Who the Gonaqua were
The Dictionary of South African English defines a Gonaqua as a member of a Khoikhoi people of what is now the Eastern Cape, absorbed by the end of the 18th century into the Xhosa polity, and also as a member of a people of mixed Khoikhoi and Xhosa descent. It says the name comes from Khoikhoi, that the first element, gona, is of unknown origin, and that the suffix -qua is a plural male suffix meaning “man” or “people”. Wikipedia’s short article says the name means “borderers”, without a source we could check for that meaning. The dictionary entry warns that it records historical usage that may be offensive; several of its quotations use words we do not repeat here.
What early writers said
The dictionary lists dated quotations. In 1776 F. Masson called them a people mixed with those the Dutch called “Caffers”, and a translation of Le Vaillant’s travels in 1790 called them a mixed people produced by the two nations. G. Barrington in 1810 said they were reduced to a very small number, and in 1827 G. Thompson described the tribe as extinct, with survivors merged into the Xhosa. W. Shaw in 1860 described them as a border tribe that had mixed heavily with the Xhosa, and J. Mackenzie in 1871 placed them between Dutch settlers and the Xhosa in 1737. Isaac Schapera, in The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa (1930), is quoted as saying the Gonaqua became the most powerful Khoikhoi group in the east by the mid-18th century. These are outsiders’ reports, written in a colonial period, and they disagree with each other about whether the Gonaqua had vanished.
The Gonaqua and the Gqunukhwebe
Wikipedia’s article on the Gqunukhwebe says the chiefdom was created under King Tshiwo (1670 to 1702) mostly from Khoi chiefdoms displaced by colonists, naming the Gonaqua, Hoengeniqua and Inqua, and that it was led by Khwane kaLungane and later by the Pato and Kama houses. The Camissa Museum, a community museum, instead puts the absorption of about ten independent Khoe clans of the Eastern Cape, “largely under the Gqunukhwebe”, in the mid-18th century under King Phalo, and calls Gqunukhwebe “an isiXhosa name for Gonaqua”. The two dates do not agree, and we do not know which is right. See our Gqunukhwebe page for what the government commission says.
Outside the Eastern Cape
Wikipedia’s Khoekhoe article lists the Gonaqua among the Eastern Cape Khoe (with the Hoengeyqua and Damasonqua) and says Kat River settlement people were predominantly Afrikaans-speaking !Gonakua; that last sentence carries a “citation needed” tag, so we do not build on it. See Inqua for another group on the Cape list.
What we have not read
We have not read the works behind these accounts: Schapera, Güldemann (2006), Raven-Hart (1971) or the Peires and Penn histories. We have found no account by Gonaqua descendants, and Wikipedia’s Gonaqua article is a short stub that relies on a 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, whose language about “outcasts” we do not repeat.
Izithakazelo and totem
We have found no recorded praises or totem for the Gonaqua, so we are printing none. If you trace your family to the Gonaqua and want its history recorded here, with your permission and credited to you, we would like to hear from you.
Sources and further reading
- Dictionary of South African English: Gonaqua
- Wikipedia: Gonaqua (stub; cites Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911)
- Wikipedia: Gqunukhwebe
- Camissa Museum: Cape indigenous Africans (no named author)
- Wikipedia: Khoekhoe (carries many tags)
Do you trace your family to the Gonaqua? Tell us the history you know and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.