Who the Mfengu are
The Dictionary of South African English defines the Mfengu (also Fengu, formerly Fingo) as members of an isiXhosa-speaking people formed from the remnants of several refugee groups displaced during the Mfecane, who settled in the eastern Cape and southern Transkei in the 1830s. South African History Online says they were largely of Hlubi, Bhele and Zizi origin, speak a Xhosa language and were helped by local chiefs on arrival. Wikipedia describes them as “a group of clans” and names the Sonkosi, Miya and Nokwe among them (we have listing pages for these three, which say how little we have found). They are therefore a people made of several clans, not a clan with one praise name, which is why this page has no totem or single praise text.
The name
The dictionary gives the name as the plural prefix ama- with mfengu, meaning destitute wanderers seeking work and refuge, from fenguza, “to seek service”, and its earliest dated quotation is from J. W. Appleyard in 1850. Wikipedia likewise links it to the Xhosa ukumfenguza, relating to wandering. Several of the dictionary’s quotations are by missionaries and colonial writers, and some describe the refugees in demeaning terms; we do not reproduce them.
The story told about their origin
According to Wikipedia, Shaka kaSenzangakhona and Matiwane kaMasumpa dispersed clans from the Natal area in the Mfecane wars of the early and mid 1800s; most fled west and settled among the Xhosa, and the Gcaleka Xhosa oppressed them in the 1820s. The government Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims, in its determination on the Dalindyebo house of the Thembu, says that during the reign of Ngubengcuka (1800 to 1832) many formerly independent communities, including the amaMfengu, sought refuge among the abaThembu because of war in Natal and the Mfecane invasions; see our Thembu page.
1835 and the Cape alliance
Wikipedia says Sir Benjamin d’Urban invited about 17,000 people to settle on the Great Fish River, and that on 14 May 1835, near Peddie and in the presence of the missionary John Ayliff, they swore the “Fingo Oath” to obey the Crown, accept Christianity and educate their children; the day is now observed as Fingo Emancipation Day. It says that in the Sixth Frontier War they were promised a territory called Fingoland. South African History Online says they fought on the British side in the wars of 1835, 1846 and 1851 to 1853 and were granted land in frontier districts of the Transkei and Ciskei at Xhosa expense, to act as a buffer for the colony. Wikipedia’s article on the Gqunukhwebe says the land between the Fish and Keiskamma rivers went to the amaMfengu after the Frontier Wars. Wikipedia names Veldtman Bikitsha (1829 to 1912) as a Mfengu military leader in the Ninth Frontier War (1877 to 1879) and says Governor Frere then disarmed the Mfengu.
Church, school and politics
South African History Online says the Mfengu were receptive to Christianity and Western education from an early date, raised funds themselves for a technical training institute that became a high school, and that in 1865 several Mfengu clans were resettled around Nqamakwe, where the village was founded in 1876 as the seat of the Government Agent to the amaMfengu and Blythswood High School opened in 1877. It says many became wealthy peasant farmers in the 19th century and produced some of the first Western-type political leaders among Cape Africans. Wikipedia names John Tengo Jabavu (1859 to 1921), editor of Imvo Zabantsundu, as one of them. It also says Cecil Rhodes brought Mfengu fighters to Matabeleland in 1896 and that Mfengu communities settled in Zimbabwe.
A disputed history
Wikipedia reports that the historians Timothy Stapleton and Alan Webster argue that the refugee story was built by colonial missionaries and administrators, that it is doubtful whether the Mfengu existed as a distinct group before colonial contact, and that the Cape government used the name for a mix of Xhosa defectors, migrant labourers and captives; it cites a 1996 article by Stapleton in the International Journal of African Historical Studies. We have not read that article. South African History Online’s page carries a further reading link to a paper titled “AmaMfengu Debate” by Manduleli Bikitsha, which we have also not read. The community’s own understanding of its past is not recorded in the sources we read, so please treat both the refugee account and its critics as contested.
What we have not read
The Wikipedia article is thinly sourced in places, with tags for missing citations and some claims (British legal status, early adoption of the plough) resting on weak sources, so we have kept to its better-supported statements. We have not read its cited works (Vail 1991, Bundy 1979, Mtumane 2017 and others), Peires’s histories, or Colenso. We have not found a Mfengu praise text for any clan, and we have not listed the Hlubi, Bhele or Zizi groups here beyond SAHO’s mention; see Hadebe and Bhele for what we have on two of them.
Izithakazelo
We have found no published praise text for the Mfengu clans, so we are printing none. If you belong to a Mfengu clan and recite your izithakazelo, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Dictionary of South African English: Mfengu (dated quotations, 1850 to 1990)
- Wikipedia: Fengu people (several tags; cites Vail, Bundy, Stapleton and others)
- South African History Online: Nqamakwe (its section on the Mfengu)
- Wikipedia: Gqunukhwebe
- Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims: Determination on abaThembu bakwaDalindyebo
Do you belong to a Mfengu clan? Tell us your praises and your family’s history and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.