How Swazis got to Swaziland

Ancient legends tell of the ancestors of the Swazi nation coming from a place called Embo in Tanzania. They migrated down the east African coast in a slow migration that took thousands of years. This ties in with archaeological evidence that the Nguni speaking peoples came down Africa with cattle and sheep and entered south eastern Africa in about 400 CE. The nucleus of the Swazi nation, the Dlamini clan, lived on the shores of the Indian Ocean near the current city of Maputo for several hundred years around 1650.

They then moved down the coast to the Pongola Valley and came up into Swaziland from 1750 onwards. In the early 19th century the Zulu nation was expanding rapidly, the Dlamini clan gathered allied clans for defence against the Zulu threat and in doing so centralised political power and became kings.