Introduction
The san Bushmen are also known as Kalahari hunter gathers. They are the oldest inhabitants of southern part of Africa. Their territory include most parts of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Angola and Botswana. The san are part of the khoisan group. Although they were traditionally related to khoikhoi, they are mostly hunter gatherers. There is a big linguistic difference between Bushmen living in southern area and the ones living on the northern parts. The san in Kalahari Desert are believed to have lived for more than 20,000 years. San communities are almost up to 25 men, children and women. Different groups from community come together for gifts and news. They also come and celebrate during visits and special occasions.
This community had a critical past full of social rejection, poverty, discrimination and decline of cultural identity. However even after all this, they still got recognition and understanding from their traditions and knowledge. In southern Africa, they are separated into different tribes according to the region. With the presence of increasing technology in Africa, this tribe is starting to become extinct. Most people in the world view and analyze this community through sociological view of neo collectivism. They are also portrayed like a tribe, which does not have economic system in place, and yet they have equal share of food in the desert. They do not have any laws, crime, police, police or rules. They lived in isolation, where no one owns anything and they share everything.
Women and men of the san, play varying roles in the family. Men usually provide for the whole family while the wife makes sure the whole family is intact. In other words, women are the main gatherers. Their work is to collect berries, nuts and other kinds of vegetation. When the man arrives from his hunting with meat, it is then taken and divided into portions and distributed to the whole tribe. The main job of the parent’s is to provide food as well as nurture their kids.
The children are usually the main concern of the parents. It is clear that Bushmen parents loving to their kids, as they like to take pains to entertain their children. In fact, most properly one motivating factor behind parents concern for their kids is because they want their baby to grow very strong and continue to carry family line. Children mostly start to carry family line immediately after their rite of passage to the adulthood. Boys their rite of passage usually comes immediately after he has killed a large animal. This shows that the boy can help the community, which represents the bigger family. For the girls their rite of passage comes when she is old enough to gather and care for children.
Religion is big part of Bushmen’s culture, as they believe in god and other lesser gods. Spirits is another part of the religion and kaggeh spirit is the most recognized in their culture. They believe that spirit was created to be foolish or to help. Their rituals differ from healing dances to things like rain dances. This tribe usually eats anything for example lion, giraffe, zebra, antelope and the list is endless.
The social cultural life of the Bushmen community
The Bushmen community has no formal authority figure like the chiefs; they govern themselves by a group of consensus. Dispute among community members are resolved through the engagement of lengthy discussion. In this discussion, both the parties that are involved are given a chance to give out their views until some agreement is reached.
Individual who excel in specific fields assumes leadership. For example hunting the healing ritual .These individual cannot be able to achieve a general influence of power. The white colonialist found this to be very challenging when they tried to establish treaties with the san.
They migrate in search of water during the dry season. As they migrate, they collect their water by scraping and squeezing of roots. They also collect their in ostrich eggshell. If they are out hunting or travelling, they dig holes in the sand to find water.
As a way of they practice hunting and gathering. They hunt animal like the antelopes and zebras. They gather fruit for food, other roots that they squeeze to obtain water. There hunting technique is use of poisoned arrows, use of traps among many other ways. The poison they use is obtained from beetles, snakes or plants. The males in the society go for hunting while the women go for gathering of foods like the edible mushrooms, bulbs, and melons. In the san, there is no specialization and division of labor at times the men can gather and the women hunt.
They also have an artwork in which they have the rocks painted. These paintings are majorly of human and eland species of antelopes. These up to them have a deep religious and symbolic meaning.
The san always observe the supremacy of the existence of one powerful god, but at the same time recognize existence of lesser gods that are within their wives. There is also paying of homage of the spirit of the deceased.In the evening, they all gather at the same point where the traditional dances are played as a ways of entertainment. The y play dance while the others cheer them.
The basic social organization of this family is the family that is headed by the father. They marry and the males treasure their wife’s and children so much.They do not have a well-established political system hence their political organization is weak since they have no one political leader like the king or the chief.
Economic organization of the san community
They are hunters and gathers. They do this to earn their living. They do this to obtain food hence the men go for hunting while their women collect fruits, vegetables and bulbs. This is there economic organization in that it sustains their lives.
Illiteracy of the Bushmen community
This community is not educated formerly. Since tis community is always in the bush, they are not able to go to classroom and attain knowledge. Lack of education among this community has resulted to this community to still being primitive. They are not able to access modern medical facilities hence a lot of them die because there are no specialized doctors in this community. They die of diseases that can be treated if they are properly educated. These diseases include those that are due to poor hygiene. Education is power and since these community is uneducated they do not have any power to influence any decision by their government hence their views maybe continuously be ignored. Therefore, lack of education in this community it has lead them live in poor condition in the bush that exposes them to harsh environmental condition. Lack of education has also resulted to this Bushmen dying of hunger since they lack the knowledge to store food during the rainy seasons for droughts.
