Mythic Bushmen in Afrikaans Literature The <i>Dwaalstories</i> of Eugène N Marais

Abstract

Previous debate around Eugène N Marais’ Dwaalstories [Wandering Tales] has been about their ‘authenticity’; Marais maintained that an itinerant Bushman, whom he had met while in the Waterberg, had narrated them, and that he had then written them up as a series of prose-poems. More interestingly for the present, the stories fill a gap in the analysis of western writing on Bushmen. They shed light on Afrikaans depictions of Bushmen, and they reveal the role played by Marais in laying a foundation for modern discourse on the Bushmen. White settler images of the Bushmen in popular writings have received historiographical analysis, but writings in Afrikaans have been omitted, distorting the chronology and content of the historiography. In Marais’ tales the ‘Bushmen characteristics’ known to us from later writers such as Laurence van der Post are first displayed.

“Dwaalstories [Wandering Tales] are among the greatest stories in Afrikaans.” N.P. van Wyk Louw (1961: 112-113)
“[Wandering Tales] is the right name. The man’s mind is wandering.”
Reverend A J Louw2 (Rousseau 1982: 379)