Frans. E. Prins
Research Associate: Natal Museum, South Africa
Heritage Specialist: Strategic Environmental Focus
Co-manager: Africa Antiqua: Archaeological Tours
Introduction
There are only a few places left in the world where the native inhabitants still have an intimate relationship to the prehistoric rock art of the area. Best known are the rock art of Australia and some areas of the Americas. The San rock art of southern Africa, it seemed, shares the same fate as prehistoric rock arts in other parts of the world in that the original artists or their immediate descendants have been assumed extinct for many years. Although San groups do live in the semi-desert areas of Botswana, Namibia and adjacent parts of South Africa they have neither knowledge of rock art production nor any significant belief systems relating to the few rock art sites in their immediate environs. Further south the Drakensberg San who produced the spectacular polychrome paintings of the Drakensberg mountain range have been regarded as extinct for more than a century. This is rather unfortunate, as the rock art of the region, has become the heartland of present academic understanding of all San rock art in the subcontinent
The presently most dominant explanatory framework of rock art , which has emerged out of this area, has variously been called the “trance-hypothesis”. shamanism, or the shamanistic interpretation of rock art. Due to the assumed extinction of the Drakensberg San it has been rather difficult to test the shamanistic interpretation against the belief systems of contemporary indigenous communities. In addition, archaeologists have taken it on upon themselves to decipher the meaning of the art and to convey their interpretations to local communities situated in the immediate environs of rock art. The notion that the knowledge systems of contemporary local communities could assist in the interpretation and management of the art have not been explored by the majority of researchers (Prins 2000).
Brief history of the Drakensberg San
It is often intimated that the San could not adapt to a rapidly changing world and due to the forces associated with
tribal warfare, colonialism and apartheid simply disappeared. Before this time the San were the masters of the southern Africa south of the Zambezi. Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers, the direct ancestors of the Drakensberg San, settled in parts of the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg from at least 8000 years ago and adjacent parts of Lesotho from at least 20 000 years ago (Mitchell 2002:137-160 Wright & Mazel 2007:23-45). It appears that many of these early San hunter-gatherers only frequented the high mountains in summer months when they followed the large herds of migratory animals such as zebra, wildebeest, hartebeest and eland into these parts. However, this use of the landscape changed dramatically when the first immigrant black farmers crossed the Limpopo River in the north and arrived along the eastern seaboard of southern Africa around 1600 years ago. With them they brought cultigens such as millet, sorghum, pennisetum, pumpkins, and beans as well as domesticated animals such as dogs, sheep, goats and cattle. Having access to these domesticates must have appeared very attractive to the nomadic San and archaeological evidence suggests that many San groups left the Drakensberg and attached themselves to friendly farmer villages in the low lying river valleys below 1000 meters altitude (Wright & Mazel 2007:46-50). Here they co-existed for at least half a century until climates changed around 1000 years ago and most of these early Bantu-speaking farmers left for the Limpopo Valley where environmental conditions appeared more amicable. We are not sure if they were followed by the San but some groups certainly returned to the Drakensberg where archaeologists found ample evidence for hunter- gatherer occupation of these mountains during the last 1000 years or so (Wright & Mazel 2007: 48-50). It was also during this period that the first Nguni-speaking farmers (i.e. isiZulu, seSwati, isiXhosa) arrived in Kwa-Zulu Natal and adjacent areas. Archaeologists are not sure about the early relationships between these farmers and the San but linguistic and genetic evidence suggest that an incredible amount of intermarriage and gene flow must have occurred . The clicks so prominent in Xhosa and Zulu languages were borrowed from the San whilst both these groups also contain a large percentage of Khoisan gene markers. It is possible that these early Nguni-speaking farmers took San wives or concubines and that their offspring were absorbed within the Bantu social and cultural group. In other areas, such as amongst the Mpondomise tribe of the Eastern Cape Province, San who called themselves the !Ga !ne were often “paid” for their services as healers, magicians, and rainmakers (Prins 1994: 179-190).
However, there is also evidence that not all such interactions were peaceful. With the development and expansion %20at%20Stepmore.jpg)
of the Zulu state under king Shaka from around 1818 many tribal refugees and wandering hordes crossed the Drakensberg on route to Lesotho and the Eastern Cape. San groups encountered in the mountains were often attacked and killed. Sometimes the children were taken as slaves or serfs and even traded with Dutch immigrants who arrived in the area soon after 1830. The Dutch took these children in and made serfs, also called inboekelinge, of them in order to assist with the development of their farms. The Dutch immigrants justified this system from their Calvinistic point of view often saying that they “tamed the wild Bushmen and made proper people of them” through this practice (Prins 1999:57). With the rapid expansion of colonial borders the remaining San groups now found themselves bottlenecked between the Boer Republic of the Orange River Free State on the west the British controlled Natal Colony in the east. To make matter worse many African groups (mostly Southern Sotho, Zulu, and Xhosa speaking tribe’s people) were forced to settle in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains or its foothills by the colonial powers (Wright & Mazel 2007: 73-96). It did not take long before all the migratory game, on which the nomadic San, was so dependent, was shot out. The San responded by initializing a pattern of livestock raiding, however, in return they were persecuted by the colonial authorities and their African surrogates. Often whole bands of San were exterminated or scattered such as the group led by Soai, the last San chief in Lesotho, who was killed and cut-up by angry Sotho tribesmen near the upper reaches of the Orange River around 1872. Some groups, such as the //Xegwi, left their mountain stronghold and migrated to Chrissiesmeer in the province of Mpumalanga in 1879, here their descendants became farm labourers for white sheep farmers (Prins 1999: 50-80)(Figure 2). Those San who remained in the Maloti-Drakensberg area often found “protection” with friendly African chiefs who hid them from the colonial authorities. Perhaps the most celebrated “protector” of the mountain San was chief Moorosi of the Baphuti people. It is said that many San died at his side in defense of his mountain stronghold at Quting in Lesotho when it was stormed and conquered by Cape colonial forces in 1879 (Jolly 1996:30-61). Some unconfirmed incidents of livestock raiding was still attributed to San after this period but for all practical purposes the San of the Drakensberg disappeared at the turn of the 20th century .
Their disappearance, however, remained a mystery. Although the Drakensberg San were violently persecuted this area never experienced the same intensive policy of genocide as was practiced towards the San in the Western Cape, the upper-Karoo, and even in parts of Namibia. In addition archaeological evidence for the San is widespread throughout the mountains. With more than 45 000 individual depictions of rock art it must certainly qualified as one of the greatest outdoor art galleries in the world. So then what happened to all San who left behind this important legacy ?
The ‘Secret San’
In 1926 a certain farmer Lombaard who was looking for his lost sheep in a hidden valley near Cathedral Peak came across two intact bow and arrow sets placed on a ledge in a cave richly decorated with rock paintings. So fresh were these bows and arrows that it encouraged speculation that ‘wild San’ may still be living in isolated parts of the Berg (Wright & Mazel 2007: 40-41) . However, it took another 50 years before rock art researchers came to hear of two old women, living amongst the Mpondomise tribe’s people, who claimed that their father Lindiso was the last Bushman rock artist of the Eastern Cape Drakensberg. One of these old women, also called Manqindi, was able to provide researchers with important information relating to the production and meaning of rock art (Jolly & Prins 1994:16-23). Other San descendants, living in similar assimilated contexts, soon emerged as well. After 1995 many individuals who previously hid their true ethnic identities came out in the open. For many of them the new government meant that the ‘war against the San’ has finally ended. Today researchers know of almost 600 people who claimed to be either Drakensberg San or of direct San descent. So how did these San survive in all these decades of antagonism? San society is often described by anthropologists as being fluid or flexible – that is it can easily change to accommodate new social and political realities (Guenther 1996). At the height of colonialism many San groups simply changed their ethnic identities and adopted the names and cultures of their African neighbours. Although intermarriage and hybridization was part of this process San individuals still kept some of their culture alive and visited each other in secret. Even those who lived amongst friendly African people often had to hide their true identities as they were often blamed for acts of witchcraft such as when someone was struck by lightning. Sacred places on the landscape, such as certain rock art sites, had to be visited at night when nobody could see them. Interestingly, just like the Yews in Spain and Portugal during the days of the inquisition the secrecy surrounding their origin has became part and parcel of their present identity. It is for this reason that they are also called the ‘Secret San’ (Derwent & Weinberg 2005).
Rock art and heritage issues
With the declaration of the period 1995-2005 as the decade of indigenous people by the United Nations some 
‘Secret San’ was given the opportunity to meet San groups and organizations in other parts of southern Africa. Today they have become part of the international movement of First Peoples and have started to assert themselves and rediscover their cultural origins. One of the first steps was taken by Amafa, the Kwa-Zulu Natal cultural heritage agency, by facilitating San access to the world famous Game Pass shelter for an annual sacred ceremony (Figure 3). This is the first time in more than 100 years that Drakensberg San descendants have been given official permission to visit sacred sites situated within the Ukahalamba Drakensberg World Heritage site. This ceremony has now grown to an annual pilgrimage for all the San descendants of the Drakensberg. In 2006 nearly 300 San descendants, from various part of the Drakensberg, attended the ceremony and their numbers are growing every year.
Game Pass shelter is not only important to San descendants it painted contents also have iconic significance for the archaeological community. In fact, the shelter is significant internationally due to the occurrence of the so-called “Rosetta Panel” against the shelter wall (Figure 4). This panel which, depicts a theriantrope (human/animal hybrid) holding the tail of a dying eland, is regarded by proponents of the shamanistic paradigm to hold all the key metaphors associated with this interpretation of San rock art. As such it is regarded by many South African researchers to have contributed significantly towards “cracking the code” in understanding the meaning of all San rock art. According to this interpretation San rock art is essentially regarded to be an expression of the religious world of the San as perceived through hallucinatory imagery in a trance state (Lewis-Williams 2003: 17-41; Wright & Mazel 2007: 67-71). This, now very popular, interpretation has also been applied to certain rock art traditions in the America’s, Siberia, and Western Europe (Whitley 1992; Clottes & Lewis-Williams 1998). However, in South Africa the shamanistic approach is largely based on the ethnographies and belief systems of San groups who never lived in the Drakensberg region such as the !Kung, Nharo, and /Xam. Proponents of the shamanistic approach, however, maintain that all San group irrespective of ethic and linguistic affiliation shared a similar belief system in religious outlook in which the trance of healing dance was the most central expression. This view, however, is not supported by all researchers of San rock art (Solomon 2008).
Interestingly, the centrality of trance and hallucinatory imagery to rock art production is also not supported by Secret San elders. According to their testimonies their parents and grandparents rather insisted that the production of the art was related to the manipulation of supernatural forces as a type of ‘life giving ceremony’. The production of the art was not necessarily dependant on trance or the experience of other altered states of consciousness before the event. However, dreams certainly played a part during and even after the painting process (Prins in prep)..
Concluding remarks
The re-emergence of the “Secret San” begs new questions regarding the management, appropriation, and interpretation of the spectacular rock art heritage of the Drakensberg. For them rock art is one of the few tangible resources left that relates directly to their heritage, identity and role in a future South Africa. The “Secret San” are still disparate entities and do not yet speak with “one voice”. In addition, they have been heavily influenced by their Bantu-speaking neighbours, both in terms of political organization and culture, with whom they have intermarried over the last few generations. However, their recent inclusion and representation on committees dealing with the management of rock art in the Ukahlamba Drakensberg World Heritage site is a first important step by management authorities to recognize them as the legitimate and direct descendants of the rock artists of the Drakensberg.
References
Clottes, Jean & Lewis-Williams, David. 1998. The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves. Harry N Abrahams.INC: New York.
Derwent, Sue. & Weinberg, Paul. 2005. The ‘Secret San’. Africa Geographic (February 2005): 59-63.
Guenther, Matthias. G. 1996. Diversity and flexibility, the case of the Bushmen of southern Africa. In S Kent (ed.) Cultural Diversity among 20th Century Foragers: an African Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Jolly, Pieter & Prins, Frans. E. 1994. M – a further assessment. South African Archaeological Bulletin 49: 16-23
Jolly, Pieter. 1996. Interaction between south-eastern San and southern Nguni and Sotho communities, c. 1400 – c. 1800, South African Historical Journal 35:30-61
Prins, Frans. E. 1999. A Glimpse into Bushman presence during the Anglo-Boer War. Natalia 29: 5-60
Prins, Frans. E. 2000. Forgotten heirs: the archaeological colonialisation of the southern San. In Lilley, I. (ed.). Native title and the transformation of archaeology in the postcolonial world. Oceania Monograph 50: University of Sydney: 139-152
Lewis-Williams, David. 2003. Images of Mystery: Rock Art of the Drakensberg. Double Storey. Cape Town.
Mitchell, Peter. 2002. The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge Africa Collection. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
Solomon, Anne. 2008. Myths, Making and Consciousness: Differences and dynamics in San rock arts. Current Anthropology 49 (1): 59-86
Whitley, David. S. 1992. Shamanism and rock art in far western North America, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2:89-113
Wright, John. & Mazel, Aron. 2007. Tracks in a Mountain Range: Exploring the History of the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg. Wits University Press. Johannesburg