Through mission education, they were able to earn higher wages during colonial times and worked primarily as porters, skilled or semi-skilled workers, and armed auxiliaries.
The Tonga people pay lobola (bride price) in the form of money, with kin liable for further payments if a child or wife falls ill.
The kin of a woman dying away from home could also demand burial permission and heavy payment from the husband.
The Tonga believed in a supreme God who remained vague and almost forgotten, for the Bantu had primarily a religion of the dead.
They worshipped ancestral spirits, believed in consulting diviners, spirit-possession, and sought out those who predicted the future and were supposed to receive messages from ancestors.