Far cheaper was the illegal trade in indigenous slaves that grew in the borderlands of the colony. Khoe-San people<\/a> were forced into servitude as colonists took both land and livestock. Together with immigrant slaves they were the labour force<\/a> for the colonial project.<\/p>\n Desertion was their most common form of rebellion. Runaway slaves escaped into the borderlands and mounted a stiff resistance to the colonial advance from the 1700s until the mid-1800s. In most cases the fugitives joined forces with groups of skelmbasters<\/em> (mixed outlaws), who themselves were descended from San-, Khoe- and isiNtu-speaking<\/a> Africans (hunter-gatherers, herders and farmers). <\/p>\n Thus, we find recorded examples of mixed bandit groups<\/a> hiding out in mountain rock shelters, within striking distance of colonial farms. Using guerrilla-style warfare they raided livestock and guns. In their refuge, they made rock art, images within their own belief systems that relate to escape and retaliation. <\/p>\n These sites can be reliably dated, because they include rock art images of horses and guns. In our most recent study<\/a> of rock art in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, we see that this art also provides us with the raiders\u2019 perspective. Our fieldwork enables us to view something of the slave and indigenous resistance from outside the texts of the colonial record. <\/p>\n These mountainous regions house many rock shelters with paintings of the traditional corpus of \u2018San rock art<\/a>\u2019 (antelope and dances) that have become world famous. But owing to almost 2,000 years of contact with incoming African herders and farmers, the hunter-gatherer art changed in appearance, if not in the essence of its meaning. The \u2018disconnect\u2019 was most stark, however, during colonisation. The artists\u2019 societies were deeply affected, disrupted and decimated. Where any art continued it was that of the mixed outlaws, often referred to simply as \u2018Bushmen\u2019 but who were actually a composite of many cultural backgrounds.<\/p>\n The paintings themselves are also mixed \u2013 some brush-painted, some finger-painted \u2013 but are united by subject matter pertaining to spiritual beliefs concerning escape and protective power. Certain motifs, including baboons and ostriches, continued to be used, but now appearing alongside motifs such as horses and guns. This suggests some continuity in the recognition of these animals, mystical or otherwise, as subject matter pertinent to people\u2019s changed circumstances. <\/p>\n Despite these changes, bandit groups, however mixed they were, held onto, and even highlighted, some specific traditional beliefs. <\/p>\n The location of one band of mixed outlaws, in the Mankazana River Valley in today\u2019s Eastern Cape, comes from the record<\/a> of the 1820 settler, poet and abolitionist Thomas Pringle<\/a>. During our fieldwork in this area we found rock paintings of horses, riders with guns and cattle raids that can be reliably dated to approximately when Pringle was writing. <\/p>\n That diverse groups of bandits painted depictions of cattle raids suggests that raiding was a fundamental concern for these groups. If we have learnt anything from the last five decades of southern African rock art research, it is that images are not the mere depictions of what the artists saw around them. Rather, they are of what ritual specialists see while travelling through the spirit world. <\/p>\n In the case of bandit groups, the ritual specialist often performed the role of war-doctor, who supplied traditional medicines to ensure protection in dangerous situations, including cattle raids and the flight from servitude.<\/p>\n It is telling that these images also include motifs relating to protection during raids as can be seen in the appearance of certain animals, especially baboons and ostriches.<\/p>\n Baboons are associated with protection across Khoe-San and African farmer society. The |Xam San people of the 1800s claimed that the baboon chewed a stick of so-\/oa<\/em>, a root medicine which would alert the user (animal or human) to approaching danger and keep it safe. Among the Xhosa there is a cognate belief in uMabophe<\/em> \u2013 arguably the same root medicine. Like so-\/oa<\/em>, uMabophe<\/em> was supplied by ritual specialists to those who wished to exert supernatural influence over projectile weapons, including turning \u2018bullets to water<\/a>\u2019. <\/p>\n Many of these images are painted with a fine-line, unshaded technique. But there are also images that are finger-painted in black or bright orange pigment, which have a distinctly Khoe-speaker inflection. In technique they strongly resemble the art of the Korana raiders<\/a>, to the north of the colony, who were known to take in runaway slaves. <\/p>\n Further into the hinterland, as if to mark the fighting retreat of bandit groups as the colonial frontier expanded, we discovered rock shelters in the Stormberg and Zuurberg that exhibit yet more features of an indigenous resistance idiom. In one are images of people with horses and guns, as well as baboons and ostriches. <\/p>\n Read more: An ancient San rock art mural in South Africa reveals new meaning<\/a> <\/strong> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance.jpg\")
<\/a>The paintings<\/h2>\n
![\"Paintings](\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Ritual specialists<\/h2>\n
![\"Paintings,](\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance-2.jpg\")
<\/a>Protective animals<\/h2>\n
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