MEN FROM DESERT

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1937, Page 11

MEN FROM DESERT

HONOUR KING GEORGE

CAPE TOWN, May 10

Direct from the Kalahari Deseit, SOO miles away. 55 Bushmen, strangest of all King George’s subjects, arrived in Cape Town yesterday. Naked but for buckskin loincloths, they scurried- and pranced, through tho citv streets, returning as out of a prehistoric age, and stamping on tho ground which belonged to their ancestors centuries ago. ’ They camo to a city bef lagged in honour of the Coronation of a King of whoso existence they had vaguely 11 card.

When they saw for the first time a portrait of his Majesty’ in a shop window they gave an impressive- demonstration of loyalty. This was- the “Chief of Chiefs,’ their Great Master, so they knelt and kissed tho windowpane. They also kissed their hands to the picture. These pigmies had made a five-day trek from regions north of the Orange River. Never before within jiving memory seen in Cape Town, members of a tribe, of whom only 150 are still in existance, they came to appeal to tho Government for the right io shoot the protected gemsbok when thev needed food. At the Houses of Parliament, they sav Mr. I*. G. W. Grobler, Minister of Native Affairs, who promised that they should be allowed to hunt the gemsbok for meat.

Their biggest thrill was when, they saw tho sea. They shouted and ‘screamed -with excitement as the breakers rolled in.