Before the 1960s the !Xun and Khwe lived in Angola and Namibia, mainly following a hunting gathering way of life. But in the past forty years their lives have changed dramatically as a result of their involvement in the Angolan and Namibian wars.

The men were employed by the South African Defence Force (SADF), mainly as trackers who used their traditional hunting skills to locate enemy troops, while their families were brought together in military camps where a new generation was taught by white Afrikaans-speaking army personnel. This war service was not always voluntary: in 1998 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard several first-hand accounts of forged conscription and brutal treatment of men in the so called Bushman Battalion.

Before joining the army under a common 'Bushman' identity given to them by the Defence Force, the two communities had had almost no contact with each other. Most of them do not speak each others language and communicate through the medium of the Afrikaans learnt in the army.

When Namibia acquired independence in 1990, the SADF relocated the !Xun and Khwe to Schmidtsdrift in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Here in a makeshift tent town erected by the army, they awaited their fate while disputes over land delayed their settlement for almost ten years. In 1994, they heard that the country's first democratic government had come into being and, with it, the promise that they would obtain security to tenure. It was then learnt that the BaTIhaping, a Tswana clan, had lodged a claim for Schmidtsdrift to be returned to them, having been ejected from the land by the military during the apartheid era.
The !Xun and Khwe feared as a result they would be sent back to Namibia.

Finally it was announced that the government had purchased the farm Platfontein, just outside Kimberley, for the two communities. In 1999 the !Xun and Khwe joyfully celebrated the official handover of the land at an occasion attended by former President Nelson Mandela. Some 12500 hectares of bushveld at last belonged to them.

For more information on the the !Xun and Khwe, as well as some of their earlier paintings, see the book "My Elands Heart" by Marlene Sullivan Winberg.