Xhosa

The Xhosa are one of the great people of South Africa. They are concentrated in the southeast part of the country, but are found everywhere in South Africa. A highly mobile people, the Xhosa have a history that dates back to antiquity in the upper reaches of the Great Lakes of Africa. However, over the past 700 years, they have lived in the southern part of Africa, being one of the African people, alongside the San, who have ventured the farthest to the south from the Great North.

Like many other African groups, the Xhosa have several clans that speak the same language and trace their origins to the legendary uXhosa. The main clans are Thembu, Xesibe, Bomvana, Bhaca, Mfengu, Mpondo, and Mpondomise. It is believed that the name Xhosa can be translated into the language of the Khoi-Khoi or San to mean “fierce.” This is probably derived from the fact that the Xhosa met those earlier people in warfare when they arrived in the south. However, they soon learned to live in proximity with each other, but the name Xhosa, with its meaning of anger or fierce, stuck in the Khoi and San's lexicon.

The nearly 10 million Xhosa people speak the second most popular language in the country after Zulu, a closely related language. Both the Xhosa and the Zulu are part of the Great Nguni Migration that moved south over a period of 300 to 400 years beginning in the 14th century. Because the people had made the great trek southward, they had brought with them many of the values they had learned in the north, as well as the ones they had gained in their migration. There are certain values and customs that assisted the Xhosa in their social interactions that must be attributed to their ideas about ethics and morality.

The Xhosa society learned from all of their neighbors, and also gave their neighbors information and practices of organization and warfare. In the first instance, the Xhosa borrowed words and terminology from the San people, intermarried with them, and also borrowed the click consonants so characteristic of the San. The whites who later invaded the country in the 1700s sought to subdue both the San and Xhosa and were met with intermittent battles that lasted for decades.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Xhosa felt the pressure of the Mfecane, the scattering of people that had been caused by wars among the Nguni and other groups to the north and east. They experienced the millennialist response to the endangering of their cattle by a widespread lung disease blamed on the whites in 1856. There was also pressure on the Xhosa created by the loss of their territory to white farmers and the further loss of their independence as a people.

One of the common features of the Xhosa culture is its language that has 15 click sounds borrowed from the Khoisan languages. The basic clicks of isiXbosa, the term for the language, are a dental click, written with a “c”; an alveolar click, written with “q”; and a lateral click, written with “x,” as in Xhosa.

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