Meaning and origin of the name
Oral tradition places Khumalo within an older Nguni grouping called the Mntungwa, which also produced the Mabaso, Blose, and Zikode clans. For this reason “Mntungwa” is the first praise called for a Khumalo person, and the names Khumalo and Mabaso are treated as closely related houses.
The literal meaning of “Khumalo” is not documented; explanations offered online (linking it to ukukhumula, “to loosen or take off”) are folk etymology and should be treated as tradition rather than fact.
Where the clan comes from
By the late eighteenth century the Khumalo were settled in the country around the Black Mfolozi and Mkhuze rivers in what is now northern KwaZulu-Natal, in the contested ground between two large powers: the Ndwandwe of Zwide to the north and the Mthethwa of Dingiswayo to the south.
The Khumalo in history
The clan’s best-documented early chief is Mashobane, who married a daughter of the Ndwandwe king Zwide in an attempt to keep the peace. Their son was Mzilikazi. Zwide later had Mashobane killed, and Mzilikazi took refuge with the rising Zulu king Shaka, who confirmed him as chief of the Khumalo.
Around 1821 Mzilikazi broke with Shaka and moved away with his followers. Over the next two decades – the period of upheaval known as the Mfecane – he led the Khumalo north across the Highveld, absorbing Sotho-Tswana and other communities, and eventually established the Ndebele (Matabele) kingdom centred on Bulawayo in present-day south-western Zimbabwe. His son Lobengula ruled until the kingdom fell to the British South Africa Company in 1893-94.
Not all Khumalo went north. A separate chief, Bheje kaSompisi, held out against Shaka from the Ngome forest; his people and many others remained in KwaZulu-Natal and are Zulu today. Some Khumalo groups scattered west during the Mfecane were absorbed into Sotho and Tswana chiefdoms.
Izithakazelo zakwaKhumalo
The core praises most families recite are:
Mntungwa!
Mbulaz’ omnyama!
Nina bakaBheje waseNgome!
KaMashobana!
Nina bakaMzilikazi kaMashobana!
Ndabezitha!
What the praises refer to
- Mntungwa – the ancient grouping the Khumalo belong to, shared with the Mabaso, Blose and Zikode.
- Mbulaz’ omnyama – “the dark Mbulazi,” an ancestral praise name of the house; the exact person is not securely documented.
- bakaBheje waseNgome – “those of Bheje of Ngome,” recalling the chief Bheje kaSompisi who resisted Shaka from the Ngome forest.
- kaMashobana – names Mashobane, father of Mzilikazi, killed by Zwide.
- Mzilikazi kaMashobana – the founder of the Ndebele kingdom.
- Ndabezitha – a high royal salute, also used for the Ndebele and Swazi royal houses, marking the Khumalo as a ruling line.
Longer versions add praises for Lobengula and other ancestors. Wording and order vary between families and between the South African and Zimbabwean branches; if your family recites a fuller or different version, we would like to record it.
Related clans
The Mabaso are the clan most closely linked to Khumalo through the shared Mntungwa origin; the two often share praises. The Blose and Zikode are also counted as Mntungwa. In Zimbabwe the surname usually appears as Khumalo or Kumalo and is associated with the Ndebele royal house.
Notable people named Khumalo
- Mzilikazi kaMashobane (c. 1790-1868) – founder and first king of the Ndebele kingdom.
- Lobengula Khumalo (c. 1845-1894) – last independent king of Matabeleland.
- Leleti Khumalo (b. 1970) – actress, known for Sarafina! and Hotel Rwanda.
- Bhekisisa “Doctor” Khumalo, Sibongiseni Khumalo and others in music and public life – the surname is common across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
In the Swazi histories by Bonner and Gillis
The name Khumalo appears in the two Swazi histories in two ways. First, Bonner says the Khumalo, with the Mamba and Ngcamphalala, were among Sobhuza I’s supporters who stayed behind at Shiselweni when he fled the Ndwandwe (PDF p. 38). Separately, he and Gillis describe a Khumalo queen-mother, Sisile Khumalo, the mother of the young prince Ludvonga. Bonner also notes that the Ndwandwe defeated the Ngwane, Matiwane, the Khumalo and the Mthethwa in turn in early nineteenth-century Zululand (pp. 21, 34); that is a Zululand Khumalo, and we have no source linking them to the Swazi Khumalo.
Gillis says that when Mswati died, some twenty of his sons had arguable claims to the kingship, among them the grown prince Mbilini and the boy Ludvonga, son of Sisile Khumalo, and that Sisile Khumalo was influential in the council’s choice of Mbandzeni, then barely a teenager, a pragmatic selection because Mbandzeni’s mother was dead and Sisile could continue as queen-mother (PDF pp. 42 to 43). Bonner says Ludvonga’s candidature appealed to the councillors because his mother had the appropriate status and he would give them several years of undisturbed power (p. 115), that Mbandzeni was installed to suit Sisile’s convenience rather than for any claim of his own (p. 139), and that the struggle between Mbandzeni and Sisile came to a head in February 1881 (p. 174).
Gillis’s notes record that Sisile Khumalo, the queen-mother, was apprehended and killed near Mbabane by Mbandzeni’s warriors while trying to flee the kingdom, and that according to Matsebula the incident resulted from a family quarrel and the betrayal of the queen by one of the king’s retainers (p. 199). Soon afterwards, Gillis says, Tibati Nkambule was named queen-mother (p. 83); see our Nkambule page. We give the account as the books give it, and do not know how the Khumalo see it.
This section summarises Philip Bonner’s Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires and D. Hugh Gillis’s The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (both read from SAHO’s scanned PDFs by OCR; page numbers are PDF pages). The Khumalo of the Swazi royal household are not the same as the Khumalo of Mzilikazi’s Ndebele, which these books do not discuss. The surname Khumalo is very common, and we claim no link between surname-holders and this clan.
We read these books only through machine OCR of scanned copies, so names and dates may contain OCR errors, and we have not checked them against the printed pages or the sources they cite (Matsebula, Bryant, Stuart’s archive). Their chapters rest on oral evidence collected in the 1970s and present contested episodes from a scholarly point of view.
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: “Khumalo clan,” “Mzilikazi,” “Lobengula” – for lineage and nineteenth-century history.
- J. D. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath (1966) – standard account of the Mfecane and Mzilikazi’s migration.
- iAfrika and zuluculture.co.za community entries on Mntungwa / Khumalo / Mabaso – for orally transmitted praises (community-sourced, uncited).
Help us improve this page. If your family recites different izithakazelo – or you belong to the Zimbabwean Ndebele branch and want that history represented here – send us a WhatsApp on 065 138 8213 or use our contact page. We credit contributors who wish to be named.