Coat of Arms and the Body Politic: Khoisan Imagery and South African National Identity

This paper focuses on the imagery of state and nation in post-apartheid South Africa, and more specifically on the use of 'Bushmen' or 'San' in the symbolic reconstruction of national unity through South Africa's new motto and Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms is based on a redrawing of a figure from rock art, while the motto !Ke e: /xarra //ke (officially translated 'Diverse people unite') comes from the extinct /Xam language once spoken in the Northern Cape. The choice of the figure and of the language of the motto were deliberate, and explicitly evoke the idea of Bushman as ancestral man and original South African, while the meaning of the motto (much criticized in contemporary South Africa) is shown here to be much richer than previously known.