Tshokwe in the sources
Tshokwe is a ward at Mapela. The people have cattle (dikgomo) as totem, though they actually avoid the hare (mmutla).
What the sources say
Jackson says spokesmen call the Tshokwe Swazi in origin, first settled with the Moletsi chiefdom, from which a section broke away and joined the Langa, probably under Mapela. The praise poem he records calls them the knobkerrie that kills sorcerers (about p. 145). Jackson explains the avoidance of the hare as a common Sotho practice of transferring the avoidance from the totem animal to something insignificant, so that the totem animal’s meat can be eaten.
The ward had 95 households, 25 of the Tshokwe clan, with a sub-headman, Mello, whose 23 households are said to be Leso with the lion (tau) as totem.
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 Tshokwe 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 Tshokwe? 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.