Pedi people

The Pedi polity under King Thulare (c. 1780–1820) was made up of land that stretched from present-day Rustenburg to the lowveld in the west and as far south as the Vaal river.[5] Pedi power was undermined during the Mfecane, by Ndwandwe invaders from the south-east. A period of dislocation followed, after which the polity was re-stabilized under Thulare's son Sekwati.[6]

Sekwati succeeded Thulare as paramount chief of the Pedi in the northern Transvaal (Limpopo) and was frequently in conflict with the Matabele under Mzilikazi, and plundered by the Zulu and the Swazi. Sekwati has also engaged in numerous negotiations and struggles for control over land and labor with the Afrikaans-speaking farmers (Boers) who had since settled in the region.

These disputes over land occurred after the founding of Ohrigstad in 1845, but after the town was incorporated into the Transvaal Republic in 1857 and the Republic of Lydenburg was formed, an agreement was reached that the Steelpoort River was the border between the Pedi and the Republic. The Pedi were well equipped to defend themselves though, as Sekwati and his heir, Sekhukhune I were able to procure firearms, mostly through migrant labor to the Kimberley diamond fields and as far as Port Elizabeth. The Pedi paramountcy's power was also cemented by the fact that chiefs of subordinate villages, or kgoro, take their principal wives from the ruling house. This system of cousin marriage resulted in the perpetuation of marriage links between the ruling house and the subordinate groups, and involved the payment of inflated magadi or brideprice mostly in the form of cattle, to the Maroteng house.

King Sekhukhune 1881

Sekhukune I succeeded his father in 1861 and repelled an attack against the Swazi. At the time, there were also border disputes with the Transvaal, which lead to the formation of Burgersfort, which was manned by volunteers from Lydenburg. By the 1870s, the Pedi were one of three alternative sources of regional authority, alongside the Swazi and the ZAR (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek).

Overtime, tensions increased after Sekhukhune refused to pay taxes to the Transvaal government, and the Transvaal declared war in May 1876. It became known as the Sekhukhune War, the outcome of which was that the Transvaal commando's attack failed. After this, volunteers nevertheless continued to devastate Sekhukhune's land and provoke unrest, to the point where peace terms were met in 1877.

Unrest continued, and this became a justification for the British annexing the Transvaal in April 1877, under Sir Theophilus Shepstone. Following the annexation, the British also declared war on Sekhukhune I under Sir Garnet Wolseley, and defeated him in 1879. Sekhukhune was then imprisoned in Pretoria, but later released after the first South African War, when the Transvaal regained independence.

However, soon after his release Sekhukhune was murdered by his half-brother Mampuru, and because his heir had been killed in the war and his grandson, Sekhukhune II was too young to rule, one of his other half-brothers, Kgoloko assumed power as regent.

In 1885, an area of 1,000 square kilometres (390 sq mi) was set aside for the Pedi, known as Geluk's Location, created by the Transvaal Republic's Native Location Commission. Later, according to apartheid segregation policy, the Pedi would be assigned the homeland of Lebowa.....

Like the other Sotho-Tswana groups, the Bapedi people use totems to identify sister clans and kinship. The most widely used totems are as follows in Sepedi:

In pre-conquest times, people settled on elevated sites in relatively large villages, divided into kgoro (pl. dikgoro, groups centred on agnatic family clusters). Each consisted of a group of households, in huts built around a central area which served as meeting-place, cattle byre, graveyard and ancestral shrine. Households' huts were ranked in order of seniority. Each wife of a polygynous marriage had her own round thatched hut, joined to other huts by a series of open-air enclosures (lapa) encircled by mud walls. Older boys and girls, respectively, would be housed in separate huts. Aspirations to live in a more modern style, along with practicality, have led most families to abandon the round hut style for rectangular, flat-tin-roofed houses. Processes of forced and semi-voluntary relocation, and an apartheid government planning scheme implemented in the name of "betterment", have meant that many newer settlements, and the outskirts of many older ones, consist of houses built in grid-formation, occupied by individual families unrelated to their neighbors.

Traditional Dancers Performing at a wedding

Important crafts included metalsmithing, beadwork, pottery, house-building and painting, woodworking (especially the making of drums).

the arts of the Pedi, they are known for metal forging, beading, pottery, woodworking much more in drum making and also painting.[7]

Pedi music consists of a single six-note scale traditionally played on reeds, but currently it is played more on a jaw harp or autoharp. Migrants influenced by Kibala music involves playing aluminum pipes of different heights to reproduce vocal harmonies. Traditional dances, women dance on their knees, usually accompanied by drums, backing vocals and with a lead singer, involve vigorous shaking topless from the upper torso while the women kneel on the floor.[7]

Songs are also part of Pedi culture. While working the Pedi sang together to finish the job faster, they had A song about killing a Lion to become a man it was a bit peculiar song. The act of killing a Lion is very unusual and is no longer practiced. In fact, it was so unusual that if a boy was successful he would get high status and the ultimate prize - marrying the chief's daughter.[8] The Bapedi, they also have the different types of cultural music:

1. Mpepetlwane: played by young girls;
2. Mmatšhidi: played by older men and women;
3. Kiba / Dinaka: played by men and boys and now joined by women;
4. Dipela: played by everyone
5. Makgakgasa and also played by older women.[9]

Pedi music (mmino wa setso: traditional music, lit. music of origin) has a six-note scale. The same applies to variants of Mmino wa Setšo as practiced by Basotho ba Leboa (Northern Sotho) tribes in the Capricorn, Blouberg, Waterberg districts, as well as BaVhenda in the Vhembe district. Mmino wa Setšo (indigenous African music) can also be construed as African Musicology - a concept that is often used to distinguish the study of indigenous African music from the dominant ethnomusicology discipline in academe. Ethnomusicology has a strong footprint in academe spanning several decades. Such presence is evident in ethnomusicology journals that can be traced back to the 1950s.[10] Ethnomusicologists who study indigenous African music have been criticized for studying the subject from a subjective Western point of view, especially given the dominance of Western musical canon in South Africa.[11] In South Africa, authors such as Mapaya[12] indicate that for many years, African Musicology has been studied from a multi-cultural perspective without music success. Scholars of African Musicology such as Agawu,[13] Mapaya,[14] Nketia[15] and Nzewi[16] emphasize the study of indigenous African music from the perspective, and language of the practitioners (baletši). These scholars argue for the study of African Musicology from an approach that elevates the practitioners, actions, and their interactions.

Mmino wa Setšo in Limpopo province has a number of categories. Categories of Mmino wa Setšo are distinguished according to the function they serve in the community.

The peak of Pedi (and northern Sotho) musical expression is arguably the kiba genre, which has transcended its rural roots to become a migrant style. In its men's version, it features an ensemble of players, each playing an aluminum end-blown pipe of a different pitch (naka, pl. dinaka) and together producing a descending melody that mimics traditional vocal songs with richly harmonized qualities. Mapaya[17] provides for a provided for a detailed descriptive analysis of Dinaka/Kiba music and dance, from a Northern Sotho perspective.

In the women's version, a development of earlier female genres which has recently been included within the definition of kiba, a group of women sings songs (koša ya dikhuru- loosely translated: knee-dance music). This translation has it roots in the traditional kneeling dance that involves salacious shaking movements of the breasts accompanied by chants. These dances are still very common among Tswana, Sotho and Nguni women. This genre comprises sets of traditional songs steered by a lead singer accompanied by a chorus and an ensemble of drums (meropa), previously wooden but now made of oil-drums and milk-urns. These are generally sung at drinking parties and/or during celebrations such as weddings.

Children occupy a special place in the broader category of Mmino wa Setšo. Research shows that mmino wa bana can be examined for its musicological elements, educational validity, and the general social functions[18]

Kgoshi – a loose collection of kinsmen with related males at its core – was as much a jural unit as a kinship one, since membership was defined by acceptance of the kgoro-head's authority rather than primarily by descent. Royal or chiefly kgoros sometimes underwent rapid subdivision as sons contended for positions of authority.

Marriage was patrilocal. Polygamy was practiced mostly by people of higher, especially chiefly, status. Marriage was preferred with a close or classificatory cousin, especially a mother's brother's daughter, but this preference was most often realised in the case of ruling or chiefly families. Practiced by the ruling dynasty, during its period of dominance, it represented a system of political integration and control recycling of bridewealth (dikgomo di boela shakeng; returning of bride cattle). Cousin marriage meant that the two sets of prospective in-laws were closely connected even before the event of a marriage, and went along with an ideology of sibling-linkage, through which the Magadi (bridewealth) procured for a daughter's marriage would, in turn, be used to get a bride for her brother, and he would repay his sister by offering a daughter to her son in marriage. Cousin marriage is still practiced, but less frequently. Polygyny too is now rare, many marriages end in divorce or separation, and a large number of young women remain single and raise their children in small (and often very poor) female-headed households. But new forms of domestic co-operation have come into being, often between brothers and sisters, or matrilineally linked relatives.

Previously the oldest son of a household within a polygynous family would inherit the house-property of his mother, including its cattle, and was supposed to act as custodian of these goods for the benefit of the household's other children. With the decline of cattle-keeping and the sharp increase in land-shortage, this has switched to a system of last-born inheritance, primarily of land.

The life-cycle for both sexes was differentiated by important rituals. Both girls and boys underwent initiation. Boys (bašemane, later mašoboro) spent their youth looking after cattle at remote outposts, in the company of peers and older youths. Circumcision and initiation at koma (initiation school), held about once every five years, socialized youths into groups of cohorts or regiments (mephato) bearing the leader's name, whose members then maintained lifelong loyalty to each other, and often traveled together to find work on the farms or on the mines. Girls attended their own koma and were initiated into their own regiments (ditswa-bothuku), usually two years after the boys. Initiation is still practiced, and provides a considerable income to the chiefs who license it for a fee or, in recent years, to private entrepreneurs who have established initiation schools beyond chiefs' jurisdiction.[19]

The pre-colonial system of communal or tribal tenure, being broadly similar to that practiced throughout the southern African region, was crystallized, but subtly altered, by the colonial administration. A man was granted land by the chief for each of his wives; unused land was reallocated by the chief, rather than being inherited within families. Overpopulation resulting from the government's relocation policies resulted in this system being modified – a household's fields, together with its residential plot, are now inherited, ideally by the youngest married son. Christian Pedi communities who owned freehold farms were removed to the reserve without compensation, but since 1994 South Africa many have now reoccupied their land or are preparing to do so, under restitution legislation. The few Pedi who still live as labor tenants on white farms have been promised some security of tenure by land reform legislation.