While on the material
level he seems to have nothing, the Bushman in fact has something of infinite
value - an unshakable sense of belonging. From birth he knows who he is, his
place in the greater order of things, and that he need never be alone.
The Bushmen have a fund
of stories and beliefs which explain their position in the environment. "We
have the same right to exist as the plants and the animais, the clouds and the
rain for ali are neighbours. The Bushman takes what he needs, no more, and Nature
replenishes the common fund; if he shoujd violate this natural order, the moon,
the sun, the wind and the rain will bring drought, sickness, disease and death
.
Sharing is the basis of Bushman survival. It means much more than sharing things;
it means sharing activities, experiences, health ans sickness, hopes and fears.
No one goes off by himself without tellin the others. He may go hunting alone,
but he will have discussed it in case some wosf to accompany him…
Having so defined the
natural law as an "interdiction to stock food" the busmen discover
that a big mistake had been made by splitting the social world into hunter-gatherers
and herder-cultivators. And, in summary, they explain it this way :The natural
prohibition to forbid has then been trangressed! An to explai this transgression,
they tell the following story :
: 'We who were made first, have come to be last. And those who were created
last have come to be first. Even though they arrived later than we did, Europeans
and Bantus have come to be ahead of us.
' Kara#tuma, a Bushman ancestor, is blamed for the fact that the black man learnt
to plant crops and herd cattle while the Bushman did not. In the story explaining
these events Kara#tuma was the first to see cattle but he did not appreciate
the significance of the tame beasts. Instead, he showed them to the black man
who realised their significance and became a herdsman. The black man's knowledge
of agriculture is similarly explained. But while the Bushman shows dissatisfaction
over this, he also displays a fatalistic acceptance of the world as it is, rather
than as a place that can be actively changed.
As one Bushman put it:
'I refuse this thing that we should have come to be the last of all. . . It
gives me pain. And I despise that old man of long ago who caused it to happen.
I think if I saw him today I would beat him. But he's dead and there's nothing
that can be done.'
The mythological era
ended, so the Bushmen claim, when man became separate from the animal world.
They say: 'Before this we were ali people together, but after this we were divided
each to his own.'