ABSTRACT
The earliest San and Khoikhoi inhabitants o f the southernmost parts o f Africa lived as hunter-gatherers over several millennia prior to the arrival o f Bantu-speaking pastoralists and agriculturalists from the north during the first millennium A.D. (Christopher, 1984). The former groups were peripheralised to the least hospitable parts of the country such as the Karoo (derived from the Khoi word for ‘dry’) and the Drakensberg mountain range, and later to the Kalahari desert o f present-day Botswana and Namibia. The latter settled in southern Africa having begun to migrate from western, central and eastern parts of the continent as early as 200 B.C. Archealogical evidence1 indicates the presence o f well-established Bantu settlements in present-day South Africa before 500 A.D. (Davenport, 1987). The people that conquered and occupied the eastern part o f what today constitutes South Africa were primarily o f the Nguni grouping. Territorial defeat o f their Khoikhoi predecessors entailed a degree o f cultural transfer and intermixing (Van Warmelo, 1966). Many o f the clicks o f the Khoikhoi languages were adopted into the Nguni languages today known as isiZulu and isiXhosa. The Sotho groups occupied the interior highveld regions that now comprise the Free State, North West, Gauteng and the Northern Province.
