addition, there is little evidence that the/Xam experienced the same social transformations and had the same intensity of interactions and intermarriage with Bantu-speaking populations that occurred along the eastern seaboard (Deacon 1996: 245-270).
Although some San groups who occupied the Drakensberg most probably belonged to the larger southern San linguistic family, they comprised of distinct linguistic dialects and ethnic units. Most of these had African names such as the amaThola of Nomansland and the Baroa of Lesotho. However, the Khoisan names of a few other groups, such as the!Ga !ne,//Xegwi, and//Ku//ke have been recorded as well. In addition, these San groups were often joined by so-called 'tame Bushmen', many of whom originally hailed from the Cape Colony, but had decided to leave the farmsteads of their colonial masters to join the autonomousSan in the mountains (Wright 1971: 30-36). It is unclear whether allthese San groups could speak a San language. What is known, is that some groups and individuals spoke the Bantu language of their immediate neighbours and affines (Jolly 1996a & b). Kerrick Thusi, an old San descendant interviewed by the author, maintained that some Drakensberg San used Cape Dutch, the language of their former colonial masters, in order to communicate effectively with one another.
The making of the 'Secret San'
Due to the forces of colonialism, independent San hunter-gathererseventually disappeared from the Drakensberg as a separate entity (Wright 1971). By the beginning of the twentieth century only a few individuals, classified as San by white farmers and other administrators,were still spotted on isolated farms in the foothills of the Drakensberg (Vinnicombe 1976:107). For all intents and purposes the Drakensberg San have become extinct. However, a few reports throughout the twentieth century suggested that this notion is indeed incorrect, and that San--some of whom still had intimate links to their former nomadic existence--survived in the mountains.
In 1926 a certain farmer, Lombaard, who was looking for lost sheepin a hidden valley near Cathedral Peak in the northern Drakensberg, came across two intact bow and arrow sets placed on a ledge in a caverichly decorated with rock paintings. So fresh were these bows and arrows that it encouraged speculation that 'wild San' may still be living in isolated parts of the Berg (Wright & Mazel 2007: 40-41). Although this idea seemed rather far-fetched at the time, another interesting report alluded to independent San activity in the Drakensberg during more or less the same time. In 2001, I interviewed an old Afrikaner lady, Mrs. Boshoff, who related how her great uncle was killed by a poisoned arrow in 1930 while pursuing thieves who had stolen cattlefrom their farm, Riverside, in the Kamberg Valley. Two years later Iwas told the same story in Lesotho, but this time by the old San descendant, Kerrick Thusi, who claimed that his father, a San man named Sidinandi, was responsible for the killing (Prins, in preparation). Four years after this alleged incident, in 1934, a medical doctor, H. Anders, met two men in a rural part of Tsolo, who spoke a San language later identified as !Ga !ne (Vinnicombe 1976: 104). Although not known to Anders at the time, one of the men was known by the name of Lindiso--a person subsequently identified as possibly the last San rockartist in the Drakensberg (Jolly & Prins 1994: 16-23; Blundell 2004:52). In the late 1970s, researchers came to hear of two old women, the daughters of Lindiso by his Mfengu wife, who were still living amongst the Mpondomise people. One of these old women, also called Manqindi, was able to provide researchers with important information relating to the production and meaning of rock art (Jolly & Prins 1994: 16-23). In 2001, I introduced Patricia Vinnicombe to Masudukeni Majola,a grandchild of Lindiso by his older daughter Chitiwe. Other San descendants, living in similar assimilated contexts, soon emerged as well (see Figures 2, 3 and 5).
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
After 1995, many individuals who had previously hidden their San ethnic affiliations came out into the open. The largest community of Drakensberg San descendants lives near Mzimkhulu in the former Transkei. This group is made up of the direct descendants of the amaThola, ahorse-riding San horde of mixed genetic origins who operated in south-eastern Lesotho and parts of the adjacent Eastern Cape province in the 1840s. Today they number almost four hundred individuals. Anothersubstantial grouping lives between Lotheni and Kamberg in the southern KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg. In the late 1840s, this group was invited by the Nguni chief Dumisa Duma to join his subjects, then living near the present Underberg/Himeville, and to 'become part of his nation'. Although the most outspoken of all San descendants regarding their cultural heritage, they are also the most acculturated. However, a sprinkling of San descendants occurs in most parts of the southern Drakensberg--especially the section that straddles the Eastern Cape. Most of these communities refer to themselves by the Nguni term 'aBatwa' (Zulu) or 'abaThwa' (Xhosa). They view themselves as being directlydescended from a community of hunter-gatherers who also painted and had an intimate relationship with rock art in the not too distant past. The notion of their self-ascribed identity, as well as the anthropologically defined notions of their ethnicity has been discussed in considerable detail by Francis (2007) and needs no repetition here. However, their present social and cultural circumstances have often leddescendants to inform the author that there are no 'pure' Drakensberg San left. As a notable scholar of Khoisan studies recently affirmed, 'there are no true Bushmen' (Barnard 2007: 143-147). Nevertheless, some of the older generation still have valuable oral history and remaining traditions relating directly to the meaning of the rock art. For many San descendants, the new African National Congress (ANC)-led government meant that the 'war against the San' has finally ended, and that it would be in order to come out into the open. The question should be asked, however, how these San descendants survived all thesedecades of antagonism.
Drakensberg San's approach to colonial pressures
The San of the Drakensberg adopted three main strategies to cope with colonial pressures and the alienation of their former hunting andpainting grounds. These included a) warfare and resistance, b) migration to new areas, and c) assimilation with their neighbours and a change of ethnic identity.
Although warfare and resistance certainly occurred, this approach seemed to have been ineffective and not always actively pursued (Wright 1971). Certainly, the Drakensberg San never unified and posed the same formidable resistance to frontier expansion as was recorded in the Sneeuberge, in the northern Karoo, in the eighteenth century. In addition, there is little evidence that the Drakensberg San, especially those in the KwaZulu-Natal section of the Drakensberg, experienced the same policy of genocide as was perpetuated against the San in theCape Colony and southern Namibia.
With the development and expansion of the Zulu state under King Shaka, from around 1818, many tribal refugees crossed the Drakensberg en route to Lesotho and the Eastern Cape. Various San descendants interviewed by the author maintained that San individuals encountered in the mountains during this period were often attacked and killed. Sometimes the children were taken as slaves or serfs, or even traded by Dutch immigrants who arrived in the area soon after 1830. The Dutch took in these children and made serfs (also called inboekelinge) of them, in order to assist with the development of their farms. According to Kerrick Thusi, an old San descendant interviewed by the author between 2003 and 2007, the Dutch farmers in the northern Drakensberg region were often accompanied by Swazi warriors, who assisted the Dutch in killing adult San, in order to capture their children. The Dutch immigrants justified this system from their Calvinistic point of view,saying that they 'tamed the wild Bushmen and made proper people of them' through this practice (Prins 1999: 57). With the rapid expansionof colonial borders, the remaining San groups now found themselves bottlenecked between the Boer Republic of the Orange River Free State in the west, and the British-controlled Natal Colony in the east. To make matter worse, many African groups (mostly Southern Sotho-, Zulu-, and Xhosa-speaking peoples) were forced to settle in the Drakensberg or its foothills by the colonial powers (Wright 1971: 45-103; Wright & Mazel 2007: 73-96). It did not take long before all the migratorygame, on which the nomadic San were so dependent, was shot out. The San responded by initiating a pattern of livestock raiding, but in return they were persecuted by the colonial authorities and their African surrogates. Often whole bands of San were exterminated or scattered, such as the group led by Soai, the last San chief in Lesotho, who was killed and cut up by angry Sotho tribesmen near the upper reachesof the Orange River in around 1872 (How 1962: 21). Others were killed and routed by colonial forces, mounted police, and farmer commandosbetween the period 1845 and 1872 (Wright 1971). However, it is doubtful that the Drakensberg San experienced wholesale genocide during these colonial times (Francis 2007: 78-102), as is so often alluded to in the popular media.
A more effective approach to ensure their survival was simply to leave the Drakensberg and migrate to other areas--a process alluded toby Stow (1905). However, the best recorded instance relates to the //Xegwi, who originated in western Lesotho but moved towards the central Drakensberg and eventually left the area altogether in 1879, at the start of the Anglo-Zulu War (Prins 1999: 50-80). The remnants of this group were eventually traced in the Lake Chrissie district of Mpumalanga, where they were researched by an ethnologist in the 1950s (Potgieter 1955) and again by me in the 1990s (Figure 3) (Prins 1999, 2001).
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
Those San who remained in the Maloti-Drakensberg area often found 'protection' with friendly African chiefs who sometimes hid them fromthe colonial authorities. Perhaps the most celebrated 'protector' ofthe mountain San was chief Moorosi of the Baphuti people. The Drakensberg San aided Moorosi when his mountain fortress was stormed by colonial forces in 1879 (Jolly 1996a: 30-61). However, Moorosi was by nomeans the only 'protector' of the Drakensberg San: various African groups, such as the BaTau, Mpondomise, Mpondo, Thembu, Bhaca, Duma, and Nthlangwini allied themselves at various periods to the San, and intermarriage frequently occurred (Wright 1971).
Anthropological studies characterise San society as being fluid and flexible (Barnard 1988; Guenther 1996, 1999). San society is more plastic than hierarchical and sedentary societies, and can easily adapt to new social and political realities. It appears that the same notion also applied to San communities in the Drakensberg. In fact, it can be argued that San fluidity, more than anything else, ensured the survival of some Drakensberg San into modern times. According to San descendants, their immediate ancestors--some three to five generations removed--simply changed their former identities and adopted the names and cultures of their African neighbours. However, even during this period they secretly visited one another and maintained intimate contact. Sacred places on the landscape, such as certain pools and rockart sites, had to be visited at night when nobody could see them. Although intermarriage and hybridisation frequently occurred, San individuals still kept selective aspects of their former culture alive. These included a close association with the rain-animal, now transformed into the inkanyamba, or mythical water serpent, of their Bantu-speaking neighbours, an active belief in the 'water people' or spirits ofthe dead specifically associated with the rain-animal, and an intimate knowledge of medicinal plants and their healing and magic properties. In this regard individuals of acknowledged San descent are still consulted by their Bantu-speaking neighbours for rainmaking and healing purposes. Unfortunately, their familiarity with the supernatural is also a double-edged sword in this social context. People of San origin, or who are conceptually associated with the San, are often blamed for witchcraft-related incidents. It often happens when villagers are struck by lightning, that the blame is placed on the supernatural abilities of the San. In fact, in the past four years I have met fourindividuals of San descent, including Msudukeni Majola, who were accused of witchcraft and violently persecuted by community members. In other instances, people of San descent, such as the Slamlela family at Stepmore, were simply labeled as thieves, victimised, and marginalised. One way in which San communities ensured 'protection' from African chiefs was to take on the clan or totem name of the chiefly lineage in their area of habitation. Today, many San descendants in the Drakensberg carry the clan names of Duma, Sithole, and Majola--all namesassociated with the chiefly lineage in the areas where they eventually settled. In Lesotho, a common name encountered amongst San descendants is Kwena, the royal totem of the Basotho people. Typically, San descent is established patrilineally, which is essentially a borrowedAfrican system of kinship. However, the dividing line between San and African is often blurred, and only given meaning in particular social circumstances.
Interestingly, most of these assimilated San did not change their identities completely but took on a dual ethnicity. Amongst themselves they are known as 'aBathwa' (the Nguni term for San), but for all other official purposes they present themselves as Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi,or Sotho. Such fluidity is also applicable to their personal identities. Some individuals have taken on an itinerant existence and travelfrom rural village to village, selling their skills as rainmakers and healers to Xhosa and Sotho-speaking communities. However, their personal names never remain the same, and indeed a different name is often presented to villagers in each village. Like the 'Secret Jews' of Spain and Portugal (Prinz 1973), the secrecy surrounding the San's cultural origins is part and parcel of their present identity. It is for this reason that they are also called the 'Secret San' (Derwent & Weinberg 2005)--a term that has been embraced by many of them at the present time. 'Secret San' tours are now officially conducted by San descendants of the Thendela community in the Kamberg Valley.
Rock art and heritage issues
With the declaration of the period 1995 to 2005 as the decade of indigenous peoples by the United Nations, some 'Secret San' were giventhe opportunity to meet San groups and organisations in other parts of southern Africa, such as representatives of WIMSA (the Working group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa) and SASI (the South African San Institute). Today, they have become part of the international movement of First Peoples and have begun to assert themselves andrediscover their cultural origins. However, the initial encounters between the 'Secret San' and the San groupings of WIMSA were not all amicable. With the completion of the Didima Rock Art centre at Cathedral Peak in 2002, San representatives of WIMSA put in a heritage claimfor all the rock art of the Drakensberg (Chennels 2003: 7). It was especially the San Council of South Africa--a group representative of the/Xun, Khwe, and !Khomani San of the Northern Cape--which was outspoken about 'others making profit from the San heritage'. A workshop was scheduled by Ezemvelo KZN-Wildlife (the conservation agency for the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg World Heritage site) to be held at CathedralPeak, in the northern Drakensberg. 'Secret San' representatives agreed that San communities should also benefit from any commercial enterprise entailing their heritage and intellectual property. However, they questioned Kalahari San interests in the Drakensberg art and felt uncomfortable with their demanding approach. What emerged clearly from this meeting was that the 'Secret San' are not organised in any political forum, and that many of them are not yet ready to come out into the open. In addition, it was emphasised that they have become integrated into the social structures of their Bantu-speaking neighbours,and that the latter--many of whom are their relatives and close affines--should also be consulted. Some felt that San groups who had never lived in the Drakensberg should have no say regarding the future management of rock art and related tourism initiatives in the region.
Another important benchmark was the listing of the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park as a UNESCO-recognised World Heritage site in 2001. Suchlisting, some would argue, could have had major benefits for the protection of the rock art and animals sacred to the San, such as the eland. Ironically, the motivation that accompanied the proposal to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Committee again emphasised the supposed extinction of the Drakensberg San. The local community benefits which the listed World Heritage site would bring were aimed at the Zulu-speaking villagers who live adjacent to the site. In addition, many 'Secret San' saw this international listing as a simple maintenance of thestatus quo, which had seen the declaration of nature parks all alongthe Drakensberg since 1903. These parks were managed according to strict conservation principles of the time, which did not accommodate local community access to resources within protected areas. As one 'Secret San' elder, Hlatini, once remarked to me in 2001 while observinga small herd of eland at Kamberg: 'In the past the eland were the cattle of the Bushmen but today they have become the white man's pets, they mean nothing to us now and are dead, just as the rock art is dead, we are not allowed access to these special places of our ancestors.' One of the first steps to rectify this situation was taken by Amafa, the KwaZulu-Natal cultural heritage agency, and the agency responsible for managing the rock art sites within the World Heritage site. Acting on an official plea by a representative of the 'Secret San' atKamberg in 2002, access was facilitated to Game Pass Shelter, to accommodate an annual ceremony by San descendants. According to these local descendants, rock art sites in the area used to be visited frequently in the past, but it became increasingly difficult after Kamberg was declared a nature reserve in the early 1970s.
The occasion called for, is simply named the 'eland ceremony' (Ndlovu 2005; Francis 2007), and it entails the killing of an eland, usually on a private farm adjacent to the park, and the sprinkling of itsblood on the rocks leading up to the rock art site by elders and ritual functionaries (Figure 4).
During this occasion the San spirit ancestors of the 'Secret San' are revered and asked for good fortune. A smaller, more private ceremony is also held at a pool en route to Game Pass Shelter, where the ancestors are presented with small offerings of beer and bits of burnteland meat. This ceremony has now grown to an annual celebration forall the San descendants of the Drakensberg. In 2007, nearly 400 San descendants and their African relatives and friends from various parts of the Drakensberg attended the celebrations associated with the ceremony, and their numbers are growing every year. The 'eland ceremony' shows obvious features of Zulu ancestor veneration, and it can be argued that a blend of San and Zulu elements provides a newly 'invented' tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983) which assists San descendants in responding to new social and political realities and expectations. In addition, the 'Secret San' of the area have also requested that the site be protected from the 'ritual pollution' carried by outsiders and unexpected visitors: it is believed that ritually polluted peoplemay harm the spiritual potency of the rock art and eventually diminish the powers of the spirits of the dead. Visitors are requested to brush against or rub themselves with Turpentine grass (Cymbopogon excavatus) before entering the site. These ritual prescriptions have now also been incorporated into the heritage management plan of Game PassShelter. This is indeed the first time that indigenous perceptions have been incorporated into the management strategy of rock art in southern Africa.
[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]
Sadly, the original San perspectives of the meaning of the art have been clouded by the recent availability of popular literature on the rock art, visiting rock art researchers, and the tourism trade to Game Pass Shelter. San descendants living in the Thendela village adjacent to the Kamberg Nature Reserve now provide visitors with a classical coffee table book version of the shamanistic interpretation of the art. This was not the situation eight years ago, when I found no reference to altered states of consciousness or associated trance metaphors and symbolism in their interpretation of the art. Interestingly,the centrality of trance and hallucinatory imagery to rock art production is also not supported by 'Secret San' elders elsewhere in the Drakensberg. According to them, their grandparents rather insisted that the production of the art was related to the manipulation of supernatural forces as an 'act of renewal'. These actions involved the manipulation and re-balancing of environmental, sexual, and healing forces. The production of the art was, therefore, not a simple reflection of visions experienced during altered states of consciousness. However, dreams certainly played a part during and even after the painting process (Prins, in preparation).
Conclusion
The emergence of the 'Secret San' begs new questions regarding themanagement, appropriation, and interpretation of the spectacular rock art heritage of the Drakensberg. For them rock art is one of the few remaining tangible resources that relate directly to their heritage, identity, and role in a future South Africa. However, there is alsoa realisation that their present position in the San world is ratherunique, and that there is a need to acknowledge their perspectives on rock art rather than being swamped by ideas obtained from San groups who are spatially removed from the Drakensberg. The dismissal of their testimonies as not coming from 'true San' is both shortsighted and incorrect. As indicated, the San of the Drakensberg were heavily influenced by Bantu-speaking groups and the forces of acculturation during the last two millennia--a process that is still continuing. The 'Secret San' are still disparate entities and do not yet speak 'with one voice'. However, their recent inclusion and representation on committees dealing with the management of rock art in the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg World Heritage Site is a first important step by management authorities to recognise them as the legitimate and direct descendantsof the rock artists of the Drakensberg. Although the 'Secret San' have become the topic of research in two postgraduate anthropology dissertations in recent years (Ndlovu 2005; Francis 2007), it still remains to be seen to what extent they will be embraced by the rock art research fraternity in years to come.
[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]
Acknowledgements
I dedicate this article to the late Patricia Vinnicombe, whose research into the symbolic meaning of Drakensberg rock art remains a monumental contribution to the history and beliefs of the Drakensberg San. The research reported in this article was funded by the IndigenousKnowledge Systems section of the National Research Foundation. I would also like to thank all the San descendants, too numerous to mention by name, who have opened their homes and accompanied me to various places of significance on their physical and symbolical landscapes over the last 15 years.
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Frans E. Prins is affiliated to the Natal Muscum, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Anthropology, Gender & Historical Studies. feprins@gmail.com
