‡Khomani San - Hugh Brody

University of Cape Town

The ǂKhomani San are the first people of the southern Kalahari. They lived as hunters and gatherers in the immense desert in the northwest corner of South Africa. For them, it was a land rich in wildlife, plants, trees, great sand dunes and dry riverbeds. When the ǂKhomani San share their history, they tell a story of dispossession from their lands, erasure of their way of life, and disappearance of their language. To speak of their past is to search in memory for all that was taken from them in the colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid era. But they also tell a story of reclamation and recovery of lands, language and even of memory itself. They tell a story of struggle to emerge from the losses of the past, to put in place a new story.