The Gods Must Be CrazyIn their mythology, God created all of southern Africa for the San (Bushmen). Then he created the San, and then he created the San’s animals for and even from the San. They believe God left them to guard it all, which they did for years, until we (the more advanced people) arrived. The Bushmen are the world’s oldest surviving pragmatic environmentalists.The Bushmen are some of the last nomadic hunter-gatherers on earth. But let’s not forget that before the start of the Agricultural Revolution, all humans were hunters-gatherers. The Agricultural Revolution entailed humans first discovering the technology of domesticating plants and/or animals. The result was mankind becoming more sedentary vs. nomadic. This led to a significant increase in our population growth. At the start of the Agricultural Revolution, the Bushmen had all of Africa up to the southern edge of the Sahara, except for the Pygmies occupying the Congo, and the Bantu black having only the western most west of Africa.
The majority of the Sans were ethnically cleansed for their land in South Africa by the Dutch who landed in 1652, invading from the south, and by the Zulus and other black migrating from the north. By 1890, the last of the Bushmen had been exterminated in South Africa, leaving only their haunting rock paintings and a few of their genes. The last of the Bushmen survived into the 20th century only in the world’s fourth largest desert, the Kalahari, despite the bounty on their heads in the early 1900’s. This was simply because it was a harsh daunting land avoided by all others. The Bushmen learned to live despite there being no surface water. The 70,000 or so Kalahari Bushmen that survive today are in Botswana, Namibia and a few in Angola, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The various Bushmen groups live in the desert areas of Namibia, Botswana and Angola. The Bushmen, originally known as the Sans, were given their name by the Dutch in South Africa. Even though there are about 70,000 Bushmen in southern Africa, by some reports only about one third of them continue their traditional nomadic lifestyles. Many of them were kidnapped and made to work in people’s homes and on farms. But because they were paid no wages, only food, they are very poor.
The San people are short and slim with kinky hair described as “peppercorn”. The San call themselves Zhu Twa Si, “the harmless people,” in contrast to non-San, whom they call Zosi, “animals without hooves,” meaning they are as dangerous as predator animals. The San are descendants of the original inhabitants of Angola. Bantu groups began to expand into their area by 1000 AD and easily dominated the harmless people. The languages of the San are also referred to as San. There are various names of the various forms of the language spoken by the different groups. These are “click” languages, as members of the San language family. The exclamation point represents one of the click sounds. The people in the San group speak the following languages: Akhoe, Kung – Ekoka, Kung – Gobabis, Kung – Tsumkwe and Oung. These languages, together with Vasekela and Maligo, make up the northern division of the southern African Khoisan languages. Many also speak the Tswana language and some speak English. Afrikaans is commonly spoken by many men in Namibia. Portuguese would be needed in Angola. These two languages would be the languages of education in the respective countries.The San languages are distantly related to the languages spoken by the Khoikhoin, also called Khoi or Hottentots. Some of the San neighbors also speak Khoi languages. Some of the unusual click sounds of these languages have been borrowed by a group of Bantu language speakers about 300-500 years ago. The San languages are written in a standardized alphabet based on Latin characters with special symbols for the click sounds unique to the Khoisan languages. Some of these symbols are // , ! , and / . Technical materials are available to explain the sounds these symbols represent. The San groups are very small, nomadic groups living distantly from other peoples, even other groups of San. They have been oppressed and dispossessed by both the Bantu and European immigrant groups. History even documents the hunting of the San people for sport.Food is not easy to obtain in the desert so many of the San are forced to live among the Bantu population and the Europeans of southern Africa. In the desert their basic diet is melons, seeds, nuts and the antelope. The San are renowned as trackers and are in demand by commercial and government interests for bush tracking. The San originally had no permanent settlements, but built simple windbreaks of saplings in a semicircle, tied together at the top and covered with grass. They practiced no agriculture and the only domestic animal was an occasional dog. Their hunting and gathering life has suffered continual advance. Some have entered the settled life to work on farms and in recent years have even begun cultivating and herding cattle.The majority of the marriages are monogamous, normally arranged by senior members of the kinship group. It is preferred to marry cousins, but there is a complicating generational naming system which can limit cousin choices by naming cousins as siblings in certain cases. Children are actively socialized with teaching. Ridicule is used for discipline as well as corporal punishment. Important events in the family or community are celebrated by the exchange of ritual gifts.
There are hereditary leaders, sometimes considered chiefs, but the have limited authority. Traditionally social order was enforced by ridicule, forced separation and sometimes even execution. Infractions are now handled through district councils or government courts. There was no formal military system. The San peoples were generally peace keepers, though minor scuffles might occur.The Bushmen as a whole are traditional tribal religionists and very closed to Christianity. They believe celestial bodies (sun, moon, morning star and the southern cross) are symbols of divinity. They believe the praying mantis is a divine messenger. Other animals also have spiritual significance for them. They also believed that dancing near a sacred fire will give them the power to heal. Their spiritual leaders are diviners and healers. They believe ancestors are involved in curing rituals, but they do not recognize the dead as the Bantu peoples do. Legends play an important role in the life of the San. Each story is someone’s perception of the supernatural. Each tell its own truth, bringing to light some aspect of the divine. The sacred Tsodilo Hills are legendary. The story goes that a man had two wives, but he loved one wife more than the other, and this caused a big quarrel. The one he didn’t love hit him on the head, causing a deep wound. Then she ran off into the desert. But the Great God, Gaoxa, decided that because there was no peace among them, he must turn them all into a stone. The man became the largest of the hills; the unloved wife became the smallest hill that stands alone; and the loved wife, with her children, became the cluster of hills in the middle. But they believe there are supernatural powers in the Hills because Gaoxa himself lived there. It was there that he created and kept him cattle, sheep, goats, and all sorts of different animals. The San claim you can see footprints in the rocks.
Today the Africa Evangelical Fellowship, the Dutch Reformed Church, as well as the Lutherans are reaching out in evangelism to the Bushmen. But many Bushmen are nomadic, and remain rather mysterious and difficult to locate. Even so, reports indicate perhaps 10% of the San are Christians. “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” originally recorded in Afrikaans, was released in Botswana in 1981. The English version was released in the United States in 1984. It became the highest grossing foreign film in American history. “The Gods Must Be Crazy” is a comedy based on the disturbance of civilization on the Kalahari Bushmen when a coke bottle is tossed out of a plane. While the movie is a comedy, it has a strong documentary feel to it. Shortly after the Bushmen find the bottle, they discover wonderful uses for it. Unfortunately, the bottle is so useful to them that they soon discover resentment and viciousness when someone else is using it. Because of this, one Bushmen decides to travel to the end of the earth and return the bottle to the Gods.
Before the bottle – the Bushmen lived quite contently. They knew where to dig for roots and which berries were poisonous. For water they would collect dew drops from leaves that were laid out the night before. They had no crime, punishment, laws, police or judges. Living in small family groups, in complete isolation, they were quite unaware that there are other people in the world. You would never catch a Bushmen punishing their children let alone speaking harshly to them. Although they lived in a quiet gentile world, just 600 miles north of them was a vast city. “Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment, instead he adapted his environment to suit him – building cities, roads, and machinery,“ a quote directly from the movie that I think says it all. The three main plots that intertwine at various points are the Bushmen, Semboca and Kate Thompson. The Bushmen’s plot is introduced with the coke bottle falling from the sky and the misadventures of Xi; Semboca’s begins with the attempt to assassinate the President; and Thompson’s with her dissatisfaction with her current job.
Xi’s family lives deep in the Kalahari. They have never seen a white person and have rarely had contact with anyone else. They live a peaceful life, sharing everything and hunting and gathering all of their necessities. One day, a pilot carelessly drops a Coca-cola bottle out of his plane. It changes their lives drastically. They thought the Gods sent the coke bottle and wondered why. As the days went on they found more and more uses for the bottle, except to drink from it. Since there was only one bottle, and everyone wanted to use it, the family members grew jealous of each other for the first time (we have to remember this is a society with no sense of ownership at all). They called the coke bottle the “evil thing”. This goes on until Xi decides it’s best to return the bottle back to God. His journey is where the movie really starts. On Xi’s way to find the end of the world and dispose of the bottle, he meets Andrew Stein ( Afrikaan micro-biologist ) and Kate Thompson ( big city reporter). His first thought is that they might be Gods, but when they were unable to help him, he went on his way. The film’s other plot is an off the wall love story with Andrew and Kate. It starts when Andrew agrees to pick up Kate – the new school teacher – for the Reverend. They share an exhilarating and amusing two-day ride from the bus stop to the village. Andrew just can’t do anything right, he gets the car caught in the tree, almost gets Kate killed seeing as how the breaks don’t work. He’s just horrible around women. However, Stein and Xi crossed paths again when Xi was arrested for shooting a goat. Mbudi , Stein’s mechanic, is asked to interpret for Xi at the trial. Stein agrees to hire Xi as an “environmental expert”, instead of having him sit in jail. The third sub-plot which ties all three stories together is Boga and his revolutionaries. After their failed assassination, government forces follow them to their hideout and attack them, forcing them to escape towards the Kalahari. Him and his army kidnap Kate and the children in an attempt to escape from the government troops. Andrew and Xi capture Boga and in the end – Andrew wins Kate’s heart. And Xi finds the end of the world, which was nothing more than the ocean.
“The Gods Must Be Crazy” is definitely an effective witty comedy. The narrator explains that, except for a short rainy season, the Kalahari is devoid of water. “Humans avoid the deep Kalahari like the plague, because man must have water to live. So, the beautiful landscapes are devoid of people, except for the little people of the Kalahari.” The Bushmen, “the most contented people in the world,’ are presented as just another aspect of this fascinating environment.
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