Envisioning San History: Problems in the Reading of History in the Rock Art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa

Abstract

This article considers what Geoff Blundell has called the ‘Holy Grail of southern African rock art research’ (2004:63): the vision of a South African history, based not on outsider colonial records, but on the insider evidence of rock art. It reviews two decades of research aimed at historicising our understanding of the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains and discusses the extent to which this work has provided the kind of histories ‘owned by the San’ that were called for by Aron Mazel in 1992 (see quote below). Has this work sought the unattainable, a Holy Grail, or does it open the door to more inclusive writings on the past?