Who the Gqunukhwebe are
The Dictionary of South African English defines the Gqunukhwebe as the members of a people of mixed Khoikhoi and Xhosa descent who lived in the 19th century in what is now the Eastern Cape, and says the name is an isiXhosa adaptation of the Khoikhoi Gonaqua. Wikipedia calls them “a chiefdom of the Xhosa Nation”. They are one of the groups the commission and other sources place among the amaXhosa chiefdoms; see our Tshawe and Rharhabe pages for the royal houses.
How the chiefdom is said to have formed
Wikipedia says it was created under King Tshiwo (1670 to 1702), mostly from Khoi chiefdoms, naming the Gonaqua, Hoengeniqua and Inqua, which had been displaced by colonists and absorbed into the Xhosa nation, and that Tshiwo chose Khwane kaLungane, a counsellor and warrior, to lead it, which began the Khwane dynasty. The Camissa Museum, a community museum, instead places the absorption of about ten independent Khoe clans “largely under the Gqunukhwebe” in the mid-18th century under King Phalo. The government Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims, in its determination on the amaRharhabe, says that when Rharhabe settled west of the Kei the land was already inhabited by other amaTshawe communities, including the amaGqunukhwebe, and that Rharhabe, as son of the reigning king, was the most senior of their leaders. The commission therefore treats them as an amaTshawe community, not as an absorbed Khoi group. These accounts do not agree, and we cannot tell you which is right. The dictionary also quotes writers from 1920 and 1970 describing them as the product of intermarriage between Xhosa and Khoikhoi; we do not reproduce their wording.
Pato and Kama
Wikipedia says Pato and Kama, both of the leading family, later split and settled different areas, that Kama became a Christian, which further distanced him from the royal family, and that the Cape Colony later recognised him as the true leader, possibly because of his conversion, which weakened Pato’s influence. J. B. Peires, quoted in the dictionary (1989), calls the Gqunukhwebe “the most important of the minor chiefdoms” and names Phatho and his junior brother Kama as its leaders. The dictionary also quotes W. Shaw’s diary for 6 October 1829, recording a meeting of the Governor with “Pato, Kama and Congo” of the “Amagonakwaybie Tribe”, and H. H. Dugmore (c. 1847), who says they extended along the coast from the mouth of the Fish River nearly to the Buffalo. The dictionary’s other quotations are by colonial-period writers using terms we do not repeat.
Land and the present
Wikipedia says the chiefdom once stretched from the Buffalo River to Zwartkops, lost most of its land after the Frontier Wars, with the land west of the Fish going to settlers and the land between the Fish and Keiskamma to the amaMfengu (see Mfengu), and that it is today effectively two entities with separate centres, one led by the Pato house and one by the Kama house. It names a descendant of Pato as next in line. We have not verified who leads either house today, and we have not read the 1988 Rhodes University thesis on the life of Kama that we found in a search, because its page could not be opened.
Izithakazelo and totem
We have not found a published text of the Gqunukhwebe praises or a confirmed totem, so we are printing neither. If you belong to the Gqunukhwebe and recite your praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
What we have not read
Wikipedia’s account rests on a 1853 Wesleyan Juvenile Offering article on Kama, Le Vaillant’s 1790 travels, a review by Roger Beck (1993) and a 2019 article by M. Bikitsha; we have read none of them. Peires’s The House of Phalo and The Dead Will Arise are the standard histories and we have read neither. We have found nothing in the chiefdom’s own words.
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: Gqunukhwebe
- Dictionary of South African English: Gqunukhwebe (dated quotations from 1829 to 1989)
- Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims: Determination on the amaRharhabe
- Camissa Museum: Cape indigenous Africans (no named author)
Do you belong to the Gqunukhwebe? Tell us your praises and what elders say about the history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.