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55-670: The first people to permanently settle at this place, then known under its Khoikhoi name ǃAutsawises , were a group of Oorlam herder clans from the Cape Province , driven across the Orange River by encroaching European settlers and the law enforcement of the Dutch East India Company . They arrived in the area of Berseba in 1812. In 1850 their patriarch Paul Goliath established himself as independent leader of this community that subsequently became known as

110-722: A Moravian Brother from Herrnhut , Saxony, now Germany, founded Genadendal in 1738, which was the first mission station in southern Africa, among the Khoe-speaking peoples in Baviaanskloof in the Riviersonderend Mountains . The colonial designation of "Baasters" came to refer to any clans that had European ancestry in some part and adopted certain Western cultural traits. Though these were later known as Griqua (Xirikua or Griekwa) they were known at

165-468: A "Khoekhoe" people. The broad ethnic designation of "Khoekhoen", meaning the peoples originally part of a pastoral culture and language group to be found across Southern Africa, is thought to refer to a population originating in the northern area of modern Botswana . This culture steadily spread southward, eventually reaching the Cape approximately 2,000 years ago. "Khoekhoe" groups include ǀAwakhoen to

220-566: A large and successful region of the Cape that subsisted more or less autonomously. The people were predominantly Afrikaans-speaking !Gonakua, but the settlement also began to attract other diverse groups. Khoekua were known at the time for being very good marksmen, and were often invaluable allies of the Cape Colony in its frontier wars with the neighbouring Xhosa politics. In the Seventh Frontier War (1846–1847) against

275-560: A secondary school, the Ecumenical Community School , which was declared "unfit to serve as an educational institution" in 2010 and has since been abandoned. Berseba is connected by road to Tses (MR98), Bethanie (D3901 and D3905), Asab (D3903), Helmeringhausen (D554) and Keetmanshoop (D531), as well as to the Brukkaros tourist site (D3904). Berseba is governed by a village council that has five seats. In

330-709: Is a term that was historically used by Europeans to refer to the Khoekhoe , the indigenous nomadic pastoralists in South Africa . Use of the term Hottentot is now considered offensive, the preferred name for the non Bantu speaking indigenous people of the Western Cape area being Khoekhoe (formerly Khoikhoi ). Hottentot originated among the "old Dutch" settlers of the Dutch Cape Colony run by United East India Company ( VOC ), who arrived in

385-529: Is actually a kare or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe -speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the Griqua , Gona, Nama , Khoemana and Damara nations. The Khoekhoe were once known as Hottentots , a term now considered offensive. While the presence of Khoekhoe in Southern Africa predates

440-459: Is also believed to be the creator and the guardian of health, while ǁGaunab is primarily an evil being, who causes sickness or death. Many Khoe-speakers have converted to Christianity and Nama Muslims make up a large percentage of Namibia's Muslims. UNESCO has recognised Khoe-speaking culture through its inscription of the Richtersveld as a World Heritage Site . This important area is

495-870: Is related to certain dialects spoken by foraging San peoples of the Kalahari , such as the Khwe and Tshwa , forming the Khoe language family. Khoekhoe subdivisions today are the Nama people of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa (with numerous clans), the Damara of Namibia, the Orana clans of South Africa (such as Nama or Ngqosini), the Khoemana or Griqua nation of South Africa, and the Gqunukhwebe or Gona clans which fall under

550-484: Is that the name derived from an overheard term in chants accompanying Khoikhoi or San dances, but seventeenth-century transcriptions of such chants offer no conclusive evidence for this. An early Anglicisation of the term is recorded as hodmandod in the years around 1700. The reduced Afrikaans /Dutch form hotnot has also been borrowed into South African English as a derogatory term for black people, including Cape Coloureds . In seventeenth-century Dutch, Hottentot

605-427: Is thought to have entered the region in the 3rd century AD, pushing pastoralists into the Western areas. The example of the close relation between the ǃUriǁ'aes (High clan), a cattle-keeping population, and the !Uriǁ'aeǀ'ona (High clan children), a more-or-less sedentary forager population (also known as "Strandlopers"), both occupying the area of ǁHuiǃgaeb , shows that the strict distinction between these two lifestyles

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660-402: Is unwarranted, as well as the ethnic categories that are derived. Foraging peoples who ideologically value non-accumulation as a social value system would be distinct, however, but the distinctions among "Khoekhoe pastoralists", "San hunter-gatherers" and "Bantu agriculturalists" do not hold up to scrutiny, and appear to be historical reductionism . Portuguese explorers and merchants are

715-613: The 2004 local authority elections SWAPO gained three council seats and obtained 260 votes. One seat each was obtained by the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) and the Congress of Democrats (CoD) with 99 and 91 votes, respectively. In the 2010 local authority election Berseba was one of a few local authorities in Namibia where an opposition party obtained more votes for the village council than SWAPO when

770-552: The BBFC raised the film's age rating from U to PG due to this instance of "discriminatory language". The name of Reiner Knizia 's game " Schotten-Totten " is a portmanteau of the German words "Schotten" ( Scottish people ) and "Hottentotten" (Hottentots). The Sheakspearers Sister 1992 song "I Don't Care" from the album "Hormonally Yours" includes the lines: "In a boreolic iceberg came Victoria Queen Victoria sitting shocked upon on

825-670: The Bantu expansion , according to a scientific theory based mainly on linguistic evidence, it is not clear when, possibly in the Late Stone Age , the Khoekhoe began inhabiting the areas where the first contact with Europeans occurred. At that time, in the 17th century, the Khoekhoe maintained large herds of Nguni cattle in the Cape region . They mostly gave up nomadic pastoralism in the 19th to 20th century. Their Khoekhoe language

880-615: The Nama or Namaqua and they have among them 11 formal clans: Among the Namaqua are also the Oorlams who are a southern Khoekhoe people of mixed-race ancestry that trekked northwards over the Orange River and where absorbed into the greater Nama identity. The Oorlams themselves are made up of five smaller clans: These Namaqua inhabit the Great Namaqualand region of Namibia . There are also minor Namaqua clans that inhabit

935-518: The "Berseba Oorlam" ( Khoekhoe : ǀHai-ǀkhaua ). The foundation of Berseba is recorded on 17 October 1850 when Rhenish Missionary Samuel Hahn founded the missionary station and gave it a biblically inspired name. In 1857 a church was built. Since the establishment of the chieftainship of the Berseba Oorlam it has been held by the Goliath and Isaak clans who often were in dispute about

990-628: The Bantu was noted as early as 1684 by the French anthropologist François Bernier . The idea that Hottentot referred strictly to the non-Bantu peoples of southern Africa was well embedded in colonial scholarly thought by the end of the eighteenth century. The main meaning of Hottentot as an ethnic term in the 19th and the 20th centuries has therefore been to denote the Khoikhoi people specifically. However, Hottentot also continued to be used through

1045-643: The DTA defeated SWAPO 221 votes to 200. No other party participated in the election for the Berseba Village Council. The 2015 local authority election was narrowly won by SWAPO party which gained three seats (266 votes). The DTA finished second and gained the remaining two seats (200 votes). In the 2020 local authority election the Landless People's Movement (LPM, a new party registered in 2018) won with 278 votes and gained two seats. SWAPO

1100-536: The Dutch colonial administration of the time. The word is also used in the common names of a wide variety of plants and animals, such as the Africanis dogs sometimes called "Hottentot hunting dogs", the fish Pachymetopon blochii , frequently simply called hottentots , Carpobrotus edulis , commonly known as a "hottentot-fig", and Trachyandra , commonly known as "hottentot cabbage". It has also given rise to

1155-727: The European, colonial image of "the Hottentot" from the seventeenth century onwards bore little relation to any realities of the Khoisan in Africa, and that this image fed into the usage of hottentot as a generalised derogatory term. Correspondingly, the word is "sometimes used as ugly slang for a black person". Use of the derived term hotnot was explicitly proscribed in South Africa by 2008. Accordingly, much recent scholarship on

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1210-591: The Gcaleka, the Khoekua gunmen from Kat River distinguished themselves under their leader Andries Botha in the assault on the " Amatola fastnesses". (The young John Molteno , later Prime Minister, led a mixed commando in the assault, and later praised the Khoekua as having more bravery and initiative than most of his white soldiers.) However, harsh laws were still implemented in the Eastern Cape, to encourage

1265-540: The Khoekhoe form of government. Goringhaiqua: The Goringhaiqua are a single tribal authority made from the two houses of the Goringhaikona and Gorachouqua. A commissioned Grammar and Dictionary of the Zulu Language , published in 1859, put forward the idea of an origin from Egypt that appears to have been popular at the time. The reasoning for this included the (supposed) distinctive Caucasian elements of

1320-647: The Khoekhoe's appearance, a "wont to worship the moon'", an apparent similarity to the antiquities of Old Egypt, and a "very different language" to their neighbours. The Grammar says that "the best philologists of the present day ... find marked resemblances between the two". [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). " Hottentots ". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. Hottentot (racial term) Hottentot (British and South African English / ˈ h ɒ t ən ˌ t ɒ t / HOT -ən- TOT )

1375-478: The Khoena political rights to avert future racial discontent. Attorney General William Porter was famously quoted as saying that he "would rather meet the Hottentot at the hustings, voting for his representative, than meet him in the wilds with his gun upon his shoulder". Thus, the government enacted the Cape franchise in 1853, which decreed that all male citizens meeting a low property test, regardless of colour, had

1430-636: The Khoena to leave their lands in the Kat River region and to work as labourers on white farms. The growing resentment exploded in 1850. When the Xhosa rose against the Cape Government , large numbers Khoeǀ'ona joined the Xhosa rebels for the first time. After the defeat of the rebellion and the granting of representative government to the Cape Colony in 1853, the new Cape Government endeavoured to grant

1485-690: The Little Namaqualand regions south of the Orange River in north western South Africa . The southern Khoekhoe peoples (Sometimes incorrectly called the Cape Khoe due to the importance of the Cape of Good Hope) inhabit the Western Cape and Eastern Cape Provinces in the south western coastal regions of South Africa . They are divided into four subgroups: Eastern Cape Khoe , Central Cape Khoe , Western Cape Khoe and Peninsular Cape Khoe . Each of these subgroups are further divided into nations and subtribes who constitute an integral part of

1540-650: The Xhosa-speaking polities. The Xirikua clans (Griqua) developed their own ethnic identity in the 19th century and settled in Griqualand West. Later, they formed another independent state in Kwazulu Natal named Griqualand East , losing their independence barely a decade later to the British. They are related to the same kinds of clan formations as Rehoboth Basters , who could also be considered

1595-597: The ancestors of the !Ora nation of today. In the late 16th century, Portuguese, French, Danish, Dutch and English but mainly Portuguese ships regularly continued to stop over in Table Bay en route to the Indies. They traded tobacco, copper and iron with the Khoekhoe -speaking clans of the region, in exchange for fresh meat. Local population dropped after smallpox contagion was spread through European activity. The Khoe-speaking clans suffered high mortality as immunity to

1650-473: The author refers to "Hottentots" as a "subfamily of the Khoisan linguistic family" who "became detribalized in contact with Dutch settlers in 1652, mixing with the latter and with slaves brought by them from Indonesia to form the hybrid population known today as the Cape Coloured ." The term Hottentot remained in use as a technical ethnic term in anthropological and historiographical literature into

1705-412: The blanket designation of "coloured" (ignoring any nuances of the Khoekhoe peoples' specific cultures or subgroups) contributed to an erasure of Khoekhoe identity and culture, one which modern Khoekhoe people are still working to undo. Apartheid ended in 1994 and so too did the "Coloured" designation. After apartheid, Khoekhoe activists have worked to restore their lost culture, and affirm their ties to

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1760-638: The borders of the Cape Colony. In the face of gradual Boer expansion and then large-scale Boer migrations away from British rule at the Cape, Jonker Afrikaner brought his people into Namaqualand by the mid-19th century, becoming a formidable force for Oorlam domination over the Nama and against the Bantu-speaking Hereros for a period. By the early 1800s, the remaining Khoe-speakers of the Cape Colony suffered from restricted civil rights and discriminatory laws on land ownership. With this pretext,

1815-600: The disease was rare. This increased, as military conflict with the intensification of the colonial expansion of the United East India Company that began to enclose traditional grazing land for farms. Over the following century, the Khoe-speaking peoples were steadily driven off their land, resulting in numerous northwards migrations, and the reformulation of many nations and clans, as well as the dissolution of many traditional structures. According to professors Robert K. Hitchcock and Wayne A. Babchuk, "During

1870-479: The early phases of European colonization, tens of thousands of Khoekhoe and San peoples lost their lives as a result of genocide, murder, physical mistreatment, and disease." During an investigation into "bushman hunting" parties and genocidal raids on the San, Louis Anthing commented: "I find now that the transactions are more extensive than did at first appear. I think it not unlikely that we shall find that almost all

1925-472: The eighteenth century onwards, the term hottentot was also a term of abuse without a specific ethnic sense, comparable to barbarian or cannibal . According to James Boswell's The Life of Johnson , Samuel Johnson was parodied in Lord Chesterfield's Letters of 1737 as "a respectable Hottentot". In its ethnic sense, Hottentot had developed its connotations of savagery and primitivism by

1980-571: The eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in a wider sense, to include all of the people now usually referred to with the modern term Khoisan (not only the Khoikhoi, but also the San people , hunter-gatherer populations from the interior of southern Africa who had not been known to the seventeenth-century settlers, once often referred to as Bosjesmannen in Dutch and Bushmen in English). In George Murdock 's Atlas of World Cultures (1981),

2035-510: The farmers living near this border are implicated in similar acts ... At present I have only heard of coloured farmers (known as Bastards) as being mixed up with these matters." "Khoekhoe" social organisation was thus profoundly damaged by the colonial expansion and land seizure from the late 17th century onwards. As social structures broke down, many Khoekhoen settled on farms and became bondsmen (bondservants, serfs) or farm workers; others were incorporated into clans that persisted. Georg Schmidt,

2090-523: The first to record their contacts, in the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. The ongoing encounters were often violent. In 1510, at the Battle of Salt River , Francisco de Almeida and fifty of his men were killed and his party was defeated by ox-mounted !Uriǁ'aekua ("Goringhaiqua" in Dutch approximate spelling), which was one of the so-called Khoekhoe clans of the area that also included the !Uriǁ'aeǀ'ona ("Goringhaicona", also known as "Strandlopers"), said to be

2145-730: The history of colonial attitudes to the Khoisan or on the European trope of "the Hottentot" puts the term Hottentot in scare quotes . In its original role of ethnic designator, the term Hottentot was included into a variety of derived terms, such as the Hottentot Corps , the first Coloured unit to be formed in the South African army, originally called the Corps Bastaard Hottentoten ( Dutch ; in English: "Corps Bastard Hottentots"), organised in 1781 by

2200-507: The land. Khoekhoe and Khoisan groups have brought cases to court demanding restitution for 'cultural genocide and discrimination against the Khoisan nation’, as well as land rights and the return of Khoesan corpses from European museums. The religious mythology of the Khoe-speaking cultures gives special significance to the Moon , which may have been viewed as the physical manifestation of a supreme being associated with heaven. Thiǁoab (Tsui'goab)

2255-519: The late 18th century, Oorlam communities migrated from the Cape Colony north to Namaqualand . They settled places earlier occupied by the Nama. They came partly to escape Dutch colonial conscription, partly to raid and trade, and partly to obtain herding lands. Some of these emigrant Oorlams (including the band led by the outlaw Jager Afrikaner and his son Jonker Afrikaner in the Transgariep ) retained links to Oorlam communities in or close to

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2310-473: The late 1980s. The 1996 edition of the Dictionary of South African English merely says that "the word 'Hottentot' is seen by some as offensive and Khoikhoi is sometimes substituted as a name for the people, particularly in scholarly contexts". Yet, by the 1980s, because of the racist connotations discussed below, it was increasingly seen as too derogatory and offensive to be used in an ethnic sense. From

2365-527: The nation address. Khoekhoe were classified as "Coloured" under Apartheid. While this meant that they were offered a few privileges not given to the population deemed "black" (such as not having to carry a passbook), they were still subject to discrimination, segregation, and other forms of oppression. This included the forced relocation caused by the Group Areas Act , which broke up families and communities. The destruction of historical communities and

2420-482: The only place where transhumance practices associated with the culture continue to any great extent. The International Astronomical Union named the primary component of the binary star Mu¹ Scorpii after the traditional Khoekhoe language name Xami di mûra ('eyes of the lion'). The classification of Khoekhoe peoples can be broken down roughly into two groupings: Northern Khoekhoe & Southern Khoekhoe ( Cape Khoe ) . The Northern Khoekhoe are referred to as

2475-519: The powerful Commissioner General of the Eastern Districts, Andries Stockenstrom , facilitated the creation of the "Kat River" Khoe settlement near the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. The more cynical motive was probably to create a buffer-zone on the Cape's frontier, but the extensive fertile land in the region allowed people to own their land and build communities in peace. The settlements thrived and expanded, and Kat River quickly became

2530-467: The region in the 1650s, and it entered English usage from Dutch in the seventeenth century. However, no definitive Dutch etymology for the term is known. A widely claimed etymology is from a supposed Dutch expression equivalent to "stammerer, stutterer", applied to the Khoikhoi on account of the distinctive click consonants in their languages . There is, however, no earlier attestation of a word hottentot to support this theory. An alternative possibility

2585-640: The right to vote and to seek election in Parliament. However, this non-racial principle was eroded in the late 1880s by a literacy test, and later abolished by the Apartheid Government. From 1904 to 1907, the Germans took up arms against the Khoekhoe group living in what was then German South-West Africa , along with the Herero . Over 10,000 Nama, more than half of the total Nama population at

2640-442: The scientific name for one genus of scorpion , Hottentotta , and may be the origin of the epithet tottum in the botanical name Leucospermum tottum . The word is still used as part of a tongue-twister in modern Dutch, "Hottentottententententoonstelling", meaning a "Hottentot tent exhibition". In the 1964 film Mary Poppins , Admiral Boom mistakes the rooftop-dancing chimney sweeps for an attack by "Hottentots". In 2024,

2695-478: The seventeenth century; colonial depictions of the Hottentots (Khoikhoi) in the seventeenth to eighteenth century were characterized by savagery, often suggestive of cannibalism or the consumption of raw flesh, physiological features such as steatopygia and elongated labia perceived as primitive or "simian" and a perception of the click sounds in the Khoikhoi languages as "bestial". Thus, it can be said that

2750-558: The succession. In the 1960s the two clans split over the leadership issue and only reunited in April 2010. Today, Kaptein Johannes Isaak is the traditional leader of the ǀHai-ǀkhaua. The first diamond in Namibia was found in this area in 1898, and oil explorations were conducted in 1900 and 1929, though neither led to substantial industrial development. The settlement is riddled with poverty, substance abuse, and crime. It features

2805-706: The time as " Basters " and in some instances are still so called, e. g., the Bosluis Basters of the Richtersveld and the Baster community of Rehoboth, Namibia , mentioned above. Arguably responding to the influence of missionaries, the states of Griqualand West and Griqualand East were established by the Kok dynasty; these were later absorbed into the Cape Colony of the British Empire . Beginning in

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2860-508: The time, may have died in the conflict. This was the single greatest massacre ever witnessed by the Khoekhoe people. As native African people, Khoekhoe and other dark-skinned, indigenous groups were oppressed and subjugated under the white-supremacist Apartheid regime. In particular, some consider Khoekhoe and related ethnic groups to have been some of the most heavily marginalized groups during Apartheid's reign, as referenced by previous South African president Jacob Zuma in his 2012 state of

2915-461: The west, and ǀKx'abakhoena of South and mid-South Africa, and the Eastern Cape. Both of these terms mean "Red People", and are equivalent to the IsiXhosa term "amaqaba". Husbandry of sheep, goats and cattle grazing in fertile valleys across the region provided a stable, balanced diet, and allowed these lifestyles to spread, with larger groups forming in a region previously occupied by the subsistence foragers . Ntu-speaking agriculturalist culture

2970-403: Was at times used to denote all black people (synonymously with Kaffir , which was at times likewise used for Cape Coloureds and Khoisans), but at least some speakers used the term Hottentot specifically for what they thought of as a race distinct from the supposedly darker-skinned people referred to as Kaffirs . This distinction between the non-Bantu "Cape Blacks" or " Cape Coloureds " and

3025-480: Was the runner-up with 211 votes and also two sets. The remaining council seat went to the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM, the new name of the DTA since 2017) with 104 votes. Khoikhoi Khoekhoe ( /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ KOY-koy ) (or Khoikhoi in former orthography) are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of South Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "Foragers") peoples. The designation "Khoekhoe"

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