Northeast Lowveld (Pedi, Tsonga, Venda)

The hot, low country between the escarpment and the Mozambican border, and the part of South Africa where the tsetse fly and malaria did more to shape settlement than any policy. Cattle could not be kept across much of it, which meant the Boer republics never occupied it densely and the African polities there - Pedi, Tsonga, Venda - kept their independence later than most. The Pedi under Sekhukhune were among the last to fall, defeating a Transvaal commando in 1876 and being conquered only when Britain brought Swazi allies and imperial troops against them in 1879. Venda in the far north held out until 1898, the last African polity in the country to be subdued. The Tsonga along the eastern border straddled a line drawn between Portuguese and Boer territory, and the migrant route from Mozambique to the Rand ran directly through their land. Gold at Pilgrim's Rest and Barberton drew the first rush to the Transvaal a decade before the Witwatersrand. The region's other defining creation is the Kruger National Park, proclaimed in stages from 1898 and consolidated in 1926, which preserved an extraordinary ecosystem by removing the people living in it. Under apartheid the area was fragmented into Lebowa, Gazankulu and Venda, three homelands drawn on ethnic lines that had been sharpened for the purpose. Subtropical fruit, forestry and tourism dominate the economy. It remains among the country's poorest regions. Nelspruit, now Mbombela, is the largest town. The Blyde River canyon is among the largest green canyons in the world. Kruger covers an area roughly the size of Wales. The Lebombo mountains mark the Mozambican border.

• Existed: 1000 CE – present
• Type: Entity