Maseko in the Swazi record
The Maseko were the most powerful chiefdom in central Swaziland when Sobhuza I moved north. Bonner describes them as of Ntungwa-Nguni origin, settled at Nqabaneni on the Lusutfu (Lusushwana) for at least two generations, and heads of a minor confederacy of at least twenty subordinate clans (p. 41).
What the books say
According to Bonner, Sobhuza fled to the Maseko stronghold at Nqabaneni during the Ndwandwe attacks (p. 38) (Gillis also mentions the Maseko country as a stop on his flight, p. 31). Once established, Sobhuza treated the Maseko cautiously: he gave his daughter laMbombotsi in marriage to the Maseko king, Mgazi, and allowed him wide autonomy (p. 42). The Maseko, Bonner says, jealously guarded that autonomy, and he reports a story that they slighted laMbombotsi by installing an Ndzimandze woman as chief wife (p. 43).
Bonner says Sobhuza eventually struck by calling Mgazi’s regiments out for a hunt and taking them unawares; Mgazi was caught and killed on Intsakane mountain, and the Maseko were scattered, some to the eastern Transvaal, some as far as Lesotho, while one minor section that had remained loyal stayed (p. 43). He also says the Ngoni leader Nxaba, skirting the western borderlands, picked up “Ngwane Maseko” on the way (p. 40). We have not checked whether the Ngwane Maseko of that passage are the same group.
Sources and cautions
This page summarises two scholarly histories of the Swazi kingdom: Philip Bonner’s Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (read from SAHO’s scanned PDF by OCR; page numbers below are PDF pages), and D. Hugh Gillis’s The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (read from SAHO’s scanned PDF by OCR; page numbers below are PDF pages). The books do not give a Maseko praise text or genealogy, and we found no Maseko-authored history in them.
We read these two books only through machine OCR of a scanned copy, so names and dates may contain OCR errors, and we have not checked them against the printed pages or against the other histories they cite (Matsebula, Bryant, Kuper, Stuart’s archive). Both books rely heavily on oral evidence collected in the 1970s from clan informants, and they present contested episodes from a particular scholarly point of view.
Izithakazelo and totem
We are printing no Maseko praises or totem because none has been confirmed. If you belong to the Maseko and recite your izithakazelo, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Philip Bonner: Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (SAHO scan)
- D. Hugh Gillis: The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (SAHO scan)
- Wikipedia: Swazi people (clan lists)
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