Who the Bakubung are
We found no encyclopedia article on the Bakubung, and the history here is thin. South African History Online’s page on the Pilanesberg Game Reserve says the Bakubung “decided to settle on this land, arriving from the nearby town of Ventersdorp”, with no dates, and says the northern part of the park was originally owned by the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela, whose Chief Tsidimane Pilane agreed to include their mountainous region in the reserve (the page spells it Tsidmane and links the Bakgatla to a page about King Sekhukhune, which looks like a mistake). It says the southern area was farms bought by the government in the 1960s, and that the land passed to Bophuthatswana. The page lists one source, the Pilanesberg National Park website, and several of its links appear unrelated to the sentences they are attached to, so we use it only for the one statement about the Bakubung.
The community today
A Daily Dispatch article by Ernest Mabuza (28 December 2020, also credited to TimesLIVE) describes the Bakubung ba Ratheo as a community of about 30,000 whose land near Rustenburg reportedly sits on substantial platinum deposits. It reports that the North West Premier, Job Mokgoro, decided to appoint an administrator, Moatlhodi Dilotsotlhe, effective 1 December 2020, to investigate the community’s financial affairs, that the community and its chief, Solomon Monnakgotla, obtained an order from the North West High Court suspending that decision and restraining the administrator until the court decides the community’s review application, and that in June the community had “pleaded poverty” after dividends from its R500 million investment in the financial advisory firm Musa Group dried up. We have not read the court papers or the response of the premier’s office, we do not know the outcome of the review, and we are not taking a side in the dispute.
What we have not found
The University of Pretoria holds P. L. Breutz’s 501-page The Tribes of Rustenburg and Pilansberg Districts (Government Printer, 1953), an older reference for the area, and the repository’s abstract describes only the administrative history of the Rustenburg district; we have not read the book. We have found no account of the Bakubung chiefly line, their origins before the 20th century, or the history of their relationship with the neighbouring Bakgatla, Bafokeng and Bakwena. The name Ratheo does not appear in any source we could open apart from the Dispatch article.
Izithakazelo (direto) and totem
We found no published Bakubung praises, and no confirmed totem. If you belong to the Bakubung and recite your direto, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- South African History Online: Pilanesberg Game Reserve
- Daily Dispatch: Bakubung community obtains order stopping administrator’s appointment (28 December 2020)
- University of Pretoria: P. L. Breutz, The Tribes of Rustenburg and Pilansberg Districts (1953; catalogue record only)
Do you belong to the Bakubung? 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.