Mutele in the sources
Mutele is a Venda community whose head is named “Mutele of Nzhelele” among the four present Vhangona leaders in the Vhangona claimant’s presentation to the Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims. The 1991 proclamation’s roll has a Mutale community (item n), which may be the same community or a neighbouring one; we have not found a source that says.
What the sources say
Lufuno Mulaudzi interviewed the then thovhele-pfareli of Mutele, together with the Manenzhe thovhele, at the Manenzhe tribal office on 16 February 2015. The thovhele, who died in April 2018, told him that the conflict over the kingship came from royal-family politics in choosing the heir and from people in the family claiming what did not belong to them, supported the Ramabulana and the Nhlapo Commission’s decision, thought the late Patrick Mphephu deserved to be President and khosikhulu, and was unsure whether the Vhangona or the Masingo were first in Venda (ch. 10, pp. 247 to 248).
A Tshivhase leader named Mutele among the communities Tshivhase used to rule; Mulaudzi disputes that and cites sources showing Mutele and the other communities were independent (ch. 10, about pp. 273 to 275). The Know My Roots blog says the Vhalembethu of “Ha-Mutele” and Thulamela were subjugated by Dimbanyika, though we do not know if that is the same place (see Vhalembethu). See Manenzhe.
Cautions
Mutele, Mutale and Ha-Mutele may be three names for one place or different places; the sources do not settle it. Mulaudzi is a historian writing in 2020 from commission reports, newspapers and interviews he carried out himself, and he states his own opinions in the text; the extracted text of the thesis has stray spaces and some unreadable characters, so page numbers are approximate. The interviews were carried out in 2015 and 2016 with the consent of the leaders concerned; they give those leaders’ opinions and what they told the author about their communities, and we have not checked them against other sources. We name office-holders only where the thesis names them as public witnesses or holders of an office. Venda kingship history is told differently by each house and by each historian, and where the sources differ we say so and take no side.
Sources and further reading
- Lufuno J. P. Mulaudzi, “Historicising the politics of vhuhosivhuhulu: the Venda polity and state formation in South Africa, c.1800s-2020”, DPhil thesis, University of Pretoria (2020), chapter 10, pp. 247 to 248 and 274 to 275
- Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims: Determination on the Vhavenda kingship claim
- Know My Roots: Venda Clan Names (community blog; no author or citations given, so unverified)
See also Masingo, Ramabulana and Tshivhase.
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