Masebe in the sources
Masebe III ruled the Langa Ndebele from 1877 to 1890. He was the son of Mankopane, and the chief after whose death the Langa were divided into the Mapela and Bakenberg chiefdoms.
What the sources say
Jackson says Masebe was Mankopane’s chosen heir, but the rightful heir by the rules of succession was his half-brother Tokodi, born to a wife married to raise the house of Mankopane’s uncle Selaki. Tokodi accepted Masebe’s succession and Masebe was proclaimed on 3 June 1877. Earlier, in the 1860s, Masebe had quarrelled with his father and fled to the Hermannsburg mission at Mosetlha (about pp. 20 to 21 and 28).
Missionaries welcomed Masebe, who wore European clothes and attended church, but his refusal to hold rainmaking rituals during the drought of 1877/78 turned opinion against him. He had Tokodi killed on 26 January 1878, and the matter was settled by a fine in 1878. From 1883 to 1886 he fought the Kekana of Mokopane after Masebe’s principal wife, an ancillary wife and his eldest son Hans took refuge there; President Kruger ended the war in October 1886. In September 1877 Masebe acknowledged the supremacy of the Transvaal government, which Jackson says no Langa chief had done before (about p. 28); Mankopane never had. Jackson says he took to drink in later years and died by his own hand on 4 May 1890; he was buried in his cattle-kraal facing the south-east, the direction of the old Natal home.
The succession dispute between his sons Hans and Bakenberg led the Transvaal government to divide the Langa in 1890. Hans’s supporters said Hans’s mother was an ancillary wife of the principal wife, so Hans ranked higher; Bakenberg’s supporters said she ranked below Bakenberg’s mother. Most of the Sotho subjects of the Langa went over to Hans, and most Langa clansmen to Bakenberg.
Cautions
Jackson notes that Langa spokesmen differ from the written record on when Tokodi died. Jackson was a government ethnologist, and his fieldwork at Mapela took about 100 days between 1962 and 1967; he says the opinions are his own. His present tense describes 1968. We read the book through machine OCR of a typed transcription, so names and numbers may contain errors, and page numbers are approximate.
Izithakazelo and totem
The book records the totem and praise poem of this ward where given above, but we are not printing them in full. If you belong to the Masebe and recite your own izithakazelo or direto, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
See also Langa, Kekana and Ndzundza.
Do you belong to the Masebe? 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.