Kunene in the Swazi record
Gillis says that suspicions of disloyalty after Mswati’s accession fell on those who had backed the brothers or were thought allied with the Zulu, and that some southern chiefdoms, including the Kunene, were forced to move south of the Pongola river (p. 37). Wikipedia’s article on the Swazi people names the Kunene among the 17 founding clans, which our listing used.
What the books say
The two books also mention individual Kunenes. Gillis names Cleophas Kunene, connected with the Edendale mission in Natal, as one of the educated men from Natal and Zululand active at the Swazi capitals, who became a tutor to the young king Bhunu and then the queen-mother’s principal adviser, working against the transfer of Swaziland to the Republic (pp. 98 to 99). Bonner mentions a messenger Majumba Kunene, used by the Swazi in communications with Langalibalele, but adds in a note that, according to Matsebula, Majumba’s isibongo was Mndzebele, not Kunene (pp. 74, 260). Whether any of these men belong to the Kunene clan of the Swazi chiefdoms is not clear from the books.
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). We found no Kunene-authored history in the books.
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 Kunene praises or totem because none has been confirmed. If you belong to the Kunene 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)
Do you belong to the Kunene? 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.