9 - The Cape Khoekhoe and Korana

Summary

Introduction

Schapera (1930: 44–50) divided the Khoekhoe into four ethnic divisions: the ‘Cape Hottentots’, ‘Eastern Cape Hottentots’, ‘Korana’ or ‘!Kora’, and ‘Naman’ (Nama). More recent archival research suggests that the Eastern and Cape ‘Hottentots’ might best be considered a single people, the Cape Khoekhoe, and that three subdivisions were distinguishable within this group in historical times: Western, Central, and Eastern Cape Khoekhoe. According to historian Richard Elphick (e.g., 1985: xvi-xvii), each of the three subdivisions occupied their own ecologically and socially distinct regions. Another major ethnic division, the Einiqua, is mentioned in some of the early sources (especially Wikar 1935 [1779]), but ethnographically, virtually nothing is known about them except that they lived along the River Orange, to the east of the Korana (see Figure 9.1).

The Korana are the historic inhabitants of the northeastern Cape Province. It is doubtful that they can still be said to exist as an ethnic group, as in the course of the last two centuries their descendants have slowly become absorbed into the Baster, Griqua, or ‘Coloured’ population of the area (see Chapter 10). Nevertheless, their raiding activities were recorded by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers, and their origins have become the subject of much debate among historians. More significantly, remnants of their culture survived in the memories of living individuals until at least the early part of the twentieth century.