Ngwenya in the Swazi record
The Ngwenya appear in Bonner’s account as one of the smaller Sotho-speaking chiefdoms of central and western Swaziland, listed with the Mavimbela and Dhladhla west of Mahlangatja (p. 41). Wikipedia’s article on the Swazi people names the Ngwenya among the 17 founding clans; Bonner describes them as already settled when Sobhuza arrived, which is a different picture, and we cannot reconcile the two.
What the books say
Bonner says the Ngwenya, Dhladhla and Mavimbela submitted at once to Sobhuza when he moved against central Swaziland (p. 42), and that under Mswati the Ngwenya, Dhladhla, Mncina and Moyeni’s Magagula had their autonomy restricted, being placed under trusted officers of the king (p. 97). His book also mentions Ngwenya mountain, where the concession-seeker David Forbes obtained prospecting rights in the 1880s (p. 183); that is a place name, not a clan history.
Sources and cautions
This page summarises two scholarly histories of the Swazi kingdom: Philip Bonner’s Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (read from SAHO’s scanned PDF by OCR; page numbers below are PDF pages), and D. Hugh Gillis’s The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (read from SAHO’s scanned PDF by OCR; page numbers below are PDF pages). We found no further detail on the Ngwenya in the two books.
We read these two books only through machine OCR of a scanned copy, so names and dates may contain OCR errors, and we have not checked them against the printed pages or against the other histories they cite (Matsebula, Bryant, Kuper, Stuart’s archive). Both books rely heavily on oral evidence collected in the 1970s from clan informants, and they present contested episodes from a particular scholarly point of view.
Izithakazelo and totem
We are printing no Ngwenya praises or totem because none has been confirmed. If you belong to the Ngwenya and recite your izithakazelo, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Philip Bonner: Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (SAHO scan)
- D. Hugh Gillis: The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (SAHO scan)
- Wikipedia: Swazi people (clan lists)
Do you belong to the Ngwenya? 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.