Phophi Nelwamondo in the sources
Phophi was the son of Maboho Nelwamondo who won the contest for the throne of Lwamondo in 1883, when Makhado accepted his surrender and recognised him as khosi. Wikipedia’s uncited list of Lwamondo chiefs gives him the name Sidemere and the years 1883 to 1942.
What the sources say
The contest. After Maboho’s death in 1883, Phophi and his older brother Raidimi each claimed the throne. By Kone Nengovhela’s account, which Nemudzivhadi preferred to Van Warmelo’s, Phophi had the larger following within the territory, and after Raidimi called in Makhado’s army, Phophi’s side surrendered without fighting, and Makhado, satisfied, recognised Phophi as khosi (see Lwamondo succession dispute, 1883; Nemudzivhadi pp. 178 to 181). His niece, Kone Nengovhela, who was about a hundred years old when Nemudzivhadi interviewed her in 1980 and 1982, was one of Nemudzivhadi’s informants on these events.
Installation. Preparations began once the way was open: men were invited to dance tshikona, a hut was built and plastered by the women, the khosi-designate left through Madefule while Netshivhale, who was responsible for the installation, entered through Tshiozwi, and the installation took place at Makambe. Phophi then returned to his royal residence in the mountain (p. 181).
As Nelwamondo. After 1883 Nemudzivhadi calls him “Nelwamondo (Phophi)”. When Netsianda (Mukhesi) of Tsianda claimed sovereignty over Lwamondo on the ground that its people had once settled there by a friendly agreement, and Phophi objected to paying him tribute, Makhado ruled that each should govern his own territory and send girls as tribute to Dzanani separately (p. 182).
Family. Van Warmelo, as Nemudzivhadi reports, names Phophi’s mother as Mmbodi, a daughter of Raluthaga Madzivhandila of Tshakhuma, and Nemudzivhadi adds that the gota Matatani, whose area supported Phophi, had married a daughter of Raluthaga (pp. 178 to 179). See Nelwamondo and Raluthaga Madzivhandila.
Overview article
See The Venda succession wars of the 1880s for the wider context.
Cautions
Nemudzivhadi’s account of the contest rests chiefly on one very old informant, Phophi’s niece, whose version he judges clear and unambiguous against Van Warmelo’s; we report it as his judgement. Wikipedia’s name “Sidemere” and dates are uncited. Two Venda-language typescripts about Lwamondo are held in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria (W. Matodzi, 1938, on Maboho; L. Manthagu, 1942, on betrothal, burial and succession customs of the Lwamondo chiefs). We machine-read the first, which is four pages: the text is badly garbled and we could not quote it, though in what we could make out it concerns the fight between the supporters of Raidimi and Phophi. We did not read the second, which deals with private customs. 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); 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)
- Wikipedia: Lwamondo (short article tagged as needing more references; its list of chiefs is uncited)
- W. Matodzi, “U dzama ha murena Maboho Ne-Lwamondo” (Venda typescript, July 1938, 4 pages), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, see the caution below
See also Lwamondo, Nelwamondo, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Madzivhandila.
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