Kingdom of the Vhavenda in the forested Soutpansberg between the Luvuvhu and the Limpopo, founded when the Singo, kin of the Zimbabwe-plateau Kalanga, built the stone-walled capital Dzata over the older Vhangona chiefdoms. Split into rival houses after Thohoyandou, the Venda under Ramabulana and then Makhado (d. 1895) held the mountains against Boer settlement — burning out Schoemansdal in 1867 — and were the last Transvaal polity to lose its independence.
Not an ending: the ZAR's Mphephu War of 1898, described by an eyewitness missionary, ended Venda independence just before the Anglo-Boer War. The Venda later got the apartheid Bantustan of Venda (1979-1994, already in the atlas) and are today concentrated in northern Limpopo province.
The standard ethnography of the Venda, covering Singo dynastic history, Dzata and the political structure of the Soutpansberg chiefdoms.
An eyewitness account of Venda country and of the Mphephu War that ended its independence, by a missionary resident among them.