Only recently have historians and archaeologists noticed that a similar pattern of conflict and competition engulfed the Sotho-Tswana-speaking chiefdoms stretching from the eastern fringes of the Kalahari desert to the Limpopo valley and right down to the Free State/ Lesotho region. From about 1750 internecine and civil wars struck the Hurutshe, Kwena, Kgatla, Fokeng and Rolong in the former western Transvaal. A similar, though less pronounced pattern emerged among the Pedi/Venda along the Limpopo valley and Fokeng/ Kgatla/Kwena lineages in the southern highveld.
This created an ongoing process whereby chiefdoms broke apart, migrated and then frequently merged with other more powerful groups. Once-powerful dynasties found themselves assailed by stronger alliances, which over time broke down their unity, leading to fragmentation. This pattern intensified in the later eighteenth century. Early in the nineteenth century, the Ngwaketse broke the dominance of the Hurutshe in the Madikwe River region, the Tlhaping seized control from the Rolong south of the Molopo and the Kgatla-Pedi rose to power on the Lydenburg plateau.
These Sotho-Tswana-speaking chiefdoms were perhaps not based on the same kind of militarism and chiefly autocracy as many of the Nguni, and were unable to withstand the scale and intensity of the raiders who entered their territories from 1822.
