CHAPTER 1

Ancestors

On August 2, 1978, while searching for bones and tools at Laetoli, thirty miles south of
Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, paleontologists Mary Leakey and Paul Abell discovered
a series of footprints about 3.6 million years old traceable to human ancestors. Studying the
pattern of the prints, Leakey concluded that three people, a woman, a man, and a child, had
crossed the plain. In the midst of their walk, possibly sensing danger, the female appeared to
pause and turn to the left; she then resumed her stride. Writing in National Geographic, Leakey
reflected, “This motion, so intensely human, transcends time. A remote ancestor—just as you
or I—experienced a moment of doubt.”1 Equally intriguing in attracting popular attention to the
origins of human life is the idea that all people are descended from a single ancestor whom
researchers have dubbed “Lucy.”
Such discoveries connect us with our remote ancestors, the earliest human beings, known
as hominids, who lived in the vast grasslands of eastern and southern Africa about four to six
million years ago. By studying their remains in the form of bones and tools, paleontologists and
archeologists have traced both human evolution and the development of technological skills
and social life in early societies. More recently, biologists who examine the comparative
genetic structure of contemporary populations have advanced competing theories of human
origins. Although scholars in these different fields often disagree with one another, their
innovative research has revolutionized our understanding of the genesis and development of
human societies.
These evolutionary patterns, which connect us to the family discovered by Mary Leakey,
occurred in a vast continent with a diverse and fluctuating physical and ecological
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environment. With a total land area of some 11.7 million miles, Africa is more than three times
the size of the continental United States. In southern Africa, including present-day South Africa,
Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland, high plateaus of grassy savannah cover the
central and eastern interior, with dry scrub and desert to the west and a well-watered
semitropical strip along the east coast, and, in the far southwest, a four-season Mediterranean
climate. Though these ecological zones seem relatively well defined, their boundaries have
shifted over time in response to changing patterns of rainfall, farming, and grazing.
“Pula!” (May it rain!), a standard greeting in Lesotho, highlights the importance of rainfall
to daily life and the impact of climate on economic patterns and on changes in fertility,
mortality, and population growth. In most of Africa, rainfall is seasonal, with alternating wet
and dry periods. Moving south from the equator, annual rainfall totals gradually diminish, with
less than ten inches a year falling in the Kalahari and Namib deserts in South Africa and
Namibia. Thus, farming and herding thrive during the well-watered months, leaving a six- or
seven-month period with reduced levels of agricultural productivity and scarce resources for
pasturing livestock. Fluctuations in precipitation from year to year make agricultural planning
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 unpredictable. Combined with varying soil fertility, irregular rainfall causes periodic food
shortages that, until recently, restricted population density in many areas. These precarious
conditions promoted a belief in the value of large families and in religious ceremonies
designed to encourage rainfall and celebrate abundant harvests.
The region’s extensive mineral wealth has also shaped historical change. Exquisitely
crafted gold jewelry found in the royal graves of early southern African states highlights the
longstanding connection between precious metals and political power and the importance of
gold in regional trade and patterns of consumption. Of all the gold mined throughout human
history, 40 percent (more than 40,000 tons) has come from one area of South Africa. Large-
scale mineral extraction is relatively recent, however, dating only to the late nineteenth century,
when the European discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa initiated a scramble for
resources that dramatically reshaped the history of the entire region.
As elsewhere in the world, several major themes dominated early southern African history:
increasing technological complexity and social differentiation (particularly the shift from
gathering and hunting to herding and agriculture) and changing patterns of trade, intermarriage,
cultural borrowing, and conflict. Despite these general trends, our knowledge of the evolution
of complex societies often comes from chance discoveries. In 1924, a quarry worker was
blasting limestone in an ancient cave at Taung in the northern Cape of South Africa when he
unearthed a mysterious skull embedded in rock. The skull was brought to Raymond Dart, an
Australian-born professor of anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand who had
expressed an interest in locating prehistoric bones and fossils. Dart’s conclusion—
controversial at the time—that the skull belonged to a human-like creature helped to launch the
theories of Mary Leakey and her husband, Louis S. B. Leakey, that human life emerged in the
African savannahs.
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Dry lake basins and limestone caves in remote areas of east, central, and southern Africa
preserve the fossil evidence on which archeologists base their current hypothesis—that the
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 direct ancestors of modern humans evolved in Africa between five and seven million years
ago. A seven-million-year-old skull in Chad, on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert, now
provides the oldest evidence of a link between primates and humans. As the climate became
cooler and drier, and large areas of open grassland replaced forests, these “hominids”
gradually began to walk upright on a regular basis and to develop larger brains. Subsequent
research confirmed Dart’s conclusion that the Taung skull belonged to one of the first early
hominids who lived about three million years ago. By about 2.5 million years ago these
ancestors were making stone tools that contributed to their ability to survive on fish and
scavenged animals.
During the next evolutionary era, from roughly 1.5 million years ago to between 200,000
and 100,000 years ago, our ancestors began making even more finely crafted stone tools.
Known as hand axes and cleavers, these implements probably had numerous uses for digging
and working wood, or as weapons. The chips or flakes produced in making them provided
sharper implements for cutting and scraping. During this time, people migrated over much of
the African continent, except for the most dense forest regions. Living in communities of
between twenty and fifty individuals, they preferred sites near water and subsisted largely on
vegetables, adding some meat from hunting. Evidence of cooperative hunting suggests that the
use of language had developed and the fine finish of some hand axes points to the emergence of
esthetic awareness. From this time on, evolution favored those with strong skills in
communication and cooperation.
By 160,000 to 100,000 years ago anatomically modern humans, people physically similar
to us, had emerged. In this evolutionary process, sometimes characterized as a progression
from the “Middle Stone Age” to the “Late Stone Age,” tools became finer and more complex.
With these microlithic tools, people began to master the natural environment in new ways,
developing more efficient methods of exploiting wild food sources. In association with these
changes, language and creativity began to flourish. Indeed, new discoveries provide striking
evidence that our Late Stone Age ancestors in Africa initiated the creative and symbolic
thinking that distinguishes modern humans from their predecessors. The Blombos cave in South
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Africa, perched high above the Indian Ocean on a cliff 200 miles east of Cape Town, supports
this hypothesis. While exploring this cave, Christopher Henshilwood and Judy Sealy of the
South African Museum in Cape Town made discoveries that challenge the longstanding theory
that such creative developments emerged more recently and originated in Europe. Artifacts
more than 70,000 years old indicate that these cave dwellers were turning animal bones into
sharply pointed, finely polished tools and weapon points and engraving red ochre stones with
intricate geometric decorations.
Supporting these new archeological findings, genetic analysis confirms the theory that
human populations originated in Africa. By studying both mitochondrial DNA in modern
humans (inherited only through women) and the male or Y chromosome, biologists have drawn
up a human family tree that indicates the genetic relationships between modern peoples and
ancestral human populations. This analysis is possible because, unlike most genetic material,
mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome are inherited relatively unchanged from one
generation to the next. On the basis of such reconstruction, archeologists believe that by about
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 30,000 years ago people related to the modern foraging (hunting and gathering) peoples of
southern African had spread across the eastern half of Africa, in a band stretching from South
Africa to Ethiopia.
The diversity of archeological remains from this time onward provides a more complete
picture of peoples’ lives than is available in earlier periods. Findings at numerous sites in
southern Africa show communities that crafted wooden bows and arrows and digging sticks,
sewed leather bags and clothing, made strong fiber for nets, and gathered grass and soft
undergrowth for bedding. The remains of plant foods suggest that some groups migrated
regularly between coastal winter settlements and inland summer camps. Caves along the coast
preserve the remains of fish, marine birds, seals, and whales that washed ashore as well as the
bones of antelopes, tortoises, and mongooses. Grave sites from southern Africa contain tools,
beads, and other personal belongings, probably indicating a belief that the dead would be able
to use these objects in some kind of afterlife. Most remarkable in the region are the rock
paintings and engravings, an ancient artistic tradition with varied motifs. They include human
figures, sometimes armed with bows and arrows, antelope herds, and eland, associated with
rain and fertility.
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This rock painting from the Drakensberg Mountains is similar to thousands of paintings and
engravings found throughout southern Africa. Archeologists now tend to interpret this art
work as reflecting the values and beliefs of foraging communities. Eland, the largest
antelope, were a frequent motif of these paintings. Their spirits were thought to influence
rain, fertility, and personal and communal problems. Iziko Museums of Cape Town.

These widespread artistic remains, found all over southern Africa, provide fascinating
insight into the conceptual world of early human communities. Although some of these creative
works date to the nineteenth century and portray relatively straightforward scenes, such as
whites firing guns at African cattle raiders, others go back to the Late Stone Age and are more
difficult to interpret. Puzzled by the frequent representations of people in a bent-over position,
anthropologists, observing the same posture among healers in contemporary foraging societies
when in a state of trance, relate the paintings to the rich spiritual life of the hunter-gatherers.
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 For most of human history, people lived in hunting and gathering communities such as those
that remain in remote pockets of southern Africa. They collected food from the natural
environment; lived primarily on wild fruits and vegetables and the meat of wild animals and
fish; and clothed themselves in skins, furs, and feathers, which in more recent times were
exchanged for iron and tobacco. Wood, bone, and stone provided materials to make weapons
and tools, while ostrich egg shells were perfect for storing liquids. Living in small
communities (or bands) that moved frequently in search of food and water was the best strategy
for survival. Members of a band shared the fruits of their gathering and hunting expeditions and
met as a group to make decisions and settle disputes. Because of the limited opportunity to
accumulate wealth or material goods, there were no ruling groups and anthropologists assume
that relationships between women and men were considerably more equal than in subsequent
stages of human existence. These societies also placed a strong emphasis on cooperation and
generosity.
Descendants of ancestral foraging societies, now identified in southern Africa as San or
Bushmen (Basarwa in Botswana), remained the main inhabitants of the region until about 2,500
years ago, when herding, farming, and iron technology profoundly altered social and cultural
life. (The term San, also Sonqua or Soaqua, comes from the name that herding peoples gave to
the foragers at the Cape, who call themselves by particular group names. It has been variously
translated as “people different from ourselves” or “bandits.”) With these transformations, the
relationships among diverse communities became a key theme of local history, as it was
throughout Africa and the rest of the world in the wake of similar developments.
Between 20,000 and 7,000 years ago people in north and northeast Africa began to add
herding and cultivated plants to diets that still included fish, wild game, and foraged fruits and
vegetables. Farming gradually became more widespread through the cultivation of new
indigenous crops such as sorghum, millet, yams, African rice, and teff, an Ethiopian grain used
in making unleavened bread. By gaining greater control over their food supply, farmers were
able to develop a more settled way of life, paving the way for greater economic specialization
and the accumulation of material possessions. Although foraging remained important to most
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African economies, farming has provided the primary basis for cultural and social
transformation since the sixth millennium BCE.
The drying up of the formerly fertile Sahara Desert around 2500 BCE prompted the next
phase in the continent’s history. As large numbers of people migrated southward to find new
sources of food, cereal agriculture and domestic animals moved with them. Only later, from the
end of the first millennium BCE, did livestock (sheep and cattle) and farming disperse to the
southern areas of the continent. By the middle of the first millennium CE, however, both cattle
and sheep had spread widely in central and southern Africa, although archeological remains in
South Africa and Namibia suggest that sheep herding predated the arrival of cattle from the
north. Iron working also had diffused throughout the region by the first millennium CE, bringing
with it profound changes in economic and social life. With this new technology, people could
produce more efficient agricultural tools as well as spears, knives, ceremonial bells, and
jewelry; in addition, forests could be cleared, wood worked, land cultivated, and enemies
defeated with greater efficiency.
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 Until recently, historians and archeologists credited iron working with beginning an
agricultural revolution across much of the continent. They believed that when the Sahara dried
up, many of the displaced people migrated southward into West Africa. As the new technology
led to overpopulation, people speaking closely related languages known as Bantu (from the
root word for person, -ntu) spilled across central, east, and southern Africa, bringing with
them knowledge of iron working, pottery, and agriculture. Armed with superior tools and
weapons, they displaced or absorbed earlier foraging peoples. The basis for this hypothesis
came from a comparative analysis of the hundreds of Bantu languages. However, new
linguistic analysis, which dates the dispersal of Bantu-speaking peoples to a period earlier
than presumed, disconnects their spread from metal smelting and agriculture. Analysis of
“proto-Bantu,” the reconstructed original language, now suggests that its speakers in the
highlands of present-day Cameroon crafted pottery and cultivated root crops as far back as
3,000 BCE and began dispersing across the continent before the advent of metal working in
west or east Africa. Contrary to earlier hypotheses, this research also suggests that Bantu
languages diffused not only through migration, but in numerous ways, including trade,
intermarriage, and warfare.
Distinctive ecological niches shaped the expansion of herding and agriculture into southern
Africa, although irregular rainfall and difficulties storing grain encouraged interdependence
between farmers and herders. In the dry regions of the west, livestock herding, supplemented
by hunting and gathering, was probably established in the last few centuries bce. In the more
fertile grasslands of the Northern Province and the east coast, new Bantu-speaking arrivals
began to farm between the third and seventh centuries CE, particularly in the deep fertile soils
along the beds of major rivers. At the same time sheep and goats replaced fish as a main
source of animal protein. Using a form of agriculture known as shifting cultivation, these
farmers periodically burned the forests to open up new land for crops and grazing. As the
population grew, burned-over forests became grasslands and cattle herds increased in size,
helping families to survive in time of drought.
The continual search for water and pasture land makes the spread of nomadic herding easy
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to understand, although historians have debated whether new groups of people brought herding
into southern Africa or whether some foragers gradually adopted a new way of life. Whatever
their origins, both groups speak closely related languages with distinctive click sounds, now
known as Khoisan, and the boundaries between them were extremely fluid. In times of disease
or drought, herders who lost their cattle might fall back on foraging until they could rebuild
their stock through theft or by working as clients for wealthier men. But herders expressed their
sense of distinctiveness by calling themselves Khoekhoe (or Khoikhoi), meaning the “real
people” or “real men.”
Unlike their more egalitarian foraging neighbors, herders formed communities in which
wealth in livestock—including fat-tailed sheep (a breed well suited to arid dry conditions),
long-horned cattle, and oxen—became the primary measure of status and prestige. Although
cattle could not be bought and sold, owners of large herds (sometimes numbering in the
thousands) could acquire power by lending cows to other men, who then became their clients.
Both men and women rode oxen, used as pack animals, and, unusual for southern Africa,
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 women milked cattle and retained control over the cows they received as bride-wealth gifts
from their husbands’ families. While the ecological environment defined daily life through the
continual need to find pasture and water for livestock, and milk was the dietary staple, people
also hunted, fished, and collected honey along with wild roots and berries as did their foraging
neighbors.
Religious life revolved around ceremonies to promote rainfall, a necessity in a drought-
prone environment, and on beliefs in such spiritual figures as Tsui-||Goab, a creator or founding
ancestor and guardian of health, and ||Gaunab, believed to cause sickness and death. (The
double lines stand for a click sound.) Commenting on the values of these communities, Olfert
Dapper, a Dutch geographic writer who published a detailed and comprehensive study of
contemporary knowledge about southern Africa in 1668, wrote: “In generosity and loyalty to
those nearest them, they appear to shame the Dutch. For instance, if one of them has anything he
will willingly share it with another; no matter how small it may be, they will always
endeavour to share and divide it amongst themselves in a brotherly manner.”2
Although herders moved frequently in search of pasture and water, in contrast to gatherers
and hunters they remained in one place long enough for established villages to develop and for
some families to emerge as hereditary leaders. These local elites judged disputes (along with
the wealthiest stock-owners) and decided when and where the group should seek new pasture
lands. M. K. H. Lichtenstein, a naturalist and traveler at the Cape, wrote in 1806 of the limited
power of the chief, observing that “His authority is exceedingly circumscribed, and no one
considers himself as wholly bound to yield obedience to him; neither does he himself ever
pretend to command them.”3 People lived in round huts, with frames of green branches planted
into the ground, bent over, and tied together. These houses, covered simply with reed mats,
could be easily moved. A brush fence surrounding each community enclosed cattle at night.
Villages, often numbering more than 100 people, grouped together in larger networks of up to
several thousand people who shared food and intermarried. Related communities reinforced
their relationships with each other by having newly married men live with their wives’
families until the first child was born. With population density low, there was little competition
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for pasture land. When Dutch newcomers arrived at the tip of southern Africa in the
seventeenth century, these herding communities bore the brunt of their intrusion.
Because they moved so frequently, dense archeological remains of herding communities
are scarce. The situation is different for cultivators, who lived a more sedentary life. In the
mid-1990s, archeologists working in the northeastern corner of South Africa, on the border
between South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, began to excavate a stone wall and royal
grave site, one of more than five hundred hilltop stone remains scattered along the Limpopo
River basin. Their discoveries along these fertile riverbeds revealed relics of southern
Africa’s earliest centralized states, whose leaders based their power and wealth on
international Indian Ocean trading networks that connected them with the Middle East and
India. Ruling from imposing dry-stone enclosures, these kings claimed large numbers of
followers and extensive cattle herds. The royal site of Mapungubwe and the neighboring
village of K2 were the center of a thriving kingdom between 1000 and 1300 CE whose remains
include gold jewelry, iron fragments, glass beads, crafted ivory, and bone tools. The remnants
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 of spinning wheels point to a local cotton weaving industry, and among the most striking
discoveries were a rhinoceros and a scepter and bowl made of gold sheet tacked onto a
wooden carving. Archeologists at the later site of Thulamela (“place of birth,” c. 1200–1600)
found a royal grave decorated with gold and another body, believed to be a ruler’s wife. She
was buried with her hands folded below her chin—a pose of respect among the area’s
contemporary inhabitants. These states, perched on the high sandstone cliffs towering above
the Limpopo River, also include Toutswe, c. 700 CE, one of more than 250 sites from this early
period. When Mapungubwe declined, whether through environmental change or shifts in trade,
the center of power flowed eastward to Thulamela and north to the better-known kingdom of
the Great Zimbabwe.

One of the most vivid descriptions of the societies that followed Mapungubwe and
Thulamela comes from the autobiography that nationalist leader Nelson Mandela smuggled out
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of his Robben Island prison cell. In the book he recalled his childhood in the rural Transkei, “a
beautiful country of rolling hills, fertile valleys, and a thousand rivers and streams”4 where his
father was a government-appointed chief. Though he writes of the early twentieth century, many
aspects of his account evoke life among his Xhosa ancestors (and other communities of Bantu-
speaking farmers and herders) in earlier times. Families lived in beehive-shaped houses with
mud walls in which a peaked, thatched roof balanced on a central wooden pole. Mandela’s
mother had three huts, one used for cooking, another for sleeping, and the third for storage.
Cooking either outdoors or in the center of the house, she prepared food on an open fire in a
three-legged iron pot. The dietary staple, maize, was ground and made into a porridge eaten
with sour milk or beans. As a young boy expected to herd sheep and calves, he discovered “the
almost mystical attachment that the Xhosa have for cattle, not only as a source of food and
wealth, but as a blessing from God and a source of happiness.”5
Mandela depicts a highly stratified society in which everyone’s status was clearly defined,
including women and men, chiefs and commoners, and elders and youth. Those considered
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 close family encompassed a wide range of relatives. “I hardly recall any occasion as a child
when I was alone,” he wrote. “In African culture, the sons and daughters of one’s aunts or
uncles are considered brothers and sisters, not cousins.”6 Community values, which
emphasized cattle and honoring one’s ancestors, were communicated in part through a rich
tradition of storytelling, and Mandela thrived on the legends and fables his mother recounted.
He also learned to appreciate the importance of ancestral veneration. “If you dishonored your
ancestors in some fashion,” he explained, “the only way to atone for that lapse was to consult
with a traditional healer or tribal elder, who communicated with the ancestors and conveyed
profound apologies.”7
The autobiography also recounts the process that led Mandela to full manhood and political
involvement. After his father’s death, when he was nine years old, Mandela went to live with
the acting paramount chief of the Thembu, a Xhosa clan. Living at the royal court, he was
immersed in preparation for a leadership role among his people. He became fascinated with
the process of government, attending open meetings where men gathered to discuss drought or
cattle and settle disputes, and where poets recited eulogies to rulers, both ancient and modern,
and satirized current power holders. When Mandela was sixteen years old he experienced the
painful circumcision ceremony that transformed youth into men—receiving a new name and
undergoing a period of seclusion during which he was painted with white ochre to symbolize
purity—a time he described as “a kind of spiritual preparation for the trials of manhood.”8
Although the trials Mandela would face were far different from those of his distant ancestors,
his rural upbringing reflected many aspects of life in earlier times.
During the second millennium CE, societies such as the Xhosa, which survived by
combining agriculture with herding and hunting, became well established throughout the
northern, central, and eastern parts of present-day South Africa. People spoke Bantu languages
closely related to those elsewhere in Africa; but the click sounds in some languages as well as
borrowed words for sheep, ram, cattle, ox, and sour milk affirmed their ties with neighboring
Khoisan speakers. With ample land available, these farmers continued to practice shifting
cultivation, moving to new areas when population increases exhausted the soil, and burning the
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forests to claim the newly fertile fields for farming and pasture. One of the earliest external
descriptions of these communities, which emphasizes their dependence on cattle keeping and
women’s labor, came from the survivors of a Portuguese ship that went aground on the east
coast in 1635. They reported of the local people: “There are rich and poor among them, but
this is according to the number of their cattle. … The kings have four, five, and seven wives.
The women do all the work, planting and tilling the earth with sticks to prepare it for their
grain. … Cows are what they chiefly value: these are very fine and the tamest cattle I have
ever seen in any country. In the milk season they live chiefly upon it, making curds and turning
it sour, which was little to our taste. … The women bring no dowry in marriage, on the
contrary the husband pays the bride’s father with cattle.”9
This description accurately captures many aspects of these mixed-farming communities in
which family members had to work together to sustain a stable food supply. Their main crop
was sorghum (a droughtresistant grain), supplemented by beans, pumpkins, calabashes, and
melons. By the seventeenth century, maize and tobacco had arrived from the Americas via
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 Portuguese trading networks. Women planted, hoed, weeded, and harvested the crops, while
men took responsibility for heavy tasks such as clearing the fields and building huts. Despite
the key role women played in farming, older men had the authority to allocate land to each
family and, with the exception of unusually powerful women, men alone could own cattle. As
in earlier times, by combining cultivation with raising cattle, sheep, and goats, families could
ensure subsistence in areas in which rainfall was unpredictable. Hunting also supplemented the
food supply, producing skins for clothing and, particularly from the seventeenth century
onward, ivory that might be traded at the coast. Regular trade with neighboring areas ensured
that everyone had essential goods such as iron and salt. Copper ornaments, more of a luxury,
were also widespread.
Cattle not only were crucial to economic survival and social organization, as they were for
the Khoekhoe, but were also primary symbols of wealth and power. Cattle owners with large
herds might build up personal networks by lending cows to poorer men. Gifts of cattle also
established powerful ties among families when children married. By exchanging cows (or, in
some areas, iron hoes) for wives in bride-wealth, gifts presented by the man’s family to that of
the woman, men rich in livestock could marry more than one woman, thereby acquiring the
labor to cultivate larger plots of land. Wives and children added to a family’s wealth and
prestige. As a gift that generally had to be returned in case of divorce, bridewealth stabilized
marriage. Since a married woman and her children lived with her husband’s family, these
exchanges also compensated the woman’s family for the loss of an economically active
member.
In a society where everyone’s position was clearly defined, fathers and husbands had
considerable control over daughters and wives, and the idea that older members of the group
(women and men) should command respect from the young permeated all social relationships:
between rulers and family heads, patrons and clients, husbands and wives, and parents and
children. These principles also influenced relationships among women. Thus, mothers-in-law
held authority over wives, as did older over younger co-wives. One Xhosa woman, healer and
storyteller Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, described her behavior when she first married:
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“Even in the way that I walked, I showed deference. I went about that homestead [of her
husband’s family] very carefully, … being very submissive to my in-laws. … I continued to act
like that until I began to sense that I was pregnant, that I would soon give birth to a child.”10
In communities in which well-being depended on agricultural abundance, the fertility of
both women and the land was central to religion and ritual. Ceremonies marked stages in the
agricultural cycle as well as the rites of passage in an individual’s life, from birth through
initiation into adulthood, marriage, childbirth, and death. Naboth Mokgatle, born in 1911 in the
Rustenburg District (in the area then known as the Transvaal), described the customary
marriage process in his autobiography: “At the age of twelve or thirteen, the girl was told by
her mother who her husband was going to be and who her parents-in-law were going to be.
Similarly, before the boy left for circumcision, his father told him whose daughter he was
going to marry and the name of his future wife. … Before they got married, they … were not
allowed to be alone, or given time to ask one another whether they knew they were going to be
husband and wife.”11
Berger, Iris. South Africa in World History, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/detail.action?docID=430667.
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 As Mandela observed, the most important spiritual forces were recently deceased lineage
ancestors, who were commemorated with regular observances. Men who were family heads
guided these ceremonies, which emphasized the importance of descent through the male line, as
in the following description from the Sotho area. “When a Mosuto dreams of his dead father,
he thinks it is a supernatural visitation caused by his own neglect; and, upon the diviner’s
advice, an ox or a sheep of a certain colour is sacrificed … and prayer is offered: ‘Oh, let us
now sleep in peace, and trouble us no more.’”12 In areas of centralized kingship, royal dead,
both men and women, were also venerated.
Spiritual power could be exercised in both positive and negative ways, particularly in
relation to illness and healing. Women were prominent as diviners, who could explain the
complexities of personal relationships in the present and future, and as spirit mediums, who
communicated with deities and with shades of the deceased. They were trusted advisors to
those who sought their assistance in personal and community matters. Zulu diviners, almost all
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married women, were identified through a mysterious illness that an experienced practitioner
attributed to spirit possession. Xhosa storyteller Mrs. Zenani, who had felt a vocation to
become a doctor when she got married, described her persistent nervousness, anxiety, and
intense chest pain after four of her children had died. Following her treatment, “The pains in
my chest ended, my anxieties were calmed”; she then began to treat other patients until the
doctor instructed: “Well, it’s about time that she should go and set up her own practice, …
because she’s now got quite a clientele here.”13 Working for the good of the community, these
religious specialists were called on to ensure harmony in both individual and collective
relationships. But spiritual power could also be used to cause harm, and most people saw
witchcraft as a possible explanation of misfortune, believing that some individuals had the
power to damage other people as well as their crops and livestock.
Apart from the early kingdoms that flourished in the Limpopo River Valley, until the
seventeenth century most inhabitants of southern Africa lived in relatively small-scale
communities organized around homesteads, districts that incorporated several extended
Berger, Iris. South Africa in World History, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/detail.action?docID=430667.
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 families, and small states or chiefdoms of no more than 1,000 people. Subordinate to the
official above him, the head of each group had his own court, cattle enclosure, and settlement
areas. Leadership was hereditary through the male line and abundant farm land enabled
discontented or ambitious individuals to found their own states, which were identified by
individual ancestral names. Based on language similarities, historians have identified two
main groups: Nguni (most prominently the present-day Xhosa and Zulu along the east coast)
and Sotho (now Sotho and Tswana, occupying the center and north of the region). Two smaller
groups included the Venda, in the far north, and the Tsonga along the northern coast.
From c. 1600 onward, increasing external trade, growing centralization of political power,
and extensive population movement destabilized these political and economic patterns. As
trade expanded, mainly with Portuguese settlements on the east coast, chiefs began to exploit
and extend the areas under their control to supply products for export. Among the Sotho-
speaking peoples and the Venda, these rulers were often women. The development of larger
states with intensified demands for labor and tribute prompted major migrations as people
sought better grazing land for their cattle and land that could produce ivory, furs, and metals for
trade. The importance of trade notwithstanding, oral traditions suggest that disputes over
succession or competition for cattle and wives remained more important sources of conflict
than competition for tribute in trade goods. In the area north of the Vaal River (and particularly
on the Waterberg plateau roughly 100 miles north of present-day Johannesburg), the most
striking development was the emergence of hill-top defensive settlements among
Sotho/Tswana/Pedi-speaking groups that protected them from raiders known as Ndebele, the
Sotho name for Nguni speakers.
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Tswana states had diverged decisively from
others in the region, developing large capital towns of anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000
inhabitants. Probably a result of the introduction of maize (which could yield three times the
harvest of sorghum and millets), population growth contributed to larger, more centralized
kingdoms. One means of expansion was for rulers wealthy in cattle to offer lavish bridewealth
gifts, thus expanding their networks of dependents and the territory over which they ruled.
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Since these states did not practice primogeniture, increasing numbers of wives and children
meant growing competition for succession in addition to intensified disputes over bridewealth.
By the early nineteenth century, this growing conflict set the stage for more violent and intense
warfare.
A rich heritage of oral literature, including poetry, stories, and historical narratives,
transmitted the culture and values of these societies. Poetry might celebrate the bravery of
distinguished warriors or political leaders, lament the downtrodden situation of women in the
homes of their mothers-in-law, or recount catastrophic historic events. In one poem collected
in Lesotho in 1842, women bemoaned the aftermath of war.

Alas! Are they really gone?

Are we abandoned indeed?
But where have they gone
That they cannot come back?14
Berger, Iris. South Africa in World History, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/detail.action?docID=430667.
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 Zulu praise poems, called izibongo, which celebrate the personality and achievements of
both rulers and ordinary people, illustrate the wide range of oral literature. Poetry honoring
powerful men emphasized masculine warlike values, extolling physical courage and
endurance. These poems repeated images such as the blood-spattered shield or assegai (spear)
or rivers flowing with blood. Part of a poem recited for Dingiswayo, a late eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century ruler, boasts of his military prowess:

Trail Blazer like the vulture along the path; he is red; with the blood of men.
Inventor; overcoming other chiefs; through his fresh devising.15

Zulu men’s private poems, performed at weddings and coming of age celebrations, use this
heroic medium to honor ordinary people.
Women’s poetry, performed in more private spaces open only to other women, chronicled
relations with co-wives and mothers-in-law, courtship, and marital mistreatment; but at times
these recitations also celebrated women’s strength and resilience. One powerful poem recited
by MaJele, the junior third wife of a former chief, memorialized her fierce and passionate life
before marriage:

I am she who cuts across the game reserve

That no girl crosses.
I am the boldest of the bold, outfacer of wizards.
Obstinate perseverer,
The nation swore at me and ate their words,
She cold shoulders kings and despises mere commoners.16

Alongside this expressive oral culture, other arts also flourished, from San rock paintings
to sculpture, pottery, basketry, and beadwork. The seven terra cotta heads found at Lydenburg
in the eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga) dated to 500–700 CE are particularly striking.
Ranging in size from 12 to 20 inches, these heads featured incised decorations similar to those
Copyright © 2009. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

on the pottery found at the site; the two largest may have been used as ceremonial masks. Over
a longer period of time, men carved elaborate wooden headrests, which were said to establish
communication with ancestral spirits, and made baskets decorated with bold geometric
patterns; women crafted clay pots with intricate decorations. Tsonga, Swazi, and Lobedu
people in the northeastern corner of South Africa produced carved human figures associated
with initiation societies and elaborate beadwork jewelry and clothing that distinguished people
of different ages and rank. In Zulu society, small beaded squares facilitated communication
between young women and their male friends, with different colors and designs communicating
coded messages. A triangle with the apex pointing up, for example, signified an unmarried
woman, while the color black could indicate sadness as well as marriage.

Berger, Iris. South Africa in World History, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/detail.action?docID=430667.
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 This sculpture was one of seven terra cotta heads dated to 500–700 CE found at Lydenburg
in the eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). The heads, which range in size from 12 to 20
inches, are the earliest known sculptures found in southern Africa. Their incised
decorations are similar to those on the pottery found at the site. While their meaning is not
certain, the sculptures may have been used in initiation rituals, the two largest possibly as
ceremonial masks. Iziko Museums of Cape Town.
Copyright © 2009. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Berger, Iris. South Africa in World History, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/detail.action?docID=430667.
Created from well on 2018-09-02 13:28:30.
 This Zulu headrest from Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal province is dated to ca. 1900.
Such wooden sculptures probably were used as stools during the day and, at night, as
headrests that mediated communication with the ancestors through sleep and dreams.
Photograph by Franko Khoury. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Beginning in the 1590s, when Dutch and English sailors arrived on the coast, this complex
world would begin to face new challenges. Coming from European countries that were
aggressively acquiring new colonial outposts, these sailors were following the path of
Portuguese traders, already settled in Mozambique. Although people of different languages and
cultures had interacted intensively over land for thousands of years, apart from the indirect
effects of Indian Ocean trade, the region had remained relatively isolated from external contact
by sea. The ancestors of Mandela and MaJele could not have known that over time, the
Copyright © 2009. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

appearance of these strangers would dramatically transform the life they knew.

Berger, Iris. South Africa in World History, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/detail.action?docID=430667.
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