"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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ruefulness may, on the other hand, be read as awareness of a threat to its own survival
because those who knew how to live symbiotically with it are dying out. Embedded in the
body imagery is the idea of Gaia (or Mother Nature) as a heart or life-support system.
Livingstone then compares the paintings in this cave on the Natal coast with
those of another cave beyond Macheke in Zimbabwe. He says the latter cave is also
“unknown” (line 27) by other people. But the poet has obviously been in it, even
‘discovered’ it, for he knows it also contains “crowded” (line 27) rock art. Both caves
depict “pristine hangups”. The unspoilt paintings reflect the ancient knowledge of the San
people, but why "hangups"? Is Livingstone deliberately introducing the idea of paranoia,
or does the word simply describe the 'exhibition' of rock paintings which have been
suspended in time? This modern, slang word jars with the surrounding poetic diction. The
word "hangups" may also be read as a hint that ancient San life was not wholly Edenic, as
indicated by the colon at the end of the line, which introduces a version of the mythical
feud between Kogaz and /Kaggen. 38
The penultimate stanza concentrates on the role of the shaman in the San culture.
Paul Garner thinks it is likely that all the San artists were shamans who painted
remembrances of what they saw during their trance:
Fortunately many Bushman beliefs were recorded in the last century before the
painting Bushman became extinct. At the centre of Bushman religion are people
known as medicine people or shamans. A shaman is someone in a hunter-gatherer
society who enters a trance in order to heal people, protect them from evil spirits
and sickness, foretell the future, control the weather, ensure good hunting and
generally try to look after the well being of their group. (2)
The shaman is said to purge an evil, invoke rain or healing, preside over wedding
ceremonies, rites of puberty and burials. The eland plays a central role in these rites.
“During trance, they [the shamans] assume the potency of various animals, especially the
eland, so that they are able to communicate with and plead with the spirits” (Garner 2). It
is through “the souls of eland” (line 34) that the shaman is able to enter the trance. The
38 Megan Biesele says the stories collected a hundred years ago in the Cape revolve primarily around the
Mantis /Kaggen and his family. Mantis’ wife is a dassie. They have three children, a daughter and two
sons. One of the sons, !gauna-ts’axau [could this be Livingstone’s Kogaz?] is killed by baboons and
restored to life by his father (in Tobias 169). According to Livingstone’s version, the Mantis’s son was
abducted and killed and the Mantis turned these abductors or “first kidnappers” into baboons.