Bushman & Khoisan Sue State

This article took me by surprise this morning as I couldn’t believe my eyes. Bushman and Khoisan want the use of the word coloured whipped from our South African vocab as they think the word is derogatory and doesn’t give them enough in terms of identity, now I don’t mind people trying to take charge of their identity but I do have a problem with it if its going to mess with the entire ebb and flow of things in the country.

THE Bushmen and Khoisan people of South Africa are dragging the government to court over "cultural genocide and discrimination".

The Equality Court will hear a "case of cultural genocide and discrimination against the Khoisan Nation" in the next two months.

Calling themselves the "nation of the Khoisan" the group on Saturday denounced the apartheid and present ANC-led government for classifying them as "coloureds".

Francisco Mackenzie of the Institute of the Restoration of the Aborigines of South Africa said being called "coloureds" was a "classification that helped to keep us in bondage".

Mackenzie said the constitution of the country discriminated against his people, as it did not recognise their rights as the Khoisan people.

Frank Smith of the Circle of Elders and Indigenous Leaders said that in 1950 "white people passed a law to declare us as coloured".

"We fought in the struggle to have the name kaffir removed now how about coloured? These are rude names. We are saying that Bushmen want to be called Bushmen, the Khoisan wants to be called Khoisan," he said.

Khoi Mclaren Holloway, a community leader from Atlantis, said that they were demanding the government to recognise their leadership and 18 clans that included Namaqua, Griqua and Hessequa.

As Winston Churchill put it “History is written by the victor”, we can’t escape the fact that the majority of people who fought and won the struggle are black people, there are only a couple of coloureds who were vocally involved in the struggle and not once did they ever support the plight of Khoisan and Bushman.

The way I see things is if we start classifying coloureds then we’ll be in a very precarious position where we’ll have to call each other African Africans and white people Afrikaaner African or Euro Africans…The list goes on.

Final argument would be how the hell do you differentiate between a Bushman and Khoisan, not to sound racist but don’t they all look alike and secondly which coloured do you know who knows exactly which he is between Bushman and Khoisan? I rest my case!

Source:Sowetan 


BCM