Venda

The Venda, or Vhavenda, are a Bantu people of the mountainous country along the Limpopo, on either side of the present-day border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Their roots reach back to the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, whose hilltop capital flourished between about 1220 and 1300 as a center of metalworking and long-distance trade before it was abandoned as the climate dried and power shifted north to Great Zimbabwe.

The Venda formed from the Vhangona, earlier inhabitants of the Soutpansberg, and Karanga-Rozvi clans moving in from Zimbabwe; their language took shape from around 1400 through contact with Sotho-Tswana and Kalanga neighbors.

In the Soutpansberg they built the royal kraal of Dzata under the legendary chief Thoho-ya-Ndou, and the stone settlements of Thulamela and Dzata carried on the Mapungubwe tradition of hilltop towns.