Khoekhoe
The Khoikhoi ("people people" or "real people") or Khoi, in standardised Khoekhoe/Nama orthography spelled Khoekhoe, are a historical division of the Khoisan ethnic group, the native people of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (or San, as the Khoikhoi called them). They had lived in southern Africa since the 5th century AD.[1] When European immigrants colonized the area in 1652, the Khoikhoi were practising extensive pastoral agriculture in the Cape region, with large herds of Nguni cattle. The European immigrants labeled them Hottentots, in imitation of the sound of the Khoekhoe language,[2] but this term is today considered derogatory by some.[3]
Archaeological evidence shows that the Khoikhoi entered South Africa from Botswana through two distinct routes – traveling west, skirting the Kalahari to the west coast, then down to the Cape, and travelling south-east out into the Highveld and then southwards to the south coast.[4] Most of the Khoikhoi have largely disappeared as a group, except for the largest group, the Namas.
History
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Early History
The Khoikhoi were originally part of a pastoral culture and language group found across Southern Africa. Originated in the northern area of modern Botswana, the ethnic group steadily migrated south, reaching the Cape approximately 2,000 years ago. Khoikhoi subgroups include the Korana of mid-South Africa, the Namaqua to the west, and the Khoikhoi in the south. Husbandry of sheep, goats and cattle provided a stable, balanced diet and allowed the related Khoikhoi peoples to live in larger groups than the region's previous inhabitants, the San. Herds grazed in fertile valleys across the region until the 3rd century AD when the advancing Bantu encroached into their traditional homeland. The Khoikhoi were forced into a long retreat into more arid areas. Today, in the southwest country of Namibia, the majority of the Khoikhoi people are mixed with one of the Bantu groups known as the Damara – today, they have a mixed-light skin tone, resulting from the light color of the Khoikhoi people and the darker color of the Bantu people. This people group – known as either Damara or Khoikhoi – live around the Erongo region of Namibia. They speak the language known as "Khoikhoigobab" or simply (the more wide spread term) "Damara".
Migratory Khoi bands living around what is today Cape Town intermarried with San. However the two groups remained culturally distinct as the Khoikhoi continued to graze livestock and the San subsisted as hunter-gatherers.
The Arrival of the Europeans
The Khoi initially came into contact with European explorers and merchants in approximately AD 1500. The ongoing encounters were often violent. Local population dropped when the Khoi were exposed to smallpox by Europeans. Active warfare between the groups flared when the Dutch East India Company enclosed traditional grazing land for farms. Over the following century the Khoi were steadily driven off their land, which effectively ended traditional Khoikhoi life.
Khoikhoi social organization was profoundly damaged and, in the end, destroyed by European colonial expansion and land seizure from the late 17th century onwards. As social structures broke down, some Khoikhoi people settled on farms and became bondsmen or farm workers; others were incorporated into existing clan and family groups of the Xhosa people. The first mission station in southern Africa[5], Genadendal, was started in 1738 among the Khoi people in Baviaanskloof in the Riviersonderend Mountains by Georg Schmidt a Moravian Brother from Herrnhut, Saxony, now Germany.
The Griqua nation
Early European settlers frequently intermarried with the indigenous Khoi, producing a sizable mixed population known at the time as "Basters", but currently known as the Griqua people.
Like the other Afrikaans-speaking people, the Boers, the Griqua left the Cape Colony en masse and migrated inland. They formed the states of Griqualand West and Griqualand East which, like the two Boer republics, were eventually subsumed within the British Empire.
The Kat River settlement (1829-1856) and the Khoi in the Cape Colony
By the early 1800s, the remaining Khoi of the Cape Colony were suffering from restricted civil rights and discriminatory laws on land ownership. With this in mind, the powerful Commissioner General of the Eastern Districts, Andries Stockenstrom, facilitated the creation of the "Kat River" Khoi settlement near the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. The more cynical motives were probably to create a buffer-zone on the Cape's frontier, but the extensive and fertile lands in the region did allow the Khoi to own their land and build their communities in peace. The settlements thrived and expanded, and Kat River quickly became a large and successful region of the Cape that subsisted more or less autonomously. The people were predominantly Afrikaans-speaking Gonaqua Khoi, but the settlement also began to attract numbers from other Khoi, Xhosa and mixed-race groups of the Cape.
The Khoi were known at the time for being remarkably good marksmen, and were frequent and invaluable allies of the Cape Colony in its frontier wars with the neighboring Xhosa. In the Seventh Frontier War (1846–1847) against the Gcaleka Xhosa, the Khoi gunmen from Kat River distinguished themselves under their leader Andries Botha in the assault on the "Amatola fastnesses". (The young John Molteno, later Prime Minister, led a mixed Commando in the assault, and later praised the Khoi as having more bravery and initiative than most of his white soldiers.)[6]
Harsh laws were still implemented in the Eastern Cape however, to encourage the Khoi to leave their lands in the Kat River region and to work as laborers on white farms. The growing resentment exploded in 1850. When the Xhosa rose against the Cape Government, large numbers of the Khoi, for the first time, joined the Xhosa rebels.
After the war and the defeat of the rebellion, the new Cape Government endeavored to grant the Khoi meaningful political rights to avert any future racial discontent. William Porter, the Attorney General, was famously quoted as saying that he "...would rather meet the Hottentot at the hustings, voting for his representative, than meet him in the wilds with his gun upon his shoulder", and so the beginnings of the multi-racial Cape franchise was born in 1853. This law decreed that all citizens, regardless of colour, had the right to vote and to seek election in Parliament. This non-racial principle of franchise was later eroded in the late 1880s, and then finally abolished by the Apartheid Government. [7]
Massacres in German South West Africa
From 1904 to 1907, the Germans took up arms against the Khoikhoi group living in what was then German South West Africa, along with the Herero. Over 10,000 Nama, more than half of the total Nama population, perished. This was the single greatest massacre ever witnessed by the Khoikhoi people.
Culture
The religious mythology of the Khoikhoi gives special significance to the moon, which may have been viewed as the physical manifestation of a supreme being associated with heaven. Tsui'goab is also believed to be the creator and the guardian of health, while Gunab is primarily an evil being, who causes sickness or death.[8] Recently, many Khoikhoi in Namibia have converted to Islam and make up the largest group among Namibia's Muslim community.[9]
Traditionally, the Khoisan[clarification needed] lived in simple and disposable huts made of long sticks bound at the top with vines or other fiber then covered in grass. Each family would have their own hut. However, children that were older may have lived live in separate huts with others in their age group.
The Khoisan are polygamous (more than one wife). Wives may share or occupy different huts depending on how well they get along. Visitors are entertained outside the home unit around the fire.[10]
See also
- Herero and Namaqua genocide
- Namaqua
- Khoikhoi mythology
- Griqua people
- History of South Africa
- Hottentot Venus
Publications
- P. Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope (London, 1731–38);
- A. Sparman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope (Perth, 1786);
- Sir John Barrow, Travels into the Interior of South Africa (London, 1801);
- Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa; or Hottentot Fables and Tales (London, 1864);
- Emil Holub, Seven Years in South Africa (English translation, Boston, 1881);
- G. W. Stow, Native Races of South Africa (New York, 1905);
- A. R. Colquhoun, Africander Land (New York, 1906);
- L. Schultze, Aus Namaland und Kalahari (Jena, 1907);
- Meinhof, Die Sprachen der Hamiten (Hamburg, 1912);
- Richard Elphick, Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa (London, 1977)
References
- ^ Country Information on Namibia (cached page)
- ^ Rev. Prof Johannes Du Plessis, B.A., B.D. (1917). "Report of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science". pp. 189–193. Retrieved 5 July 2010.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ http://web.mit.edu/racescience/in_media/baartman/baartman_m&g_june95.htm
- ^ Pre-colonial Cultures in South Africa: The San and Khoikhoi About.com
- ^ The Pear Tree Blossoms, Bernhard Krueger, Hamburg, Germany
- ^ P. A. Molteno: The life and times of Sir John Charles Molteno, K. C. M. G., First Premier of Cape Colony, Comprising a History of Representative Institutions and Responsible Government at the Cape. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1900
- ^ http://newhistory.co.za/the-kat-river-rebellion/
- ^ "Reconstructing the Past – the Khoikhoi: Religion and Nature".
- ^ Mukumbira, Rodrick (June 1, 2006). "Islam in Namibia…Making an Impact". IslamOnline.net.
- ^ Schapera.I "The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots" (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul LTD, 1930), 88–89.
External links
