Koup, the region, its name, its settlement and its droughts
reference (encyclopaedic) · consulted 2026-08-01
- Type
- reference (encyclopaedic)
- Repository
- Afrikaanse Wikipedia, 'Koup'; citing Die Volksblad, 5 Februarie 1947 ('Die Koup feitlik al woestyn')
- Consulted
- 2026-08-01
The citation as it was given
THE NAME. "Die naam van die streek kom waarskynlik van 'n Khoi-woord, HOUP, of 'MAAGVET'. Volgens oorlewering hou dit verband daarmee dat skape in die streek so vet kan word en omdat die geil, blink gras na 'n goeie reenseisoen soos die BINNEVET VAN 'N SKAAP lyk." So: caul fat. The country is named for what it does to sheep, and for what good grass looks like. GOUPH and GHOUP are older spellings of the same word - Thomas Bain's 1891 report is titled 'The Nuggets of the GOUPH and the Prince Albert Gold Fields'. | THE EXTENT, and it matters for this project: the towns OF the Koup are Beaufort-Wes, KLAARSTROOM, Laingsburg, Leeu-Gamka, Matjiesfontein, Merweville, PRINS ALBERT, Touwsrivier and Willowmore. Klaarstroom and Prince Albert are both Koup towns, so 'the Koup' is the correct regional name for this project's ground - more exact than 'the Karoo', which is a third of the country. | SETTLEMENT: stock farmers arrived between 1750 and 1760; a P.E. Kruger held one of the first grazing licences in 1755. Permanent residents stayed scarce for years because of drought and Khoi resistance. That is twenty years before the De Claar Stroom loan farm of 1777. | DROUGHT: 1926/27 and 1946/47. After five poor years, sheep died in numbers in 1946/47 and parts of the Koup turned to desert - 75,000 head lost in the Beaufort West district alone. Beaufort-Wes, Laingsburg and Merweville worst hit. TERTIARY.
Kept verbatim. This project contradicts published genealogies and corrects a family's own oral tradition, so every claim has to be checkable by someone who was not in the room.
Nothing in the model cites this source yet.