That framework does not fit these societies. This is an accurate replacement. ~1050 words –>
The Khoikhoi and the San are the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa – the region’s First Nations. Their ancestors were living here for tens of thousands of years before Bantu-speaking farmers arrived from the north around 1,800 years ago, and long before European settlement. They are related peoples with distinct ways of life, and neither is organised around the clan-praise (izithakazelo) system used by the Nguni and Sotho-Tswana – so this page is structured differently from the others on the site.
A note on names
“San” and “Khoi” are both outsider terms, and both have been used with contempt in the past (“Bushmen”, “Hottentots”). Many communities today have reclaimed “San” and “Khoi”; others prefer their own names – ǃKung, Juǀʼhoansi, ǂKhomani, Nǁnǂe, Nama, Korana, Griqua, ǁXegwi, ǀXam. “Khoisan” (or Khoe-San) is a modern umbrella term for both, and also the name linguists give to the click-language groups of the region.
The San
The San were traditionally hunter-gatherers, moving in small, flexible bands of a few families across a recognised territory. San society was egalitarian: there were no chiefs or kings, decisions were reached by discussion, and meat from a large kill was shared by strict custom so that no one accumulated power through wealth. Kinship, naming systems and gift exchange (such as the Juǀʼhoansi hxaro network) held bands together across long distances.
There is no single “San people”. Groups documented in and near South Africa include the ǀXam of the central Karoo (whose language died out in the early twentieth century), the ǂKhomani of the southern Kalahari, the ǃKung / Juǀʼhoansi of the Namibia-Botswana borderland, the Khwe and Naro, and the ǁXegwi of the Mpumalanga escarpment (also now extinct as a language community).
San rock art – painted and engraved – is found at tens of thousands of sites across southern Africa and includes some of the oldest dated art in the world. Much of it is now understood to be connected with the trance dance and the work of healers who enter altered states to draw out sickness and travel to the spirit world. The great collection of ǀXam narratives and beliefs recorded by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in Cape Town in the 1870s is one of the most important archives of any indigenous people anywhere, and is the source of the national motto on South Africa’s coat of arms – ǃke e꞉ ǀxarra ǁke, “diverse people unite”.
The Khoikhoi
The Khoikhoi were pastoralists – herders of fat-tailed sheep and long-horned cattle – who adopted livestock around 2,000 years ago and spread through the western and southern parts of the region. Their society was more hierarchical than that of the San: people belonged to named clans grouped into larger chiefdoms under hereditary leaders, and cattle were both wealth and status.
Major Khoikhoi groups included:
- Nama (Namaqua) – of the Northern Cape and southern Namibia; the largest surviving Khoikhoi community and the only one whose language, Khoekhoegowab, is still widely spoken.
- Korana (ǃOra) – of the middle and lower Orange (Gariep) River.
- Griqua – communities of mixed Khoikhoi and other descent who formed distinct polities at Griquatown, Philippolis and later Kokstad under leaders such as Adam Kok and Andries Waterboer.
- The Cape Khoikhoi – the Goringhaiqua, Gorachouqua, Cochoqua, Gonaqua and others of the south-western Cape, whose societies were largely destroyed by land loss, war and the smallpox epidemic of 1713.
Colonial dispossession
From 1652 the Cape Khoikhoi lost their grazing land and herds to Dutch settlement within two generations; survivors were drawn into the colonial economy as herders and servants. The San were subjected to commando raids through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that amounted, in the Cape interior, to extermination. Across the region, Khoi and San people, languages and land rights were pushed to the margins – a history only partly acknowledged in South Africa today.
Language
The click languages of the Khoi and San are not one family but at least three unrelated ones – Khoe (which includes Nama), Tuu (which included ǀXam and ǁXegwi), and Kxʼa (which includes ǃKung). The clicks in isiXhosa, siSwati and isiZulu were borrowed from these languages through centuries of contact and intermarriage.
Khoi and San today
Contemporary Khoi and San communities are active in cultural revival, land claims and the protection of their heritage. Milestones include the ǂKhomani San land claim settled in 1999, the establishment of a South African San Council, and the San Code of Research Ethics (2017), the first such code drawn up by an indigenous people in Africa. The Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Act of 2019 gave a measure of official recognition to Khoi and San leadership for the first time, though many activists argue it does not go far enough and it has faced constitutional challenge.
Sources and further reading
- The Digital Bleek and Lloyd Collection (lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za) – the ǀXam and ǃKung archive.
- Nigel Penn, The Forgotten Frontier: Colonists and Khoisan on the Cape’s Northern Frontier in the 18th Century (2005).
- Richard B. Lee, The ǃKung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society (1979).
- Mohamed Adhikari, The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples (2010).
- J. D. Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave (2002) – on San rock art and the trance hypothesis.
Help us improve this page. If you are of Khoi or San descent – Nama, Korana, Griqua, ǂKhomani, ǃKung or another community – and want your people’s history and language represented accurately here, send us a WhatsApp on 065 138 8213 or use our contact page. We credit contributors who wish to be named.