Madzivhandila in the sources
The Madzivhandila are the royal house of Tshakhuma in Venda. They appear in the history of Makhado’s reign as a ruling family, Raluthaga Madzivhandila being the best documented, who paid tribute to Makhado, gave him a daughter in marriage and fought off a Swazi attack at Mount Mangwele. The Venda historians we have read treat Tshakhuma as part of the Ramabulana realm, though colonial officials called its ruler independent.
What the sources say
Under Makhado. On the tour with which he tested the loyalty of the rulers around him, M. H. Nemudzivhadi’s 1998 thesis says, Makhado arrived at Tshakhuma, “where Raluthaga Madzivhandila was the ruler”. A grandson of Makhado told Nemudzivhadi that Makhado camped on Mount Madzhoni, above Lwamondo, and called Raluthaga to pay tribute; he complied and, over and above the ordinary tribute, gave a daughter, Dombo, as a prospective wife. She was the sister of Khangale and became the mother of Sinthumule (pp. 44 to 45, 118). Nemudzivhadi adds that Makhado’s success in demanding tribute led Albasini to list Makhado and seven others, Madzivhandila among them, as rulers who had allegedly conspired to murder the White settlers, which Nemudzivhadi says Albasini twisted to suit his plans (pp. 46 to 47). See Raluthaga Madzivhandila for the man.
Independent or not. Nemudzivhadi complains that the Boer authorities counted a list of rulers as independent, naming Matidze, Nelwamondo, Magoro, Mashau, Neluvhola, Nthabalala and Madzivhandila, when in his view they were in fact under the jurisdiction of Ramabulana, and that this misreading of Venda political custom caused ill-feeling and conflict (p. 65). Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis records the same view from inside the family: in May 2015 the chairman of the Madzivhandila royal council told him that, in his opinion, “the owners of the whole Venda are the Ramabulana”, and that the Vhangona, though first to arrive, lost the right to the land when they were conquered (see the caution below).
War and missions. Madzivhandila’s people were attacked on 8 May 1865 by Albasini’s men with a Boer commando (p. 79), and again, in October 1869, by a Swazi force that Nemudzivhadi says Albasini directed against Tshakhuma and against Makhado; the Tshakhuma people took refuge in the caves of Mount Mangwele (see Battle of Mangwele (1869)). In May 1874 Raluthaga asked the missionary Beuster to send a missionary to Tshakhuma, and Rev. E. Schwellnus founded the station there, though Nemudzivhadi notes that Madzivhandila himself, like Tshivhase, told the missionaries he was too old to be converted and that his sons should be (pp. 131, 138). In 1883, when Albasini was warning that Makhado’s subordinates were about to desert the Boers, he reported that Madzivhandila had been ordered to bring his commando to Dzanani and had refused (p. 162). See Tshakhuma.
Marriage ties. Van Warmelo’s account, as summarised by Nemudzivhadi, makes Mmbodi, the mother of Phophi in the Lwamondo succession dispute of 1883, a daughter of Raluthaga Madzivhandila; Nemudzivhadi rejects Van Warmelo’s explanation of why Makhado backed Phophi’s rival Raidimi, but reports the parentage without comment. He also says the gota Matatani of that area had married a daughter of Raluthaga (pp. 178 to 179).
In the homeland years. Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis records that the Bill making P. R. Mphephu Life President of Venda in May 1983 was presented in the Venda Legislature by “the honorable Thovhele A. M. Madzivhandila, Minister of Foreign Affairs”, who rejected the opposition’s proposal for a referendum (ch. 7, pp. 160 to 161). Mulaudzi’s chapter 6 places Mphephu’s boyhood and schooling partly at Tshakhuma (see Tshakhuma).
The 2015 interview. When Mulaudzi went to Tshakhuma in May 2015 he was told that the succession to the late thovhele was still unsettled and that the heir was not yet ready to speak on the Venda polity, and he was referred to the chairman of the royal council. The chairman said that all vhuhosi involve conflict over succession, that the eldest son of the cattle house should normally succeed but that the elders may move it to another house; that government intervention has helped end settling disputes “through the sword” in favour of negotiation and courts; that the Nhlapo Commission was right that vhuhosivhuhulu belongs to the Ramabulana; that the challenges by Tshivhase, Mphaphuli, Ravhura and Tshidzuwelele were politically motivated; and that “in Venda there is no khosikadzikhulu”, a view directed at the claim of Masindi Mphephu (see Mphephu). He also defended the elevation of P. R. Mphephu and criticised Ramushwana’s abolition of vhuhosivhuhulu (ch. 10, pp. 270 to 272; see Ramushwana and Nhlapo Commission). These are one man’s opinions, recorded in 2015, and are not the settled view of every Madzivhandila.
Stayt (1931) on the origins of the Madzivhandila
Hugh Stayt’s 1931 The Bavenda names Madzivhandila, “now living on the farm Goedverwachting”, among the chiefs of probable non-Venda origin, whose ancestors lived at Mutali on the Levuvhu river, and thinks the Madzivhandila, like the Lwamondo, probably of Sotho stock (p. 17). Nemudzivhadi, writing later, treats them as a ruling house long attached to the Ramabulana (see above). Stayt’s remark is brief and unreferenced, and we do not know on whose word it rests. See Lwamondo, and the Lwamondo succession dispute of 1883, in which a Madzivhandila marriage tie appears.
Cautions
The best record we have of the Madzivhandila before 1900 comes from non-Madzivhandila writers (Nemudzivhadi, Van Warmelo, Albasini’s reports), and we have not found a history written by the house itself; the 1950s book by S. M. Dzivhani and E. Mudau, Mahosi a Venda na Vhadau vha Tshakhuma, which Nemudzivhadi cites many times, is in Venda and we have not seen it. The chairman’s 2015 statements about the Ramabulana, the Vhangona and Masindi Mphephu are contested positions, not facts; the Constitutional Court and the High Court have dealt with the Mphephu succession (see our Mphephu page), and the Commission found that no Vhangona kingship had been established. We name no private individual; the only person named from the modern period is a minister whose public office Mulaudzi’s thesis prints. We found no totem and no family genealogy beyond the marriages above. 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
We have found no confirmed totem. The one recorded Tshakhuma cry in the sources is “u ya vhadwa, u ya vhadwa”, translated in Nemudzivhadi’s thesis as “you are to be destroyed”, which he gives, citing the missionary Schwellnus, as Tshakhuma’s royal praise and oath, said by the people of Tshakhuma during the fighting at Mount Mangwele in 1869 (p. 114). If you belong to the Madzivhandila 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, so page numbers below are the thesis’s printed numbers)
- 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 10 (interviews, May 2015), pp. 270 to 272
- 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 7, pp. 160 to 161 (the 1983 Life President Bill)
- Wikipedia: Venda people (tagged as needing more citations; its clan list has no inline citations)
- 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
See also Madzivhandila, Tshakhuma, Makhado, Sinthumule and Vhadau.
Do you belong to the Madzivhandila or live at Tshakhuma? Tell us what elders say about the history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.