Mugivhi in the sources
Mugivhi was a son of Dingana of Tsianda and, in the Hamutsha account, the rightful heir whom Makhado’s deputation passed over in 1882 when it installed his brother Mukhesi. He refused to send tribute to Mukhesi, fought him for several years with help from Lwamondo, and in the 1885 settlement became the independent khosi of Hamutsha. He died in 1887.
What the sources say
Family. According to Nemudzivhadi, Mugivhi’s mother was a “dzekiso” wife of Dingana, which his followers took to mean that he was the heir apparent. He was married to Vele, a daughter of Maboho Nelwamondo of Lwamondo (pp. 174 to 175). His elder sister Runganani was the mother of Matamela Mulelu (p. 174).
The contest. After Dingana’s death in 1881, the princes of Tsianda met Makhado’s deputation at Mauluma, where the deputation proposed two kingships, with Mukhesi installed at Dzananwa, where his Singo mother lived, and Mugivhi staying at Tshituwani. Mukhesi objected to two mahosi in one land, saying two bulls cannot live in one kraal; Mugivhi said nothing (pp. 169 to 170). Mukhesi was installed at Mikondeni, and Mugivhi’s followers stayed away and told him he had been deceived; Mugivhi, “who refused to believe he had been deceived”, left the matter to the elders and did not himself differ with his brother (pp. 170 to 171). When tribute was due he answered Mukhesi’s messenger that he could not bow down to him because his kraal at Hamutsha was the royal residence (p. 172).
The war. The fighting, the Dzanani force under Mulelu, the appeal to Lwamondo and the end of the war are told on Tsianda succession war, 1882 to 1885. Van Warmelo, Nemudzivhadi says, placed Mugivhi’s death in 1887, so that he enjoyed only two years of undisturbed reign after the settlement. His followers’ account of the death is that Tsianda people secretly sprinkled a mixture of blood and medicinal powders on the ground of his khoro in the night, and that when he saw it, being superstitious, he collapsed and died (p. 176). We give this as the account Nemudzivhadi records, as a story told from the Hamutsha side, and not as established fact; it implies a charge against the Tsianda side that no source proves.
Successors. Matamela Mulelu took over until Mugivhi’s sons Tshipetane and Khavhagali could agree; Tshipetane assured Mulelu he would make no claim if Mulelu left, and Mulelu did (pp. 176 to 177). See Hamutsha.
Overview article
See The Venda succession wars of the 1880s for the wider context.
Cautions
The Hamutsha side dominates the sources. Nemudzivhadi’s informant B. Mugivhi bore the same name and presumably belongs to the family, but the thesis does not say how. The account of the Tsianda succession rests chiefly on two elderly informants from Hamutsha (B. Mugivhi, about 73 in 1985, and Makhadzi Ramphiri, about 90 in 1986), on a 1906 Location Commission paper on the tribe of “Netseanda and Mogibi”, and on N. J. van Warmelo’s 1940 report on the Sinthumule chieftainship, as Nemudzivhadi cites them; they favour the Hamutsha view of events, and we have not seen the commission paper or the report. A Venda typescript by M. Mugivhi on Govhamasenga and his sons (1939) is in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria; we have not read it. 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), chapter 7; 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)
- M. Mugivhi, “Gwamasenga na vhana vhawe” (Venda typescript, 1939, published in Mudededzi II, pp. 73 to 77), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, not read
See also Tsianda, Hamutsha, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Lwamondo.
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