Kraal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kraal (also spelt craal or kraul) is an Afrikaans and South African English word for an enclosure for cattle or other livestock, located within an African homestead or village surrounded by a palisade, mud wall, or other fencing, roughly circular in form.

A South African cattle kraal (Photo by Richard Jones)

The word derives from the Portuguese curral, similar to the Spanish corral, though it is sometimes mistakenly said to have an African origin. The term primarily refers to the type of dispersed homestead characteristic of the Nguni-speaking peoples of southern Africa. Although from the period of colonization white South Africans commonly referred to the entire homestead as a kraal, ethnographers have long recognized that its proper referent is the animal pen area within a homestead, and that it is incorrect to speak of persons living in kraals. The several human dwellings within a homestead (isiXhosa umzi, isiZulu umuzi, siSwati 'umuti) are called houses by modern ethnographers (sing. indlu, pl. isiXhosa and isiZulu izindlu, siSwati tindlu).

Folds for animals and enclosures made specially for defensive purposes are also called kraals.

A South African homestead with a cattle kraal in the foreground (Photo by Richard Jones)

"Nelson Mandela was born in the Transkei region of South Africa, in the small village of Qunu - a collection of beehive-shaped huts with thatch roofs, known as rondavels. His mother had three huts and Mandela lived with her and his three immediate sisters. One hut was used for sleeping, another for cooking and the third for storing grain and other food. Everyone slept on mats on the ground, without pillows. His mother, as a married woman, had her own field to tend and her own cattle kraal - an enclosure for cattle made from thorn bushes." From Cool Planet by Oxfam

In the Dutch language a kraal is a bead, like a bead in a necklace.