LETTER: These were our First People

Roger Graham asks in his letter “Who today is part of (our) First Nation?” (“Judge sets SA up for own goal with First Nations ruling”, March 23). The question relates to a land dispute alongside the Black River in Cape Town. Recent archaeology provides the answer.

The consensus is that homo sapiens evolved in the form of hunter-gathering. The San people spread thinly across Southern Africa. One tribe, subsisting mainly on seafood, elected to migrate north up the east coast during the last ice age. Their journey took them to Mesopotamia, in the course of which they became pastoralists and also domesticated wild animals. From there they fanned out across the planet, including North America and down to the Amazon basin. They took with them the mitochondrial DNA that all of humankind has inherited.

Some chose to move south down Africa, taking their long-horned cattle and Karakul sheep, the name derived from Qarakol in Uzbekistan. These sheep endure harsh climates and store fat in their tails. It was these people with their long-horned cattle and unique sheep that Bartolomeu Diaz observed in Mossel Bay at the bottom of Africa in 1488. Vasco da Gama also recorded them and their livestock at that bay in 1497, adding that they played flutes, harmonising well.

They are the same people that Jan van Riebeeck met on arrival at the Cape in 1652, and with whom he would barter to obtain meat for shipping at his refreshment station. The Dutch called them “Hottentots”. They called themselves “Khoekhoen” and are now referred to as “Khoi”. Linked with the San, these were our First People.

In the years that followed our First People were persecuted, displaced and subjugated by settlers from Europe and Africa. A few have been allocated small pockets of land in remote areas. The remainder have become integrated. Their achievements have never been properly recognised. It is not too late to do so now.

Brian Agar
Constantia

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