Maboho Nelwamondo in the sources
Maboho Nelwamondo was the khosi of Lwamondo through the Boer, Tsonga and Swazi pressures of the 1860s and 1870s and died in 1883. Nemudzivhadi’s 1998 thesis describes him as a ruler who defended his mountain without help from Makhado, gave Makhado a head of cattle as recognition, and whose death opened a succession struggle between his sons Raidimi and Phophi.
What the sources say
His seat. According to B. Mugivhi’s account, which Nemudzivhadi follows, Maboho built his royal residence at Madefule, later moved to Tshiozwi north of Lwamondo mountain, and finally settled at Mafela on the ridge of the mountain, which became the royal residence of Lwamondo; “here he managed to beat off all outside aggression” (p. 178).
Albasini’s attack and Mzila. The 1863 commando attack on Lwamondo and the 1869 attacks by Mzila’s warriors both failed to take the mountain (pp. 67, 110 to 112; see Lwamondo).
Meeting Makhado. A grandson of Makhado told Nemudzivhadi that Makhado came to Madefule after receiving tribute at Tshakhuma and “called upon Netshivhale”, who, he said, had insulted him, to pay tribute. Netshivhale’s village was next to Madefule, and Maboho Nelwamondo, the ruler of the whole territory, came out and asked why Netshivhale had been called. Makhado replied that Netshivhale had insulted him. Seeing that the Thovhele had come in person, Nelwamondo “felt humbled” and, “in order to wipe out the curse inflicted by Netshivhale”, offered Makhado one head of cattle as recognition of his royalty, which was accepted (p. 45).
Family. His daughter Vele married Mugivhi of Hamutsha, and Nelwamondo later sent an army to help his son-in-law against Mukhesi of Tsianda (pp. 174 to 175). His sons included Raidimi, the elder, and Phophi; Van Warmelo makes Phophi’s mother Mmbodi a daughter of Raluthaga Madzivhandila (p. 178).
Death. Maboho died in 1883, and “as in other territories” a long struggle for the throne followed (p. 178; see Lwamondo succession dispute, 1883). Wikipedia’s uncited list gives his rule as beginning in the 1830s.
Cautions
A Venda typescript on Maboho by W. Matodzi (1938) is in the Van Warmelo collection; we could not read it reliably. The cattle-gift story comes from a Makhado grandson and is told from the Ramabulana side. Nemudzivhadi himself notes that Lwamondo had by then drifted from the Ramabulana, so whether the gift was tribute or a courtesy is read differently by different writers. Two Venda-language typescripts about Lwamondo are held in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria (W. Matodzi, 1938, on Maboho; L. Manthagu, 1942, on betrothal, burial and succession customs of the Lwamondo chiefs). We machine-read the first, which is four pages: the text is badly garbled and we could not quote it, though in what we could make out it concerns the fight between the supporters of Raidimi and Phophi. We did not read the second, which deals with private customs. Nemudzivhadi is a Venda historian whose subject is Makhado’s reign; he built on oral interviews done between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s and on colonial archive papers, and he often says where his informants and the written sources disagree, as do we.
Sources and further reading
- Mphaya Henry Nemudzivhadi, “The attempts by Makhado to revive the Venda kingdom, 1864-1895”, PhD thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (1998); open access at the North-West University repository (a scanned copy; we read it by OCR, and page numbers cited are the thesis’s printed numbers)
- Wikipedia: Lwamondo (short article tagged as needing more references; its list of chiefs is uncited)
- W. Matodzi, “U dzama ha murena Maboho Ne-Lwamondo” (Venda typescript, July 1938, 4 pages), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, see the caution below
See also Lwamondo, Nelwamondo, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Madzivhandila.
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