Masakona in the sources
Masakona is a Venda community, item (v) on the 1991 proclamation’s roll. In Lufuno Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis its thovhele is described as part of the Ramabulana royal house and a spokesperson for the Ramabulana; he was interviewed in February 2015 with a senior headman.
What the sources say
The Masakona leaders told Mulaudzi that the kingship was not well documented and depends on oral history; that disputes arise when sons who do not qualify are influenced to challenge the heir, and that the makhadzi and khotsimunene should resolve it by choosing the heir from the dzekiso house. They said the kingship is a matter for the royal house and that the government should not interfere, and that the Nhlapo Commission was formed to restore the kingship. On the Vhangona, the thovhele said oral sources hold the Vhangona and the Khoisan to be the same people, agreed that the Vhangona were the first settlers, and said the Masingo became the landowners by conquest (ch. 10, pp. 253 to 255).
The Manenzhe thovhele told Mulaudzi that the Masingo had elevated some makhotsimunene to vhothovhele in the areas allotted to them when they arrived in Venda, giving the example of Masakona, Nthabalala, Tshivhase, Khakhu, Rambuda and Davhana, which he called all Ramabulana (ch. 10, p. 250; see Khakhu). Mulaudzi calls one Masakona headman’s statement that the apartheid government made the Ramabulana kings “more political than factual”.
Cautions
This is oral testimony from 2015 about contested matters, and the house histories are not documented in the thesis. Mulaudzi is a historian writing in 2020 from commission reports, newspapers and interviews he carried out himself, and he states his own opinions in the text; the extracted text of the thesis has stray spaces and some unreadable characters, so page numbers are approximate. The interviews were carried out in 2015 and 2016 with the consent of the leaders concerned; they give those leaders’ opinions and what they told the author about their communities, and we have not checked them against other sources. We name office-holders only where the thesis names them as public witnesses or holders of an office. Venda kingship history is told differently by each house and by each historian, and where the sources differ we say so and take no side.
Sources and further reading
See also Masingo, Ramabulana and Tshivhase.
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