Masenya in the sources
Masenya, one of the four great wards of Mapela, is Koni of Matlala origin. Their totem is the small bird tlhantlhagane, a scaly-feathered finch.
What the sources say
Jackson says the Masenya were probably the first after the Tshaba to join the Langa, at about the time of the move from Thaba Tshweu to Moumong-wa-Matswake. The story is that Masenya broke from the Matlala because the Matlala had two stages of men’s initiation and Masenya had only one, so the Matlala would not give them a woman as principal wife (about p. 130 to 131). Jackson also records that a headman Matsukutsa, born blind, prophesied the coming of white people and printed books, and told the Masenya never to cross the Thwathwe River.
It is said to be forbidden for a Langa man to marry a Masenya girl, though a Masenya headman once married a daughter of Masebe; Jackson says the prohibition seems to come from the Masenya side. The ward had 255 households, the third largest in the demarcated area. The same small-bird totem is recorded for Seema, and for Puka.
Cautions
This is the ward as Jackson found it in 1968; headmen and household counts will have changed. The praise poems are printed in his book and we are not reproducing them here. Jackson was a government ethnologist, and his fieldwork at Mapela took about 100 days between 1962 and 1967; he says the opinions are his own. His present tense describes 1968. We read the book through machine OCR of a typed transcription, so names and numbers may contain errors, and page numbers are approximate.
Izithakazelo and totem
The book records the totem and praise poem of this ward where given above, but we are not printing them in full. If you belong to the Masenya and recite your own izithakazelo or direto, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
See also Langa, Kekana and Ndzundza.
Do you belong to the Masenya? Tell us your praises and what elders say about the history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.