He stands quietly, erect, framed by a
burgeoning, golden glow, the sun a new orb on the night sky. Guinea fowl
cluck a sudden strident call in an early morning song, then silence. His
hunting bow whispers as he draws the arrow smoothly backwards, the bow string
taut in his brown, wrinkled hand. He sights along the quivering shaft of the
arrow, and then releases it to flight. His empty bow dips, and swings loosely
from his hand. Twang! His target jumps sideways, up, momentarily surprised,
then collapses into the softly swaying, knee-length grass, heads ripe with
seed. He gives a small dance of delight, then rushes forward to claim his prey,
the springbuck a warm, limp carcass on the evening-cool, red Kalahari sands. He
talks softly to himself in the melodic clicking tongue of the San language as
he works on the carcass. His creased face crumples into a smile as he thinks of
how happy his family will be tonight, when they dance and rejoice around the
communal fire in anticipation of a coming feast, hard to come by in this arid
environment.
The San people, often also known as Bushmen, once used to live widely over
Southern Africa. San rock art sketches are testimony to this people’s once
widespread habitation. San artwork can be found in caves in the Drakensberg
Mountains, that great Barrier of Spears rising majestically in the Natal
Midlands, South Africa, or the Cederberg Mountains in the Western Cape
Province, South Africa, a rugged, arid, mountainous region of craggy cliffs and
enormous boulders. San people are no longer found in the Drakensberg. Remnants
of the San people remain in the Cederberg Mountains, and many of these people
earn a living from the attention of tourists, for example, at Kagga Kamma
Private Game Reserve. A few San grass huts can sometimes be found on the side
of the road leading to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, a wildlife park in the
very northern tip of South Africa, which lies in the rolling red sand dunes and
arid plains of the Kalahari Desert, and is adjoined with a game reserve on the
Botswana side of the border. These grass huts are mostly a shell to provide
some shelter whilst attracting the attention of tourists, perhaps to buy San artefacts.
