The Soutpansberg war, 1863 to 1869

The Soutpansberg war, 1863 to 1869: an overview

Between about 1863 and 1869 the Venda ruler Makhado and the Boers of the Soutpansberg fought a war that began inside the white community, over tribute and a Tsonga refugee, and ended with the Boers leaving their town of Schoemansdal in July 1867, then returning with Gaza and Swazi allies in 1869 and being turned back. This article follows it from its causes to the commission of November 1869, with links to the pages on each person and place.

The story

At a glance

1848: the Boers found Zoutpansbergdorp, later Schoemansdal, on land at the foot of Vhulorwa.
27 February 1855: Stephanus Schoeman chairs the meeting that imposes tribute and names 38 “chiefs” (see Stephanus Schoeman).
9 June 1859: João Albasini is appointed tribute collector (the date as Nemudzivhadi gives it; Jackson’s study says August 1859).
1863: Albasini’s commandos attack Rambuda and Lwamondo (September); the Dutch Reformed mission begins at Goedgedacht.
1864: Ramabulana dies; Makhado succeeds, Davhana flees to Luonde; Makhado’s army is repulsed at Luonde on 3 to 4 June; the Monene dispute begins.
1865: the Monene commandos hit Phahwe (April) and Tshakhuma (8 May); Madzhie’s kraal is attacked on 1 September; Hofmeyr flees Goedgedacht.
July 1867: Kruger’s commando fails against Luatame, Vhulorwa and Madzhie; Schoemansdal is abandoned on 15 July.
1868: Schoeman becomes Diplomatic Agent (July); Albasini is dismissed.
1869: Mzila’s warriors attack Thengwe, Mphaphuli and Lwamondo (April and June); a Swazi army attacks Tshakhuma and Dzanani (October); the Boers’ commission meets at Goedewensch (13 to 24 November).

The Boer system and the Venda polity

Nemudzivhadi’s account starts from a clash of two ideas of rule. The Boers, in the meeting of 27 February 1855, named 38 so-called chiefs and divided Africans among field cornets who collected opgaaf, a tribute paid in cattle, goats, hoes and ivory; the Venda, he says, had only five senior rulers (Ramabulana, Tshivhase, Mphaphuli, Rambuda and Modjadji), and the rest were their subordinates, so that the Boers’ list reduced Thovhele and mahosi mahulu to the level of mahosi (pp. 62 to 65). Paying opgaaf to Michael Buys, João Albasini or a field cornet therefore implied, in Venda eyes, that these officials were usurping the monarch’s authority (p. 65; see Michael Buys and João Albasini). Albasini’s appointment as collector, with a Tsonga following that had fled the Gaza kingdom (see Mzila), put a foreign collector over Vhuronga, Vhulovhedzi, Mashau, Vari, Luonde, Tshakhuma, Vhuphani and Vhutavhatsindi (p. 63).

Schoemansdal itself was an ivory town, with 278 houses and about 1,000 people in the Portuguese commission’s report of 1855 (Wikipedia gives a much lower house count) and, in Nemudzivhadi’s account, more than 350 elephants killed in the 1864 season; hunters lent guns to Venda hunters so as to hunt year-round, against the government’s hunting rules (pp. 68 to 72). Hofmeyr’s eyewitness book adds that the Whites were at first no friends of the missionaries, that some Boers were cruel to Africans and that Africans were killed and their cattle taken “without anyone knowing why”, though others took the Africans’ side (ch. 4).

Causes, as the sources give them

Nemudzivhadi lists several, and says the war began within the white community. First, Davhana and Albasini: after Ramabulana’s death in 1864 Davhana fled to Albasini at Luonde, who recognised him as heir, “a Thovhele outside the royal residence”, and refused Makhado’s requests to give him up (pp. 53 to 60, 87). Second, the Monene affair, a quarrel between Albasini and the Schoemansdal officials over a Tsonga trader whom Mzila had demanded; it led to the commandos of April and May 1865 (see Monene affair, 1864 to 1865). Third, forced labour on Boer farms, including women and children, which in Venda custom was “tantamount to marrying such a wife” (pp. 85 to 86). Fourth, guns: Madzhie refused to return the firearms lent to Venda hunters as long as Davhana was not handed over (pp. 87 to 88). Fifth, humiliating incidents such as the beating of Mmboi, Funyufunyu’s younger brother, by three Boers over spilled milk, which Funyufunyu reported to Makhado (pp. 89 to 90; see Funyufunyu). Madzhie pressed for war; Makhado hesitated, consulted his friend Terence Fitzgerald, who advised against, and in the end yielded to his councillors and uncle (pp. 91 to 92; see Madzhie).

The Boer-side historians Nemudzivhadi cites (Theal, Wagner, Möller-Malan, De Vaal) put more weight on the lawlessness of the frontier whites and the Republic’s lack of money and men. Theal’s view that the Whites of the Soutpansberg were among the most lawless in South Africa is quoted in the thesis (p. 72), and the Volksraad itself saw the circumstances as conducive to war (p. 80). The thesis’s own conclusion is that the war was “a war culminating in the retention of Vhavenda freedom from subjugation”, not a rebellion (p. 102).

1863 to 1865: Luonde, Monene and the first commandos

On 22 September 1863 a commando under Albasini and F. H. Geyser attacked Lwamondo, after an attack on Rambuda from 16 to 19 September (p. 67; see Lwamondo). In 1864 Makhado sent an army, under Funyufunyu, to Luonde to drive Davhana out; his warriors were told not to harm Davhana himself, in keeping with custom; they surrounded the kraal on the night of 3 June and attacked on the 4th, but Davhana’s men and Albasini’s Tsonga counter-attacked and the Venda withdrew with heavy losses to Mount Tshingwe and then Luatame (pp. 56 to 58).

The Monene affair then widened the quarrel. After Monene escaped detention on 28 March 1865, a commando under Venter and Albasini, which included Davhana and Tsonga warriors, went over the mountains to Phahwe in April, killing and taking prisoners, and on 8 May attacked Madzivhandila at Tshakhuma, which, Nemudzivhadi says, “signalled the commencement of the conflict in earnest” (pp. 78 to 79; see Tshakhuma). On 1 September 1865 the Boers attacked Madzhie and failed to take his kraal; President Pretorius and Commandant-General Kruger came in November and found the Boers living in laagers, with no money and no police, and could do only what they could (pp. 87 to 89).

Hofmeyr’s letters from this year show the same events from a mission station. Writing on 10 August 1865, he says Katlach (Madzhie) “has always been our friend”, that Michael Buys was used as intermediary but could do nothing, that the Whites wanted their guns back from African marksmen who had taken refuge with Katlach, and that Katlach demanded his enemy, apparently Davhana, accused of murdering his father. The camp commandant asked the missionaries on 14 July to move into the laager; Hofmeyr refused; on the 24th a message from Africans in the mountains said they must join them or leave; the party left, and the station was later found burned (pp. 39 to 42; see Stephanus Hofmeyr).

1867: Kruger’s commando and the fall of Schoemansdal

The government called for a commando in 1867, with figures that differ in the thesis (1,200 called and half came, or 2,000 called and about 500 came), and Kruger arrived at Schoemansdal. Makhado, having accepted Madzhie’s advice, refused to come down to negotiate and sent boys to meet Kruger, which the Boers read as contempt. A commando under Frikkie van Dyk failed to take Luatame, turned to Vhulorwa above the town and was defeated (Venda tradition adds that diviners foresaw it and that bees swarmed on the Boers); Kruger, with Davhana and Albasini’s Tsonga and the cannon Grietjie, attacked Madzhie’s mountain and withdrew at four in the afternoon (pp. 91 to 97). A war council resolved to abandon the town; the pastor, Rev. N. J. van Warmelo, protested; and on 15 July 1867 the inhabitants left, and the town was burned, by Makhado’s people according to Nemudzivhadi and by Madzhie according to Wikipedia (pp. 99 to 102; see Evacuation of Schoemansdal, 1867). The Venda took this as a victory and the Boers as a disaster; for Nemudzivhadi it meant they stayed out of the Soutpansberg north of the Luvuvhu for some thirty years (p. 104).

1867 to 1869: allies from the east

The Boers looked for help. Paul Kruger ordered Albasini in June 1867 to approach the Ngoni and Swazi (p. 109). President Pretorius’s volunteer army of 53 men, under Schoeman, was disbanded on 13 December 1867; a second call in January 1868 brought 260; and at Welgevonden on 21 July 1868 Albasini was announced to be no longer in the government’s service, with Schoeman as Diplomatic Agent (pp. 107 to 108; see Stephanus Schoeman). Schoeman approached Mzila, who answered that Albasini, “the cause of all the troubles”, had first to be sent away and that the Republic must give him land; Albasini obstructed the talks; and in March to April 1869 Mzila’s warriors under Magidjana attacked Thengwe and Mphaphuli’s territory, and Schoeman and five other Whites joined them in a failed attack on Lwamondo; a larger force under Mpisane attacked Lwamondo in June and was driven off (pp. 109 to 112). Davhana and Albasini, Nemudzivhadi says, also approached the Swazi (p. 113).

In October 1869, in his account, Albasini directed one Swazi impi at Tshakhuma, to cut off Makhado’s father-in-law Madzivhandila, and the other at Makhado at Dzanani. The Tshakhuma people fled to the caves of Mount Mangwele and repulsed the attack (see Battle of Mangwele (1869)). At midnight on Sunday 18 October the combined Swazi, Tsonga and Davhana force attacked Luatame. Nemudzivhadi tells, from missionary and local sources, how Funyufunyu answered in Swazi to pass off Venda soldiers driving out the cattle as Swazi captors, and how the Venda left full milk containers that drew the hungry attackers to lay down their weapons; the survivors fled south-east and were further ambushed in Bopedi by Sekhukhune’s warriors (pp. 114 to 117). He remarks that the government’s information on the battle was “inaccurate” and that Albasini may have misinformed it (p. 117). Davhana, put back, tried Madzhie, who had fallen out with Makhado over the missionary Hofmeyr; Makhado attacked and defeated both, and Davhana withdrew across the Luvuvhu to Mpheni, where he ruled until his death in 1894 (pp. 117 to 118). At Luatame, in 1870, Dombo, daughter of Raluthaga Madzivhandila, bore Makhado’s second son, named Sinthumule to say that Makhado must not be provoked (p. 118; see Sinthumule and Raluthaga Madzivhandila).

The commission of November 1869

After the Swazi failure, the Executive Council sent Paul Kruger, R. A. van Nispen and D. B. Snyman, who met at Goedewensch from 13 to 24 November 1869. The post of Diplomatic Agent was abolished, the landdrost was made head of the district, and Makhado and Madzhie were to pay compensation for the burning of Schoemansdal and return firearms (pp. 121 to 122). Nemudzivhadi says the great rulers (Makhado, Tshivhase, Mphaphuli, Rambuda) stayed away; the fifteen Venda delegates who made crosses and promised to pay tribute, among them Davhana and Nelwamondo, were not the real leaders, the “signatories” probably understood little of what they agreed to, and the settlement “rested on a very shaky foundation” (pp. 122 to 123). The Davhana question stayed the root of the trouble: in a declaration made in 1875 about those years, Albasini’s messenger C. J. Snyman swore that Makhado’s message was that he had nothing against the Boers but a “question” with his brother, and that Albasini could not shelter Davhana as if he were his son (pp. 123 to 125).

After 1869

The Boers did not return in strength until the 1880s, when Special Commissioner C. J. Joubert came in 1883 and Commandant Vorster’s forces fought at Begwa’s kraal; in those years the Albasini commissioners’ reports and the tax dispute kept the quarrel alive (see Antonio Albasini and Lwamondo succession dispute, 1883). The Dutch Reformed and other missions, which stood outside the contest in different ways, are the subject of Christian missions in Venda and the Spelonken, 1863 to 1895.

Who was who

Venda: Makhado; Davhana; Madzhie; Funyufunyu; Raluthaga Madzivhandila; Maboho Nelwamondo.
Boer officials and settlers: Stephanus Schoeman; Paul Kruger and President M. W. Pretorius (no pages yet); Commandants Geyser, Venter and Van Dyk; the pastor N. J. van Warmelo; Terence Fitzgerald.
Tsonga and Gaza: João Albasini; Mzila; the trader Monene.
Missionaries and mediators: Stephanus Hofmeyr; Michael Buys and the Buys community.

How the sources differ

The sources do not agree on several points, and we have given each version where it arises. Who burned Schoemansdal is one: Nemudzivhadi names Makhado’s people, Wikipedia names Madzhie (Katze-Katze), and the Executive Council in 1869 held both responsible. The size of the 1867 commando is another, and the origin of the war: for the Venda historian it is a defence of independence, for the older Boer-side writers a failure of frontier order. Dates of the two days at Hofmeyr’s station in July 1865 are as he wrote them, and the 1865 attack on Madzhie is given by Nemudzivhadi as 1 September. Details of the October 1869 battle at Luatame rest on the missionary Schwellnus and on the Venda book of Dzivhani and Mudau, which Nemudzivhadi cites but which we have not seen.

Cautions

This article is a synthesis of pages we wrote from the sources named below; its numbers are the thesis’s printed pages, and most of its facts are on the linked pages with their own cautions. Boer-side archives, Kruger’s memoirs, Maré’s account of the evacuation, Wagner, Boeyens and Möller-Malan are cited by Nemudzivhadi and we have not read them directly. The war is told here mainly from one Venda historian’s reading of the Boer archive and Venda oral history, set beside one missionary’s eyewitness letters; the Boer officials’ own side, in the archive files and in the biographies of Schoeman and Albasini, we have not read.

Sources and further reading

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