French poet and author Renaud Ego launches his book on rock art in Southern Africa

Renowned French poet and author Renaud Ego launched his book, Visionary Animal, which is described as a ‘rich collection’ of essays on San people’s rock art works in the early 17th century which spans four countries in Southern Africa.

The launch was held at Wits University’s Origins Centre Museum on 18 March. The book is a translation of Ego’s book, L’Animal voyant, published in French in 2015 into English and includes a photo essay that has been beautifully illustrated with more 140 photos taken by Ego during his field research in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Ego examined some of the world’s finest rock art in a bid to answer two central questions that often prop on why were depictions of animals a crucial trigger for the birth of art and why the animals dominated that art for a long time.

In his speech at the launch, Ego, who spent many years travelling between the four countries and meeting with the San people to try and understand the formations and emergence of rock art, endeavoured to answer and elucidate myth around these two crucial questions.

“First and foremost, the nomadic San people were hunter-gathers and assigned a fundamental role to the visualisation of the animals that not only shared their lives but also depended on them for food and livelihood.

“Animals such as the eland formed the largest object of a fascinated gaze as much of the rock art tended to centre around this form of antelope. It may have formed the biggest diet on their menu for various reasons and hence they wanted it to be clearly identified by generations over generations to come,” Ego said.

In a panel discussion with Wits’ rock art specialist Dr Catherine Namono of the Rock Art Research Institute at Wits and Professor Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu of the University of Pretoria, Ego was at pains to explain why he chose to highlight the eland only in his book that spans four countries that have different ‘favourite’ animals.

“The menu animal and favourite in Namibia is more of the giraffe as it also forms part of the rituals of the San clan in that area, while Zimbabwe and some parts of Botswana tended to be dominated by the kudu. The eland dominated the Cape while other areas in the Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were also dominated by different animals, which we do not see in the book,” Ndlovu argued.

“That could be the subject of a follow-up book,” quipped Ego in answer to the concerns raised by Ndlovu, who comes from Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal, who has also done vast research in his home province and elsewhere on rock art.

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