Introduction

The idea of ‘studying the Bushman’ was very well known throughout southern Africa, and it seemed quite unproblematic in the sense that the exercise was so obviously important. The image of ‘the Bushman’ in the Western imagination is a product of centuries of contact. The San, Bushmen or Basarwa are the original modem human inhabitants of southern Africa. Bushman ‘culture’ is sophisticated, and also diverse, in language, in aesthetics and even in social organization. For example, some Bushman languages are phonologically complex and others syntactically complex. Many Bushmen are skilled artists and musicians, wise interpreters of human thought, and consummate natural theologians. San means Bushmen, hunter-gatherers, or foragers, not in any Bushman or San language at all, but in some of the Khoekhoe dialects. ‘The San’ is just as much an image or collection of images as ‘the Bushman’, and each term has both positive and negative connotations.