!Xu, Khwe to live on South African radio

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- The state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation launched a radio station on Friday to prevent the demise of two ancient languages, a spokeswoman said.

The radio station will broadcast 12 hours a day in the !Xu and Khwe languages and will serve the San, or Bushman, community living in a tent village at Schmidtsdrif, 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of Kimberley.

"There was a serious threat that these languages were going to die out. We are very confident that the service being launched today will prevent that," said Alet Bensch, an SABC spokeswoman.

The San, a nomadic tribe of stone-age hunters and gatherers, were nearly wiped out during centuries of persecution by white European settlers and larger black tribes.

SABC has spent 700,000 rand ($100,000) to establish the radio station -- housed in a shipping container -- and train six presenters and two administration staff, she said.

The radio station has a broadcast range of 20-40 km (12-24 miles) and will serve 20,000 San people, Bensch told Reuters.

"A very important part of this station is that it will carry stories that make up San culture," she said. The station also will broadcast news and music.

The Schmidtsdrif community was set up in the late 1980s when the apartheid-era's defense force brought thousands of San soldiers -- employed for their outstanding tracking skills -- and their families from Namibia at the end of that country's liberation war.

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