Lwamondo in the sources
Lwamondo is a mountain village in Venda whose royal house is the Nelwamondo. It is known in the sources for resisting the Tsonga, Gaza and Swazi attacks of the 1860s from its fortified kop, for its link to the baboons of the mountain, and for the 1883 succession dispute that Makhado settled in favour of Phophi Nelwamondo.
What the sources say
Place and people. Wikipedia describes Lwamondo as a village in the Vhembe District of Limpopo, in the Thulamela municipality, with about 20,000 residents, almost all Venda speakers, and a paramount chief of the Nelwamondo house. Hugh Stayt’s 1931 The Bavenda names it with Rambuda and Thengwe as villages built in precarious mountain sites, reached by long winding footpaths, and notes Chief Lwamondo’s village “nearly at the top of Lwamondo Kop”. Stayt counts the Lwamondo as speakers of Tshipani, with Tshivhase, Mphaphuli, Rambuda, Khakhu and Tshakhuma.
Where they came from. The two writers we have read disagree. Stayt says Lwamondo’s ancestors “fled from Balauri” (Phalaborwa), were appointed keepers of the chief’s cattle by Tshikalanga Mphephu, and became independent during the Anglo-Boer war, and calls them, like the Madzivhandila of Tshakhuma, probably of Sotho stock; in his chapter on sibs he adds that the Vhalaudzi on Lwamondo Kop are of Sotho stock from Phalaborwa (pp. 17 and the chapter on social groupings). Nemudzivhadi writes instead that “after the evacuation of Dzata, the territory of Lwamondo and several others severed ties with Singo rulers”, which is why Makhado, after his installation, visited Lwamondo and demanded tribute from Maboho Nelwamondo; and the Boer records of the 1860s already treat Nelwamondo as a ruler in his own right, which cannot be squared with Stayt’s dating of independence to the 1899 to 1902 war (Nemudzivhadi pp. 63, 177). We follow neither as settled.
Under attack, 1863 and 1869. Nemudzivhadi records an attack on Lwamondo on 22 September 1863 by a commando under João Albasini and F. H. Geyser, in which animals were captured (p. 67). In 1869, he says, Mzila’s Gaza (Ngoni) warriors came to Lwamondo, intending to annex it, with Stephanus Schoeman and five other Whites; “they failed to capture the mountain” (April), and a larger force under Mpisane attacked in June 1869, where, “as in earlier attacks by Albasini and the Ngoni”, the warriors found the peak impenetrable: the people fired from behind boulders, others hurled stones, and “the Lwamondo baboons became quite noisy as the strangers approached”. He concludes that Lwamondo, with its mountainous terrain and baboons, “remained inaccessible and impregnable” to the Tsonga and Ngoni forces (pp. 110 to 112). Stayt records the baboon story told by Chief Lwamondo and several other informants: a Swazi impi climbing the kop stealthily was betrayed by a baboon’s sudden loud barking and utterly defeated.
Relations with Makhado. On the tour with which he tested loyalty, Makhado came to Lwamondo and, Nemudzivhadi says, demanded tribute through Netshivhale, who had insulted him; Maboho Nelwamondo, humbled that the Thovhele had come in person, gave one head of cattle “as a recognition of his royalty” (p. 45; see Maboho Nelwamondo). Nemudzivhadi argues that Lwamondo was nominally part of Makhado’s territory but had drifted from the Ramabulana: it did not appeal to Makhado when attacked by Tshivhase, Albasini, Mzila and the Swazi, and defended itself alone, and in 1884 he writes that Nelwamondo “was administratively under Makhado”, as Albasini, like the Boers, did not understand (pp. 177, 234). Albasini nonetheless listed Nelwamondo among eight rulers who had allegedly conspired against the Whites (p. 47) and among his tributaries (p. 63), and in 1869 sent Pretoria four agents, one said to represent Nelwamondo, who accused Schoeman of inviting the Swazi (p. 119); Nelwamondo was also among the fifteen Venda delegates who in 1869 made a declaration of submission to the Republic (p. 122).
The succession dispute of 1883. When Maboho died in 1883, his sons Phophi and Raidimi contested the throne, and Makhado intervened. See Lwamondo succession dispute, 1883.
The Tsianda war. Mugivhi of Hamutsha, who was married to Maboho’s daughter Vele, asked Nelwamondo for help against his brother Mukhesi (Netsianda), and Nelwamondo sent an army to Tshituwani; the fighting, Nemudzivhadi says, went on about four years, through the famine of Tshipindula, until Makhado divided the territory at the Tswororo stream in 1885. Nemudzivhadi adds that Nelwamondo sent his warriors to Hamutsha “without consulting Makhado”, and that Netsianda later claimed Lwamondo as formerly his, until Makhado ruled that each should govern his own territory and send tribute to Dzanani separately (pp. 174 to 177, 182). This Mukhesi is the ruler of Tsianda (see Mukhesi of Tsianda), not the Tshivhase ruler on our Mukhesi page.
After 1895. Nemudzivhadi says Tshikosi, Makhado’s candidate at Dzimauli, used Lwamondo as the springboard for his first attack on Tshamulumbwi and established himself there again when it failed, now without help from Dzanani because Makhado had died in 1895 (p. 226). Wikipedia’s uncited list of Lwamondo chiefs runs Tshilande, Mapungwi, Radali, Mathule, Maboho (ruling from the 1830s, died 1883), Phophi (1883 to 1942), a chief who ruled 1942 to 1970, and the present paramount, who has ruled since 1971 and marked fifty years in 2022.
Lwamondo and Hamutsha in the Tsianda war
For the fuller account of the Tsianda succession war in which Maboho Nelwamondo sent an army to Mugivhi at Tshituwani, see Tsianda succession war, 1882 to 1885 and Mugivhi.
Cautions
Almost all of what is above before 1900 comes from one historian’s thesis, supported by one 1931 ethnographer; both depend on informants who were old men and women in the 1930s, 1970s and 1980s. The origins of the Lwamondo house are unresolved, as above. The Wikipedia list of chiefs is uncited and we have not checked it. We name no living person other than the ruler’s public role as Wikipedia gives it. Two Venda-language typescripts about Lwamondo are held in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria (W. Matodzi, 1938, on Maboho; L. Manthagu, 1942, on betrothal, burial and succession customs of the Lwamondo chiefs). We machine-read the first, which is four pages: the text is badly garbled and we could not quote it, though in what we could make out it concerns the fight between the supporters of Raidimi and Phophi. We did not read the second, which deals with private customs. 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.
Izithakazelo and totem
Stayt (1931) records that the Vhalaudzi of Lwamondo Kop have no totem animal in the usual sense but are forbidden to work in their gardens on the day after they first see the new moon, and that those living on the kop are so closely connected with the baboon that they are generally called the Vha-ila-Pfene (pfene, baboon). Stayt, quoting H. A. Junod, reports a belief that the baboons of the kop are linked with the ancestors; we repeat nothing of the rites or places associated with it. We found no Lwamondo praise poem. If you belong to the Nelwamondo or the Vhalaudzi of Lwamondo and recite your praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
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); 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)
- Hugh A. Stayt, The Bavenda (Oxford University Press for the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, 1931); open access at the University of Pretoria repository
- Wikipedia: Lwamondo (short article tagged as needing more references; its list of chiefs is uncited)
- W. Matodzi, “U dzama ha murena Maboho Ne-Lwamondo” (Venda typescript, July 1938, 4 pages), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, see the caution below
- L. Manthagu, “Betrothal, twin murder, burial and succession of Lwamondo chiefs and minor items of custom” (Venda typescript, 1942), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, not read
See also Lwamondo, Nelwamondo, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Madzivhandila.
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