//KABBO

//Kabbo [Oud Jantje Tooren] (1815-1876)

The meager historical archival evidence available to posterity would seem to indicate that //Kabbo, whose name in English translates as “Dream”, was a dreamer of stories and a possessor of prodigious memory that enabled him to retell endlessly newer and newer folktales at the center of /Xam culture, and by implication at the center of South African culture since our cultural South Africanness originates from the historical experience of the /Xam people. The antiquity and ‘mythical’ cultural origins of our South Africanness was made historically and intellectually evident with the publication of Specimens of Bushman Folklore in 1911 collected by Wilhelm Bleek (1827-1875) and Lucy Lloyd (1834-1914). The importance of the contribution //Kabbo to this historic publication is made evident by the illustrative painting of his visage in the inside cover page of the book, that is thirty-five years after his death. Mentioning in the Preface that he contributed fifteen folktales to the book, Lucy Lloyd wrote the following of //Kabbo: “He was an excellent narrator, and patiently watched until a sentence had been written down, before proceeding with what he was telling. He much enjoyed the thought that the Bushman stories would become known by means of books. He was with Dr. Bleek from February 16th, 1871 to October 15th, 1873. He intended to return, later, to help us at Mowbray, but, died before he could do so.” With Specimens of Bushman Folklore as well as with his other writings, Wilhelm Bleek established the foundations of South African scholarship. In a landmark essay of 1873, “Scientific Reasons for the Study of the Bushman Language”, Bleek wrote the following: “Here a thorough knowledge of the Bushman language is an indispensable necessity for the future student of early South African history---a history which precedes by many ages the written records, as well as the stone implements, to which the present study of prehistoric times is now mainly directed.” The logic of this reasoning is still very much relevant in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The concluding words should deservedly given to //Kabbo, for in a transcribed autobiographical sketch of 1871, “My Capture and Journey to Cape Town”, he had unforgettable things to say about the near extermination of the /Xam Nation as the consequence of the making of modernity in South Africa: “I came from that place, I came here, when I came from my place, when I was eating a springbok. The Kafir took me; he bound my arms. We (that is, I) and my son, with my daughter’s husband, we were three, when we were bound opposite to the wagon, while the wagon stood still. We went away bound to the Magistrate; we went to talk with him; we remained with him.” Wilhem Bleek obtained //Kabbo and the other /Xam ‘informants’ from the Cape Town prison system. Much more important, //Kabbo holds both white South Africans and black South Africans for the genocidal destruction of his Nation. That he walked away from modernity speaks for itself!