Bushman orality

In 1929 D. F. Bleek wrote that |xam people she encountered in the Upper Karoo two decades before were unable to tell her a single story, and that their folklore `was dead’ and so was, by extension, their culture and sense of community, thus encouraging the notion that the |xam people had become extinct. Archival research and fieldwork in the area by the author in 2011-2014 shows that no such extinction took place and that a rich oral tradition, with strong connections with that documented by Bleek and Lloyd in the 19th century, is still very much alive in the area.

The 19th |xam Bushmen of the Upper Karoo, South Africa, told stories about a protean being called !khwa: (“water”), one of whose many shapes was that of a bovine they called “the water bull”, which ritual specialists captured in order to cause rain over the land. This water-creature has been variously interpreted by scholars as a metaphor, a symbol of the dangers of water or a death-wielding divinity. This
article seeks to demonstrate that for the |xam and their contemporary descendants the water-creature was, and still is, water itself, considered to be a living being when present in large concentrations, such as dams, rivers or permanent waterholes, or certain accumulations of clouds. Because of this the water-creature is a tangible entity connected with a vital substance, but whose dealings with human beings are always
fraught with danger.

This paper, written in collaboration with Katriena Swartz and Marlene Winberg, includes the translation into English of a story told by Katriena Swartz in 2011, which is a contemporary version of a story already documented in the 19th century by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd. It provides also an introduction that places the narrative in context and tries to explain why in the early 20th century, Dorothea Bleek failed to realize that the inmediate descendants of her father's and aunt's informants were still carrying a rich oral tradition.