How San art got to star in coat of arms

!ke e: Ixarra IIke – People who are Different: Come Together celebrates the rock art of the San people, the first inhabitants of southern Africa.

Presented by the University of the Witwatersrand’s Rock Art Research Institute and the Origins Centre, the exhibition includes an ultra-high-resolution facsimile of a San rock art panel called the Linton Panel. The panel contains the image chosen for South Africa’s national coat of arms.

The exhibition also features a new artwork by descendants of the San people and a book launch.

The names San and Bushman refer to the indigenous hunter-gatherers of southern Africa, and their descendants, whose ancestors lived here for many thousands of years. Both names have been used pejoratively – as demeaning terms – for centuries.

But now both have been reclaimed as identities to be worn with pride. Some groups prefer either one term or the other, depending on the historical use in their region.

South Africans prefer the word San while those in the Kalahari Desert region – and the artists from Nieu Bethesda whose work we commissioned for the new exhibition – prefer Bushman.

The rock art is an indigenous archive of San religion: their beliefs about how to transcend realms to heal the sick, influence the movements of animals and control the weather. It is not a “menu” of animals they liked to eat, and these are no idle doodles or simple “records” of events.

In the 1860s and 1870s, two linguists, Bleek and Lloyd, recorded the language of San Bushmen prisoners being held in Cape Town. Later, scholars realised that these |Xam (San/ pronounced “Kgamm”) testimonies produced a “fit” with rock art images, which until then had been poorly understood. Dorothea Bleek’s 1932 study Customs and Beliefs of the |Xam Bushmen proved an almost inexhaustible resource for understanding this art from the perspective of the artists. Especially when these beliefs intersected with those of the Maloti Mountain San and Kalahari Bushmen, and otherS who inherited them.

In 2000, president Thabo Mbeki’s office approached the Rock Art Research Institute because they wanted an indigenous rock art image to grace the coat of arms of the new South Africa. (The old shield had contained ox wagons and other colonial images.)

The institute’s scholars offered options, and the government chose the human figures from the famous Linton Panel, is displayed at Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town.

With various partners we have reproduced the panel digitally. The art can now be viewed on an interactive zoom console in which visitors can highlight motifs with explanations.

The two human figures come from one painting of a male figure. In the original, he most likely represents a San healer and game control specialist. He’s been mirrored and stylised to form a gesture of greeting.

Mbeki’s office also asked the institute to deliver a new national motto using the |Xam San language. Our professor, David Lewis-Williams, chose the |Xam words “!ke e: Ixarra IIke” from the phrases “people who are different” and “come together”. It can be translated as “diverse people, unite”.

The language is no longer spoken (and so does not favour any of the country’s 11 official languages) but it is important to recognise that the people survive.