Funyufunyu in the sources
Funyufunyu and Stuurman were the two Venda men, hunting companions and gun-handlers, who in Lufuno Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis helped Makhado take the throne in 1864. Funyufunyu later helped Mphephu remove Maemu in 1895 and was then driven away by Mphephu.
What the sources say
Makhado’s companions. Mulaudzi says that Makhado, as a youth, worked on a farm and then with European elephant hunters under the guidance of Funyufunyu and Stuurman, the two Venda men who knew how to handle guns (ch. 4, p. 80). They advised him to send elephant tusks as a gift to the whites to coax his father out of hiding. When Ramabulana died while they were away hunting, they and Makhado were afraid to go to the royal homestead, and with Nyakhuhu and Madzhie planned to scare Davhana off the throne with guns stolen from the whites (pp. 81 to 86). For years afterwards the two always accompanied Makhado and were called his right-hand men (ch. 4, p. 94).
1895. After Makhado died, Funyufunyu and Nyakhuhu opposed the proclamation of Maemu, and Funyufunyu was charged with arranging warriors for Mphephu’s attack. Once Mphephu was king he drove away all the headmen who had served his father, “including Funyufunyu who had helped him to remove Maemu”, and told them to stay out of the homestead (ch. 5, pp. 100 to 106). Mulaudzi reads this as the cruel behaviour of a vengeful king that contradicted his peaceful image in the white press. See Mphephu I and Maemu.
Overview article
See The Ramabulana succession, 1864 to 1895 for the wider context.
Cautions
The spelling varies (Funyufunyu, Funyufunya) and nothing is known of the men beyond what this account says. “Stuurman” is an Afrikaans word meaning helmsman, and we do not know whether it was a name or a nickname. Mulaudzi is a historian writing in 2020 from earlier collections of oral testimony, mainly Van Warmelo’s (1940), Nemudzivhadi’s interviews of the early 1970s and Müller-Malan’s popular history of 1953, and he says himself that traditions are socially constructed and reshaped over time. His text as extracted has stray spaces and some unreadable characters, so we have checked names against more than one passage; page numbers are approximate. The Ramabulana house’s history is told differently by Van Warmelo’s informants, Nemudzivhadi, Müller-Malan and the Commission’s record, and the names and dates do not always agree; where they differ we say so and take no side.
Izithakazelo and totem
We are printing no Funyufunyu praises or totem because none has been confirmed. If you belong to the Ramabulana house and recite its praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- 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 4, pp. 80 to 94; drawing on Van Warmelo (1940), Nemudzivhadi (1977) and Müller-Malan (1953)
- 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 5, pp. 100 to 106; drawing on Van Warmelo (1940), Nemudzivhadi (1977) and Müller-Malan (1953)
See also Ramabulana, Makhado and Masingo.
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