The Soaqua were the San hunter-gatherers of the south-western Cape, including the Riviersonderend mountains [IC]. They are the first people of this valley whose name has come down to us [IC]. The name was given to them by the Khoekhoe herders, and the Dutch took it over in their records [MS]. The Soaqua were San, the same people, and some older sources that call them “ancestors of the San” are describing the same people in different words.
What the letters in square brackets mean
Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.
- [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
- [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from the records or statements of one side only. For the peoples of the early Cape, almost every written record was made by outsiders: Dutch East India Company officials, travellers, and missionaries. None of it was written by the people it describes.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
A living heritage
Descendants of the Khoekhoe and San live in the valley today, and many hold their own knowledge of this history. This page is written from outside sources, and it will be corrected and added to as descendants give their own accounts. See Have your say below.
At a glance
| Also called | Sonqua; in Dutch records, sometimes Obiqua for San groups on the colony’s edge [TBV] |
| Way of life | Hunting and gathering [IC] |
| In the valley | Rock art, mostly on the drier northern side of the Riviersonderend mountain, and traces in the mountains north of Genadendal [IC] |
| Period | For thousands of years before the Khoekhoe arrived, and alongside them afterwards [IC] |
The name
“Soaqua” (or “Sonqua”) was the Khoekhoe name for the hunter-gatherers who lived among and around them [IC]. One museum explains it as meaning “people different from ourselves”, a name herders used for people they saw as lower in status [MS]. It was not the name the Soaqua used for themselves, which is not recorded.
Life in the valley
The Soaqua lived in the Cape for thousands of years, hunting game and gathering plants [IC]. Their rock paintings survive in the Overberg, most of them found on the drier northern side of the Riviersonderend mountain [IC]. Archaeologists have noted signs of the Soaqua in the mountains north of Genadendal [IC].
About 2,000 years ago, Khoekhoe herders arrived with sheep and cattle [IC]. The herders took the best grazing, and the Soaqua moved higher into the mountains. There they lived on plants and on small animals such as tortoises and dassies [IC].
Fourteen cave sites in the Riviersonderend mountains are on a heritage list [TBV]. They have not been formally surveyed or dated, so much of the Soaqua story in this valley is still in the ground [TBV].
After the colony came
As colonists spread across the Cape in the 1700s, the San, including the Soaqua, lost their land and game, and many were killed on the colonial frontier [IC]. See San. Some Soaqua families were drawn into the Khoekhoe and colonial world as herders and farm workers, and their descendants live on in the Western Cape [TBV].
What is still open
- What the Soaqua called themselves.
- The age of the rock art and the cave sites in the Riviersonderend mountains.
- Whether any families in the valley trace their descent to the Soaqua.
Have your say
If you hold knowledge of the Soaqua, or of rock art sites in the mountains, contact the moderators via How to Submit. Rock art sites are fragile. Please share their locations with the moderators privately, and not in public.
Related
References
- Huguenot Memorial Museum. The First Inhabitants. Soaqua as the herders’ name for hunter-gatherers, and its meaning.
- CapeNature. Riviersonderend Complex Protected Area Management Plan 2021 to 2031, section 2.5, citing Humphreys (1989), Le Roux (1984), and Clift (2001). The Soaqua in the Overberg, their rock art, their move into the mountains, and the cave sites.
- Wikipedia. San peoples. The San and the colonial frontier.