Nhlapo Commission in the sources
The Nhlapo Commission is the Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims, chaired by Professor Thandabantu Nhlapo, set up under section 23 of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act of 2003. It decided disputes about kingships, senior traditional leadership and headmanship nationally, including the Venda kingship claims whose determinations are cited throughout this directory.
What the sources say
Lufuno Mulaudzi’s thesis dates the Commission’s establishment notice in the Government Gazette to 2008, while the Luonde community site says it was appointed in October 2004; the Commission’s own determinations are cited on our Ramabulana, Tshivhase, Mphaphuli, Ravhura and Vhangona pages. It was empowered to investigate doubts about whether a kingship, senior traditional leadership or headmanship was established under customary law, contested titles, claims of communities to recognition, boundaries and mergers or divisions of “tribes”, and events before 1 September 1927 (ch. 9, pp. 216 to 217).
On the Venda it had to look at four possibilities: restoring a Vhavenda kingship as a whole under the Vhangona claimant, Tshidziwelele Azwidowi Nephawe (see Nephawe); under the Ramabulana, with the claimant Toni Peter Mphephu Ramabulana; and under the Ravhura, with the claimant Azwianewi David Mutshinyalo Ravhura; and the new kingship claims of Tshivhase (Kennedy Prince Midiavhathu Tshivhase) and Mphaphuli (Phaswana Musiiwa Michael Mphaphuli). Hearings ran in two stages, in which claimants testified under oath, examined one another’s evidence, and took questions from the public. Mulaudzi remarks that the Davhana did not lodge a claim, which he reads either as a gesture towards reconciliation with Dzanani or as conceding defeat, and that the Ravhura claim looks opportunistic (ch. 9, pp. 217 to 218).
The Commission found that the kingship of the Vhavenda was created around 1600 by Dimbanyika and destroyed by the Voortrekkers in 1898, and recommended its restoration under the lineage of Mphephu Ramabulana, rejecting the Vhangona, Tshivhase, Mphaphuli and Ravhura claims. The press reported the Commission’s ruling in January 2010 (Sowetan, 2012). The succession within the Mphephu house has since been contested; see our Mphephu page. See also Ralushai Commission.
Overview article
See Venda kingship disputes, 1890s to 2020s for the wider history.
Cautions
The Commission’s establishment date differs between our two sources, and Mulaudzi’s commentary is his own interpretation. 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. 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 9, pp. 216 to 220
- Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims: Determination on the Vhavenda kingship claim
- Luonde: Venda Kingship (community site; no author given)
See also Masingo, Ramabulana and Tshivhase.
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