Microsoft Word - PhD Thesis Final.pdf - University of Limpopo ...

and explorers, did not immediately affect the ways of life of the communities
who had already settled in the area. Apparently, these temporary,
occasional visitors to the interior areas such as Makgabeng, kept very few
and scanty records, and this explains why their stories on local communities
were not as extensive in literature as that of the later groups - the
missionaries, the Boers and the British. This explains why the earliest
European travellers, hunters, traders and explorers seemed to have had
little impact in shaping the identities in the Makgabeng area.
The theoretical explanation of the result of the earliest Europeans’ brief,
temporary visits to areas such as those in Makgabeng is that change and
creation of identities become experiences over a longer period 208 . Using
this notion of Castells on identity creation, the earliest Europeans would
have shaped the Makgabeng identities to a large extent had they not been
there for only shorter periods. The later European groups, the missionaries,
the Boers and the British, had a lasting impact on identity formation in the
Makgabeng area because of their more permanent settlement there.
There seems to have been very minimal contact between those early
European travellers and the San hunter-gatherers. Rock art and
archaeological evidence does not indicate any meaningful contact between
these groups, as the San retained their nomadic identity in the Makgabeng
208 M. Castells, “Globalisation, Identity…, p. 7.
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