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3 - Shipwreck Survivor Accounts from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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- Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa
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Written European sources from as early as the fifteenth century provide eyewitness evidence of chiefdoms and chiefs in southeastern Africa. The accounts confirm that the sociopolitical organization of ancestral Ngunispeaking peoples from before the first European witnesses encountered them consisted of chiefdoms in which authority was vested in a chief, and the territorial extent and limits of his authority was known and recognized. Familiar patterns of mixed farming involving cultivation and pastoralism were already present, and the chief held decision-making powers over settlement and land resources, hunting, trade, and interaction with other chiefs and chiefdoms, including the mustering of armed men when necessary for offensive or defensive purposes. The evidence demonstrates in and of itself that these societies had not and did not develop in isolation. Not only did European eyewitness accounts record what they were told about links, often tenuous, between chiefdoms, but also the various parties of shipwreck victims who traveled across the area over the next three centuries introduced the peoples they met to many aspects of the cultures they represented. Hailing from Europe, India, the Far East, and East Africa, these exhausted travelers interacted openly with villagers and chiefs across southeastern Africa, from whom they received food and information and guidance and with whom in exchange they left not only remnants of material culture—iron goods, cloth and garments from India and Europe, and trinkets—but also knowledge of the Christian God and Savior and the symbol and symbolism of the Cross.
After the first Portuguese ship reached the southern tip of Africa in 1488 and the ships of Vasco da Gama rounded the tip of South Africa in 1498 the Portuguese Crown supported traders and adventurers who created a vast trading empire based in what was referred to as Portuguese India. The ships of Portugal reached enormous size to accommodate the pepper and spices, cloths, and other trade goods from India and beyond.
Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa
- Oral Traditions and History, 1400–1830
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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The emergence of well-known southern African kingdoms such as the famous kingdoms of the AmaZulu, AmaSwazi, and BaSotho in the early nineteenth century was the culmination of centuries of social and political developments that reflected the consolidation of the political control of ruling descent lines of small-scale chiefdoms across the region. This book traces events and developments among the peoples living in the regions of modern KwaZulu-Natal, Swaziland, southern Mozambique, and Lesotho from 1400 to 1830, as related in indigenous oral traditions and histories, in order to explain the social and political factors propelling sociopolitical consolidation and the emergence of chiefdoms and kingdoms. Elizabeth A. Eldredge is the author of The Creation of the Zulu Kingdom, 1815-1828: War, Shaka, and the Consolidation of Power (2014), Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870-1960 (2007), and A South African Kingdom: The Pursuit of Security in Nineteenth-Century Lesotho (2002).
10 - Ancestors, Descent Lines, and Chiefdoms West of the Drakensberg before 1820
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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- 15 June 2015, pp 237-266
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Oral traditions identify the chiefs and chiefdoms that migrated over centuries from the west and north as well as from east across the Drakensberg into the Caledon River region, which became the heart of the BaSotho kingdom in the nineteenth century. The oral traditions remembered by their descendants in Lesotho in the nineteenth century narrate stories of inheritance confLicts over succession to chieftaincies, raids, wars, migration, and resettlement and attach these events to ancestors named in their genealogies who were individually and specifically associated with these momentous events in their history. The people who came to identify themselves as the BaSotho belonged to the kingdom of Lesotho, which was unified under the leadership of the Moreno e Moholo, Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe, beginning in the 1820s. By the time of the emergence of Moshoeshoe's nascent kingdom from a small chiefdom in the early 1820s, the people under his rule included descendants of San hunter-gatherers who had lived in the region for tens of thousands of years and immigrant mixed farmers who cultivated grains and herded stock. The farmers were made up of Nguni-speaking peoples who had migrated as chiefdoms from east of the Drakensberg Mountains and Sotho-Tswana speaking chiefdoms that had immigrated from the north and west.
Residual Stone Age communities, known in modern times as Baroa, Basarwa, Bushmen, or San and associated with the KwaZulu-Natal region and areas of the Cape Colony districts and modern Namibia and Botswana, had been concentrated in the high mountain areas and adjacent regions of modern Lesotho for at least twenty thousand years and survived to trade and sometimes intermix socially over centuries with Iron Age farming communities. As D. F. Ellenberger observed, their historical presence in the Lesotho-Orange Free State area has always been marked by the names of rivers and locations carrying their language and names. By the nineteenth century,
the Bushmen were divided into clans, with their headquarters in caves in which they painted pictures of the animal which gave its name to the clan. For instance, all the Bushmen of Herschel Quthing and Barkley East had their headquarters at the cave of the Eland near Dordrecht.
8 - Zulu Conquests and the Consolidation of Power, 1815–21
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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When Shaka returned to the AmaZulu chiefdom from the AmaMthethwa chiefdom with an entourage and usurped the chieftaincy, he remained subordinate to Chief Dingiswayo, who retained paramountcy across smaller chiefdoms in the vicinity of the AmaMthethwa. Several smaller chiefdoms had already offered submission to Shaka's father, Senzangakona, and Shaka himself had retained strong links with the AmaLanga chiefdom of his mother, including many prominent people of eLangeni who had taken refuge with him in Dingiswayo's growing kingdom. In spite of his contentious relationship with his maternal cousin Makedama, the eLangeni people were the first to come under the AmaZulu chiefdom as Shaka widened the control that his father had already begun to extend. The few small chiefdoms that recognized the authority of Senzangakona, such as the AmaMpongose, also khonza'd the new AmaZulu chief Shaka. But Shaka had already earned a reputation that caused the smaller chiefs to worry about the fate of their people, and their diviners foretold disaster:
When people heard that Tshaka had become king, Ngoza of the Tembu people, and Macingwane, and then Matiwane, all fLed. Matiwane went along the Drakensberg. On the way some of his people lost toes from the cold. Tshaka had not yet made war; he had not yet fought with Zwide. They saw him in the isitundu medicines (medicines made by the diviners for the king to wash with). Diviners in those days still had medicines, unlike those of today, who collect money and doctor with nothing.
The Ama Ngwane, under their chief Matiwane, appear to have fLed first after suffering defeat in a joint attack by the forces of Dingiswayo and Shaka. Matiwane's people were set into fLight again by Shaka a few years later, and in the interim other chiefs had also led their people in an exodus southward. Although his dates are questionable, Shepstone appears to be the most accurate of the sources for early Ama Ngwane history, and he explained that they were settled in the northwestern part “of the present Zululand” until they were attacked by Dingiswayo, who was assisted by the forces of his subordinate chief Shaka.
1 - History and Oral Traditions in Southeastern Africa
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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By the time King Ngwane V was installed as the King of Swaziland in 1894, the Swazi Royal House could recite forty-one generations of kings through their line of descent, tracing the ruling house back an estimated 1,025 years to approximately 870 CE. A Portuguese shipwreck survivor observed, after meeting a “king” as he traveled through the region of Kwa- Zulu-Natal to Maputo Bay in 1622, “It is a notable thing that these barbarians are respected in their way, and as their race and family are united, their children never lose the territory and kraals left them by their fathers, everything descending to the eldest, whom the others call father and respect him accordingly.” The emergence of well-known southern African kingdoms in the early nineteenth century, such as the famous kingdoms of the AmaZulu, Ama Swazi, and BaSotho, was the culmination of centuries of social and political developments that reflected continuity in the consolidation of the political control of ruling descent lines of small-scale chiefdoms across the entire region. The first complex society emerged in the Trans-Vaal region of modern South Africa along the middle Limpopo River in 850 CE, and by 1400 CE prominent lines of descent of the ruling families of small chiefdoms had been established across southeastern Africa that would give rise to thriving processes of sociopolitical consolidation both east and west of the Drakensberg Mountains by the early 1700s. By the time the first Europeans made their way to southern Africa in 1488, these processes had long since been underway. The purpose of this book is to trace the events and developments of the peoples living in the regions of modern KwaZulu-Natal, Swaziland, southern Mozambique, and Lesotho through these formative centuries to explain the social and political factors impelling the process of sociopolitical consolidation and the emergence of chiefdoms and kingdoms.
How and why did social and political amalgamation occur, causing the emergence of larger-scale chiefdoms and kingdoms? When and why did large-scale migrations and resettlement occur? What events or circumstances propelled hundreds of people to undertake large-scale, long-distance migration and resettlement, and what were the social, political, and cultural consequences?
Notes
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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Appendix B - Chronology of Conflicts, Migrations, and Political Reconfiguration East of the Drakensberg in the Era of Shaka
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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1750 – 60
Two large chiefdoms, the AmaThuli and the AmaCele, migrated from north to south of the Thukela River.
1750 – 1800
North of the Thukela River several major chiefdoms consolidated control over territory and expanding populations. These chiefdom and their chiefs in 1800 were Ama Hlubi (Chief Bungane), Swazi (Chief Ndvungunye son of Ngwane), AmaNdwandwe (Chief Zwide), AmaMthethwa (Chief Dingiswayo), and AbaQwabe (Chief Kondhlo).
The proto-Swazi Chief Ngwane led his chiefdom south from the Lebombo Mountains to the Magudu hills area just south of modern Swaziland, where over time they came into confLict with the AmaNdwandwe there, with whom they were distantly related.
Smaller chiefdoms ranging in size from several households of fewer than one hundred people under the senior male of the line of descent to one or two thousand people ruled by the senior male of the dominant line also proliferated, and over time their chiefs became tributary subordinates to the more powerful chiefs. The AmaZulu chiefdom under Chief Senzangakhona became tributary to the AmaMthethwa of Chief Dingiswayo but also incorporated several smaller chiefdoms under AmaZulu rule. Their neighbors the eLangeni (AmaLanga) under Chief Mbengi and then his son Mgabi were on friendly terms, and in the 1780s Mbengi's daughter Nandi bore Senzangakhona's first son out of wedlock, Shaka (pronounced Tshaka or Chaka), who was raised mostly by his maternal relatives with his first cousin Makedama.
∼1805
Makedama violently seized the eLangeni chieftaincy, causing other members of the ruling family, with Shaka, to migrate and seek refuge with Chief Dingiswayo of the AmaMthethwa. Shaka served in Dingiswayo's army circa 1806 – 16, during which time the AmaMthethwa fought battles against at least eight chiefdoms.
1815
Swazi Chief Ndvungunye died and was succeeded by Somhlolo, later called Sobhuza, who consolidated rule over the smaller chiefdoms of modern Swaziland (Nguni and SeSotho cultural heritage), 1816 – 20.
1816
AmaZulu chief Senzangakhona died; Shaka returned and usurped the Ama- Zulu chieftaincy, ordering the half brother who was the heir to be killed.
1816 – 17
AmaZulu impis were sent against small nearby chiefdoms (at least nine), which were subordinated and incorporated by diplomacy (e.g., Chief Pungatshe of the AmaButhelezi) or by force.
2 - Oral Traditions in the Reconstruction of Southern African History
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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- Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa
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The oral traditions from the isiZulu-speaking people are a critical and central starting point for the reconstruction of much of the history of southeastern Africa. The success of the AmaZulu king Shaka and his successors in achieving political unification and dominance over a wide area ensured that their early genealogies and oral traditions of inheritance, migration, settlement, and peaceful and hostile interactions in the area were remembered into the twentieth century. Studies of the AmaZulu ruling line of descent and their followers have illuminated processes that included the subordination of peoples incorporated, both willingly and unwillingly, into the emerging Zulu kingdom in the late 1810s. The incorporated population was socially, politically, and culturally diverse, and the process was accompanied by internal social stratification. Records of the past, both written and oral, are more often preserved by rulers who have survived political upheaval, skewing the record in favor of those who have predominated. Fortunately, however, the oral traditions that James Stuart collected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included the distinctive histories of the many subordinated families, lineages, and chiefdoms whose identities came to be subsumed under the larger AmaZulu identity after the consolidation of the kingdom in the 1820s. In addition to the oral traditions recorded by Stuart, of critical importance are oral traditions and histories as well as personal observations recorded about early KwaZulu and precolonial “Natal” history by the early traders Henry Francis Fynn, Nathaniel Isaacs, and Charles Rawden Maclean.
Mandhlakazi told James Stuart that he should give great weight to whatever he heard from Mgidhlana ka Mpande about the royal house of Zululand by saying, “His words fill the mouth.” Stuart added the annotation, “That is, his talking is authoritative, final and so [therefore] complete.” In other words, Mandhlakazi was reporting Mgidhlana's reputation as an authoritative and fully credible source and in doing so indicated that the AmaZulu people were able to recognize and distinguish an authoritative source from someone who was not reliable.
12 - The Expansion of the European Presence at Maputo Bay, 1821–33
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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Rising demographic and political turmoil across southeastern Africa on both sides of the Drakensberg Mountains in the 1820s, occasioned by ambitious chiefs, drought, famine, and despair, coincided with a rising European interest in the region from both east and west. At Maputo Bay, site of the earliest European foothold in the area, the complacent and haphazard Portuguese presence was suddenly threatened by inland violence in 1821 and by the arrival of a British survey ship in 1822.
The first AmaZulu defeat of the AmaNdwandwe under Chief Zwide in 1821 had serious repercussions in the region of Maputo Bay. The Portuguese referred to the arrival of the migrant AmaNdwandwe chiefdoms from the south to the outskirts of Delagoa (Maputo) Bay as the “invasion of the Vatwahs.” The first report from a governor at Lourenço Marques, the Portuguese settlement at the bay, was made in a letter of Caetano da Costa Matozo, dated July 11, 1821. He wrote that on July 5, 1821, the Tembe territory of Chief Capella had been invaded by Chief “Inhaboza,” master of the lands south of Santa Lucia, who had come with a force of eight thousand men, more or less. He said it was true that “Capella,” that is, Muhadane, now an old man, was capable of countering this, but the enemy had caused such a panic that Muhadane's (Capella's) people had fLed and only the young chief Mayeta had opposed the enemy with a column of warriors. These fought with such valor that the invaders were routed, but not before there had been many casualties, making them unwilling to prosecute the war further because they did not believe they could defeat the invaders. The Tembe chief Mayeta had informed the governor that he could not raise sufficient forces because his people had lost their spirit of resistance, and he was obliged to retreat. Chief “Capella” himself took refuge on a small island with his relatives, and the enemy ranged freely over his territory, stealing the cattle and leaving the villages in fLames.
Preface
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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When I first arrived in Lesotho in March 1981, it was listed as one of the ten poorest countries in the world. The strains of apartheid and resistance in South Africa and the Cold War in neighboring countries had taken its toll and continued to do so across the region for the next decade. I had the pleasure of visiting Swaziland, South Africa, and Botswana in 1981 and lived in Lesotho for eighteen months until September 1982. I was able to return on short research trips to Lesotho more than once, but I did not return to the other countries in the region until 1992. On that visit I attended a conference at the then University of Durban-Westville and visited several universities in South Africa that were grappling with the political changes finally coming in their country. Only by requesting business visas was I able to travel for the first time with my family, including my four-year-old and eight-year-old children (who also received business visas), to Mozambique, where war was still felt on the outskirts of Maputo, and the political problems there were yet to be resolved. The streets were full of homeless children, and British soldiers had assisted in securing some areas before UNIMOZ arrived to secure a transition to peace. People were surprised and pleased to see visiting American youngsters, and the prospect for the research I had long since planned to do began to seem feasible. Over the course of the years it had become obvious that language barriers had handicapped the work of scholars in the field of southern African history, and few people were able to work not only in English but also in Portuguese (which I studied at night school at the University of Pittsburgh while I was writing my dissertation) and in the southern Bantu languages, of which I had studied IsiXhosa, SeSotho, and IsiZulu under the auspices of Professor Wandile Kuse, then at the University of Illinois, and Professor Daniel Kunene at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With the ability to read and converse in these languages, I had an unusual qualification to conduct cross-border research that would provide new insights and depth into the precolonial history of southeastern Africa, when colonial borders were neither present nor relevant. The present book is the result.
9 - Military Campaigns, Migrations, and Political Reconfiguration
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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Shaka faced numerous challenges to his campaign of AmaZulu expansion following the death of Dingiswayo and his incorporation of the remnants of the AmaMthethwa chiefdom. In the north the greatest threat came from the AmaNdwandwe under Chief Zwide because the larger Ama- Hlubi chiefdom had never been militarized and was weakened following the death of Chief Bhungane in about 1815. The AmaKhumalo segment led by Mzilikazi rose in rebellion to Shaka's assertion of authority, and the Ama Ngwane under Chief Matiwane attacked the Ama Hlubi before themselves coming under attack and being forced to fLee by Shaka's forces. To the south the AmaCele and AmaThuli conceded to Shaka's show of force and AmaZulu rule, and their chiefs became tributary subordinates to Shaka, but Shaka sent troops south of the Thukela to raid throughout the region and enrich his herds with captured cattle. Ultimately, Shaka decided that the AmaMpondo under Chief Faku were a threat and sent two military campaigns against them as he considered expansionism to the south. In the meantime, however, far to the north the kingdom of the Ama Swazi was emerging under the leadership of Shaka's contemporary, Somhlolo, who as Sobhuza I became known as the founder of the Ama- Ngwane Swazi kingdom.
Chief Zwide and the AmaNdwandwe
Zwide built the AmaNdwandwe into a powerful chiefdom by means of both treachery and military aggression against his neighbors. The Swazi royal Giba ka Sobuza told Stuart in 1898 how Zwide drove the emerging Ama- Swazi kingdom of Somhlolo (later known as Sobhuza) from their homes at Etshiselweni:
Here they lived until attacked by Zwide, the Zulu chieftain, in Tshaka's reign. The Swazis were defeated by Zwide and put to fLight. They fLed into what is now the Transvaal, to the Basutos [Transvaal Sotho]. Ncaba, Zwangendaba and Mpakeni fLed at the same time. Sobuza's kraals were burnt by Zwide and the place is now known by the name Etshiselweni. There is a Zombode kraal at Etshiselweni, the present induna being the man Silele above referred to. The Swazis fLed as far as the Basutos, to Esidhlomodhlomo hill, because Zwide's impi followed them.
11 - The Caledon River Valley and the BaSotho of Moshoeshoe, 1821–33
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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The first two decades of the nineteenth century had brought multiyear droughts and food scarcity more than once across the region of southeastern Africa. As the ecological stress of drought reemerged in the 1820s, entire populations were faced with food scarcity caused by crop failures and the loss of cattle to poor pasturage. Responses to scarcity and looming famine included raiding for livestock and migration and resettlement at better-watered sites with better cattle posts. The consequent dislocations disrupted not only food production but also social networks and systems of political patronage and authority. Some chiefdoms increased their wealth and authority over others, and some were dispersed and scattered and lost their autonomy and identity as they were incorporated into the stronger chiefdoms.
Moshoeshoe's BaMokoteli and the Rise in Violence before 1822
In the 1810s the BaMokoteli branch of the BaMonaheng were a small chiefdom, living in the northern region of modern Lesotho under a small chief, Mokhachane, putatively subject to the overrule of the related Ba Sekake. Mokhachane's senior son, Moshoeshoe, came of age at the turn of the century, underwent initiation rites in about 1803, and sometime afterward took his age-mates to build their own village at Menkhoaneng. While he was still very young, Moshoeshoe was joined by a man of MaZizi origins named Ntseke, who was from the same descent line as the BaPhuthi chief Mokuoane (father of Moorosi), and Ntseke's son Makoanyane became Moshoeshoe's companion as a youth and later his famous military commander, known to have saved Moshoeshoe's life on at least one occasion before the migration to Thaba Bosiu. After visiting the sage Mohlomi (who died in 1814), according to Moshoeshoe's son Tlali Moshoeshoe,
Moshoeshoe returned. It was at that time that many wars arose. As for all these peoples whose names I have already mentioned, now two who lived in one place would fight with three who lived together. Then all these little nations—although I am unable to mention everybody, for I too have only a limited knowledge—simply scattered throughout the whole land, for everywhere there was fighting, and throughout this time all that one held in one's hands was war. It was only if the herds returned home in the evening that people knew that there was no war.
List of Illustrations
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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13 - Southern African Kingdoms on the Eve of Colonization
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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The advent of European traders and missionaries into the interior of southern Africa and along the southeastern coast after 1800 challenged the independence and autonomy of African chiefs and kingdoms. The interaction between Africans and Europeans brought new infLuences and new perspectives on events as they occurred and were witnessed and recorded by Europeans. Later generations remembered stories from their histories that had been orally transmitted, along with the genealogies of their ancestors, but by the end of the nineteenth century the written word would overcome the use of oral transmission as the record of history and historians. Among the last significant oral traditions of the newly emergent Ama- Zulu kingdom was that of the death of Shaka, who was both respected and reviled among the people who became the subjects of future Zulu kings.
The AmaZulu oral traditions have numerous stories about the latter years of Shaka's life and his assassination in September 1828. Shaka had developed a contentious relationship with the Europeans traders who had established themselves at Port Natal (Durban) in 1824, had heard rumors of the strength of the AmaXhosa chiefs of the TransKei and CisKei, and nurtured ambitions for expansion in the direction of the Cape Colony. He opened negotiations with the Cape Colony through emissaries, led by a man named Sotobe, who went as far as Grahamstown but never made it all the way to Cape Town. Immediately after the death of his mother, Nandi, Shaka began building a new capital at Dukuza, near modern Stanger, and moved there from the ancient capital at Bulawayo. Makewu, in an 1899 interview, told Stuart,
Shaka built his principal Natal kraal where Stanger now stands and called it Dukuza. The reason for the name is that when he was at Gibixegu kraal [Bulawayo] in Zululand he was stabbed by Ntintinti ka Nkobe. The assegai, which he drew out, he recognized at belonging to Sipezi [the military barracks, or ikhanda, of the isiPhezi regiment] where his brothers lived (he had distributed to them this kind of assegai). It struck him high up the arm (right, I fancy) above the elbow and therefore penetrated the arm and just touched the side.
6 - Maputo Bay, 1740–1820
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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After the departure of the failed Dutch trading post in 1730, the political contests and occasional military engagements among the Maputo Bay chiefdoms that had so disrupted trade appear to have persisted, driven at least in part by rivalries over succession to chieftaincies. During the 1720s the heir to the Tembe chieftaincy, Modammadom, was still a minor, and his uncle, Nwangobe, served as ruling regent. When he reached adulthood Modammadom had to use force to drive out Nwangobe, who refused to step aside voluntarily, as was expected, for the legitimate heir. Nwangobe took refuge with Inyaka chief Machavane east of the Maputo River, from where he launched sporadic attacks against the AmaTembe, now under Modammadom's rule. Eventually by the 1750s the older man, Nwangobe, had defeated his nephew, the legitimate heir Modammadom. In the midst of this turmoil, in 1747 some Maputo Bay chiefs sent a joint message to the Portuguese post at Inhambane requesting the Portuguese resume their previous biennial trade voyages, evidently because it had been so long since any traders had visited the bay. In the meantime Nwangobe turned against his former host Machavane and defeated him, subsuming the territory east of the Maputo River, that of the two Inyaka chiefdoms, under the Tembe chieftaincy.
In spite of their claims of imperial rights over southern Mozambique, including Maputo Bay and the trade there, the Portuguese were never able to assert control there in the eighteenth century. Instead, in the Inhambane and Maputo Bay regions shifting configurations of chiefdoms continued to operate independently under shifting alliances and drew on the benefits of trade that remained in the hands of traders known for their cultural origins in India and the Muslim Swahili coast. InfLuences from the Swahili coast ports, including the Islamic religion, filtered down to Inhambane through trade and traders. Competition increased for control over the vicinity of Inhambane between Tonga chiefs, including the important chiefdoms of Tinga-Tinga, Nhamussa, Chamba, and Nhampossa, who were required by the Portuguese to provide labor and defense and to allow the free fLow of trade goods through their territory to the Portuguese.
5 - Maputo Bay Peoples and Chiefdoms before 1740
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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Summary
The chiefdoms of southern Mozambique were known by reference to the lines of descent of their rulers and were of longstanding existence by the time of the first arrival of Europeans. Like the chiefdoms to their south, they were not large enough to be considered kingdoms in accordance with how the term has been used in other regions of Africa, but their chiefs were called “kings” by the early Portuguese. The sociopolitical units of the southern Mozambique lowlands were considerably smaller than the contemporaneous well-known and much larger sociopolitical units of the Zimbabwe plateau and related cultures, which were kingdoms or empires with extended political networks involving tributary relations with subordinate chiefs. Modern references to the peoples of Maputo Bay have been largely determined by the observations and labeling of the Swiss missionary Henri Junod, but this has led to considerable confusion and difficulty because of the similarity of names of separate and distinct peoples in southern and northern Mozambique. To avoid confusion with the Tonga peoples of northern Mozambique, the southern culture and people have been referred to as Thonga or Tsonga, and the southernmost of these Tsongaspeaking peoples are referred to by Junod as “Ronga.”
The original ethnolinguistic designation “Tsonga” (Thonga or Tonga) in the Maputo Bay area was probably derived from the name of the early ancestor Mtonga. John Gama told Stuart, “the Tongas [southern Tsonga speakers] have for a very long period occupied the land they are at present living in. People after people have passed this part of the country from the north on the way to Zululand, Natal, Pondoland, etc., whilst the Tongas have remained stationary in Tongaland.” He continued with the explanation universally accepted among Ama Ngwane-Swazi descendants:
it was in the Tonga king Mtonga's reign that his (Mtonga's) brother Mswazi (the one listed among the names below Samukedi) came to occupy country along the base of or on the Ubombo mountains. The legend is this. Mswazi wanted to cultivate crops because he wanted food. Mtonga on the other hand wanted to hunt game. This was the origin of the separation, which was not due to a quarrel. Mswazi wished to fight with other peoples and obtain cattle, some of which were paid as tribute to his elder brother. Mtonga received these cattle, slaughtered and ate them.
4 - Founding Families and Chiefdoms East of the Drakensberg
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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- Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa
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Summary
All across southeastern Africa early social organization was premised on the leadership of the senior member of a prominent family who made determinations of land allocation and land use, oversaw judicial hearings regarding disputes or the punishment of a criminal, and ensured the allocation of food resources to prevent starvation. Providing for people who would otherwise become indigent was the responsibility of the chief, who could use tributary payments or judicial fines for this purpose. The origins of small chiefdoms as extended families joined by those who intermarried with them or attached themselves to the chief through declaring their allegiance prompted westerners to think of these as “clans,” a group of people who considered themselves to be collectively descended from a distant ancestor. The easily observed process of the subdivision of these social groups in new generations created distinctive groups with known origins from a recent ancestor, who was perhaps still living or from only a generation earlier, and this prompted the western designation of subbranches of clans as “lineages,” several of which made up a clan. These terms are useful for the specific purpose of explaining the most obvious feature of social organization, but they obscure the equally prevalent processes of amalgamation of social segments led by prominent family members who with their followers collectively joined another chiefdom. Such a voluntary submission to another political authority positioned the newcomers in a subordinate status, with both obligations and privileges attached to such proffered group allegiance. The attachment of outsiders, as individuals, a family, or followers of a minor chief to a more powerful chief who headed a prominent family and attracted numerous dependents in a socially based patronage system created what are more accurately thought of as chiefdoms. Thus a chiefdom was a socially based political unit that included not only the biological descendants of a known or distant ancestor but also all the people who over time came to be attached to that leader and the family from which he hailed.
Appendix C - Interviewees from the James Stuart Collection of Oral Traditions
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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Volume and page numbers refer to C. de B. Webb and J. B. Wright, eds., The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples, Killie Campbell Africana Library Manuscript Series, vols. 1–5 (Durban: Killie Campbell African Library; Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1976–2001). The interview notes of James Stuart, both published by Webb and Wright and unpublished, are the source for the information compiled in this appendix. This list includes only those interviewees of James Stuart who are cited in this book.
Baleka ka Mpitikazi, JSA, 1:4–14. Interviewed in 1919. She was born about 1856. Her paternal ancestry was of the royal family of the AbaQwabe chiefdom, and her father was directly descended from Qwabe ka Malandela, the brother of Zulu ka Malandela. Her grandmother was a first cousin of Nandi, Shaka's mother.
Baleni ka Silwana, JSA, 1:16–52. Interviewed in 1914. He was born about 1838. His paternal ancestry was the AmaMpungose chiefLy line of descent.
Dinya ka Zokozwayo, JSA, 1:95–123. Interviewed February, March, and April 1905. He was born about 1827 and was from the AbaQwabe who had submitted to the rule of the AmaCele chiefdom under Magaye south of the Thukela River. At the time of the interview Dinya was from the Ifafa mission station.
His paternal ancestry was of the royal family of the AbaQwabe chiefdom and his father was directly descended from Qwabe ka Malandela, the brother of Zulu ka Malandela.
John Gama, JSA, 1:132–46. Interviewed in 1898. He was born about 1841– 42. His father had left Swaziland for KwaZulu-Natal in about 1843–44, and John Gama had returned there in about 1873. J. S. M. Matsebula, author of History of Swaziland, used original notes written by John Gama.
Giba ka Sobuza, JSA, 1:149–54. Interviewed in 1898. Son of Ama Swazi king Sobhuza.
Jantshi ka Nongila, JSA, 1:174–207. Interviewed in 1903. He was born at Nyezane in about 1848. His paternal ancestry belonged to the Mabaso chiefdom.
Kambi ka Matshobana, JSA, 1:208–12. Interviewed in 1903. He was born about 1864. His paternal family was from the AbaQwabe chiefdom.
Appendix A - Ama Swazi King Lists
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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From the correspondence of James Stuart and Theophilus Shepstone Jr., Stuart's various annotations to his notes, and the comments of Matsebula, we know that of the various published “Swazi kinglists,” all have as their primary source one of Stuart's own informants, John Gama. An early Swazi king list was drawn up by Theophilus Shepstone Jr., known as Offy to distinguish him from his famous father who served as a government administrator in Natal for many years. Offy also served in various capacities, including as an adviser to the Swazi king in 1887 to 1889, before the country came under joint British-Transvaal administration in 1895, followed by British colonial rule in the twentieth century. Colin Webb and John Wright reprinted a letter from Offy Shepstone to James Stuart dated November 15, 1898, because it appeared in Stuart's notebook. It confirms the statement by John Gama that he was the original source of Shepstone's information. Offy wrote to Stuart,
I took a very long time with old John Gama in getting the information which I then and now believe to be accurate. John of course was assisted by the information he had from Edendale men and the Rev. Allison, who was as you know in Swaziland over 40 years ago. I also got information from every old Swazies [sic]. One very old man in particular was very clear in his memory and, as I remarked to Gama at the time, he looked about 2,000 years of age! If you want further information, old John can give it to you. The memo was drawn up for my book which I intend to publish some day…. Yours sincerely, Offy Shepstone.”
One of the earliest Swazi king lists to be published was that of A. Miller, copied by Stuart from the Times of Swaziland, August 21, 1897. It is signifi- cant that since Miller's list appeared in a very public publication, the dates he added may have unfortunately gained credibility and may have created feedback in the sources after 1897. The Miller list has unlikely dating based on a simple assumption of a fifteen-year reign for each king, which certainly distorted the calculation of dates by a matter of centuries over time.
Frontmatter
- Elizabeth A. Eldredge
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- Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa
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