Putting the first people first : the case of the southern African Bushmen

Abstract

Despite it being widely recognised that the Bushmen of southern Africa have the oldest DNA in the world, and that they are the first peoples of the region, their voices are often the last to be heard in matters pertaining to their continued existence. They have faced centuries of ethnocide, dispossession and marginalisation, a situation perpetuated under the new democratic governments of southern Africa. Besides oversimplified and outright inaccurate portrayals of the Bushmen as ‘primitive man’ throughout the period of colonisation, they have more recently been romanticised in idyllic portrayals in tourism marketing. While this has resulted in many deciding to distance themselves from their culture, others who at first eagerly embraced tourism, have been put on show like “animals in a zoo” for tourists to view the ‘exotic and primitive indigenous people of Africa’. This has contributed to a trivialisation and commodification of their culture, with only few success stories. This study traces the history of the Bushmen both in terms of their invidious position in southern Africa and in tourism. It examines two juxtaposing examples of Bushmen tourism ventures and argues that by embracing both the traditional and modern, such ventures can succeed.