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Early History
The San (Bushmen) are among the oldest indigenous peoples of South Africa. About 2,000 years ago, the pastoral Khoikhoi (called Hottentots by Europeans) settled mainly in the southern coastal region. By at least the 8th cent., Bantu speakers moving southward from E central Africa had settled the N region of present-day South Africa. These Bantu-speaking groups developed their own complex community organizations. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese navigator, became the first European to round the Cape of Good Hope (so named by King John II of Portugal). The diaries of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors attest to a large Bantu-speaking population in present-day KwaZulu-Natal by 1552.
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