JOSIAH SEMOUSE

Listen to what I explain to you. Africa, on the side of the Indian Ocean, from Natal to near the Portuguese Colony, was ruled by a king by the name of Chaka. He was the lion of that whole country. . . As a result, the whole group feared to return home and carried on with their hunt, down the coast to what is now known as the Cape Colony.There the Iboto met with the Bushmen (Baroa). The Bushmen named the Iboto Xhosas. Those Bushmen came from the West. I don't know their origin, I am still searching for it. Their home country is the Cape; it is there that the whites, when they came to this country, found them. They fled to the North and East of Africa. What is known is that they, like all other African nations, descended from the son of Noah, Ham. . . . The Iboto formed itself into a nation, intermarried with the Bushmen and then called itself Xhosa. That is why we find in the Xhosa language wordswhich are called 'clicks' in the white man's language. These words make the Xhosa language more difficult than those of other nations. As a result of their intermarriage with the Bushmen, we find among the Xhosa reddish people with woven lined hair like that of the Bushmen.

- Josiah Semouse, "Libini tsa Africa [African Singers]", Leselinyana, November 1, 1891.