By the traditional Xhosa calendar, the year began in June and ended in May, when Canopus, a large star visible in the Southern Hemisphere, signaled the time for harvesting.

In the Xhosa language, there are two ways of naming months: modern and traditional. In urban areas the modern names of the months are used. However, in rural areas, in poetry, and particularly in the Eastern Cape the old names are still used.

The modern names for the months are borrowed from the English equivalents:

The traditional names for months come from names of plants or flowers that grow or seasonal changes that happen at a given time of year. They are:

Kirsch et al., Clicking with Xhosa, David Phillip Publishers, Cape Town, 2001, p.44

Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 10 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award winning South African singer and civil rights activist.

In the 1960s she was the first artist from Africa to popularize African music in the U.S. and around the world. She is best known for the song "Pata Pata", first recorded in 1957 and released in the U.S. in 1967. She recorded and toured with many popular artists, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela.

She actively campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. As a result, the South African government revoked her citizenship and right of return. After the end of apartheid she returned home. She died on 10 November 2008 after performing in a concert organized to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the Region of Campania.

Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma (traditional healer-herbalist). Her father, who died when she was six years old, was a Xhosa. When she was eighteen days old, her mother was arrested for selling umqombothi, an African homemade beer brewed from malt and cornmeal. Her mother was sentenced to a six-month prison term, so Miriam spent her first six months of life in jail. As a child, she sang in the choir of the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, a primary school that she attended for eight years.