She was born in 1933 in South Africa's Northern Cape.
Formal education was not part of her childhood.
UCT reported that she never attended school and spent parts of her life working as a shepherd and domestic worker.
At her 2023 honorary-degree ceremony, Katrina reflected emotionally on the extraordinary path her life had taken — from a woman denied formal schooling to someone being honored by one of Africa's leading universities.
The contrast is powerful.
The academic world traditionally associates expertise with qualifications.
Degrees.
Published papers.
Institutions.
Libraries.
Years of formal study.
Katrina possessed another kind of expertise.
She carried knowledge that almost nobody else on Earth still possessed fluently.
Her classroom had been family, community and life itself.
She knew the sounds.
The vocabulary.
The expressions.
The songs.
The cultural meanings behind the words.
And as the other fluent speakers disappeared, that knowledge became increasingly irreplaceable.
Eventually she faced a choice.
She could simply continue speaking N|uu for the remainder of her life.
Or she could try to transfer what she knew.
She chose the second path.
A School at Her Own Home
Katrina did not wait for someone to build a major institution.
She started teaching where she could.
At home.
In Rosedale, outside Upington, a tiny language school developed at her property.
Children came to learn.
The Presidency of South Africa described her home as filled with activity as she transferred linguistic and cultural knowledge to young people, hoping that San language and traditions would survive into future generations.
The irony is difficult to miss.
A woman who had never been allowed the opportunity to attend school had created a school of her own.
And she was teaching something no conventional school could easily replace.
N|uu.
Linguist Sheena Shah, who has worked on documenting the language, says Katrina has actively taught N|uu for more than two decades. Her granddaughter has assisted her, and community children have learned N|uu vocabulary, phrases and songs through the program.
These children are not necessarily becoming fluent native speakers overnight.
Language revitalization is far more difficult than simply memorizing vocabulary.
Fluency requires repeated use.
Conversation.
Listening.
Grammar.
Confidence.
And ideally, communities in which the language can function naturally in everyday life.
But every child learning a greeting, a song or a phrase represents something important.
The chain has not completely broken.
Her Granddaughter Joined the Mission
Katrina was not alone.
One of the most important people in her language-preservation work has been her granddaughter, Claudia Snyman.
Claudia grew up learning N|uu from her grandmother and became one of the younger community members able to help bridge the gap between Katrina's oral knowledge and written educational materials.
That partnership became crucial.
Katrina carried extraordinary linguistic knowledge but had not received literacy education.
Claudia could help record and write down what her grandmother knew.
Researchers and linguists could then contribute technical expertise.
Together, generations that might otherwise have been separated by language loss began working toward the same goal.
Preservation.
This is an important distinction.
Katrina did not single-handedly "save" N|uu.
Language revitalization is collaborative.
Community members, younger learners, researchers, linguists and institutions have all played roles.
But Katrina provided something that could not simply be reconstructed from textbooks.
The living knowledge of a fluent speaker.
Turning Spoken Knowledge Into Books
For most of its history, N|uu was primarily an oral language.
That creates an enormous challenge when the speaker population collapses.
If a widely written language loses speakers, libraries may still contain thousands or millions of pages.
Dictionaries remain.
Grammar books remain.
Letters remain.
Newspapers remain.
Audio recordings may remain.