A settlement is a general term used in archaeology, geography, landscape history and other subjects for a permanent or temporary community in which people live, without being specific as to size, population or importance. A settlement can therefore range in size from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. The term may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities.

In both England and Wales, and Scotland, the term is used to denote an urban area when analysing census information.

A settlement conventionally includes its constructed facilities such as roads, enclosures, field systems, boundary banks and ditches, ponds, parks and woods, wind and water mills, manor houses, moats and churches.

Settlements can be ordered by size or other factors to define a settlement hierarchy.

Landscape history studies the form (morphology) of settlements – for example whether they are dispersed or nucleated.

Mosima Gabriel Sexwale (born 5 March 1953), commonly known as Tokyo Sexwale (Venda; English approx. /sɛˈxwɑːleɪ/), is the current Minister of Human Settlements of South Africa. A South African businessman, politician, anti-apartheid activist, and former political prisoner. A charismatic leader, Sexwale was imprisoned on Robben Island for his anti-apartheid activities, alongside figures such as Nelson Mandela. After the 1994 general election—the first universal franchise election in South Africa—Sexwale became the Premier of Gauteng Province.

Sexwale was born in the township of Orlando West in Soweto. His father was a clerk at Johannesburg General Hospital. Sexwale grew up amid the turmoil of the black township's upheaval; he was eight when he heard the explosions at a nearby post office of the first bombs in the African National Congress's guerrilla campaign^{[citation needed]}. Sexwale graduated from Orlando West High School in 1973.

Sexwale became a member of the Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1960s and became a local leader of the radical South African Students' Movement. In the early 1970s, he joined the African National Congress's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("spear of the nation"). While in Swaziland, he completed a Certificate in Business Studies at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1975, Sexwale went into exile, undergoing military officers' training in the Soviet Union, where he specialized in military engineering.