The Van’wanati
Wikipedia describes the Maluleke as part of the Van’wanati, a Tsonga subgroup in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and links the name to the Nwanati River. Its article on the Tsonga lists Maluleke, Makwakwa, Mondlane and Xivambu under the Van’wanati. The article on the Maluleke draws on P. Harries (1987), R.H. Massie’s The Native Tribes of the Transvaal (1905) and unpublished Van’wanati records, and is itself flagged as needing more sources.
Malenga and Maxakadzi
According to Wikipedia, the founder was Malenga, a son of Gunyule, king of the Vacopi (the Chopi), who left his father’s land in the mid-seventeenth century and settled at Pfukwe. His sons were Muswana, Nxelwa and Maxakadzi. Maxakadzi is described as a hunter, warrior and trader in ivory, copper and gold. He is said to have expanded the kingdom by absorbing Tsonga clans and fighting Venda groups, reaching the Zoutpansberg, and his villages lay in what is now the Kruger National Park, including Nyandweni, which the article calls a sacred place.
After Maxakadzi’s death the people divided into a northern section under Shimambani and a southern section under Guyu, near Mapai in Mozambique. Most followed Shimambani. The article credits Shimambani’s forces with killing a Voortrekker party led by Van Rensburg in 1836. That is a strong claim, and we have not found a second source for it.
The Mhinga house
Wikipedia names Mhinga Shilungwa as an important leader, followed by his son Sunduza Mhinga, and describes the Mhinga royal house as paramount among the Maluleke. It also names Mavambe and Shikundu as notable chiefs in the early 1900s. The place name Malamulele is said to come from an event when Mhinga rebelled against the Venda. Government action between 1906 and 1912 removed the Mhinga and Shikundu areas from the Shingwedzi Game Reserve.
Borders and the homeland
The article says the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885 divided Maluleke territory among South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and that the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 and the Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 led to the Tsonga-dominated Gazankulu homeland.
In Junod’s 1912 ethnography
Junod, writing in 1912, describes the Maluleke from the people he knew. He puts them in the northern (Nwalungu) group, along the Limpopo north of the Baloyi as far as the Levubu, and says that, according to native historians, they are one half of a larger clan, the Nwanati, whose other half is the Makwakwa of Khambane and Ndindane near the Limpopo mouth (about pp. 16 to 17; see our Makwakwa page). That matches the grouping Wikipedia gives under the Van’wanati.
The founder. In Junod’s version, the Nwanati and Baloyi travelled south together from the Nyai (Kalanga) country, and when the Nwanati stayed on the coast to eat the makwakwa fruit the Maluleke separated from their brethren, led by their ancestor Mashakatsi, a great hunter, and came back north into the Baloyi country. Seeing he could easily defeat the Ba-Nyai settled there, he brought his followers back and founded the Maluleke dynasty (about p. 22). His chief list for the clan reads Mashakatsi, Dlamana, Shitanda, Shihala, Nkuri, Mhinga, Sunduza (about p. 25), and a photograph in the book shows Sunduza, chief of the Maluleke, with his counsellors (about p. 395). He also names Mashakadzi as “the ancient chief” whose children each received a personal charm (about p. 365), probably the same man under another spelling.
This differs from the Wikipedia account above, which makes the founder Malenga, a son of a Chopi king, and Maxakadzi his son. Junod does not mention Malenga. Mashakatsi and Maxakadzi look like the same name, and the order Mhinga then Sunduza agrees with Wikipedia, but we cannot say the two accounts describe the same line of descent, and Junod himself warns that such lists may be incomplete.
Other notes. Junod says the Thonga of the Spelonken, north of the Zoutpansberg, were called Magwamba by the Venda and Bvesha, and were mostly Hlengwe, Maluleke and Djonga refugees (about p. 18). He records that the Maluleke, like the Hlengwe, cremated certain dead, for example strangers whom no one knew and women who died in pregnancy or childbirth, whereas most Thonga buried their dead (about pp. 166 to 167). The Rev. S. Malale supplied the Maluleke speech forms for his word lists, and Junod notes that in Maluleke the sound written dj is sometimes pronounced dh.
This section summarises Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 1, The Social Life (Neuchatel, 1912), read in the Internet Archive scan. Junod was a Swiss missionary writing in 1912 from a missionary’s viewpoint, in his own spelling, and he says himself that his genealogies are probably too short and may mix brothers with sons. Page numbers are approximate, taken from the page markers in machine-scanned text, and we have not checked them against the printed book. Where we match his spelling to a name used today, that is our inference.
Izithakazelo (milawu) and totem
We have not found a published Maluleke praise text or a confirmed totem, so we are not printing either. If you belong to the Maluleke and recite your praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: Maluleke
- Wikipedia: Tsonga people (post-1890 community list)
- Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 1, The Social Life (Neuchatel, 1912)
The main account above rests on Wikipedia; the Junod section is from his 1912 volume 1. Before relying on a date or event, check it against Harries (1987), Massie (1905) or Junod’s volume 2, which we have not read.
Do you carry the Maluleke name? Tell us your praises, your totem and what elders say about the history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.