Paul Weinberg South African, b. 1956
There are over 50 000 rock paintings in the Drakensberg area that span millennia of the San hunter-gatherers’ existence in southern Africa. While it was thought that the Abathwa, the last living San of the Drakensberg, had been wiped out during the 19th century, a group of San survivors continued to practise their beliefs and traditions in secret. After South Africa’s democratic transition in 1994, the Duma clan, once considered one of the original Zulu clans, claimed their San heritage and regularly return to this part of the Drakensberg to perform sacred rituals among sites with rock art. Scholars like David Lewis-Williams and others have argued that rock art is connected to the San people’s cosmology. They argue that San spiritual leaders who were connected to the spirit realm through trance would translate these experiences by painting them onto the surfaces of rock shelters.
