Movement and settlement of the Khoisan speakers into Southern Africa

Movement and settlement of the Khoisan speakers into Southern Africa

Our knowledge of the migration and settlement of the Khoisan comes mostly from the work of archaeologists.

They moved into South Africa in the later Stone Age period, lived by hunting or fishing and gathering wild foods (Veldkos).

Our knowledge of these people comes from excavation and sturdy of their settlements - archaeology, linguistics and anthropology.

Their settlement, language and culture shows that they settled in the desert or the dry margins of the Kalahari or Namib desert. But environmental forces and needs influenced their movement to other areas in different directions.

Those Khoikhoi people at the Cape could also call themselves Khoi, while other Khoi people in the north called themselves - Khoi, Khwe, Kxoe, among other names.

The earliest skeletons of modem humans found in Africa- South of the Sahara are of Khoisanoid racial type.

The Khoisan bunter- gatherer societies may have lived as far as Natal or in East and Central Africa.

They must have been living along the highlands between lakes Tanganyika and Malawi (across what is now the Tanzania- Zambia border).

Disease infested areas, drought, the changing climate and others might have led to their settlement in South Africa.

Many linguistics have shown that the Khoisan words are originally from the central Sudanese language group of Easter Africa. And that this was around B.C. 500. Linguistics E.O. Westphal has shown that all Khoi herders’ languages, as f as the Cape of Good Hope, were derived from the Khoe (Tshu-Khwe) languages.

The San occupied the highland areas of the Brakenstein, Camideboo, Winterberg and the Drakensburg ranges.

They were also found along the Orange River and to the north of it. They had also settled at the Vaal, Kei or Kalaha desert and the Tugela river valleys to the east. The rock paintings are the evidence of their early settlement and culture among them.

Presently only a handful of the San live in the Republic of South Africa, (Ciskei, Transkei, Kimberly and Cape Colony).

The rest about 10-15,000 live in Botswana, Swaziland and Namibia.

The San are believed by historians to be the earliest inhabitants of South Africa. However Portuguese and Dutch recon of early inhabitants of the cape failed to draw any distinction between the San and the Khoikhoi,

The Khoikhoi settled in the land from the Atlantic coast to the Buffalo coast in the Indian Ocean and settled little w. inland of the coast was without fresh water and pastures. They were not found on the interior plateau south of the Orange River.

By the early 18th century, the Khoikhoi were retreating northwards before the Boer advance.

By 1652, they were about 200,000 Khoikhoi at the Cape (according to records of the early Dutch settlers). Diseases and other hazards forced them to withdraw north, as about 20.000 remained at the Cape by 1805.

The Khoisan herders and hunter - gatherers often lived together. The Khoisan herders continued to hunt and settle in different areas of South Africa until the 19th century - when they lost their livestock and existence to drought, disease and conflict with incoming Bantu speakers and Europeans.

Some Khoisan - speaking people joined the new Bantu speakers around the upper Zambezi. Others may have been forced to pay tribute to their farming neighbors by hunting or herding for them.

Other Khoisan continued south of the Zambezi and adopted elements of the early Iron Age culture.