Xhosa

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Xhosa women dancing as they return to their village from the fields.
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People living primarily in East Cape province, South Africa.

They form part of the southern Nguni group of Bantu-speaking peoples. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the series of conflicts called the Cape Frontier Wars engaged the Xhosa against the European settlers. Eventually the Xhosa were defeated and their territory annexed. Between 1959 and 1961 the Xhosa inhabited the nonindependent black states of Transkei and Ciskei created by the white South African government. In the 1960s many Xhosa became migrant labourers. Today they number some 7.8 million.

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click - In phonetics, a suction sound made in the mouth.

Transkei - Administrative region, South Africa.

Ciskei - Former black enclave, South Africa.

Swazi - Bantu-speaking people inhabiting the grasslands of Swaziland and neighbouring regions of South Africa and Mozambique.

Bantu languages - Group of some 500 languages belonging to the Benue-Congo language branch of the Niger-Congo language family.

More on "Xhosa" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

Xhosa - a cluster of related peoples living primarily in Eastern Cape province, South Africa, and forming part of the southern Nguni group of Bantu-speaking peoples. The main Xhosa groups are the Gcaleka, Ngika, Ndlamba, Dushane, Qayi, Ntinde, and the Gqunkhwebe (the latter being partly of Khoekhoe origin).

Xhosa language - a Bantu language spoken by seven million people in South Africa, especially in Eastern province. Xhosa is a member of the Southeastern, or Nguni, subgroup of the Bantu group of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Other Southeastern Bantu languages are Zulu, Swati (Swazi), Sotho, Tswana, Venda, and Ndebele. Although Xhosa and Zulu are similar enough to be considered dialects ...

Ciskei - former republic (though never internationally recognized as such) that was inhabited principally by Xhosa-speaking people in southern Africa. It bordered the Indian Ocean on the southeast and was bounded by the Republic of South Africa on the southwest, northwest, and northeast. A fingerlike extension of South African territory on the northeast separated Ciskei from Transkei (another former Xhosa ...

African literature - As in Zulu literature, the themes of the heroic past and of the opposition between beneficent tradition and harsh modernity are much in evidence. The question of how best to come to terms with change is also central in Xhosa literature. Much important early writing, expressing Xhosa aspirations and views on Christianity and tradition, appeared in the Xhosa-language newspapers and journals of the ...

Southern Africa - Settler expansion to the Cape's eastern frontier was blocked by the 1770s when trekboers came up against numerous Xhosa farmers in the area of the Great Fish River. During the 18th century the Xhosa had been embroiled in two major civil wars over the chiefly succession, of which the more important was the dispute, between the paramount Gcaleka and his ambitious brother Rarabe, that split the ...

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