Vol. 5 · No. 1 · 2001 · pp. 28-36 (9)

Some Notes on Childhood in a South African Peripatetic Community

Riana Steyn

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The Karretjie People: An Overview

The Karretjie People, or Cart People, of the Colesberg district of the Karoo represent a peripatetic community within the South African context. They are dependent upon other communities for food resources and do not own land. Sheep-shearing, which is the special, and often only skill of the men, is also a service they perform for the farming community in this relatively wealthy agricultural part of the country. It necessitates very frequent spatial mobility, which is enabled by a cart (hence, Karretjie People) and donkeys. The Karretjie People may, following Rao's (1987) definition of the term, be qualified as peripatetics-they are 'primarily non-food producing, preferentially endogamous, itinerant communities subsisting mainly on the sale of specialised services to sedentary customers'.