Tsianda succession war, 1882 to 1885 in the sources
After Dingana of Tsianda died in 1881, the people of Tsianda asked Makhado to settle which of his sons should rule. Makhado’s deputation installed Mukhesi, Mugivhi’s followers refused to accept it, and the two brothers fought for some years, with Makhado’s army backing Mukhesi and Lwamondo backing Mugivhi, until Makhado divided the territory in 1885 along the Tswororo stream.
What the sources say
The appeal. Dingana died in 1881. Because one of his wives came from Dzanani, the Tsianda messengers sent word to Makhado, and Nemudzivhadi argues that this fitted Makhado’s plans to extend his sphere of influence (pp. 167 to 169). Makhado sent a deputation, which met the Tsianda elders, brothers and sisters of the late khosi and found the country divided between Mugivhi and Mukhesi. They took all the Tsianda princes to Mauluma, neutral ground ruled by Ravele, the son of Nndwayamiomva, and proposed two mahosi, Mukhesi at Dzananwa, where his mother was, and Mugivhi in his father’s territory at Tshituwani (pp. 169 to 170).
The split. Mukhesi rejected the two-khosi plan, insisting he alone should be installed; his supporters installed him at Mikondeni. Mugivhi’s people, from Mathuzeni and Mukanye to Dzwerani, gathered instead at Hamutsha and refused tribute, arguing that Hamutsha was the real royal residence. Nemudzivhadi’s sources have Mugivhi answering Mukhesi’s messenger that he was prepared to defend his position (pp. 170 to 172).
The fighting. The armies faced each other, Mukhesi’s on the hill Hamagidi and Mugivhi’s on Matomboni overlooking the Tswororo; so much blood was shed that the stream, previously otherwise named, became the Tswororo, “the gushing out of blood” (pp. 172 to 173). Nemudzivhadi cites colonial letters of March 1883 in connection with the fighting. Mukhesi’s followers asked Ratombo of Tshidzivhani, his mother’s brother, for help; Ratombo told Makhado, who ordered an army to Tsianda under Matamela Mulelu (p. 173). Mulelu, as Mugivhi’s nephew, ordered his men to spare Mugivhi, and Mugivhi’s side secretly sought help from Lwamondo, where Maboho Nelwamondo, whose daughter Vele was Mugivhi’s wife, sent an army to Tshituwani (pp. 174 to 175; see Lwamondo).
The settlement. The hostilities continued “for some four years, right through the famine of 1882 known as Tshipindula”, Nemudzivhadi says, though he elsewhere dates the great famine to 1881; Makhado, hearing Mulelu’s report, ordered the fighting stopped. Mugivhi and Mukhesi agreed to divide the territory along the Tswororo stream and to become independent mahosi, each paying tribute directly to Makhado at Dzanani; Mukhesi’s part lay north of the stream, with Magidi and Dzananwa, and Mugivhi’s south, bounded by the Mufule, Dzondo and Dzindi rivers (pp. 175 to 176). Nemudzivhadi gives the decision as of 1885 (p. 177). Tsianda’s people were dissatisfied, and Nemudzivhadi’s informants say they sent blood and medicines to be sprinkled on Mugivhi’s khoro; he is said to have died in 1887 (p. 176).
Lasting effect. Nemudzivhadi writes that Makhado’s territorial settlement “has remained unaltered since the nineteenth century” and that the government of South Africa, and later the Republic of Venda, could not unify the two territories (p. 177). See Tsianda, Hamutsha and Mugivhi.
Overview article
This war is set beside Lwamondo and Dzimauli in The Venda succession wars of the 1880s.
Cautions
The dates do not line up neatly: a death in 1881, an appeal in 1882, fighting recorded in March 1883, a settlement in 1885, and the phrase “some four years”. We give Nemudzivhadi’s figures and do not reconcile them. The story of the poison-like sprinkling that preceded Mugivhi’s death is the Hamutsha side’s account and unproved. The war is told from Hamutsha informants, and some place names (Hamagidi, Matomboni, Mikondeni) are as the scan gave them and may contain misreadings. The account of the Tsianda succession rests chiefly on two elderly informants from Hamutsha (B. Mugivhi, about 73 in 1985, and Makhadzi Ramphiri, about 90 in 1986), on a 1906 Location Commission paper on the tribe of “Netseanda and Mogibi”, and on N. J. van Warmelo’s 1940 report on the Sinthumule chieftainship, as Nemudzivhadi cites them; they favour the Hamutsha view of events, and we have not seen the commission paper or the report. A Venda typescript by M. Mugivhi on Govhamasenga and his sons (1939) is in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria; we have not read it. 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.
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), chapter 7; 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)
- M. Mugivhi, “Gwamasenga na vhana vhawe” (Venda typescript, 1939, published in Mudededzi II, pp. 73 to 77), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, not read
See also Tsianda, Hamutsha, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Lwamondo.
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