Indigenous peoples of Southern Africa

Bantu speaking people are the majority ethno-racial group in South Africa. They are descendants of Southern Bantu-speaking peoples who settled in South Africa during the Bantu expansion. They are referred to in various census as blacks, or Native Africans.

The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. They are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa.

The South African Military Health Service Mobile Military Health Formation is the SANDF military special operations health capability. The formation operates two regular force medical battalions, with 7 Medical Battalion Group providing support to the South African Special Forces Brigade and 8 Medical Battalion Group focusing on airborne operations. Three reserve units, 1 Medical Battalion Group, 3 Medical Battalion Group and 6 Medical Battalion Group fall under the command of the formation.

The Shona people also/formerly known as the Karanga are a Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Africa, primarily living in Zimbabwe where they form the majority of the population, as well as Mozambique, South Africa, and a worldwide diaspora. There are five major Shona language/dialect clusters: Manyika, Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, Kalanga, and Ndau.

Khoisan (KOY-sahn) or Khoe-Sān is a catch-all term for the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who traditionally speak non-Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen and the Sān peoples. Khoisan populations traditionally speak click languages. They are considered to be the historical communities throughout Southern Africa, remaining predominant until European colonisation in areas climatically unfavorable to Bantu (sorghum-based) agriculture, such as the Cape region, through to Namibia, where Khoekhoe populations of Nama and Damara people are prevalent groups, and Botswana. Considerable mingling with Bantu-speaking groups is evidenced by prevalence of click phonemes in many Southern African Bantu languages, especially Xhosa.

Khoekhoe (/ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ KOY-koy) (or Khoikhoi in former orthography) are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of South Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "Foragers") peoples. The accepted term for the two people being Khoisan. The designation "Khoekhoe" is actually a kare or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the Griqua, Gona, Nama, Khoemana and Damara nations. The Khoekhoe were once known as Hottentots, a term now considered offensive.

The ǀXam and ǂKhomani heartland World Heritage Site consists of regions located to the South and North of Upington, respectively, in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. The ǀXam and ǂKhomani (more correctly Nǁnǂe) people were linguistically related groups of San (Bushman) people, their respective languages (ǀXam and Nǁng) being part of the ǃKwi language group. Descendants of both the ǀXam and Nǁnǂe include Afrikaans-speaking ‘Coloured’ people on farms or in towns in the region amongst whom the precolonial languages are either entirely extinct (in the case of ǀXam) or can be spoken by but a very few people (in the case of Nǁnǂe).