40 Fun Facts About Xhosa People

The Xhosa language is spoken on screen as the native tongue of which fictional Marvel kingdom?

Wakanda speaks Xhosa because a South African actor in the cast was a native speaker, and Chadwick Boseman chose to learn whole scenes in it.

The xh that begins the word Xhosa is pronounced as which kind of sound, rare among the world's languages?

A click made at the side of the mouth, like the sound English speakers use to urge on a horse, opens the word Xhosa. The language writes its three basic clicks as c, q and x.

Nelson Mandela is affectionately known across South Africa by which Xhosa clan name?

Madiba honours the lineage he was born into, and in Xhosa etiquette addressing someone by clan name is the highest form of respect.

Nelson Mandela's Xhosa birth name, Rolihlahla, carries which fitting colloquial meaning for a future revolutionary?

Troublemaker is the colloquial sense of Rolihlahla; the English name Nelson came later, given to him by a teacher.

The Xhosa wedding song Qongqothwane, popularised worldwide by Miriam Makeba, is named after which knocking creature?

Beetle, specifically the knocking beetle that taps the ground to attract a mate; in Xhosa oral tradition it guides lost children home.

In the 1850s the Xhosa destroyed their own herds and crops after a prophecy delivered by which unlikely figure?

A teenage girl named Nongqawuse, about 15, said spirits promised to sweep the settlers into the sea. Around 40,000 people starved after the prophecy failed.

Xhosa is South Africa's second most common first language, just behind which closely related tongue?

Zulu and Xhosa are largely mutually intelligible, so a speaker of one can usually follow much of the other.

Umqombothi, made by Xhosa families from fermented maize and sorghum for ceremonies, is a traditional type of what?

Beer it is, thick, creamy and sour. Brewers test it by holding a lit match near the vat: if the flame dies quickly, the brew is ready.

Zozibini Tunzi, a Xhosa woman raised in the rural village of Sidwadweni, won which global title in 2019?

Miss Universe 2019 made her the first winner to take the crown with afro-textured hair. Her name, Zozibini, means received with both hands.

Which South African province, home to Mthatha and the Wild Coast, is the traditional heartland of the Xhosa people?

Eastern Cape was created in 1994 by merging two apartheid-era Xhosa homelands with part of the old Cape Province.

Which Xhosa homeland became, in 1976, the first Bantustan that apartheid South Africa declared independent?

Transkei, whose name means the area beyond the Kei River, was never recognised by any country except South Africa and its fellow Bantustans.

Which archbishop of Xhosa and Tswana heritage popularised the phrase Rainbow Nation for post-apartheid South Africa?

Desmond Tutu first reached for the image in 1989, describing a multiracial protest crowd. He grew up in a home where his parents spoke Xhosa.

Which Xhosa politician from the village of Mbewuleni followed Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1999?

Thabo Mbeki left South Africa at twenty and spent almost three decades in exile before the ANC was unbanned in 1990.

Which Xhosa activist from Ginsberg township led the Black Consciousness Movement and died in police custody in 1977?

Steve Biko was 30 when he died after beatings by state security officers, and he became one of the earliest icons of the struggle against apartheid.

U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, a film shot entirely in Xhosa, won Berlin's Golden Bear by resetting which composer's opera?

Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen moves to a modern South African township in the film, which blends the original score with traditional African music.

Xhosa custom says two people who share the same isiduko, or clan name, are forbidden to do what?

Marry each other they cannot, since a shared clan name marks them as relatives. A wife keeps her own clan name for life, with the prefix Ma- added.

Xhosa diviners known as amagqirha take up healing only after receiving a calling from whom?

Their ancestors do the choosing, by tradition. The training that follows, called ukuthwasa, is served under an experienced healer and can last from a few months to many years.

Traditional Xhosa were nicknamed the red blanket people for dyeing their blankets with which natural pigment?

Ochre gave the blankets their colour, and the depth of the red varied from one Xhosa group to the next.

Which comedian and author of the memoir Born a Crime is the son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss-German father?

Trevor Noah took the title from the fact that his parents' interracial relationship was illegal when he was born, and Xhosa is one of the languages he speaks.

Which Xhosa rugby player, raised in Zwide township, became the first black captain of the Springboks in 2018?

Siya Kolisi went on to captain South Africa to Rugby World Cup titles in 2019 and 2023, becoming only the second captain to win back-to-back.

The amaMfengu, clans who joined the Xhosa nation in the 1800s, carry a name with which meaning?

Wanderers is the meaning, from an old Xhosa verb; tradition holds that their clans had been scattered by the wars of Shaka's era.

Nelson Mandela was born into the royal family of which Xhosa-speaking nation, once ruled by his great-grandfather?

Thembu royalty raised him too: after his father died, he became the ward of the regent Jongintaba at the Great Place palace.

What is the Xhosa word for a praise poet, the role that earned Samuel Mqhayi the title poet of the nation?

Imbongi perform at great occasions, weaving in the praise names of a chief and his forebears. The young Nelson Mandela once heard Mqhayi recite.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, the Xhosa hymn in South Africa's national anthem, was composed in 1897 by someone in which job?

Schoolteacher and choirmaster Enoch Sontonga first intended it as a school anthem; decades later it was sung as the anthem of the African National Congress.

Xhosa is an official language in South Africa and in which neighbouring country, home to a Mfengu community?

Zimbabwe has a small but significant Xhosa-speaking community, and the language holds official status there.

Xhosa belongs, alongside Swazi and Ndebele, to which closely related group of southern Bantu languages?

Nguni languages shade into one another like dialects, which is why neighbouring peoples in the group can often follow each other's speech.

Which university in the town of Alice counts Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Robert Sobukwe among its alumni?

Fort Hare was a key college for black students from across sub-Saharan Africa between 1916 and 1959, and its graduates went on to lead independence movements.

Umngqokolo, performed by some Xhosa women in a low, rhythmic voice, is a local style of which unusual vocal art?

Throat singing of this kind has been likened to kargyraa, the deep style of the Tuvan people on the far side of Asia.

Which city, long called Grahamstown, was renamed in 2018 after the Xhosa warrior-prophet who attacked it in 1819?

Makhanda had promised his fighters that British bullets would turn to water. The renaming was proposed as a symbolic reparation for an unjust past.

The Seventh Xhosa War of 1846 earned its nickname from the theft of which everyday tool?

Axe theft lit the fuse: Xhosa raiders attacked the escort marching the accused man to trial, and the colony went to war.

The uhadi, a Xhosa musical bow traditionally played by married women, is amplified by which hollow resonator?

Calabash openings are held towards the player's chest, and moving the gourd nearer or farther changes the notes that ring out.

In Xhosa marriage custom, the groom's family negotiates lobola, a bride-price traditionally paid in which form?

Cattle were the traditional payment, though many urban families now prefer money because city life leaves no room for livestock.

In Xhosa beadwork, which colour do diviners use when they address the spirit world?

White, the Xhosa colour of purity, is still used for bead offerings to the spirits, and diviners sway a beaded veil before a person's eyes to bring on a trance.

Amasi, a staple of the traditional Xhosa diet, is a thick, sour fermented form of which everyday drink?

Milk is left to sour in a skin bag or other vessel until the whey separates. The Xhosa often eat the result mixed with crumbly maize pap.

Umngqusho, a Xhosa staple often described as Nelson Mandela's favourite dish, pairs samp with which other ingredient?

Sugar beans are cooked with samp, dried maize kernels pounded until they crack, and the dish has spread to kitchens across South Africa.

When ulwaluko, the Xhosa initiation into manhood, ends, what happens to the seclusion hut and the initiates' belongings?

They are burnt, old clothing included, and each initiate leaves with a new blanket and the standing of a new man.

Which Xhosa-speaking actor, a Tony winner who played King T'Chaka, taught Chadwick Boseman lines in his mother tongue?

John Kani shared a 1975 Tony with his co-star Winston Ntshona, and later voiced Rafiki in the 2019 remake of The Lion King.

Gqeberha, a Xhosa name for the Baakens River, has been since 2021 the official name of which coastal city?

Port Elizabeth also has an older Xhosa name, iBhayi, adapted from the Afrikaans for the Bay.

In which Xhosa village did Nelson Mandela herd livestock as a boy, later build a home, and receive a state funeral?

Qunu is where he grew up in his mother's kraal, tending herds, though he was born in the village of Mvezo.

Khayelitsha, a vast and mostly Xhosa-speaking township on the edge of a South African city, has a name meaning what?

New Home is the translation, and the township grew fast in the late 1980s after the pass laws were scrapped and many Xhosa moved to the city for work.