San

The article outlines the pre-independence past of the Khwe in West Caprivi, one of Namibia’s San populations whose history is yet to be written. Besides consolidating material from previous publications, it also presents fresh insights based on archival and oral sources. While the trans-regional networks and power relations, in which the Khwe participated before the onset of colonialism, remain blurred due to scarce source material, the article will show that the German colonial power, while not profoundly affecting the daily lives of West Caprivi residents, nevertheless had significant and long-lasting effects through the definition of the boundaries, which, although permeable for local residents, became crucial in rendering activities illegal, delineating territories of refuge and marking out areas affected by conflicts in the neighbouring countries. During the first decades of South African administration, the situation on the ground was not much different from that under German ...

Wilhelm H. I. Bleek first came to Natal in 1854 with Bishop J. W. Colenso's party to assist with translation of the English bible into Zulu.  A young Prussian linguist, he was the founder of southern African linguistics.  Bleek's doctoral dissertation at the University Bonn, submitted in 1851 as De Nominum Generibus Linguarum Africae Australis, Copticae, Semiticarum Aliarumque Sexualium was written in Latin, and based on a few texts that he had been able to obtain from missionaries in the Cape and from European libraries. This dissertation dealt with the problem of how the more abstract grammatical 'gender' classes of the African languages might be related to ‘sexual’ gender categories (masculine and feminine) in European languages.  Although broadly comparative, it also attempted to provide the first grammars of Nama and Xhosa.  Bleek’s earliest work was the first philosophical and comparative approach to African languages in relation to cultural categories: what we would today call a socio-linguistics.  Indeed, his work on gender as both a grammatical and cultural category anticipated by at least a century similar work by linguists and feminists.  This work formed the basis for his later Grammar of South African Languages published in 1863, a work which formed the basis for all subsequent grammars of Bantu languages and still forms the basis on which all of these languages are described and taught today.  By coining the term ‘Bantu’ as the universal label for a large family related languages and cultures, he paved the way for ideas of pan-African identities and histories, comparative studies in ethnology and linguistics, and helped to make later ethnographic studies possible

South African commercial and production pottery is a
highly neglected field of research. In this article I focus on
reproductions of San rock paintings on domestic crockery
produced by Grahamstown Pottery’s Drostdy Ware
in the 1950s. At first glance, Drostdy’s Bushman wares
appear to resemble clichéd copies of Helen Tongue’s
(1909) reproductions. It is argued that Drostdy’s Bushman
wares offer a partial reflection into the complex,
evolving and frequently contradictory public sentiment
of the 1950s regarding the provenance of San rock art;
its raison d’etre; its public profile in the media, literature,
popular fiction, scientific literature, the arts, festivals
and exhibitions. This article contends that Drostdy’s
Bushman wares both espoused and contested contemporary
realities. The interstitial agency of Drostdy’s
Bushman wares was asserted via the triangulation of
textual markings on their bases; iconography and design;
and compounded by their relative quantitative “weight”.
These wares challenge the political neutrality or complicity
of much contemporary South African art and craft
production.

This thesis situates the current ‡Khomani claims to land in their historical context. Examining the nexus between land, economic choices, power, and identity, I analyze the construction of the "Bushman myth "in South Africa as it relates to the ‡Khomani San of the Northern Cape. The myth refers to stereotypical depictions of “Bushmen” based on invented traditions. These traditions are depicted as atavistic manifestations of a historically immutable Bushman ethnicity. Stressing their timelessness and isolation, the Bushman myth thus disregards the San’s internal dialectics and fluid social worlds as well as their historical and local relationships to non-San; nevertheless it has come to define the life of the so-called Bain’s Bushmen and their descendants during the last 80 years. By tracing the development, application, and appropriation of the Bushman myth and its power to define traditions, I hope to contribute towards a much-needed discussion in the present about multiple identities and ‡Khomani ethnicity.



Motivated by a desire to understand the difficulties the ‡Khomani community is facing today, I set out to trace the development of San identity and its relationship to land and the political economy through the past 150 years. My thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the Northern Cape in South Africa from Cape Town to Upington and on the ‡Khomani land in January and summer 2008. I conducted 42 unstructured and semi-structured interviews with community members and others ranging from lawyers, government officials, to NGO consultants, and engaged in participant observation. The archival work is based on government records, newspaper articles, correspondence, and ethnographic studies collected in six South African archives.

BA thesis, summa cum laude in history

The hunter-gatherer rock-arts of northern Australia and southern Africa have much in common. Both places have an abundance of engraved and painted rock-art that occurs at topographically comparable locales. Though northern Australian and southern African hunter-gatherers had no contact with each other, their world-understandings have tended to find expression in similar ways and often involve rock-art imagery. In the case of northern Australia and southern Africa, rock-art points the way, often literally, to multiple landscapes that co-exist but that do not seem to have been equally accessible to all hunter-gatherers. In particular, the notion of inner worlds of extra-ordinary experience simultaneously and immanently existing with the outer world of ordinary existence is pervasive. Rock-art sites represent places where these worlds connected. As important as the rock-art imagery in this respect is the rock itself, which is by no means a neutral support for imagery, but was and is an active, living and sometimes dangerous entity. By using ethnography, rock-art imagery and a consideration of rock and place, we explore the nature of landscape perception and usage among northern Australian and southern African hunter-gatherers and see if these perceptions and practices have an ancient origin or not.

The visual primacy of rock-art imagery can sometimes blind researchers to equally important but less obvious, non-visual aspects of rock-art. Recent work from southern Africa indicates that certain San rock-engravings were hammered, rubbed, cut and flaked in order to produce sound; to touch certain numinous images and rocks; and to possess pieces of potent places. By combining rock-art’s non-visual with the concepts of questing and desire we may understand how body, landscape and mindscape combined in an aesthetic and sensory articulation.

Evidence from Thaba Sione, a town and rock engraving site in the Bophutatswana District of the North West Province, South Africa, indicates that both the site and its imagery were and are involved in the spiritual and political lives of foragers and farmers. Thaba Sione constituted a hierophany where elements of forager and farmer belief and practice, particularly rain-making, appear to have been modified as a result of contiguity initiated with the movement of Bantu-speaking farmers into the area from at least 1 500 years ago. Today, local Tswana-speakers believe Thaba Sione to be a place of the ancestors and the town Chief and Zionist Christian Church members use the site and its imagery to posit and perpetuate a definite political identity.

The aim of this article is to propose some principles and practices for truth-seeking during research into violent conflict. To achieve this aim, an argument is deployed by analysing the theoretical concepts “truth”, “myth” and “oral culture” as sources of knowledge. This conceptual analysis precedes a discussion on community-based participatory research (CBPR) as a research methodology to access the knowledge of lived experiences embedded in the oral culture of the San community of Platfontein, near Kimberley, South Africa. It was found that CBPR contains good practices to use in research to judge the probable truth about disputes. The CBPR process is ideal for determining the accuracy of data in the context of a specific culture, considering the norms, spiritual influences and personal considerations of knowledge-holders that accompany a unique cosmology. A variety and equity of worldviews and perspectives of what happened during violent conflict successfully challenges hegemonic ...

As former mobile foraging peoples, the indigenous Hai//om San of Namibia lost most of their land-including Etosha National Park and Mangetti West-to other groups and the state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After independence (1990), the government redistributed some of this land to various expropriated groups. In the following overview , we delve into this complex history to argue that the recent decision by the Hai//om (2015) to file a collective action lawsuit against the government of Namibia over Etosha and Mangetti West must be seen in a context of ongoing, often subtle, processes of land dispossession simultaneously taking place as a result of marginalisation and structural disempowerment.

The aim of this article is to propose some principles and practices for truth-seeking during research into violent conflict. To achieve this aim, an argument is deployed by analysing the theoretical concepts “truth”, “myth” and “oral culture” as sources of knowledge. This conceptual analysis precedes a discussion on community-based participatory research (CBPR) as a research methodology to access the knowledge of
lived experiences embedded in the oral culture of the San community of Platfontein, near Kimberley, South Africa. It was found that CBPR contains good practices to use in
research to judge the probable truth about disputes. The CBPR process is ideal for determining the accuracy of data in the context of a specific culture, considering the norms, spiritual influences and personal considerations of knowledge-holders that accompany a unique cosmology. A variety and equity of worldviews and perspectives of
what happened during violent conflict successfully challenges hegemonic power relationships, paradigms and narratives, ultimately leading to informed judgements of
what is probably true about a conflict. CBPR with the San of Platfontein revealed principles that can be used as guidelines for researching disputes where oral culture is involved.

Vaalekop Shelter, a small and seemingly sparsely painted rock art site on the upper reaches of the iMpofana (Mooi) River, KwaZulu-Natal, will be flooded by the construction of the Spring Grove Dam downstream. In mitigation, the site was photographed using a proprietary digital imaging process with the acronym CPED (Capture, Process, Enhance and Display). CPED provides different views of the rock art: a 360˚ view of the painted rock surfaces and their surrounds, a very high-resolution mosaic of the painted rock surface, and enhancements of the painted rock surface that reveal details of the art invisible to the naked eye. These innovations literally change the way that we look at rock art. Instead of the traditional approach to rock art photography in which many separate images are recorded of the paintings, CPED takes the painted rock surface as the basic unit of analysis and users may zoom in and out of the the high-resolution mosaic image depending on the level of detail required....

Colonial processes continue to dominate many indigenous peoples' development programmes in countries around the world. This paper examines some of the underlying factors that contribute to continued failure in the implementation of the Remote Area Development Programme (RADP) in Botswana. It argues that the problem is not just failed implementation, but a more fundamental problem found in its philosophy, which suggests relentless colonialism. This paper is based on the empirical findings of a recent study in one Basarwa settlement in Botswana and draws on the practical experience of the author. Case examples from this study are used to unravel and illustrate embedded colonial practices of the RADP. Recommendations from the findings argue for the development of a ‘decolonising approach to development practice’ that may respond effectively to problems that resulted from relentless colonialism.

A program to develop planetary rover technology is underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) under sponsorship of NASA. Developmental systems with the necessary sensing, computing, power, and mobility resources to demonstrate realistic forms of control for various missions have been developed, and initial testing has been completed. These testbed systems and the associated navigation techniques used are described. Particular emphasis is placed on three technologies: Computer-Aided Remote Driving (CARD), Semiautonomous Navigation (SAN), and behavior control. It is concluded that, through the development and evaluation of such technologies, research at JPL has expanded the set of viable planetary rover mission possibilities beyond the limits of remotely teleoperated systems such as Lunakhod. These are potentially applicable to exploration of all the solid planetary surfaces in the solar system, including Mars, Venus, and the moons of the gas giant planets

The arrival of printing in South Africa occasioned a great many social changes: it facilitated governance, participated in the production and propagation of anthropological and scientific ‘knowledge’ about the place and its peoples, required the development of orthographies for African languages, and served the spread of western education and of Christianity—with all of its attendant complex and ambiguous consequences. Print, Text & Book Cultures in South Africa explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives—historical, bibliographic, literary critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of ‘book history’ for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.

This volume is the most comprehensive and representative introduction to the study of print and of the book in South Africa, showcasing the best of current research (while problematising the nature of ‘the book’, and exploring the difficult conditions for print in the country). It takes the measure of the impact of book-historical and related fields of study on South African scholarship, while pointing the way towards avenues for future research.

Authors (in order of appearance): Leon de Kock, Isabel Hofmeyr, Meg Samuelson, John Gouws, Lucy Graham, Rita Barnard, Andrew van der Vlies, Jarad Zimbler, Patrick Flanery, Lize Kriel, Archie Dick, Hedley Twidle, Jeff Opland, Deborah Seddon, Lily Saint, Peter McDonald, Margriet van der Waal, Natasha Distiller, Sarah Nuttall, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Beth Le Roux.

*

Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa is a field-defining contribution to the country’s literary scholarship. Andrew van der Vlies’s introductory essay maps the conceptual terrain in a systematic and engaging way, illustrating its relevance to South Africa’s literary and cultural history. The essays that follow demonstrate the archival richness and liveliness of the field, while opening doors to future research. Beyond South Africa, the book will be exemplary in showing how book histories develop under postcolonial conditions.
-- David Attwell, author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History (2005), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)

South African literary criticism has been rejuvenated by an emphasis on the materiality of book production and circulation, and the historical embedding of those institutions and practices that turned texts into ‘works’ considered worthy of our attention. This elegantly framed collection of readable, provocative essays examines the relations between the production and consumption of books to present a rich social history of South African print cultures. It is indispensible reading for anyone seeking to come to terms with the processes and practices, both national and transnational, that have fashioned this country’s literature and the ways in which it is read and understood.
-- Michael Titlestad, University of the Witwatersrand

This is an extraordinarily rewarding book. Its essays by key scholars and book-trade practitioners attend to the rich complexity of the varied trajectories and meanings of South African print culture. The introduction by Andrew van der Vlies offers a tour de force statement of the complex interplay between South African social, political, and economic realities and book history methodologies; each piece that follows charts a compelling course through the shifting contexts for South African print, whether to bring those contexts to bear on literary interpretation, or to highlight the interdependence of print and history.
-- Sarah Brouillette, author of Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace (2007)

Wide-ranging and sophisticated, this collection of essays does not simply add more case studies to the book-historical canon but contributes new models to the debate.
-- Leah Price, Harvard University

Thought provoking, wide ranging in its subject material, and dynamically edited, this collection marks a turning point in the study of book cultures in South Africa. These essays, exemplars of recently published work in the field, draw attention to the rich, interdisciplinary seams of material uncovered by key exponents of South African print culture history. The work as a whole demonstrates how one can engage with the confluence of text, people, history, culture, and print technology in South African contexts. It will prove one of the first ports of call for anyone wishing to undertake further journeys in this subject area in the future.
-- David Finkelstein, co-editor of The Book History Reader (2001) and The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland (vol. 4, 2007), and co-author of An Introduction to Book History (2005)

Rock-art is a powerful and theoretically informed artefact that allows non-rock-art producing people an understanding of the worldview of the rock-artists. But the flow of information in such rock-art researches – ‘us’ observing ‘them’ via `their’ artefacts is often asymmetrical and can be disempowering to the rock-art-producing individuals and communities past and present. Fortunately, rock-art is also able to balance and even reverse this asymmetry. For example, there are certain ‘contact’ period rock engravings and rock paintings in southern Africa that were produced at and after the time of the colonisation of southern Africa by non-Bushmen beginning about 2 000 years ago. Some of the power relations between indigenes and colonists are made explicit in the form of rock paintings and rock engravings. Specifically, much of this rock-art shows how the Bushmen imagined and imaged the colonists.

The aim of this article is to propose some principles and practices for truth-seeking during research into violent conflict. To achieve this aim, an argument is deployed by analysing the theoretical concepts “truth”, “myth” and “oral culture” as sources of knowledge. This conceptual analysis precedes a discussion on community-based participatory research (CBPR) as a research methodology to access the knowledge of lived experiences embedded in the oral culture of the San community of Platfontein, near Kimberley, South Africa. It was found that CBPR contains good practices to use in research to judge the probable truth about disputes. The CBPR process is ideal for determining the accuracy of data in the context of a specific culture, considering the norms, spiritual influences and personal considerations of knowledge-holders that accompany a unique cosmology. A variety and equity of worldviews and perspectives of what happened during violent conflict successfully challenges hegemonic ...

s  Morphology, interfacial tension, and stress relaxation spectra of immiscible SAN/EPDM blend and its compatibilized blend with SAN-g-EPDM (Centrex) was studied. The results showed that the morphology of the blend had a quick response to added Centrex. In the compatibilized blend with 20-wt% compatibilizer (optimized blend) having a droplet-in-matrix type of morphology, the particle sizes were reduced by a factor of

The paper demonstrates the efficacy of natural rubber-g-poly (styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (NR-g-SAN) copolymers as impact modifier for SAN. The impact behaviour of SAN /NR-g-SAN blends were studied as a function of cross-link density of NR, percent grafting, rubber content in the blend and the AN content in the grafted chain. The cross-link density of NR had no significant effect on impact strength of the blends whereas increase in percent grafting (PG) of the rubber significantly improved the impact strength. Thus the impact strength increased four times when the PG of the rubber was increased from 34.2 to 65%. Further increase in PG decreased the impact strength. Similar trend was observed on increase in the rubber content, the maximum impact strength was observed at 20% rubber. The impact strength also depended on the acrylonitrile content of the grafted chain. Tensile and flexural strength and modulus of these blends were not influenced by PG and AN content in the grafted chain whereas these properties decreased with the increase in the rubber content. Scanning electron microscopic studies of the impact fractured surfaces showed cavitation of rubber particles and craze induced matrix deformation. Dynamic mechanical studies confirmed the two-phase structure of these blends.

"An eye witness account of coastal people along the northern Namibian coast was recently found in the State Archives, Windhoek (Elers 1907). In view of current interest in coastal settlement and subsistence, it was thought worthwhile to reproduce relevant parts of the document. It shows that small groups of people were living on the coast searching for beached whales."

Species-specific rock paintings of freshwater mormyrid fish in central and eastern Zimbabwe and the south-eastern mountains of South Africa are interpreted in terms of San shamanism. Elements of mormyrid appearance and physiology appear to have been foregrounded in order to more precisely nuance San perceptions of supernatural potency and extra-corporeal travel. Many of the south-eastern mountain ichthyoid paintings have not been widely accepted as representations of mormyrids because they do not correspond with the natural distribution of mormyrid fish. This discrepancy may be indicative of extensive forager social networks in eastern southern Africa during the late Holocene.

A program to develop planetary rover technology is underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) under sponsorship of NASA. Developmental systems with the necessary sensing, computing, power, and mobility resources to demonstrate realistic forms of control for various missions have been developed, and initial testing has been completed. These testbed systems and the associated navigation techniques used are described. Particular emphasis is placed on three technologies: Computer-Aided Remote Driving (CARD), Semiautonomous Navigation (SAN), and behavior control. It is concluded that, through the development and evaluation of such technologies, research at JPL has expanded the set of viable planetary rover mission possibilities beyond the limits of remotely teleoperated systems such as Lunakhod. These are potentially applicable to exploration of all the solid planetary surfaces in the solar system, including Mars, Venus, and the moons of the gas giant planets