An unconfirmed “Nhlave cluster”
An earlier version of this page said that Tsonga clans fall into a few large clusters and that the Mabunda belong to a “Nhlave” cluster with the Nkuna, Maswanganyi, Nkwinika and Novela, sharing a sub-dialect and common praise material, so that Mabunda praises often open with the call “Nhlave!”. We have not been able to confirm any of that in a source we have read. Junod, the main early ethnographer, does not use the label and does not name the Mabunda at all (see the Junod note below).
Origins and migration
An earlier version of this page said that oral traditions recorded by historians of the Tsonga link the Mabunda and Maswanganyi to a group that moved out of northern KwaZulu (with a connection to the Mazibuko) and into a “Nhlave” area of southern Mozambique, where they took up a “Nhlave” dialect. We have not been able to source that account, and Junod does not give it (see below). The page then said that from the mid-nineteenth century many Mabunda families moved west across the Lebombo mountains into the Zoutpansberg and Lowveld. Mabunda groups are recorded among those who supplied fighting regiments to the trader and militia leader João Albasini in the Zoutpansberg in the 1800s; we have not traced a source for these statements.
Tinyimpfuri (praises)
The praise text currently on this page reads:
Mabunda wa nhloko ya tinyoka,
Wa hlantswa hi mati ya tinhlampfi.
(“Mabunda of the head of snakes, who is washed with the water of fish.”) This is a short fragment from a secondary source. We have been told that fuller Mabunda praises open with “Nhlave!” and name ancestors and settlement places, but we have not confirmed this; we do not yet hold a verified complete text and would like to record one from Mabunda elders.
Related clans and names
Xilaveko and the wider Nkuna house, Maswanganyi, Nkwinika, Novela (an earlier version of this page called these a “Nhlave cluster”; we could not confirm that). The spelling Mavundza / Mavunda is common in Mozambique and older records.
A note on the name Mabunda
There is also an unrelated Mabunda / Mabundza usage among some Nguni and Swazi families. On this site the page covers the Tsonga clan; if you carry the name in another tradition, tell us and we will add that.
In Junod's ethnography
Junod does not name the Mabunda. We searched both volumes of his ethnography for Mabunda, Mabundza, Mavunda and similar spellings and found none. The nearest name is Mavundja, which he lists among the Hlabi (Ba-Hlabi) clans in the country between the lower Olifants and the Limpopo, with the Mapsanganyi, Tsungu, Nkwinika and Makamo (vol. 1, about p. 17). Whether the Mavundja are the people who carry the name Mabunda or Mavundza today is our guess from the sound, and we found no source that says so. Our page above notes the spelling Mavundza and Mavunda but does not cite a source either.
If they are related, this is what Junod records of the Mavundja. They belonged to a group whose dialect, he says, is very like the Djonga. Along with the Nkuna and the Baloyi they were among the clans that left for the Transvaal between about 1835 and 1840 rather than submit to Soshangane (Manukosi) (vol. 1, about p. 28), and he later says the Nkuna, Mavundja, Tsungu and other Hlabi clans took refuge in the Spelonken, north of the Zoutpansberg (vol. 2, a passage on how a Spelonken man dated events from that flight). That fits the page’s statement that Mabunda families moved into the Zoutpansberg, though it is the only link.
Two clan sayings in Junod bear on the Hlabi and may or may not be Mabunda ones. For the Hlabi as a whole he gives the praise-name “the Hlabi who are hated, sons of Makamu, of Mavuse, of the calf (?)”, the question mark being his own (vol. 1, about p. 335). In his chapter on hunting, he records that each clan has its own shout to call clansmen to a big kill, and that the Mavundja shout is “The big mountain, difficult to climb!” (vol. 2, about p. 64). He does not give the Mavundja a totem.
Junod does not mention the Nguni and Mazibuko origin that our page above gives for the Mabunda. He says only that the Nkuna, Khosa and Hlabi all claimed a western or south-western origin, the Nkuna from Zululand (vol. 1, about p. 23). Nor does he record the “Mabunda of the head of snakes” praise on this page.
This section summarises Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 1, The Social Life (Neuchatel, 1912) and vol. 2, The Psychic Life (1913), read in the Internet Archive scans. Junod was a Swiss missionary writing from a missionary’s viewpoint, in his own spelling. Page numbers are approximate, taken from the page markers in machine-scanned text, and we have not checked them against the printed books. Where we match his spelling to a name used today, that is our inference.
Sources and further reading
- Patrick Harries, Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Labourers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860-1910 (1994) – on Tsonga clan formation and migration.
- Henri-Alexandre Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (1912-13) – early ethnography of the Tsonga, including clan groupings.
- Community clan-name archives (uncited oral material) – used with caution.
Help us improve this page. Written history of the Tsonga clans is thin, and your family’s oral record matters. If you can supply a verified praise text (xivongo), a totem, or migration history, send us a WhatsApp on 065 138 8213 or use our contact page. We credit contributors who wish to be named.