The Fascinating African Heritage of the San and Himba People

The San and the Himba are indigenous people of Angola and other surrounding African countries.

The Kalahari desert is home to a few San communities. These groups were initially made known to the world through the 1955 documentary, “The Lost World of the Kalahari.” In this 6-part documentary, Sir Laurens van der Post recounts his discovery of the Bushmen and their beautiful culture of cave art and music-making.

Traditionally, the San maintained an egalitarian society. The communities had chiefs who inherited their position based on familial ties. However, decision-making was largely made between community members with equal consideration given to males and females. Instead of using a monetary system, San communities traditionally exchanged gifts such as food or other valuables. Within the gift culture, there is no agreement made regarding repayment, but it is an implied expectation that gifts will be reciprocated at some stage. It has been suggested that gift cultures help to build a cohesive community.

Himba women have become known around the world for their use of red ochre on their skin. The red ochre helps to protect the skin against sunburn and mosquitoes. It is also used in women’s hair. Interestingly, women use smoke baths to cleanse themselves. According to elders, this practice dates back to periods of great drought when water was scarce.

Drought and water scarcity are still major challenges that the Himba and the San must contend with, and this problem has only gotten worse. In fact, in southern Angola, indigenous people face an existential threat due to commercial cattle-people ranches occupying their land.

Supreme Master Ching Hai (vegan) has also outlined the repercussions of eating animal-people flesh, which inevitably leads to the starvation of many human beings. “They don’t need to clear the forests. We have enough land to cultivate for seven, eight billion people. But we’re just too greedy and we do things wrong. Instead of cultivate for humans and have just enough for everybody, we just destroy all the land by planting for animal-people and they just eat and eat and eat, they eat the planet and we eat them. So both humans and animal-people are eating up the planet!”