Qkung

The Qkung are the ǃKung, also written ǃXun or Ju, both words meaning people, a San nation of the western edge of the Kalahari. Their country runs through Ovamboland in northern Namibia and into Botswana.

They lived in small, fluid bands of hunter-gatherers, following game and wild plant foods around seasonal waterholes, and kept no chiefs or headmen: even an acknowledged leader only divided the kill and stood no higher than the elders. Bands intermarried, with a new couple living with the wife's family. Their Ju language belongs to the Kxʼa family and makes heavy use of click consonants.

As the Bantu expansion reached the region by about the year 1000, cattle-keeping Ovambo and other Bantu peoples settled the watered fringes of the desert, and ǃKung bands traded, intermarried and sometimes served them while keeping their own foraging life.