Mudau in the sources
Mudau is a Venda surname and, in the sources we read, three different things: the surname of E. Mudau, a Venda informant who wrote histories for N. J. van Warmelo; of Baldwin Mudau, the opposition leader of the 1970s; and, on a community blog, one of the prominent chiefs of the Vhadau. We have found no history of a Mudau clan or house itself.
What the sources say
E. Mudau as historian. Lufuno Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis cites E. Mudau’s “Ngoma-Lungundu” in Van Warmelo’s The Copper Miners of Musina and the Early History of the Zoutpansberg (1940) and his Mahosi a Venda na Vhadau vha Tshakhuma with S. M. Dzivhani. Mudau’s account makes Hwami (also Mutumbuka-Vhathu), the first thovhele of the Vhasenzi to arrive in the Soutpansberg, the first khosikhulu to rule all the people in Venda, who died after seeing his great-grandchildren, and says Dimbanyika ruled after Dyambeu and Bele-la-Mambo, which Mulaudzi reads as perhaps Vele-la-Mbeu under another name. Mudau also raised a point about the Vhangona kingship that no other scholar mentioned (ch. 3, pp. 53 to 56). A Mudau manuscript on the Vhadau of Tshakhuma (1939, in Venda) is held by the University of Pretoria and is listed on our Vhadau page; we have not read it.
Baldwin Mudau. Baldwin Mudau led the Venda Independence People’s Party (VIP), which Mulaudzi says won two elections (he dates one to 1978) but was denied power by Patrick Mphephu, because the traditional leaders who sat in the Assembly gave the Venda National Party its majority. He proposed a government of national unity in the Assembly in 1980 and launched a motion of no confidence in Mphephu’s cabinet, which a minister, Gota E. R. B. Nesengani, defeated. He died on New Year’s Day 1982, aged 51, at Kalafong Hospital, Pretoria, of coronary complications according to the hospital; some Venda said he had been poisoned or beaten, and his death set off riots and arrests, while Mphephu’s government said it was natural causes. Mulaudzi thinks the rumours cannot be dismissed as baseless but does not decide; he adds that a lieutenant, Esroma Nethononda, claimed Mudau had been persuaded to accept independence (ch. 7, pp. 149 to 158).
A community blog on Venda clan names lists Mudau among the prominent chiefs of the Vhadau, with Raphulu, Tshidziwelele and Dewasi, but gives no source; another page says the Vhangona chief of the Nzhelele valley was Tshidziwelele of the Mudau clan (unverified). We make no link between the surname-holders and any of these.
Cautions
The surname Mudau is common, and we claim no link between surname-holders and the people above. Mulaudzi is a historian writing in 2020 from commission reports, newspapers and interviews he carried out himself, and he states his own opinions in the text; the extracted text of the thesis has stray spaces and some unreadable characters, so page numbers are approximate. Venda kingship history is told differently by each house and by each historian, and where the sources differ we say so and take no side.
Sources and further reading
- Lufuno J. P. Mulaudzi, “Historicising the politics of vhuhosivhuhulu: the Venda polity and state formation in South Africa, c.1800s-2020”, DPhil thesis, University of Pretoria (2020), chapter 7, pp. 149 to 158
- Lufuno J. P. Mulaudzi, DPhil thesis (2020), chapter 3, pp. 53 to 56 (on E. Mudau’s account of Hwami)
- Know My Roots: Venda Clan Names (community blog; no author or citations given, so unverified)
See also Masingo, Ramabulana and Tshivhase.
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