#griqua

In South Africa, DNA testing has a complex and contested history, particularly given the eugenic underpinnings of the apartheid regime, which manipulated scientific research to justify white supremacy (Turner, 2024). In the post-apartheid era, narratives celebrating the benefits of DNA testing have proliferated, particularly with the rise of capitalist-driven initiatives such as AncestryDNA. These services offer possibilities for family reunification, contribute to the dismantling of bias, and inform research and narratives about marginalized groups historically excluded from official archives and other historical sources. For many, access to DNA testing has led to ambiguous and sometimes contradictory messages about belonging, communal identity, and origins. These tensions deeply affect key components of identity formation—such as ethnicity and race—and have, paradoxically, led to feelings of exclusion for some individuals.

Although this sense of exclusion can be profoundly damaging, it is often dismissed until it manifests in tangible societal outcomes, such as adverse mental health effects, social unrest, or the rise of nationalism and extremism (Macron, Rachuel, and Caulfield, 2020).

When I began my fieldwork in January 2024, DNA-related narratives were already prevalent online. One striking example included the claim: “Our Khoikhoi women, the carriers of the world’s most ancient DNA, have been the most beautiful on this land.” Such narratives have real offline impacts, particularly on the ethnic and racial constructions surrounding Coloured identities and communities. Since then, I have encountered a proliferation of similar narratives. Statements such as, “Many Coloured individuals can trace their lineage and history to the Khoekhoe/San tribes and are their ancestors,” initially seem to offer solidarity. However, these are often accompanied by conflicting or unresolved ideas about the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, reinforcing rigid boundaries around the meanings of Colouredness and indigeneity.

While many individuals may now be able to trace their DNA, there is still a prevailing sentiment that “our youth are still left behind” because Coloured communities “refuse to acknowledge” or are “negligent in understanding” their complex “shared historical roots as Khoi people.” These online narratives not only increased in volume but also became flashpoints for tension, generating sharp conflicts between South Africans and their diasporic descendants over questions of Coloured identity.

In my own family, AncestryDNA testing confirmed long-held suspicions about several ancestors who, according to archival records, were frequently racially reclassified by state officials at different points in their lives, often between baptism and marriage. These ancestors were all born at least a century before the official start of apartheid, which meant that much of our familial history was preserved through oral storytelling, often fragmented by various forms of migration and the erasure of records.

When I discovered that my family’s roots also extend to Turtle Island, it took me over two decades to begin understanding decolonization. Although the term has become a buzzword among many Canadians, it remains a critical reminder to me, as a South African, that blame should not be placed solely on individuals. Rather, it is important to recognize that colonial systems have long adapted and persisted, actively enforcing structures of oppression through the erasure of knowledge, identity, and entire communities. South Africa is not immune to such manipulations. However, it appears that Turtle Island is, in some respects, further along in co-creating and preserving knowledge across communities to resist such erasures.

The Griqua (Afrikaans Griekwa, sometimes incorrectly called Korana) are a subgroup of South Africa's heterogeneous and multiracial Colouredpeople. However, they have a unique origin in the early history of the Cape Colony. Similar to the other Afrikaans-speaking group at the time, theTrekboers, they originally populated the frontiers of the infant Cape Colony. Also like the Boers, they migrated inland from the Cape, and established several states in what is now modern South Africa and Namibia.

Under Apartheid they were classified as "Coloured" and have since mostly integrated with other mixed populations in South Africa.

The Griqua are a racially and culturally mixed people who originated in the intermarriages and sexual relations between European colonists in theCape and the Khoikhoi living there in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The mixed-race groups that developed in the early Cape Colony had different names for themselves. "Bastaards", "Basters", "Korana", "Oorlam" and"Griqua" were a few of them, with each group often having a preference. Like the Afrikaners, these groups frequently migrated inland to escape colonial rule.

According to Isaac Tirion, the Khoi name "Griqua" (or "Grigriqua") is first recorded in 1730 as referring to a people living in the northeastern section of the Cape Colony. [1] In 1813 Rev. John Campbell of the London Missionary Society (LMS) used the term for a mixed group of Chariguriqua (a Cape Khoikhoi group), 'bastaards', Koranna, and Tswana living at the site of present-day Griekwastad (formerly "Klaarwater").[2] The British found their "proud name", Bastaards, offensive, so the LMS called them Griqua.

Because of a common ancestor named Griqua and shared links to the Chariguriqua (Grigriqua), the people officially changed their name to the Griqua.[3]

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) did not intend the Cape Colony at the Southern tip of Africa to become a political entity. As it expanded and became more successful, its leaders did not worry about frontiers. The frontier of the colony was indeterminate and ebbed and flowed at the whim of individuals. While the VOC undoubtedly benefited from the trading and pastoral endeavours of thetrekboers, it did little to control or support them in their quest for land. The high proportion of single Dutch men led to their taking indigenous women as wives and companions, and mixed-race children were born. They grew to be a sizeable population who spoke Dutch and were instrumental in developing the colony.

These children did not attain the social or legal status accorded their fathers, mostly because colonial laws recognised only Christian forms of marriage. This group became known as Basters, or bastards. The colonists, in their paramilitary response to insurgent resistance from Khoi and San people, readily conscripted the Basters into commandos. This ensured the men became skilled in lightly armed, mounted, skirmish tactics. Many recruited to war chose to abandon their paternal society and strike out and live more the way their maternal lines did. The resulting steady stream of disgruntled, Dutch-speaking, trained marksmen leaving the Cape hobbled the Dutch capability to crew their commandos. It also created belligerent, skilled groups of opportunists who harassed the indigenous populations the length of the Orange River. Once free of the colonies, these groups called themselves the Oorlam. In particular, the group led by Klaas Afrikaner became notorious. He attracted enough attention from the Dutch authorities to cause him to be rendered to the colony and banished to Robben Island in 1761.[4]

One of the most influential of these Oolam groups was the Griqua. In the 19th century, the Griqua controlled several political entities which were governed by Kapteins(Dutch for "Captain", i.e. leader) and their Councils, with their own written constitutions.[5] Adam Kok I, the first Kaptein of the Griqua – a slave who had bought his own freedom – led his people north from the interior of the Cape Colony. Probably because of discrimination against his people, they again moved north; this time outside the Cape, near the Orange River, just west of the Orange Free State, and on the southern skirts of the Transvaal.[6] The Griqua had largely adopted the Afrikaans languagebefore their migrations. This area is where most of the tribe settled; some remained nomadic.

Kok's successor, Andries Waterboer, founded Griqualand West, and controlled it until the influx of Europeans accompanying the discovery of diamonds. In 1834, the Cape Colony recognised Waterboer's rights to his land and people. It signed a treaty with him to ensure payment for the use of the land for mining. Not long after 1843, the competition between the Cape Colony, Orange Free State, and the Transvaal became too much for the Griqua. Led by Adam Kok III, they migrated east to establishGriqualand East. Griqualand East only existed for months before its annexation by the Cape Colony in 1874.[7]

Both Griqualands, East and West, were dissolved in European colonies. The Griqua were classified as Coloured under apartheid.

Today, Basters are a separate ethnic group of similarly mixed origins living in south-central Namibia; Northern Cape at Campbell and Griquatown; (the historic territory of Griqualand West); the Western Cape (around the small le Fleur Griqua settlement at Kranshoek); and at Kokstad.

The total Griqua population is unknown. The people were submerged by a number of factors. The most important factor were the racist policies of theApartheid era, during which many of the Griqua people took on the mantle of "Coloured" fearing that their Griqua roots might place them at a lower level with the Africans.

Genetic evidence indicates that the majority of the present Griqua population is descended from European, Khoikhoi and Tswana ancestors, with a small percentage of Bushman ancestry.[8]

The Griqua people are represented in the National Khoisan Consultative Conference (Nasionale Khoe-San Oorlegplegende Konferensie) established inOudtshoorn in 2001. That represents the Capoid "first nation peoples" of South Africa. It participates in research and development projects in co-operation with the government of the Western Cape Province and with the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. Especially prominent are members of the influential le Fleur clan.

The Griqua established their own church, the Griqua Church, which is Protestant. It has a strong focus on maintaining the Griqua cultural and ethnic identity.

One of several disputed theories as to the origin of Bloemfontein's name connects it to the Griqua leader Jan Bloem (1775–1858). This may be a coincidence, as Bloemfontein is Dutch for "spring of bloom," "flower spring," or "fountain of flowers", and the place could have been named for vegetation.

Several areas of South Africa became known as Griqualand when the group migrated and settled away from other areas of population.

Griqualand East is the area around Kokstad on the frontier between the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. This area was settled by Adam Kok III and over 2,000 Griquas who followed him over the Drakensberg in 1861. Griqua descendants are now largely centred in Kokstad, where the Griqua Church is a center of the community.