San/!Kung 'bushmen' of the Kalahari desert

Linguistic and sociological discussion were raised this morning on R4 'Today', when an aid organisation representative debated with Baroness Tonge over her descriptions of 'Bushmen' as 'primitive' and 'stone age'.

I didn't have any problems with either Jenny Tonge's or the aid representative's language as intended, but they differed in ieterpetation and nuance.

The former quite factually used anthropological terms to described pre-contact Khoisan as a hunter-gatherers with a pre-metallurgical neolithic technology (stone tools and ceramics). The latter was able to highlight a plight where these people are being forced into reservations which are not adequate to fulfill the low population densities required of their lifestyle. Botwana and Namibia are regulating and concentrating a people for whom the assigned lifestyle is not sustainable.

But were I San, !Kung or Khoisan, I would rather by named by this, my own word, than the colonial term of 'Bushmen' used blithely by both commentators.