The Khoisan were the first inhabitants of southern Africa

The Khoisan people are an ancient ethnic group with a long and intriguing history. The Khoisan are believed to be the oldest human inhabitants of southern Africa.The Khoisan people are best known for their rock art. Over 20,000 rock art sites, scattered across South Africa, have given us a window into their world.One of the Khoisan’s biggest challenges is race. Land restitution was conceived to benefit black South Africans, but the Khoisan are not generally considered black; they are designated as “coloured.” The term, originally coined by the British, was used during apartheid to label citizens who did not fit the binary race model—including most Afrikaans-speaking nonwhites and mixed-race children. This amorphous categorization condemned much of the Khoisan’s history to oblivion and facilitated the theft of their land.