Langa in the sources
The Langa are the ruling clan of two neighbouring chiefdoms, Mapela and Bakenberg, north of Mokopane (formerly Potgietersrus) in Limpopo. A. O. Jackson, a government ethnologist who studied them in the 1960s, calls them the Ndebele of Langa and says anthropologists classify them as Northern Transvaal Ndebele, part of the wider Transvaal Ndebele. They claim to have been Hlubi originally, and name their founder Langa.
What the sources say
Origin. According to Jackson, the Langa say their chief in the original home was Langa, from whom the clan name comes, and that tribesmen going to see him said they were going to “Langalibalele”, where the sun is hot. A short manuscript from the ruling family, drawn up between 1905 and 1918, gives the original home as the Zulu country. Jackson reads this loosely as KwaZulu and Natal, not Zululand proper. He points out that several Hlubi relatives, among them the Mbo, Bhele and Swazi, also carry their genealogies back to a chief called Langa, and suggests the Langa left during a turbulent period in Hlubi history (about p. 3). Some Langa say the migration was led by Langalibalele, others, including the family manuscript, by Masebe I; Jackson thinks the second is likelier. This ancestor belongs to the seventeenth century and is not the Hlubi chief on our Langalibalele page.
Date and route. Using the Langa cycle of nine named initiation age-sets, Jackson reckons Podile, Masebe I’s grandson, was initiated about 1690, which puts the departure from the Hlubi country at about 1650, give or take 20 years. The people moved in easy stages through Swaziland, with a first stop near Leydsdorp that appears in a written record, then to Mafefe’s place and to the Bosega area east of Pietersburg, and settled for about four generations at Thaba Tshweu, south-east of Pietersburg, under Masebe I, Mapuso, Podile and Masebe II (about pp. 4 to 5). Their later homes were Moumong-wa-Matswake under Seritarita and Mapela, Fothane (Moordkoppie) in Mapela’s old age, Magagamatala and then Thutlwane Hill under Mankopane.
Rulers. Jackson’s chief list runs Masebe I, Mapuso, Podile, Masebe II (about 1745 to 1775), Seritarita (about 1775 to 1795), Mapela (about 1795 to 1825), Maleya (about 1825 to 1836), Mankopane (about 1836 to 1877) and Masebe III (1877 to 1890), after whom the chiefdom was divided between Hans, who took Mapela, and Bakenberg (about p. 7).
Customs and totem. Jackson says the Langa learned circumcision from their Sotho neighbours at Thaba Tshweu, probably from the Matlala, because Sotho women would not marry uncircumcised men, and that the head of a Langa circumcision lodge is still called Matlala (about p. 5). The Langa are babinatlou, which he glosses as venerating the elephant, so the elephant is their recorded totem. The men of the clan are called bakgomana, “men of the royalty”. Their old language, he says, was a Nguni dialect heavily influenced by Sotho, which very few at Mapela still spoke in the 1960s. Several lineages are junior or senior branches, among them Mosoge and Mamaala.
Our earlier listing called the Langa a Ndzundza royal house; Jackson does not support that. He treats the Langa and the Ndebele who claim descent from Musi (the Ndzundza and Manala) as two migratory streams that seem to have come from the same Hlubi stock, entering the Transvaal at about the same time.
Cautions
Most of this is oral tradition, and Jackson says himself that the date and place names should not be read too literally. 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. We found no confirmed praise text beyond what he records for the chiefs.
Izithakazelo and totem
Jackson records the elephant as the Langa totem and prints praises of Mankopane and Masebe III; we have not reproduced them here. If you belong to the Langa 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 Langa? 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.