Pila in the sources
Pila is a ward at Mapela of Tlokwa people from Moletsi. Their totem is nkwe, the leopard.
What the sources say
Jackson says they joined the Langa voluntarily in the time of Mapela, having broken away from the Komapi people at Moletsi after a quarrel; the original Komapi and Pila were said to be full brothers, and the Komapi are the owners of the land at Moletsi (about p. 141). The praise poem he records names a chequered leopard of the Batlokwa, children of the segalakana of Moletsi, and calls the leopard a cavity that has swallowed kings, including Moloto and the Poopedi of Matome.
The ward of about 145 households is shared with the headman Baloi, whose people are Tsonga. The two act together in doctoring the boundary but rank as full headmen, and neither is subject to the other. Jackson describes the Baloi as cultural strangers living among the others.
Cautions
This is the ward as Jackson found it in 1968; headmen and household counts will have changed. The praise poems are printed in his book and we are not reproducing them here. Jackson was a government ethnologist, and his fieldwork at Mapela took about 100 days between 1962 and 1967; he says the opinions are his own. His present tense describes 1968. We read the book through machine OCR of a typed transcription, so names and numbers may contain errors, and page numbers are approximate.
Izithakazelo and totem
The book records the totem and praise poem of this ward where given above, but we are not printing them in full. If you belong to the Pila and recite your own izithakazelo or direto, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
See also Langa, Kekana and Ndzundza.
Do you belong to the Pila? Tell us your praises and what elders say about the history, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.