The White Camel of the Makgabeng

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Periodical article

Title:	The White Camel of the Makgabeng
Authors:	Smith, Benjamin W. Van Schalkwijk, Johan A.
Year:	2002
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	43
Issue:	2
Period:	July
Pages:	235-254
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	Sotho colonial conquest rock art Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Anthropology and Archaeology History and Exploration colonialism
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/4100507
Abstract:	Research in the Northern Province of South Africa has revealed a surprising new rock art find: a painting of a camel. This paper investigates how and why a camel came to be painted in the remote rock art of the Makgabeng hills. Analysis of archival material allows one to attribute the painting to a Northern Sotho artist who was active in the first decade of the twentieth century. The purpose of the painting is revealed in its context: it forms part of a collection of paintings which ridicule elements of ineptitude in the ways of the new white intruders. The authors argue that this pointed humour helped the Makgabeng community to overcome some of the trauma of the displacement and violence which characterized the era of the first white settlement in northern South Africa. Notes, ref., sum.