A Nguni homestead is a cluster of several houses, typically occupied by a single extended family and often with an attached kraal, characteristic of Nguni speaking peoples in southern Africa including the Xhosa, Zulu and Swati. The individual dwellings, called an indlu, are traditionally arranged in a semicircular layout using locally sourced materials, a pattern also found with variation among the Sotho-Tswana, Ndebele, Swazi and Ngoni peoples. Contemporary homesteads increasingly use commercially available materials, such as sheet metal roofing in place of thatch on the rondavel huts, while preserving the underlying vernacular arrangement; as of 2022 such traditional dwellings made up 4.3 percent of South African households.
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