Xhosa people
Bantu ethnic group
The Xhosa people ( KAW-sə, KOH-sə; Xhosa pronunciation: [kǁʰɔ́ːsa] ) are an ethnic group in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho. They are the second largest ethnic group in South Africa and are native speakers of the isiXhosa language.
The Xhosa people are descendants of Nguni clans who settled in the southeastern part of Southern Africa displacing the original inhabitants, the Khoisan. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Xhosa people have inhabited the area since the 7th century.
Presently, over ten million Xhosa-speaking people are distributed across Southern Africa. In 1994 the self-governing bantustans of Transkei and Ciskei were incorporated into South Africa, becoming the Eastern Cape province.
As of 2003, the majority of Xhosa speakers, approximately 19.8 million, lived in the Eastern Cape, followed by the Western Cape (approximately 1 million), Gauteng (971,045), the Free State (546,192), KwaZulu-Natal (219,826), North West (214,461), Mpumalanga (46,553), the Northern Cape (51,228), and Limpopo (14,225).
There is a small but significant Xhosa-speaking (Mfengu) community in Zimbabwe, and their language, isiXhosa, is recognized as an official national language. This community was brought by Cecil John Rhodes for cheap labour in Rhodesian mines in early 20th century.
History
Some archaeological evidence has been discovered that suggests that Xhosa-speaking people have lived in the Eastern Cape area since at least the 7th century.
“Xhosa people” enters the record as bantu ethnic group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Xhosa, people and Bantu can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q207996. The Library of Congress control number is sh85148819. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1994 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Xhosa people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.