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9 - The Nguni outburst

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
J. D. Omer-Cooper
Edited by
John E. Flint
J. D. Omer-Cooper
Affiliation:
University of Otago
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Summary

THE AFRICAN PEOPLES OF SOUTH AFRICA, c. 1800

By the mid-eighteenth century the greater part of South Africa had been settled by Bantu-speaking peoples through a prolonged process which may have begun as early as the third century AD. The Bantu replaced or absorbed earlier populations of San hunters and gatherers, and in some areas Khoi pastoralists also, though some survived in rugged or poorly watered country, or in dependence on Bantu groups. From these peoples the South African Bantu speakers had acquired a number of distinctive click consonants and incorporated them in their languages.

Bantu settlement was densest in the south-east, along the eastern coastal corridor between the Drakensberg mountains and the sea where the relatively high rainfall and fertile soils provided the most congenial conditions for human settlement. By 1800 the Bantu had reached the Great Fish river and had begun to spread into the lands to the south-west, between the Fish and Sunday rivers, named Zuurveld by the Cape Dutch settlers.

On the high veld, west of the Drakensberg and east of the Kalahari, the Bantu occupied much of the area of the modern Transvaal, Botswana, Orange Free State and the less mountainous parts of Lesotho, but had not in general advanced as far south as the Orange river.

Two main linguistic and cultural groups had differentiated themselves among the South African Bantu. The Nguni-speaking peoples lived along the eastern coastal belt between the Drakensberg and the sea, while the Sotho- and Tswana-speaking peoples occupied the interior plateau. West of the Kalahari, the Ambo and Herero in South-West Africa (Namibia) belonged to a third linguistic grouping.

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The Cambridge History of Africa , pp. 319 - 352
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1977

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