ABSTRACT
Evidence on Nguni history comes from four main sources: contemporary documents, oral tradition, archaeological excavations, and linguistic studies. The Nguni are a people who can understand one another’s speech, though there are dialect differences among them as marked as between Kent and Cumberland. The Santo Thome was wrecked in 1589 on the Mozambique coast north of the Nguni area, but the chronicler who wrote of their journey has one comment on the political structure of the people to the south which is of great interest. Genealogies of Nguni chiefs were collected before 1821, and there have been a number of studies of genealogy and tradition since then. The Nguni and Khoikhoi languages are not genetically related as the Bantu languages are, but Nguni has a number of sounds, including three clicks, as well as many words which have come from Khoikhoi.
