Sotho people

The Sotho (/ˈsuːtuː/), also known as the Basotho (/bæˈsuːtuː/), 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. There are 3 types of Basotho, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Tswana people.

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.

In modern times, the Sotho continue to make significant contributions to South African and Lesotho societies.

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. By the 16th century, Iron-working was well established in Basotho communities alongside their Nguni neighbours. Basotho were mostly independent and relatively isolated up until this point in which they occasionally traded with the regions north of their homeland with external links that are described as "Sporadic and Marginal". By at least the 17th century a series of Basotho kingdoms covered the southern portion of the African plateau (nowadays Free State Province and parts of Gauteng), and North West. Basotho society was highly decentralized, and organized on the basis of kraals, or extended clans, each of which was ruled by its own chief. Chiefdoms were united into loose confederations.

In the 1820s, refugees from the Zulu expansion under Shaka came into contact with the Basotho people residing on the highveld. In 1823, pressure caused one group of Basotho, the Kololo, to migrate north. They moved past the Okavango Swamp and across the Zambezi into Barotseland, (which is now part of Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia). In 1845, the Kololo conquered Barotseland.

At about the same time, the Boers began to encroach upon Basotho territory. After the Cape Colony was ceded to Britain at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, many farmers opted to leave the former Dutch colony in the Great Trek. They moved inland, where they eventually established independent polities.