The tribal system in south africa: a study of the bushmen and the hottentots

By the end of the Seventeenth century, when the Dutch settlement at the Cape was already firmly established, and the foundation had thus been laid for the present political dominance of the white man in the country, Africa south of the Kunene Okavango and Zambesi Rivers was inhabited by a considerate. number of different native peoples On the basis of racial, linguistic and cultural distinction, these can all be classified into four main stocks, commonly known as the Bushmen, the Hottentots, the Bergdama and the Bantu respectively. The Bushmen are a short, brownish-yellow people, with certain peculiar and racial characteristics, they all speak languages of a uniform, well-defined and easily recognizable type, phonetically remarkable especially for the great prevalence of click consonant; and they practice neither agriculture nor pastoralism, but live in small separate commutative which lead a nomadic hunting and collecting existence.