President Thabo Mbeki has opened a new museum complex at the University of the Witwatersrand to showcase the origin of mankind and bushman rock art to the public.
Mbeki said the opening of the Origins Centre was timely, following soon after the inauguration of the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) and the Cradle of Humankind Maropeng Visitor’s Centre.
”These are very important centres because they practically help to link the evolution of humanity to the creative genius of our ancestors as represented by this centre and to the origins of our universe as seen from the glittering array of mirrors of Salt,” Mbeki said at Wits on Tuesday night.
”The Origins Centre exhibition is part of a repository of the measureless and immeasurable. It is part of a stream upon whose bank we sit and watch the flowing of human evolution, imagination and creativity.”
The president, speaking from a walkway above his audience, was in form and cracked at least two jokes before starting his prepared address and adding several more before signing off.
Noting that his audience was standing, the president said he would keep his speech short. Next he remarked that the walkway reminded him of the pulpit in the Groote Kerk in Cape Town.
”This feels like a pulpit so I think I’ll preach,” the president said to much laughter.
Mbeki said he was impressed with what the centre’s creators had done on a small budget.
”Together, on a modest budget, you have created a unique and stunning museum in Africa for the people of the world.”
The president remarked that the recent discovery of incised ochre pieces from the Blombos Cave on the southern shores of South Africa strongly suggested that art and symbolic thought began in Africa.
At 77 000 years in age, the ochre pieces are the world’s oldest best-known human-made images, Mbeki said.
”The evidence from Blombos and other places shows that Africa was not only the place where humans first originated but that it was here that the very things that give us our humanity — art, symbolism, language, complex technology — first developed.
Clearly, Africa is the home of humans and humanity, he said.
”Because of all these, our ancestors have blessed us with among others, the 250 000 rock art sites that experts estimate are to be found south of the Zambezi River. The art is believed to be unsurpassed by any other rock art tradition in the world in its intellectual sophistication, detailed subject matter and complex techniques of rendering.
”Tonight, we know from the DNA/RNA strands illustrated in the Origins exhibition that the blood of the San and the Khoi courses through the veins of the diverse peoples of South Africa,” Mbeki said.
Mbeki said he would shortly have his DNA tested and would have the results published unless, he joked, it showed he was the twin of former British prime minister Maggie Thatcher.
Wits Vice-Chancellor Loyiso Nongxa said the value and significance of aboriginal art has, up to now, been consistently undervalued.
He said the centre, aimed at school children in particular, had cost R40-million.
”It takes some of Wits’ core research and makes it available to the general public in a world class museum.”
Anthropology professor David Coplan was impressed with the effort put into the museum — and the attention to detail. An expert on the Bushmen or San, his only criticism was that the role of the Khoi, Sotho and Tswana in exterminating the aboriginal people had been overlooked.
He also explained that he used both terms, as the word ”Bushman” (man of the bush), in the original context was not derogatory, and neither was ”San”, a word derived from a Khoi word that either meant ”thief” or those who tried to maintain their traditional lifestyle, depending on one’s point of view.
”The name acquired a brush of savagery from settled communities who painted them as riff-raff,” Coplan said.
Prior to 1800 many settled Bushman communities dotted the interior, but by 1850 they were nearly all gone.
The final communities were wiped out, ironically, in the Boer-Sotho wars of the 1880s.
Coplan added that they did not willingly submit to genocide but fought back fiercely and were greatly feared as adversaries.
He added that like the American settlers who wiped out the native American, and the English settlers in Australia who destroyed the aborigines, South Africans needed to acknowledge what they had done to their fellow countrymen.
He was somewhat ambivalent on celebrating the San when little was being done to assist the survivors of that genocide, who assimilated into other communities where they still live on the fringes.
Coplan’s 14-year-old daughter, Thabi, a pupil at Greenside High School, said she agreed with the centre’s motto. ”We are who we are because of who we were”.
”It [the museum] is fascinating,” she said. ”It is also really empowering.”
Her friend, Lisa Ally (14) added ”It is really important to know the history of your country.”
Coplan said he brought the girls so they could experience their history.
”What it’s to us? It’s for them this was built. We [Gauteng] should be famous for something else than casinos.”
Also attending the event was legendary archaeologist Professor Phillip Tobias.
Asked what role he had played in the creation of the centre he said: ”I don’t know if I had a role, we tried to help with odds and ends.
”I haven’t looked around yet, President Mbeki had the pride of place, of course.” – Sapa