. Eddie Koch says it well in an article in the 1998 guide to SouthAfrican arts, culture and heritage:"The Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa are unique in atleast one respect: more myths and misunderstandings have been held about them than any other of our planet'spopulations ... Against the background of South Africa'srecent history, it is most important that great care be takenwhen labels such as Khoisan are applied to segments of the population. During the apartheid era, the entire life anddestiny of everyone in South Africa was determined by anartificial, arbitrary and totally unscientific system of raceclassification. South Africa occupied a unique position in the world, in that it based its Constitution, legislative system and practically every other phase of life on differential treatment of different sections of its population. These groups of people were spoken of as 'races'. Under the suffocating mentality of apartheid, all aspects of life came to be dominated by the classificatory status of every man and woman."I would simply take these words and extrapolate them to a more global application. We must stop labeling people. People are people. . Genetic studies subsequently showed the general sub-Saharan African affinities of Khoisans...... It is now known that Bushmen share a number of allelic frequency patterns with southern African Negroes and with other sub-Saharan Africans. An extensive process of acculturation and Europeanisation has resulted in the incorporation of the descendants of Khoisan people into nearly all levels of society throughout southern Africa. Since the extensive political and social changes in South African and Namibian society began in the 1990s, some people of Khoisan origin have been vigorously asserting new forms of identity in an attempt to revive their cultural heritage....
