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Notes CHAPTER 1 1. The typical vegetation of the Karoo (low-lying scrub bushes and droughtresistant succulents) covers about one-third of South Africa’s total land area (153,000 square miles/395,000 square kilometers). It is split into three areas: the Great Karoo and the Little Karoo, in the areas of the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces, and the Upper Karoo in the Northern Cape region. Graaff-Reinet lies in the Great Karoo. Farmers raise livestock (mainly sheep, goats, cattle, and ostriches) or cultivate crops (mainly fruit and grains) as the principal trades of the area (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2010). 2. In 1959, the apartheid government further differentiated the “coloured” category into seven subdivisions, namely, “Cape Coloured, Cape Malay, Griqua, Indian, Chinese, ‘other Asiatic,’ and ‘Other Coloured’ ” (Reddy 2001, 75). The use of the word “native” in the 1950 Population Registration Act shows how the “coloured” category was constructed as not indigenous in relation to black South Africans, when in fact the ancestors of many coloured people, the Khoekhoe and San, are now viewed as the original inhabitants of the country. In certain contexts, apartheid ideology also constructed black people as not indigenous (see note 5 below). 3. Within the field of geography, Graaff-Reinet can be categorized as a “central place.” A central place refers to a market town that provides goods and services for the surrounding (rural) farming community. Thus, I should qualify the term “rural” with this explanation of Graaff-Reinet as a central place within a larger rural area (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2010). 4. In Nama, the predominantly surviving Khoekhoe language, “Khoekhoe” is a more recent spelling of the older term “Khoikhoi.” Although some South African his- 132 Notes torians still prefer the term “Khoikhoi,” “Khoekhoe” continues to gain currency in contemporary scholarly literature as it bears a closer resemblance to the name’s correct pronunciation (Newton-King 1999, 8 n. 25; Davenport and Saunders 2000, 8). 5. The name “Karoo” comes from a Khoekhoe word meaning “dry” or “thirstland,” which is an additional testament to the Khoekhoe people’s connection to this area (Westby-Nunn 2004, 146; Willis 2009). Attempts to date the arrivals of the peoples of South Africa on the land of the present-day nation remain infused with political ideology, especially because of the deeply contested issue of land ownership and the post-apartheid land-claims process. A myth “once held in innocence and long propagated , that the Bantu-speaking peoples arrived as immigrants on the highveld of the trans-Vaal at about the same time as the Europeans first settled in Table Bay, has been demolished as a consequence of archaeological research” (Davenport and Saunders 2000, 8–9). In recent times, this myth allowed Europeans to claim equal land access with the African peoples as both groups were constructed as “immigrants,” which therefore designated the African peoples as “not indigenous.” This ideological construction is similar in some ways to the Australian “terra nullius” doctrine, which designated the country as empty and unoccupied, thus allowing European settlers to claim land belonging to the aboriginal peoples. This was overturned in 1992 (Brett 2001). 6. “Bantu” refers to a large group of indigenous people with a series of related languages who migrated into southern Africa around the third or fourth century C.E. Although the term itself merely means “persons,” the apartheid government often used it as a derogatory term for black people (Beck 2000, 11–17). 7. The zoologist Leonhard Schultze coined the term “Khoisan” in 1928, which Isaac Schapera used as a name for the Khoekhoe and San in his work two years later (1930, 5). South African historians adopted this term in the 1970s, largely due to various debates about the terminology and practices of the Khoekhoe and San (NewtonKing 1999, 250 n. 28). In a recent work on post-apartheid revivals of Khoesan ethnic identity, Michael Besten introduces a hyphen between the two terms, explaining that “although the early hunter-gathering and herding indigenes of southern Africa had a shared ancestry and some cultural commonalities, there were differences in language, culture, livelihood and identity between the two. This configuration [Khoe-San] also takes account of the objection that the San should not be subordinated to, or subsumed within, Khoekhoe groupings” (2009, 135). While remaining aware of these concerns, I continue to use the term “Khoisan” for the purposes of this book, in order to avoid adding more confusion to the already-controversial terminology surrounding the Cape’s indigenous peoples. 8...

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