Venda

The Venda kingdom lay in the Soutpansberg region south of the Limpopo. Venda traditions associate its capital Dzata with the chief Thohoyandou.

Dzata was built shortly after 1700 and abandoned some 50 to 60 years later. A Dutch record of 1730 described Mahumane’s visit about five years earlier to a stone-walled settlement in the kingdom of Thovhele. Tradition held that Thohoyandou disappeared and the kingdom split into independent chiefdoms.