Settlement hierarchies in the northern Transvaal: Zimbabwe ruins and Venda history

Abstract

Zimbabwe Culture ruins have been recorded over a large part of southern Africa, including Venda and the northern Transvaal. These stone buildings were the political centres of Shona-speaking leaders and the products of an institutionalised bureaucracy based on divine kingship. For over 50 years Africanists have debated the relationship between these Zimbabwe ruins and the Venda, partly because Venda chiefs traditionally lived in stone-walled settlements and partly because the Venda language contains elements of both Shona and Sotho-Tswana.