Sotho people

The Basotho (), also known as the Sotho (), are a Sotho-Tswana ethnic group indigenous to Southern Africa. They primarily inhabit the regions of Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.

The ancestors of the Sotho people are believed to have originated from Northeast Africa, and migrated south in the fifth century AD. The Sotho people have split into different clans over time as a result of the Mfecane (a series of wars and migrations that took place in the 19th century) and colonialism.

The British and the Boers (Dutch descendants) divided Sotho land amongst themselves in the late 19th century. Lesotho was created by the settlers in the 1869 Convention of Aliwal North following the conflict over land with Moshoeshoe I, the king of the Southern Sothos.

The Southern Sotho of Lesotho's identity emerged from the creation of Lesotho by the British after the Boers defeated Moshoeshoe I in the Third Basotho War in 1868 and he asked the British for protection. Some of the Southern Sotho speakers who were not part of Moshoeshoe's kingdom when he united some of their tribesmen are living in Gauteng, while some are found in the west of KwaZulu-Natal, the north of the Eastern Cape and most of the Free State province.

History

Early history

The Basotho nation is a mixture of Bantu-speaking clans that mixed with San people who already lived in Southern Africa when they arrived there. Bantu-speaking people had settled in what is now South Africa by about 1500 CE. Separation from the Batswana is assumed to have taken place by the 14th century. Some Basotho people split from the Nguni while others got assimilated into building the Nguni nation.