“VAN DER POST gave a face and a story to a discarded people before anyone thought to do so.” These words by Christopher Hope in The Guardian state one of the principal attainments in the ninety-year lifespan of Sir Laurens van der Post, the
Afrikaner-cum-European polymath.
The people Hope refers to are the San, the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. They came into public view mainly because of van der Post’s 1956 television film about them, and his subsequent book. The Bushmen, hunted and killed by white, black, and other invaders of their land, were near extinction when van der ...
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