Dimbanyika in the sources
Dimbanyika (also Dambanyika) is remembered as the king who led the Masingo across the Limpopo and created the Vhavenda kingship. The Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims found that a kingship was created by Dimbanyika around 1600. The Masingo account it recorded dates his reign to 1688 to 1722, which does not fit “around 1600”, so the dates are oral chronology.
What the sources say
In the Commission’s record. The claimants’ account, which the Commission calls mostly common cause up to Vele-la-Mbeu, says the Masingo came from Central Africa under Mambiri and settled at Mapungubwe under Shiriyadenga, then crossed the Limpopo under Dimbanyika, who settled round the Soutpansberg and built the first Dzata, when the community was known as Masingo or Makwinda. He conquered, subjugated and merged the Vhangona and Vhatavhatsinde into a new community, the Vhavenda. He died in 1722 and was succeeded by Vele-la-Mbeu (pp. 610 to 611). The Commission used this conquest to reject a Vhangona claim to seniority; see our Vhangona and Masingo pages.
Other accounts. The Luonde community site calls him the first king of all the Vhavenda in the mid-1600s, with his capital at Dzata, and says he is believed to be buried in a cave on Mount Lwandali. Wikipedia’s Venda Kingdom article gives the name as Dambanyika and says he was also called Vele Lambeu or Dyambeu, which would make him and Vele-la-Mbeu one person, while the Commission treats Vele-la-Mbeu as his successor. It also says the family of Netshiendeulu tends his grave, and that radiocarbon dates at Tshiendeulu give occupation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which the article attributes to earlier Shona settlers.
The name was revived in the twentieth century by a Mphephu Ramabulana king, Dimbanyika Tshimangatsho, who reigned from 1993 to 1996 in the Commission’s account; Luonde says he died in a car accident in December 1997.
In Van Warmelo’s informants’ accounts
Lufuno Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis (ch. 3, pp. 52 to 70) sets out how the Venda informants who wrote for N. J. van Warmelo in 1940 placed Dimbanyika, and how they contradict one another. S. M. Dzivhani made Luvhimbi of the Vhambedzi the first Venda king remembered, conquered by Dimbanyika but spared as royal rainmaker, and said Dimbanyika, Dyambeu and Vele-la-Mbeu were one man. E. Mudau told a longer story: Hwami led the Vhasenzi to the Soutpansberg; Dyambeu, his great-grandson, was killed by the Vhatavhatsindi; Tshishonga avenged him, killed Bele-la-Mambo, and installed Dimbanyika, whom he then ruled through. Dimbanyika lived to a great age, was believed to be Mwali’s son, and was acknowledged beyond the Limpopo, and Tshivhula, the displaced Ngona ruler, acknowledged him. Near the end of his life, Mudau says, he divided the kingship among his sons Ravhura, Mandiwana, Munzhedzi, Tshivhase and Thohoyandou, the eldest of them being Munzhedzi, and after his death the Vhandalamo installed the youngest, Thohoyandou. The Commission’s record, by contrast, has Vele-la-Mbeu succeed Dimbanyika, and Ravhura as the grandson of Vele-la-Mbeu. Nemudzivhadi’s list of the first four khosikhulu (Dimbanyika, Dyambeu, Thohoyandou, Tshisevhe) ruling in 1688 to 1800 is different again. Mulaudzi concludes that the lineage from Dimbanyika to Thohoyandou is “a mystery to all Venda scholars and their interlocutors”.
Cautions
Accounts disagree on his dates, on whether Dimbanyika and Vele-la-Mbeu are one person, and on whether the Masingo arrived around 1600 or in the later seventeenth century. Venda oral history is told differently by each royal house and the dates in the sources do not always agree; where they differ we say so and take no side.
Izithakazelo and totem
We are printing no Dimbanyika praises or totem because none has been confirmed. If you belong to this house and recite its praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims: Determination on the Vhavenda kingship claim (the Masingo background, pp. 610 to 623, and findings, pp. 654 to 664)
- Wikipedia: Venda Kingdom (lists of rulers and succession disputes; it cites Loubser 2024, Huffman, Beach 1980, Hanisch 2008 and others)
- Luonde: Brief History (community site; no author or bibliography given, so treat as unverified)
- Lufuno J. P. Mulaudzi, “Historicising the politics of vhuhosivhuhulu: the Venda polity and state formation in South Africa, c.1800s-2020”, DPhil thesis, University of Pretoria (2020), chapter 3, “Early history and the contestation of the Venda vhuhosivhuhulu until the early 1800s”, citing the contributions of E. Mudau, S. M. Dzivhani, O. S. Radzilani, M. M. Motenda and J. M. Mugivhi to N. J. van Warmelo, The Copper Miners of Musina and the Early History of the Zoutpansberg (1940), and the work of M. H. Nemudzivhadi
See also Masingo, Ramabulana and Tshivhase.
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