Tsonga

The Tsonga, who call themselves Vatsonga, are the Bantu people of the low coast of southern Mozambique and South Africa, speaking Xitsonga and its Tswa and Rhonga dialects. Their forebears were sailors and middlemen of the Indian Ocean trade when Chibuene, occupied from about 600, exchanged glass beads and coastal goods for gold moving through Manyikeni from the Great Zimbabwe world.

Early Tsonga tribes appear in Portuguese records from the 1500s, living in chiefdoms that took tribute for passage and sent regiments to neighboring armies. Each tribe kept its own leader, for Tsonga custom held that kingship did not cross a river.

In the 1820s drought and the Nguni migrations reached the coast. Soshangane founded the Gaza Empire in 1824, and in 1837 his defeat of the rival chief Nxaba left the Tsonga chiefdoms of Gazaland under Nguni Shangaan rule.