Where did the African people get their clothing from before the use of cloth?
Since earliest times the hides of wild and domesticated animals have been part of the important treasure trove of materials. Above all, leather is one of the oldest materials used in the making of clothing and utensils by nomadic, hunting and pastoral tribes. The number of different kinds of wild animals whose hides had been used in the making of shields is so great that it appears impossible to list them all. Naturally, hides with the largest possible size, stiffness and thickness (buffalo, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe etc) were particularly preferred for the making of shields and include the hides of zebra, gnu and the back of various kinds of antelope, however, by contrast the cuirass of a crocodile or the hide of its soft underbelly were only sporadically employed.
The skins of antelopes and small animals and snakes were used more for the making of clothes and other house hold products.

Products made from the skin of animals have been manufactured through innumerable processes, from the partial or no dehairing of hides to hardened hides or to leather like or even made as soft as cloth. The skin and tegmen [an inner lining] of individual
animals also had to be prepared and treated in the most different ways. The skin of higher animals is divided into an outer layer (epidermis), middle layer (dermis, corium) and bottom layer (subcutis).

Only the isolated corium was, however, used. Since a fresh hide consists mainly of protein and, to a large degree, of water, the goal of tanning is to turn bundles of fiber into a material able to maintain its elasticity. They were necessarily treated in three 
stages: cleaning, tanning and currying. Directly after skinning, the remains of fat and muscle were cleaned from the outer and bottom layers. This was usually done with a sharp-edged scraper. Keeping them in a hole dug in the earth (technical expression: 
sweating hides) was supposed to accelerate in the most simple manner the rotting away of the fat layer. Scraping and dehairing could immediately follow, one after the other. Since many other ethnic groups in South Africa employ similar methods. 
Sometimes a selected hide was submerged in a river and left overnight to become saturated, until it was taken out the next morning to be washed and cleaned.
Afterwards it was buried in a cattle kraal where it was to be softened by a combination of urine and filth.

It is also known that the Masai placed their cowhides with the hairy side down in a shallow pit and covered them with sand for four or five days. Depending on which tanning agent is used, the distinction is made between 'fat tanning' and 'vegetable tanning'. In 'fat tanning' (oil tanning) most Africans rubbed butter, brain or palm oil into the hide. This was regarded as the simplest process. The epidermis and subcutis were removed by scraping and sanding and the liquefied brain oil, butter or fat was then worked into the dermis, after which the skins were sometimes smoked to make it more weather resistant. Following fat tanning, combination-tanning methods were also employed.
 Juices from barks and plants were used in 'vegetable tanning' (bark tanning) in all of North Africa and some tribes in Southern Africa including the San. One of the  'vegetable tanning' plants  used is the Elandbean (Elephantorhiza elephantina), the underground rhizomes, also called roots, are dug up and used in rural areas for deying and tanning In the Kalahari the bark is removed and pounded to pulp and a little water added. The paste is then smeared on the hide to make it soft.

Currying (technical term for making a hide pliable) encompasses, on the other hand, various operations such as repeatedly rubbing in fat, intermediate drying and further skilled processes. Among the 'Swazi' in South Africa the semi finished material is beaten on rocks; the 'Ndebele', however, use wooden hammers to make it pliable. One of the further processes employed by the 'Masai' was the stretching of hides on a wooden rack, where it remained until dried and stone hard. At the beginning of this stage, wood handles and rim hoops were also attached. One widespread method in Africa was pegging hides to the ground. Stones and pegs were arranged on the ground underneath the still-wet hides to form handle hollows or burls and bulges.