The Bakgalagari were classified by Guthrie (1948) as S30 and by Cole (1954) as 60/2/5. They incorporate ethnic groups such as Bangologa, Bashaga, Babolaongwe, Balala, Bakhena, Baritjhauba, and Bakgwatheng and Baphaleng, the latter of which do not speak Shekgalagari any more. At the moment, Bakgalagari are only found in Botswana. They are thought to have arrived in southern Africa more than 2000 years ago, together with other Bantu groups (Tlou/Campbell 1997:33), and were the earliest Sotho-Tswana group to inhabit the Madikwe and Limpopo river basins (Figure 1) around 900 and 1000 CE (Tlou/Campbell, 1997).

Around 1200 CE, the Bakgalagari were already inhabiting the peripheries of this area as they migrated into Botswana, where they are estimated to have arrived around 1000 CE, as Figure 2 illustrates (cf. Tlou/Campbell, 1997:90). They would later be pushed into the Kgalagadi desert, which reinforced the peripheral and distant location of some of them from the rest of the Sotho-Tswana groups that subsequently inhabited the country.

History suggests that there were ethnic rivalries amongst the Bakgalagari, and they consequently split into various ethnic groups (Tlou/Campbell, 1997:90). These ethnic groups were dispersed in various directions in the country at different times as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows the historical base and the subsequent movements of the Bakgalagari starting earlier than 1400 CE. It is possible that these movements might have been reversed at various times, and also that some people at a later stage took the same directions to find their ethic counterparts (e.g., Babolaongwe at around 1650 CE).