Pedi People

Pedi People

Pedi (also known as Bapedi, Bamaroteng, Marota, Basotho, Northern Sotho – in its broadest sense), has been a cultural/linguistic term – previously used to describe the entire set of people speaking various dialects of the Sotho language who live in the northern Transvaal of South Africa, more recently, the term "Northern Sotho" has replaced "Pedi" to characterise this loose collectivity of groups.

The Northern Sotho have been subdivided into the high-veld Sotho, which are comparatively recent immigrants mostly from the west and southwest, and the low-veld Sotho, who combine immigrants from the north with inhabitants of longer standing. The high-veld Sotho include the Pedi (in the narrower sense), Tau, Kone, Roka, Ntwane, Mphahlele, Tšhwene, Mathabathe, Kone (Matlala), Dikgale, Batlokwa, Gananwa (Mmalebogo), Mmamabolo, and Moletše. The low-veld Sotho include the Lobedu, Narene, Phalaborwa, Mogoboya, Kone, Kgakga, Pulana, Pai, Kutswe. Groups are named by using the names of totemic animals and, sometimes, by alternating or combining these with the names of famous chiefs.

Pedi in the narrowest sense, refers more to a political unit than to a cultural or linguistic one: the Pedi polity included the people living within the area over which the Maroteng dynasty established dominance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even this narrower usage should not be understood in a rigid sense because many fluctuations occurred in the extent of this polity's domination during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and processes of relocation and labour migration have resulted in the widespread scattering of its former subjects.