Culture, Communication and Media Studies - The Tourist Viewer, the Bushmen and the Zulu:

The Tourist Viewer, the Bushmen and the Zulu:

Written by Nhamo Anthony Mhiripiri

Abstract

The thesis is an ethnographic exploration of the visual performances of the (≠Khomani)

Bushmen of the Northern Cape and the Zulu from KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. I

investigate how the ≠Khomani and the Zulu involved in the cultural tourism industry are

using archetypical tropes of ethnicity, and how they recreate these in the process of

formulating context-specific identities in contemporary South Africa. The Bushmen and Zulu

iconography that is ubiquitous is read against the modern day quotidian lives of the people

concerned. The role and participation of tourists and researchers (anthro-tourists) in the

performative culture of cultural tourism is investigated. An opportunity is also taken to

critique the artistic creations of Vetkat Kruiper which partly arise because of the need to

satisfy a tourism industry interested in Bushman arts and artefacts. Similarly his wife’s

‘biographical’ book Kalahari Rainsong (2004) is critiqued interactively and allows me to

appreciate my encounters with people and text in the Kalahari. My visits to cultural villages

where either the Zulu or the Bushman self-perform permit me to indulge in critical

performative writing in which I also investigate the role and place of (anthro)tourists in the

reinvention of site-specific identities.