Mzila in the sources
Mzila (also written Muzila or Umzila) was the son of Soshangane (Manukosi), the founder of the Gaza kingdom, and the winner of the war of succession against his brother Mawewe in 1861 or 1862. During that war he took refuge in the Zoutpansberg; Nemudzivhadi says he settled at Tshitavhadulu near Tshakhuma, and in 1869 his warriors were used against the Venda at Lwamondo and Thengwe with the sanction of the Transvaal authorities.
What the sources say
The succession war. Henri Junod records that after Manukosi’s death a “dreadful war of succession” raged for more than six years over the whole Thonga area: by Thonga law Muzila was the legal heir, but Ngoni law favoured his younger brother Mawewe, who was proclaimed; Muzila’s followers fled to the Spelonken, and Muzila, with the help of the Portuguese and Ronga warriors, defeated Mawewe decisively on the Sabie River from 17 to 20 August 1862. Junod adds that Albasini, a Portuguese acting as chief of the Thonga of the Spelonken, played a considerable part in these events. The Commission’s record, summarised on our Nxumalo page, names Mzila as a son of Soshangana’s first wife and Mawewe as a son of his great wife, says Mawewe took the throne against his father’s wishes, and has Mzila winning it in 1862, Mawewe fleeing to Swaziland, and Mzila dying in 1884. Junod puts Manukosi’s death in 1856, Nemudzivhadi in 1859, and Nemudzivhadi dates Mzila’s victory to 1861 (pp. 76 to 77). Wikipedia puts Mzila’s reign at 1861 to 1885 and his death in August 1891. The sources therefore disagree on nearly every date, and we have not reconciled them.
In Venda. Nemudzivhadi writes that in the dispute following Manukosi’s death Mzila was driven into Venda and settled at Tshitavhadulu rather than near Ramabulana’s kraal; the settlement was sanctioned by Raluthaga Madzivhandila of Tshakhuma, as it was in his area of jurisdiction, and Mzila’s stay was short because events in Mozambique forced him back (pp. 76 to 77). Albasini’s duties as tribute collector included watching Mzila’s refugees at Tshitavhadulu (p. 63). Once in power again, Mzila asked Albasini to hand over the Tsonga trader Monene or put him to death, and threatened to close the Gaza hunting grounds to ivory traders if he refused (p. 77; see Monene affair).
1869. In the Boers’ struggle against Makhado, Stephanus Schoeman approached Mzila through messengers for help, agreeing that he would get land if the Venda were subdued; Nemudzivhadi says Mzila himself was interested in Lwamondo and Thengwe, and answered that Albasini, “the cause of all the troubles”, would first have to leave the Soutpansberg and that the Republic must agree to give him land (p. 110). The Executive Council sent A. Duvenage to negotiate separately, and Albasini obstructed the talks; Mzila, “confused”, did not know whose request to follow (p. 110). In March and April 1869 Mzila’s warriors, about 5,000 under Magidjana in Nemudzivhadi’s count, attacked the Thengwe and Mphaphuli territories without Schoeman’s knowledge, and Schoeman, back in April, joined them in a failed attempt to take Lwamondo; on 7 April 1869 he and Mzila’s messenger Moyakayaka agreed that the warriors would receive land if they defeated the Venda and ammunition from the Republic, which the Republic approved; and a larger force under Mpisane attacked Lwamondo in June 1869, where the people drove them away (pp. 110 to 112; see Lwamondo).
Names. Nemudzivhadi calls the Gaza and Swazi fighters “Ngoni” and notes that the Venda called them Mabunyu, “naked people” (p. 121). Junod notes that a young sub-chief of Rikatla, near Lourenço Marques, bore the name Muzila after the great Ngoni chief, and recorded a women’s carrier song praising Mzila as the hawk in the sky (vol. 1, p. 375; vol. 2, p. 189). Mzila’s son, Junod says, succeeded him as Gungunyane (Ngungunyane); our Nxumalo page has the Commission’s account of him.
Cautions
This is Mzila as he appears in the Venda and Boer story, not a history of the Gaza kingdom, for which our Nxumalo page and Junod are the starting points. A 1938 manuscript, “History of Manukuza, Mawewe and Mzila” by E. M. Ceko, is in the University of Pretoria repository (hdl 2263/64534); we have not read it. Nemudzivhadi’s “Ngoni” attribution of the 1869 warriors is his; we do not know how the Gaza state referred to them. The dates conflict, as above. Nemudzivhadi is a Venda historian whose subject is Makhado’s reign; he built on oral interviews done between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s and on colonial archive papers, and he often says where his informants and the written sources disagree, as do we.
Izithakazelo and totem
We have found no confirmed totem or praise poem for this page. If you belong to a family connected with it and recite your praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Mphaya Henry Nemudzivhadi, “The attempts by Makhado to revive the Venda kingdom, 1864-1895”, PhD thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (1998); open access at the North-West University repository (a scanned copy; we read it by OCR, and page numbers cited are the thesis’s printed numbers)
- Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 1, The Social Life (Neuchâtel, 1912), read in the Internet Archive scan; the passage on the Ba-Ngoni and the succession of Muzila
- Wikipedia: Mzila (tagged as needing more citations)
- E. M. Ceko, “History of Manukuza, Mawewe and Mzila” (1938), University of Pretoria repository; listed only, not read
See also João Albasini, Mzila, Monene affair, Makhado, Davhana and Nxumalo.
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