Xhosa

The Xhosa are the southernmost Nguni people, Bantu-speaking agropastoralists who have held the Eastern Cape since at least the seventh century, absorbing San and Khoekhoe. Oral tradition traces the Xhosa kingdom to Tshawe, who before the fifteenth century overthrew his brother and united Nguni and Khoekhoe clans under the royal amaTshawe.

Their language belongs to the Nguni branch of Bantu and carries roughly fifteen percent Khoisan vocabulary along with click consonants adopted from the same contact. The Dutch foundation of the Cape in 1652 began colonial pressure eastward, and by the later eighteenth century the Xhosa chiefdoms were fighting the Cape frontier wars.

During the mfecane upheavals of the early nineteenth century they sheltered refugees fleeing the Zulu kingdom, incorporating them as the amaMfengu. In 1823 missionaries produced the first printed works in isiXhosa at the Lovedale press.