The Lobedu are based north of today’s Tzaneen. Dzugudini, the daughter of a Shona chief, is said to have founded the kingdom, but it is possible that a proto-Lobedu community existed before her arrival. There was a period of civil conflict during the reign of King Mugodo some time before 1800, and he was replaced by his daughter Mujaji. After this, the Lobedu were ruled by queens, whose power was based on the role they played in the Lobedu rain cult, and on ‘wife exchanges’ whereby she allocated wives to different district heads, thus binding them into a complex system of subordination.
The earliest traditions of Tsonga traders place them in the hinterland of Delagoa Bay, and suggest they derived from diverse origins, including Shona and Sotho influences. They are associated with the traditions of the Kwena-Pedi who settled around the bay as early as the seventeenth century. The Portuguese recorded the presence of the large Tembe kingdom along the coastline and stretching 500 kilometres into the interior. They traded a long distance up the Limpopo and Nkomati rivers, for gold, iron, copper, ivory, horns, cloth and furs.
Their trading partners included the Venda, Sotho and Portuguese. The Maputo lineage had established power at Delagoa Bay by about 1750. By the 1780s, six or seven boatloads were arriving in Delagoa Bay annually from down the Nkomati and Maputo rivers. Early in the nineteenth century Tsonga traders were reported to be trading as far west as the Hurutshe capital, near modern Zeerust.
