Rock Art
Messages from the ancestors
South African San and Khoi indigenous rock art, one of the oldest communication mediums in the world, represent critical markers because the scope of their messaging and intricate technology of utilising materials from the natural environment are derived from their indigenous knowledge systems. Defined as “messages from the ancestors” by Kalahari San traditional leader, Elder Petrus Vaalbooi, rock art represents spiritual journeys and quests, celebrations of the human spirit, the interconnection of people and biosphere, and indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being.
We believe that rock art is the sacred narratives of shamans who had acquired the n/um of the Most High when they wanted to heal the sick or pray for rain. Near Oudtshoorn, in Chief Poem Mooney’s Attaqua-region, are rock paintings of mermaids – mysterious Water Women. We also find engravings on rocks and large stones, as at Wildebeest Kuil near Kimberley – called petroglyphs. Not all rock art has spiritual significance, but depicts ordinary hunting scenes or history. Prof. Colin Johnson found at the Savilla Rock Art hiking trail at Clanwilliam a drawing of a Phoenician ship from the Babylonian era. Much younger scenes of horsemen with guns show our clashes with colonists. Rock paintings in the Drakensberg are about 73,000 years old and prove that we have lived alone in South Africa for millennia. Drs. Hendrik Theys calls it our “signatures” and, along with DNA, provide indisputable proof of this historical fact. What a pity that many do not understand its spiritual significance and mess it up with graffiti!
Today we would not have understood the deeper, spiritual significance of rock art at all, had it not been for /Xam herbalist Diä!kwain, narrator /Hanǂkass’o, seer //Kabbo, /A!kunta and Mrs. !Kweiten-ta-//ken. With 24 more Soaqua they were thrown in Cape Town’s Breakwater Jail in 1870, for defending the /Xam-ka!au (Bushmanland) against armed colonists. The German language scholar, Dr. Wilhelm Bleek took an interest in their culture and was given permission to make use of those rebels as domestic helpers. Eventually his Specimens of Bushman Folklore was published containing information, stories, /Xam-traditions, songs, poetry and explanations about the depth of rock art – all obtained from //Kabbo and his friends.
South Africa’s motto is in /Xam, their extinct language: !Ke e: /xarra //ke, which means: ‘People from different communities come together’.”
-Dr. Willa Boezak
Text from Struggle of an Ancient Faith: the Khoi-San of South Africa.
Cape Town: Bidvest Data, 2017.
