San People
The San are probably our closest link with primeval Africa. They live in simple harmony with their surroundings, and their numbers are too small to have widespread effects on the environment. In traditional settings, San people have no private property, no permanent homes and few possessions. This lifestyle is in fact a function of the transient resources of their world and necessary for their survival.
Once they populated much of South Africa, their gentle ways were no match for the more aggressive black tribes and certainly not for the firearms of the invading whites. Rapidly they were pushed further and further westwards until only a few remained in the Kalahari and Namibia. Sadly, there are no longer any San people living in a natural state, even in the Kalahari, for a decade of drought forced the last bands to congregate around state-supplied boreholes or around army camps where their amazing tracking skills are utilized in the Namibian bush war.
Griqualand Gates
There is something about eking out a living in an extreme environment that seems to bring out the best in people. In Griqualand, they say they farm with skuld en geduld ('debt and patience'). Some farmers claim farming in those dry areas is such a gamble it's amazing the Good Lord allows it at all.
But one thing is certain, they sure have got their pride, and they wear it not so much on their sleeves as their entrance gates. Life-sized and larger casts of sheep, horses and Afrikaner cattle leave you in no doubt about what it is they do, and what gives them their greatest pleasure (Griquas rugby results notwithstanding).