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the spirit of water • magda minguzzi
I once lived in a place called Saulsbury Park, when I was a youngster. My father and mother had a big piece of land there. We had chickens, we had pigs, we had sheep, we had goats, and we used to go hunt wild animals as well, me and my elder brothers. But then we were removed from our place, to this place in the Northern areas. Where I’m living now. Away from the sea that we used to go to. We were not hungry. Even when my mother did not have bread. We went to the veld. We used to eat there in the veld and we come back full. But with the removal of us from that place. We came to a place where these things didn’t exist. So, we were left poorer. Every New Year this place is quiet, because all the KhoiSan are at the sea. It’s the only time that they can afford to go to the sea. They impose tariffs at the seaside, which are so costly that we can’t go camp there. We used to go camp there for 3 or 4 weeks but because of the high tariffs and the fact that we are now so far from the sea we cannot do this any more. The transport costs are high, that we can’t go to the sea anymore. But once a year all of us that are KhoiSan and, in other respects, Coloured can all go to the sea. They believe, and the belief is still up until today that you’ve got to wash the old year off and start a new year, fresh and clean. They believe that they’ve got to go to the sea to do just that. And they will spend their last money to do just that. Even with the high tariffs. All in all, it is a very sad story that was imposed on us by the authorities of the colonial government as well as the apartheid government.4
Chief Margaret Coetzee adds: Thinking about our people on the West coast. Most of our people depend on making their living out of the sea, through fishing. And they are in the struggle now with government, that they did not get the quotas, that they used to have. And their lifestyle has been negatively influenced, very negative, that they can’t live a normal lifestyle anymore. Their children can’t go to school, because there is no income any more, and they were used to living off the sea. They were economically deprived, with the result that there is more poverty.5
The territory and the case studies The area under study in this research project extends from the coast of Nelson Mandela Bay to that of Plettenberg Bay. The work group initially discussed the criteria upon which the choice of the study area should be based. We took into account the fact that the current provincial borders are a product of colonial conventions and, obviously, had no bearing on the range of the various tribes present in the area in precolonial times. However, failing to come to a unanimous consensus among the Chiefs and owing to the vast size of the South African coast, the practical choice was to select sites easily reachable from Port Elizabeth where we were based. Furthermore we also decided that, given that the Eastern Cape has been understudied as compared to other coastal provinces, it would be very productive and useful to study this area. We nonetheless did visit certain sites outside of the zone we had delineated because they were particularly relevant from the point of view of the archaeological remains that had been uncovered in the past by researchers and because the similar geomorphology of the areas led us to believe that 4 5
Chief William Human, Korana, interview with the author, 13 April 2018. Chief Margaret Coetzee, Inqua, interview with author, 29 March 2018.
