Dingana of Tsianda in the sources
Dingana was the khosi of the Vhalaudzi of Tsianda in the time of Ramabulana and early Makhado, son of Tshipetane and grandson of Govhamasenga. He moved his headquarters from Tshituwani to the mountain at Mikondeni after the Swazi attack of 1869, and died in 1881, leaving a succession between his sons Mugivhi and Mukhesi that Makhado then judged.
What the sources say
Reign. He succeeded his father Tshipetane and, according to Nemudzivhadi, ruled in comparative peace through Ramabulana’s troubled reign, because the Singo were absorbed in their own affairs (p. 167). When the Swazi attacked Tshakhuma and Makhado in 1869, Dingana feared for his safety at Tshituwani and moved into the mountain at Mikondeni (p. 167).
Ties to Dzanani. Ratombo of Tshidzivhani, a khosi under Makhado, gave Dingana his daughter as a wife. Nemudzivhadi says the marriage “revived the relationship between Dingana, a Mulaudzi, and Makhado, a Singo”, and she was posted to a place named Dzananwa (“little Dzanani”) as a mark of the Singo’s esteem for her (p. 167). Her son was Mukhesi. Dingana’s eldest child, Runganani, was a daughter and the heir apparent but could not succeed because she was female; she was the mother of Matamela Mulelu (p. 174; see Matamela Mulelu).
Death. Dingana died in 1881, and, because one of his wives came from Dzanani, the people of Tsianda sent messengers to tell Makhado, a courtesy the earlier Tsianda rulers had not extended to the Singo (pp. 167 to 168). Their request for help in naming a successor began the Tsianda succession war.
Cautions
Nemudzivhadi gives no dates for Dingana’s birth or accession, and the whole account is from his Hamutsha informants. 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. 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
See also Tsianda, Hamutsha, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Lwamondo.
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