H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Africa@msu.edu (June, 1997)

Emile Boonzaier, Candy Malherbe, Andy Smith, and Penny Berens.
_The Cape Herders: A History of the Khoikhoi of Southern
Africa._ Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.  viii + 147 pp.
Maps, photographs, drawings, bibliography, and index.  $19.95
(paper), ISBN 0-8214-1174-8.

Reviewed for H-Africa by Brian Siegel, Furman University
<brian.siegel@furman.edu>

First published in 1996 by Cape Town's David Philip press (and
presumably part of its "People of Southern Africa " series),
this brief student text scans the history of the Khoikhoi
peoples, from the prehistoric expansion of sheepherding hunters
down the western coast some 1800 years ago, to the contemporary
land and identity struggles in the Namaqualand Reserves.  It is
impossible to sandwich this entire history into a book of this
length. Thus the measured narrative pace of the initial and
concluding chapters breaks into a headlong rush about midway
through, and the chapters covering the 18th and 19th centuries
conclude with page-long lists of unanswered questions.  But the
entire history is outlined here, and this book's functional
bibliography and 40-odd drawings invite readers to search out
the answers for themselves.

The Cape's indigenous sheep, goat, and cattle herders had no
collective name for themselves, but they certainly would have
understood the 20th century ethnonym, "Khoikhoi" (meaning "real
people"), one based upon the term by which they distinguished
themselves from the neighboring San.  In most histories, these
indigenous herders are assigned bit parts in the drama of South
Africa's European conquest.  They appear early in the first act
to protest da Gama's unbidden use of local springs, they fight
a losing battle to deny Van Riebeeck's people their herds and
pasture lands, and then conveniently make their exit after the
1713 smallpox epidemic.

But this plot only works if one's stage is limited to the
western Cape, and if one ignores the flow of genes, people, and
culture traits which marked the post-contact history of the
Khoikhoi under their many names--the 17th century Hottentots;
the Bosjemans (Bushmen), Bastaards/Basters (later, Griquas),
and Bastaard-Hottentots of the 18th century; and the Coloureds
of the later 19th century.  In this book Boonzaier
(anthropologist), Malherbe (historian), Smith (archaeologist),
and Berens (teacher/writer) pool their collective expertise to
show the central roles these marginalized peoples played in
South Africa's historical drama, and to try to understand how
they saw their incorporation in it.

Divided among thinly scattered and rival groups, these Cape
pastoralists were unable to satisfy or long resist the
colonizers' unlimited demands for cattle and land.  Some became
hereditary client herdsmen to the freeburghers and early
trekboers.  Some moved east, alongside or among the Xhosa.  And
still others moved into the more arid lands to the north. Though
the Khoikhoi were not wiped out by the 1713 smallpox epidemic,
most had lost all of their former autonomy, and many of the
stockless ones had joined with the San as stock-raiding
foragers.

For some time now it has been argued that the permeability of
this late 17th-/early 18th-century boundary between San hunters
and Khoikhoi herders was a long-standing feature of South
African prehistory--that these hunters and herders were really
the same people, and that the hunters were just stockless
herders.  But the archaeological comparison of the ostrich shell
beads, tools, and faunal remains from the Witklip and
Kasteelberg sites in the Western Cape suggests that they were
occupied, respectively, by culturally distinct hunting and
herding groups by about 1800 years ago. In short, the
distinction between San hunters and Khoikhoi herders--one
central to the contrast between "real people" and San, and one
observed during the initial contact period--seems to have
characterized the prehistoric period too.

Much of the historical record on the Khoikhoi is mistaken or
misleading, and one characteristic feature of this book is its
self-conscious attempt to penetrate beyond the documentary
evidence--the 15th- to 17th-century sailors' and Dutch
governors' journals, the 18th-century explorers' and travelers'
accounts, and the 19th-century mission records--to discover just
what the Khoikhoi were really doing and thinking then.
"Interpreting the historical record," just one of this book's
three dozen highlighted boxes, reminds its readers that these
records were written by different categories of people for
different reasons, and that they incorporate different
ethnocentric assumptions and invidious stereotypes.  The next
dozen boxes then illustrate the Khoikhoi's varied responses to
their experience with biographical sketches of notable 17th,
18th, and 19th century individuals, including Khoikhoi
interpreters, travelers, converts, captains, and a missionary.
Above all else, these sketches amply demonstrate "'how often
collaboration and resistance [with and against Europeans] are
united in the same person'" (p. 88).  Thus this little history
goes out of its way to encourage a critical appreciation for
the writing and interpretation of historical texts.

Like America, South Africa has long been a race-conscious
society.  And while its Khoikhoi or Coloured peoples have long
been popularly associated with such stigmatizing stereotypes as
"'illegitimacy, savagery and marginality'" (p. 122), the old
ethnic and racial categories have served to foster a recent,
nascent pride in Khoikhoi ancestry.  Given the historical
impediments to acquiring and holding land of their own, it is
fitting that this book's discussion of ethnic pride and
consciousness focuses upon the Namaqualand Reserves.  For it was
here along the Namibia border that the Nama Khoikhoi
successfully resisted the plan to abolish communal herding
lands, and compelled the new Richtersveld National Park to
accommodate local land use rights.  These Khoikhoi are not
trying to reclaim a racially or culturally "pure" tradition;
racial and cultural purity have never been traditional concerns.
 "Rather, they are acknowledging and professing both their
unique history and their common humanity" (p. 142).

Do consider this book for your reading and courses on South and
Southern Africa.

    Copyright (c) 1997 by H-Net, all rights reserved.  This
    work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper
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