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/ 5 September 2007

San, Bushmen or Basarwa: What’s in a name?

A reader wrote to object to the Mail & Guardian‘s usage of the term ”Bushmen” for Southern Africa’s first people. Kobus Faasen quoted at length from a Dutch dictionary published in 1902, which said the word meant ”one who lives in the bushes” but had also been applied to apes, particularly the orangutan.