Khoemana

Khoemana, also called Korana or Griqua, is the South Khoekhoe tongue once spoken along the southern Cape coast and across the Karoo, where clans grazed Nguni cattle and sheep when Dutch ships began calling at Table Bay.

The Dutch East India Company founded its Cape station in 1652; over the following century the Cape Khoekhoe lost grazing land in wars and epidemics and were drawn into the colonial frontier. Survivors merged with settlers, freed slaves, San and Tswana into mounted, gun-using communities including the Korana and Griqua.

The name Griqua is first recorded in 1730; under leaders such as Adam Kok they trekked to the Orange and Vaal rivers, where Klaarwater, later Griquatown, became their gathering place. In the 1820s and 1830s Korana and Griqua commandos raided the highveld; a Griqua commando was destroyed by the Ndebele at Moordkop in 1831.