The River
Primary source of life
The river, representing the primary source of life, is integral to various cultural rites, specifically cleansing rituals and the affirmation ritual of the Khoi and the San. One of four symbols in the masthead of the Western Cape First Nations Collective, the symbol also represents the sacrifices of our ancestors in and around the Liesbeek River, who first suffered dispossession in South Africa. It represents the coming together of different streams, bound by the common purpose of honouring our origins and the responsibility of stewardship.
We believe God is the Great Provider who places water even in field fruits like the tsamma and !nara (wild cucumbers). Over many centuries, tribes have agreed which water source belongs to who, be it a marsh, pit or river. For example, our first contact with Europeans occurred in 1488 at the Gourits River, Western Cape. Under the leadership of Bartholomeu Diaz the Portuguese took water from that river without the local Gourikwa’s permission, which led to a skirmish that ended in the death of a herdsman.
Water is precious. Therefore the myth of /Aub the Watersnake was created so that a river would not be contaminated or children drown in it. Certain San/Bushmanclans harvested the first wildland fruits (!goa-ei-/un) of the season and placed them in a leather bag near a large tree. Then Ts’u //oa (Huwe) was asked for a fruitful season and a celebration followed.
For the Khoi-Khoi the annual rain-making ceremony was the most important religious festival on the calendar – the guri-ǂab. The elders, who could read the weather, calculated when the rainy season would begin and then organized the festival near the chief’s kraal – preferably near a stream. After that, all the families came together. Milk was burned with the fat of an animal like a pregnant ewe, as well as the contents of the uterus. The thick clouds of smoke upwards looked like heavy clouds, which would hopefully soon be “pregnant” with rain. As the cloud of smoke rises, everyone calls on Tsui//Goab and asks for a good year of rain, food and green pastures for the livestock: “Father, we come to Thee and we pray to Thee, please give us field fruits so that we can live…”
Droughts mean suffering – the work of //Gaua. The San/Bushmen shamans “make rain” in the trance, while the rest of the community pray and perform the rain dance. They sing about the wonder of rain and the strength of the “water animal”. During the trance, the shaman’s mind leaves his or her body and takes possession of an imaginary water buffalo or another powerful animal such as the eland or elephant that grazes by a river. In the trance it is led to an open, dry field and killed, because where its blood falls, the rain will fall.
It’s noteworthy that many clans, even strangers, hired our rain-making shamans in times of droughts, who always relied on the n/um of God.
The Kalahari Bushmen of the Northern Cape still perform the rain dance.”
-Dr. Willa Boezak
Text from Struggle of an Ancient Faith: the Khoi-San of South Africa.
Cape Town: Bidvest Data, 2017.
