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The Khoikhoi ("men of men"^[1]) or Khoi, in standardised Khoekhoe/Nama orthography spelled Khoekhoe, are a historical division of the Khoisan ethnic group of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (or San, as the Khoikhoi called them). They had lived in southern Africa since the 5th century AD^[2] and, at the time of the arrival of white settlers in 1652, practised extensive pastoral agriculture in the Cape region.

Name

The name Khoikhoi means 'men of men'. They were traditionally—and are still occasionally in colloquial language—known to white colonists as the Hottentots, a name that is currently generally considered offensive (e.g. by the Oxford Dictionary of South African English). The word "hottentot" meant "stutterer" in the colonists' northern dialect of Dutch, although some Dutch use the verb stotteren to describe the clicking sounds (klik being the normal onomatopoeia, parallel to English) typically used in the Khoisan languages. The word lives on, however, in the names of several African animal and plant species, such as the Hottentot Fig or Ice Plant (Carpobrotus edulis).

Author and academic Alison Lurie wrote a literary criticism of L. Frank Baum for his portrayal of a race of goat-like people called the "Tottenhot" in his book Rinkitink in Oz (written 1905, published 1916). The word "Hottentot", without any shift of syllables, is used in the song "If I Were King of the Forest" in the 1939 movie adaptation of Baum's most famous work, The Wizard of Oz.^[3]

History

The Khoikhoi were originally part of a pastoral culture and language group found across Southern Africa. Originated in the northern area of modern Botswana, the ethnic group steadily migrated south, reaching the Cape approximately 2,000 years ago. Khoikhoi subgroups include the Korana of mid-South Africa, the Namaqua to the west, and the Khoikhoi in the south. Husbandry of sheep, goats and cattle provided a stable, balanced diet and allowed the related Khoikhoi peoples to live in larger groups than the region's original inhabitants the San. Herds grazed in fertile valleys across the region until the 3rd century AD when the advancing Bantu encroached into their traditional homeland. The Khoikhoi were forced into a long retreat into more arid areas.

Migratory Khoi bands living around what is today Cape Town, South Africa intermarried with San. However the two groups remained culturally distinct as the Khoikhoi continued to graze livestock and the San subsisted as hunter-gatherers. The Khoi initially came into contact with European explorers and merchants in approximately AD 1500. The ongoing encounters were often violent, although the British made some attempt to develop more amiable relationships. Local population dropped when the Khoi were exposed to smallpox by Europeans. Active warfare between the groups flared when the Dutch East India Company enclosed traditional grazing land for farms. Over the following century the Khoi were steadily driven off their land, which effectively ended traditional Khoikhoi life.

Khoikhoi social organisation was profoundly damaged and, in the end, destroyed by white colonial expansion and land seizure from the late 17th century onwards. As social structures broke down, some Khoikhoi people settled on farms and became bondsmen or farmworkers; others were incorporated into existing clan and family groups of the Xhosa people.

In the 18th and 19th century, Khokhoi women were publicly displayed in Europe because of their presumed sexual powers. The most notable of these was Saartjie Baartman, the so-called "Hottentot Venus". In his book Regular Gradations of Man 1799, Dr. Charles White, a historical race scientist, claimed blacks were halfway between whites and apes in the great chain of being. He used the example of Khokhoi women to show the supposedly primal sexuality of blacks. White claimed Hottentot women had overdeveloped breasts, showing a more animal nature; elongated labia minora, which could hang down to as many as four inches outside the vulva; and steatopygia, the tendency to develop large deposits of fat on the buttocks, in a specific pattern of adiposity not seen in Europeans.

Culture

The religious mythology of the Khoikhoi gives special significance to the moon, which may have been viewed as the physical manifestation of a supreme being associated with heaven. Tsui'goab is also believed to be the the creator and the guardian of health, while Gunab is primarily an evil being, who causes sickness or death.^[4] Recently, many Khoikhoi in Namibia have converted to Islam and make up the largest group among Namibia's Muslim community.^[5]

Publications

• P. Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope (London, 1731-38);
• A. Sparman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope (Perth, 1786);
• Sir John Barrow, Travels into the Interior of South Africa (London, 1801);
• Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa; or Hottentot Fables and Tales (London, 1864);
• Emil Holub, Seven Years in South Africa (English translation, Boston, 1881);
• G. W. Stow, Native Races of South Africa (New York, 1905);
• A. R. Colquhoun, Africander Land (New York, 1906);
• L. Schultze, Aus Namaland und Kalahari (Jena, 1907);
• Meinhof, Die Sprachen der Hamiten (Hamburg, 1912);
• Richard Elphick, Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa (London, 1977)

See also

• Herero and Namaqua Genocide
• Namaqua
• Khoikhoi mythology
• History of South Africa

References

External links

• Cultural Contact in Southern Africa by Anne Good for the Women in World History website
• An article on the history of the Khoikhoi
• The genetic heritage of one Afrikaner] family]