Othering has many manifestations. The Khoisan occupied the Union Buildings grounds because they felt othered.
In a lecture by Prof Lehlohonolo Machobane in a class in 1978 at the National University of Lesotho, he explained some of the speculation about where the name Basotho came from. His research suggested that it is a given name by the amaZulu.
The amaZulu were amazed at the loincloth the Basotho boys and men donned. It covered only the genitals and left rump and all exposed. Others said the name came from the Basotho complexion — the brown colour that is “sootho” in Sesotho and hence Ba-sootho. “Xhosa” on the other hand is a Khoisan name. It means “angry men” or “violent angry men”. These two nations, the Basotho and amaXhosa, have had the greatest linguistic influence from the Khoisan. The clicks go deep.
Deep in the annals of South Africa’s racial classification the schema lie, making the first nations invisible. The history of South African censuses is guilty of this crime, so is the constitution. The Basotho have an idiom to deny allegations of discriminating against the Khoisan. It is based on the rudimentary shelter of the Khoisan’s abode. In Sesotho the abode is called “moqheme”. The idiom says, “Ha ke nyatse moroa, ke nyatsa moqheme [I have nothing against the Khoisan, what I do not like is the moqheme].”
Generally, the idiom emphasises hatred of the conduct and not the human being. However, it is known that the lineage of royalty among the Basotho was along the Bafokeng clan and not the Bakoena. But it was the marriage of the Bafokeng royalty to a Khoisan maiden that unseated the Bafokeng from the royal line. So “I do not hate the Khoisan but I hate the abode” hides the true pecking order the Basotho promoted relative to the Khoisan. Marrying a Khoisan, especially by royalty, was taboo. Thus to establish the symbolism of the idiom against the abode of the Khoisan constitutes the urban legend of othering that nations and clans have against each other.
In the 1996 we were confronted with this challenge of othering languages and population groups. We were not able to address it in the very first post-apartheid census. Some of the languages that draw from the Khoisan the most are isiXhosa and Sesotho. The dominance of the clicks in these languages is the heritage of the Khoisan languages.
On December 11 the Pretoria High Court granted an eviction order to remove the king of the Khoisan from the Union Buildings after he had occupied the space for seven years. The Khoisan occupied the seat of government to protest and fight for indigenous recognition, land rights and language inclusion. The eviction is quite ironic in that it came as the president signed into law the expropriation of land without compensation.
This is a core project of the Khoisan, who lay claim to the southern region of Africa as first nations. But this judgment and eviction coincides with US President Donald Trump’s executive order. This presidential order, one would have thought, should have been about the rights of the Khoisan. But if Trump had done so, he would have awakened the spirits of the first nations of the Americas. The Algonquin, Iroquois, Cree and the Inuit. The struggle of the Khoisan is etched deep in the censuses of SA, so are the ones in South America, Australasia.
I had a hand in this particular dimension of the Khoisan struggles for recognition and I felt their wrath in 1996. The context of the census in a post-apartheid SA preceded the demand for disaggregation of data that the UN Sustainable Development Goals has understandably laid emphasis on. The disaggregation in SA is by race and language group. In the US the permutations of population classification run into the hundreds, thus making the census classification of population by race or ethnicity a near-impossible task to disentangle.
In the end we are all human beings, so said the scantily dressed Khoisan we interviewed in Namaqualand in Northern Cape during the census of 1996. He made the census questionnaire look ridiculous when the question of race was asked. He took long to answer, but his answer was most profound: “You can call me Boesman, you can call me Khoi or you can call me San. You can call me coloured. Call me all you want, but I know a human being I am.”
By not asking questions of ethnicity, we rob the nation of its rainbow. The insistence and correct rejection of the Khoisan of not being coloureds is legitimate. Their fight at the Union Building was about identity
When the Khoisan entourage camped at the Union Building this answer in the census of 1996 from the Khoisan rang loudly in my head. Many a story is yet to be written about the 1996 census and censuses generally, but the story of the Khoisan occupies a special position because the Khoisan are poised to disrupt the frame and terms of reference for identity, and possibly they will be back at the Union Building sooner than later.
In this census that came shortly after the elections, the committee on questionnaire content was wary about ethnicity. So the question was, will we include ethnic groups in the data-collection instrument? The nerves were raw with fear. The apartheid censuses collected data on both ethnicity and mother tongue.
The UN Handbook on the Round of Housing and Population Censuses excluded two questions from mandatory questions that should be in the census — religion and ethnicity. The reason these two questions remained optional was nations went into internecine wars because of these two questions. So, faced with this problem, we dropped ethnic classification and retained mother tongue.
The classification of race was straightforward until Prof David Stoker threw his toys out of the cot. We had almost settled on black, coloured, Indian and white. But “black” was inclusive of the discriminated populations. So we explored the term African and Stoker, a white Afrikaner, said: “I am an African and I know no other home and you cannot appropriate this identity to black people only. I am white, but I am African and my language is Afrikaans.” A compromise definition was reached to have black African, Indian/Asian, coloured and white.
In all these classifications, be it by race and language, the Khoisan, Nama, Korana and the first nations were all excluded. The Khoisan threatened to boycott the census and rightly protested being classified as coloureds. A big headache brewed and finally a compromise was reached that said simply write in your classification. In the end this did not work because the first nations were so low on information, they had been included in the coloured people.
By not asking questions of ethnicity, we rob the nation of its rainbow. The insistence and correct rejection of the Khoisan of not being coloureds is legitimate. Their fight at the Union Building was about identity. They hold the key to disaggregation of populations by their most feasible and appropriate classifications. They hold the key to a reset for cultural economic geography that is a condition for liberation of humanity. I am certain the Khoisan will be back at the Union Buildings earlier than we thought, but this time they will be saying, “You can call me Boesman, you can call me Khoi or you can call me San. You can call me coloured. Call me all you want, but I know a human being I am.”
Perhaps the national dialogue should start by asking why the Khoisan and their languages are not among the 12 official languages. Yet the credo on the constitutional mast for parliamentary seating is written in /Xam, a Khoi language: “ǃke e꞉ ǀxarra ǁke.” The language of the first nations who tamed the Dutch language and Africanised it into Afrikaans are left in the wilderness. They are soon to be at the Union Buildings.
• Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of SA
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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