page_title: Khoekhoe
section_title: Kat River settlement (1829–1856) and Khoena in the Cape Colony
hierarchical_section_title: Khoekhoe / History / Kat River settlement (1829–1856) and Khoena in the Cape Colony
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Gruppe Kriegsgefangener Hottentotten Deutsch-Süd-West-Afrika 6011 / Franz Spenker, Hbg. 19. Postkarte. Post card. Carte postale.
context_page_description: Khoekhoen are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of southwestern Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San peoples. The designation "Khoekhoe" is actually a kare or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the!Ora, !Gona, Nama, Xiri and ǂNūkhoe nations.
  While it is clear that the presence of Khoekhoen in southern Africa would predate the postulated "Bantu expansion", it is not certain by how much.
  Khoekhoen maintained large herds of Nguni cattle in the Cape region at the time of
  VOC colonisation in the 17th century. Their nomadic pastoralism was mostly discontinued in the 19th to 20th century.
  Their Khoekhoe language is related to certain dialects spoken by foraging San peoples of the Kalahari, such as the Khwe and Tshwa, forming the Khoe language family.
  The main Khoekhoe subdivisions today are the Nama people of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, the ǂNūkhoeǃhaos of Namibia, the!Orana clans of South Africa, the Xirikua or Griekwa nation of South Africa, and the AmaGqunukhwebe or!
context_section_description: By the early 1800s, the remaining Khoe-speakers of the Cape Colony suffered from restricted civil rights and discriminatory laws on land ownership. With this pretext, the powerful Commissioner General of the Eastern Districts, Andries Stockenstrom, facilitated the creation of the "Kat River" Khoe settlement near the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. The more cynical motive was probably to create a buffer-zone on the Cape's frontier, but the extensive fertile land in the region allowed people to own their land and build communities in peace. The settlements thrived and expanded, and Kat River quickly became a large and successful region of the Cape that subsisted more or less autonomously. The people were predominantly Afrikaans-speaking !Gonakua, but the settlement also began to attract other diverse groups.
  Khoekua were known at the time for being very good marksmen, and were often invaluable allies of the Cape Colony in its frontier wars with the neighbouring Xhosa politics. In the Seventh Frontier War (1846–1847) against the Gcaleka, the Khoekua gunmen from Kat River distinguished themselves under their leader Andries Botha in the assault on the "Amatola fastnesses". (The young John Molteno, later Prime Minister, led a mixed Commando in the assault, and later praised the Khoekua as having more bravery and initiative than most of his white soldiers.)
  However harsh laws were still implemented in the Eastern Cape, to encourage the Khoena to leave their lands in the Kat River region and to work as labourers on white farms. The growing resentment exploded in 1850. When the Xhosa rose against the Cape Government, large numbers Khoeǀ’ona joined the Xhosa rebels for the first time. After the defeat of the rebellion and the granting of representative government to the Cape Colony in 1853, the new Cape Government endeavoured to grant the Khoena political rights to avert future racial discontent. Attorney General William Porter was famously quoted as saying that he "would rather meet the Hottentot at the hustings, voting for his representative, than meet him in the wilds with his gun upon his shoulder". Thus, the government enacted the Cape franchise in 1853, which decreed that all male citizens meeting a low property test, regardless of colour, had the right to vote and to seek election in Parliament. However, this non-racial principle was eroded in the late 1880s by a literacy test, and later abolished by the Apartheid Government.
caption: Khoikhoi prisoners of war in German South-West Africa, 1904
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