Matlou in the sources
Matlou is a ward at Mapela. The people say they are Pedi, and their totem is kgwadi, a water bird.
What the sources say
Jackson says the Matlou lived in their present home together with the Phalane before the Langa arrived, and say they used to rule over the Phalane. They were overcome and incorporated when the Langa came. Their short praise names them the Matlou of the heifers and Pedi of Rangako; the longer poem, recorded in July 1981 from the spokesman Samuel Shima, is printed in the book (about pp. 143 to 144).
The ward had 120 households in the Mapela area, 74 of them of the Matlou clan; many Matlou subjects work on white-owned farms to the west. The Ramorulane and Matlou disagree about whether Ramorulane were subject to the Phalane.
Cautions
This is the ward as Jackson found it in 1968; headmen and household counts will have changed. The praise poems are printed in his book and we are not reproducing them here. Jackson was a government ethnologist, and his fieldwork at Mapela took about 100 days between 1962 and 1967; he says the opinions are his own. His present tense describes 1968. We read the book through machine OCR of a typed transcription, so names and numbers may contain errors, and page numbers are approximate.
Izithakazelo and totem
The book records the totem and praise poem of this ward where given above, but we are not printing them in full. If you belong to the Matlou and recite your own izithakazelo or direto, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
See also Langa, Kekana and Ndzundza.
Do you belong to the Matlou? Tell us your praises and what elders say about the history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.