Xhosa

The Xhosa are a Nguni Bantu-speaking people of South Africa's Eastern Cape and surrounding provinces, historically organized into a number of related chiefdoms, including the Gcaleka and Rharhabe, and among the largest ethnic groups in South Africa today. The Xhosa language is noted for its extensive use of click consonants borrowed through long contact with click-language-speaking Khoisan peoples, and traditional Xhosa culture places strong emphasis on ancestor veneration, cattle, and rites of passage, particularly the ulwaluko male initiation and circumcision rite. Xhosa history includes a series of nineteenth-century frontier wars against Dutch and British colonists and the 1856 to 1857 cattle-killing movement; Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki are among its best-known modern figures.