PEDI/NORTHERN SOTHO

Pedi is more correctly known as Nothern or North Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa in the language itself). There are more Pedi speakers than first language English speakers in South Africa.

AFRICAN VOICES PEDI PRODUCTS

PEDI POPULATION, HISTORY AND INFORMATION

(the following information is derived from Wikiedia under the entry "Northern Sotho Language")

North Sotho is spoken by nearly five million - 4,208,980 people (2001 Census Data) - in the South African provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo Province and Mpumalanga.

Pedi as a cultural group

Pedi also describes the people speaking various dialects of the Sotho language who live in the former northern Transvaal. the term Northern Sotho has in some cases replaced Pedi to characterise this collectivity of groups. Northern Sotho have been subdivided into the highveld Sotho, which are comparatively recent immigrants mostly from the west and south-west (including the Pedi (in the narrower sense), Tau, Kone, Roka, Ntwane, Mphahlele, Tahwene, Mathabathe, Kone (Matlala), Dikgale, Batlokwa, Gananwa (Mmalebogo), Mmamabolo, Moletae), and the lowveld Sotho combining immigrants from the north with inhabitants of longer standing (including the Lobedu, Narene, Phalaborwa, Mogoboya, Kone, Kgakga, Pulana, Pai, Kutswe). These group names derive from totemic animals, which are sometimes alternated or combined with the names of chiefs.

History
This complex multiplicity of groups already co-existed in the northern and north-eastern Transvaal by the end of the eighteenth century, and some concerntration of political authority was already in place. In the course of their migrations into and around this area, clusters of people from diverse origins had gradually concentrated themselves around a series of dikgoto (s. kgoro) or ruling nuclear groups: identifying themselves through their shared symbolic allegiance to a totemic animal - tau (lion), kolobe (pig), kwena (crocodile) and others. The Maroteng or Pedi, with their symbolic animal noko (porcupine), were an offshoot of the Tswana-speaking Kgatla. In about 1650 they had settled in an area to the south of the Steelpoort river and of their present heartland. Here, over several generations of interaction, a degree of linguistic and cultural homogeneity developed. Only in the latter half of the 18th century did they extend control over the region, establishing the Pedi paramountcy by bringing powerful neighbouring chiefdoms under their sway.

Pedi power, at its height during Thulare's reign, (about 1790-1820) was undermined during the period of the difaqane by Ndwandwe invaders from the south-east. A period of dislocation followed, after which the polity was re-established under Thulare's son Sekwati, who engaged in numerous negotiations and struggles for control over land and labour with the Afrikaans-speaking farmers (Boers) who had since settled in the region. Sekwati's success in these struggles, and later that of his heir, Sekhukhune I, was due in part to the firepower enjoyed by the polity, bought with proceeds of early labour migration to the Kimberley diamond fields. The Pedi paramountcy's power was entrenched through its insistence that the chiefs of subordinate groups take their principal wives from the ruling dynasty. The resulting system of cousin marriage perpetuated hierarchical marriage links between ruler and ruled and involved paying inflated bridewealth to the Maroteng house.

By the 1870's, the Pedi represented one of three alternative sources of regional authority, alongside the Swazi and the ZAR (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek) which the Boers had established. Intensifying struggles between Boers and Pedi over land and labour resulted in the war of 1876, in which the Boer aggressors were defeated. British annexation of the Transvaal, partly spurred by the Boers' failure to subjugate the Pedi, followed in 1877 and the Pedi were finally defeated by British troops under Sir Garnet Wolseley in 1879.

Northern Sotho Dictionaries

Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: Northern Sotho and English, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver et al, New in 2007
Modern Northern Sotho-English bilingual dictionary with many interesting and useful features, such as real usage examples at every entry (mostly corpus-based), most frequent words indicated, detailed part of speech and grammatical information, proper word sense breakdowns etc.

Popular Northern Sotho dictionary, DJ Prinsloo, BP Sathekge, TJ Kriel, Publisher Pharos
This remains one of the most useful dictionaries if you are learning Northern Sotho (or are Northern Sotho speaking and learning English).

South African Oxford Multilingual Primary Dictionary (Sotho), (OUPSA)

Did you know?

A member of the North Sotho tribe, the legendary Rain Queen, Modjadji, was the most famous rainmaker on the subcontinent, believed by many to be immortal.

Did you know that Julius Malema, president of the ANC Youth League, is a first language Pedi speaker? He didn't do so well in Pedi in matric though, nor for that matter, in any other subject!