Mpondo People
Mpondo, also spelled Pondo , group of Nguni-speaking peoples who have for several centuries occupied the area between the Mtata and Mtamvuna rivers in Eastern province of South Africa. The Mpondo homeland formed one of the largest parts of the former Transkei (until 1994), an independent republic that was established under the South African government’s policy of apartheid but was dissolved and reincorporated (in part) into the new province in 1994. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Mpondo people shared with other Nguni speakers a basic social organization and material culture that set them off from other South African peoples. They settled in dispersed households. Agriculture was a female occupation. Men were responsible for cattle raising, which played a central role in both subsistence and social relations and which also formed the basis of Mpondo wealth. Patrilineal succession and exogamous marriage were the rule, and cattle were used to obtain wives through the payment of ...