ABSTRACT
There are three peoples in South Africa, the Sotho, the Venda, and the Tsonga, whose homes lay to the north of the Nguni. In 1965 there were five million Sotho speakers scattered throughout southern Africa. But cattle-keepers could not settle in heavily infected areas, and the concentration of early Sotho occupation was in fly-free country. A further source of evidence is to be found in the remains of stone buildings which are widely distributed over the areas the Sotho occupy. The Shona and the Venda were pre-eminent as miners, but the Venda number only 246,000, and oral tradition places them in their present habitat, with only minor incursions further into the Transvaal. The Venda and Lemba who worked in gold were closely linked with the Shona. The Venda are a fusion between a lineage of incoming chiefs and the Ngona and other aborigines.
