Khoikhoi

The Khoikhoi ("people people" or "real people") or Khoi, also spelt Khoekhoe, are a group of Khoisan people native to southwestern Africa. Unlike the neighboring San people, the Khoikhoi have traditionally practiced pastoral agriculture. When European immigrants colonized the area after 1652, the Khoikhoi maintained large herds of Nguni cattle in the Cape region. Due to a miscommunication, the group's name was long believed by outsiders to be the Hottentots, but this term is today considered derogatory.

Archaeological evidence shows that the Khoikhoi arrived in what is now South Africa from Botswana through two distinct routes—travelling west, skirting the Kalahari to the west, then down to the Cape, and travelling southeast out into the Highveld and then southwards to the south coast. Chiefly, the largest group of the Khoikhoi to remain as a group are the Namas.

Khoikhoi in In the Presence of Mine Enemies

The Hottentots of southern Africa had become a proverbial metaphor of immature, unrestrained quarreling. Lise Gimpel used this term to describe her bickering daughters one night in 2010, and then wondered whether the real Hottentots existed anymore. She had no idea whether the Reich had left any alive.