The previous body of sociolinguistics literature is replete with historical accounts of the arrival of the English language in southern Africa (see, for example, Lanham 1982; Gough 1995; Branford 1996; Kamwangamalu 2002; Meierkord 2005). These studies indicate that English-speaking people made initial contact with southern Africa prior to the period of formal British colonization of the region. According to Gough (1995: 1), English explorers and traders who visited southern Africa from as early as the sixteenth century introduced a vocabulary of the English language describing the land and peoples they had come into contact with.