Venda (ethnicity)

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A venda in pottery
A Venda village in South Africa

The Venda are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group in southern Africa, to which about 700,000 people belong. They are split off from the Shona , with whom they are linguistically and culturally related. There are also connections to the Rozewi . Their language is Tshivenda .

The traditional settlement area of ​​the Venda is in the South African province of Limpopo - formerly part of the Transvaal province  - and in southern Zimbabwe . 1973–1979 there was the homeland in South Africa , 1979–1994 the independent state of Venda, recognized only by South Africa . The Vhavenda, as they are called, became particularly well known for their heavy use of mineral resources such as copper and iron . They have also made a name for themselves as basket weavers and wood carvers.

The Lake Funduzi in the "Holy Forest" may only with permission of the tourist offices in Thohoyandou be visited. According to popular belief in the Venda, the souls of their dead medicine men still live in the mountains and the lake is home to the god of fertility .

A characteristic musical instrument of the Venda is the single-stringed trog zither tshidzholo ( tsijolo ) that has probably largely disappeared and is bowed. It is similar to the ! Gawukha: s the San and the segankuru in Botswana , but in contrast to the latter does not have a separate resonator, but is reinforced with the mouth like an arch of the mouth. The dende is a musical bow played by boys with a calabash resonator. Otherwise the large wooden kettle drum ngoma and the smaller thungwa , both played with a mallet, and the conical murumba , which is struck with the hands , traditionally occur . There are the pentatonic reed pipes anga and the heptatonic phala . They always appear in groups to accompany the dance, because each pipe produces only one tone.

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