The Woman Who Never Went to School — But Became the Guardian of a Language

Katrina Esau never had the opportunity to attend school.

She grew up in a world where formal education was largely out of reach for Indigenous children like her. Instead of sitting in a classroom, she learned from her family, her community and the traditions passed down through generations.

But decades later, the woman known affectionately as Ouma Katrina would receive one of the highest academic honors a university can bestow.

In March 2023, the University of Cape Town awarded her an honorary Doctor of Literature degree for her lifelong contribution to language preservation and her determination to protect the culture and heritage of the San people.

There was something especially striking about the moment.

The woman being honored by one of South Africa's leading universities had never experienced formal schooling herself.

Yet she possessed something that could not simply be learned from a textbook: intimate knowledge of N|uu, an ancient Indigenous language that had come dangerously close to disappearing.

For years, Katrina Esau has been regarded as the last fluent speaker of N|uu. Her work has therefore become much more than teaching vocabulary or pronunciation. She has been helping preserve an entire body of cultural memory — stories, sounds, traditions, ways of describing the natural world and knowledge passed down orally through generations.

And instead of allowing that knowledge to disappear with her, she made a decision that would change the story of N|uu.

She would teach it.

A Language That Nearly Disappeared

N|uu is an Indigenous language associated with the ǂKhomani San people of South Africa and belongs to the Tuu language family.

Its history is deeply connected to the history of the San communities who lived across southern Africa.

For much of its recent history, N|uu was transmitted primarily through speech rather than through a standardized written education system. UNESCO records that the language was officially declared extinct in 1973, before surviving speakers were identified again more than two decades later.

That discovery changed what linguists and community members understood about the language's survival.

By the late 1990s, researchers had identified a small group of older people who could still speak N|uu. According to the University of Cape Town, around 20 older speakers were known at the time to have retained fluency, including Katrina Esau and members of her family.

But languages do not survive simply because one generation remembers them.

They survive when children learn them.

And that was the problem facing N|uu.

The older speakers were aging. Younger members of the community were increasingly using other languages, particularly Afrikaans and Nama, in everyday life.

UNESCO's documentation of N|uu explains that different languages came to occupy different roles in the community, while literacy was primarily associated with Afrikaans.

As the number of fluent N|uu speakers declined, the possibility of losing the language became increasingly real.

Eventually, the group of fluent speakers became smaller and smaller.

Katrina Esau remained.

The University of Cape Town now describes her as the last remaining fluent speaker of N|uu. PanSALB, South Africa's official language board, similarly identifies her as the language's sole remaining fluent speaker while noting that other community members possess varying levels of conversational knowledge.

That distinction matters.

A language does not necessarily disappear the moment its final fluent speaker dies. Words, recordings, books and dictionaries can preserve elements of it.

But without people who can use the language naturally and transmit it to others, a living language can become something very different: an object of historical study rather than a means of communication.

Katrina wanted to prevent that from happening.

A Childhood Without a Classroom

Katrina's own childhood helps explain why her later achievements are so remarkable.

She never saw the inside of a school.

In an interview shared by UCT, she reflected on the extraordinary contrast between her childhood and the moment she received her honorary doctorate.

She had spent her early years working and carrying out domestic and agricultural responsibilities rather than receiving formal education.

The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation has also documented that Esau was never taught to read or write.

Yet her lack of formal education did not mean that she lacked knowledge.

Quite the opposite.

She had acquired a different kind of education — one rooted in memory, observation, family and community.

She knew N|uu because it was part of her life.

For generations, Indigenous languages were not necessarily written down in books or taught through standardized classrooms. Knowledge could be transmitted orally through conversation, songs, stories, names, ceremonies and everyday interactions.

That makes the loss of a language particularly painful.

When a fluent speaker disappears, the world can lose far more than a list of words.

It can lose ways of expressing relationships, describing landscapes, remembering history and understanding cultural traditions.

Katrina understood that reality from personal experience.

And eventually, she decided that simply remembering N|uu was not enough.

It had to be passed on.

"When No One Else Wanted to Teach It"

One of the most powerful parts of Katrina's story is that she did not begin her work as an academic researcher.

She began as a speaker.

UCT reports that when there were still around 20 people who could speak N|uu, Katrina made a conscious decision to teach the language because she feared that nobody else would carry it forward.

Her approach was simple in principle: teach the children.

But turning an oral language into something that could be taught systematically presented enormous challenges.