Xhosa

Clicks and Cows in the Eastern Cape - The Xhosa

Xhosa! Hold your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just behind your incisor teeth, then slide it forward and down making an almost sibilant clicking sound, then add the ‘hosa. This should produce a fair pronunciation of the name of this nation hailing from South Africa's Eastern Cape. Difficult? Not as difficult as the English colonists found it to subdue their neighbours when they arrived in the vicinity of the ‘frontier' in the nineteenth century.

The Xhosa had migrated into, and colonised, the area today known as the Eastern Cape perhaps as early as the late sixteenth century and when the British made a concerted attempt to colonise the area east of Port Elizabeth from 1820 onwards they found a mosaic of generally independent tribal clusters each recognising its own chief. Nonetheless, a culture of great leaders such as Sandile and Maqoma meant that the British fought several bloody ‘Frontier Wars' with the Xhosa in the 1840s, 1850s and 1870s. These petered out in the late 1870s with Sandile killed and Mqoma imprisoned, and later dying on Robben Island, where political prisoners, and much later another prominent Xhosa - Nelson Mandela - continued to be incarcerated until relatively recently. Xhosa, like Zulu, has an Nguni root and the two languages share many similarities, Xhosa however, having had an interface not just with the British, but with the linguistically unique Khoi and San peoples as well, inherited a number of click sounds into their dialect (think Miriam Makeba's ‘The Click Song'). The clicks don't come easily to clumsy western tongues and if you fall into that demographic you'd be forgiven for not being able to pronounce ‘Emgcwe' or ‘Qoqodala' at first attempt.

The British eventually succeeded in their conquest of course, and the Xhosa increasingly joined the ranks of migrant labourers, at first on farms in the Eastern Cape and then further afield at the diamond and gold fields. Much the same pattern remains today with the former Xhosa ‘homelands' of Ciskei and Transkei among the poorest and least developed regions of the country and offering very little employment for its people, the men of whom seek work in the country's urban and industrial centres. Nonetheless the area remains the stronghold of the nation with traditional customs and culture both well entrenched and very visible.

Persistent customs

Perhaps the most obvious and characteristic of these traditions is that of the abakhwetha - the male initiates who undergo circumcision as a rite of passage. Ranging in age from their early to late teens these boys are secluded in makeshift shelters away from their villages where they abstain from alcohol, tobacco, meat, sour milk and sexual intercourse. During this period they smear white clay on their faces and other parts of their bodies and practise the art of stick fighting. At the end of their seclusion and having washed the clay from their bodies (to be replaced by butter or fat) they are presented with sticks, blackened in the fire, symbolising peace and the new ability to settle disputes through discussion rather than force. They are now eligible to marry, a practice that was traditionally fastidious in seeking a wife outside of the clans of all four grandparents, this serving to help in allying various clans, and including another traditional practice that to this day is continued both by the Xhosa and other cultures. Lobola refers to the exchange of cattle from the bridegroom and his family to that of the bride. Erroneously believed by early missionaries to be a ‘bride price' this practice compensated the bride's family for the loss of her labour and also meant that should a bride be mistreated in her strange new home she could return to her parents while her erstwhile husband forfeited the cattle. Today, lobola often includes cash as well as cattle, and while some couples might rue the loss of wealth that might have gone towards a house, others view it with a measure of pride.

Specialist historical safari

andBEYOND's Kwandwe Private Game Reserve - named for the Xhosa word for Blue Crane, indwe - is situated in the Eastern Cape. As an additional attraction to game-drives on its 16000 hectares of restored land, it also features a specialist safari with resident historian, Alan Weyers that delves into the cultures of the Xhosa, Khoi, San, Dutch and British and the contact and conflict between them during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The presence of the Xhosa and, at some times of the year, the makeshift shelters of the abakhweta are obvious in the areas around Kwandwe and of course at Kwandwe itself, where former farm workers have been employed and upskilled in various new positions in the ecotourism industry. A variety of projects - such as literacy and conservation lessons - are conducted in the local Xhosa communities.

-Chris Roche-

Posted: Other by CC Africa, Date: 21 November 2006