Ralushai Commission in the sources
The Ralushai Commission of Inquiry was set up on 2 February 1996 by the Premier of the Northern Province, Ngoako Ramatlodi, under Proclamation No. 2 of 1996, to investigate claims by traditional leaders that they had been irregularly deposed or not recognised under the previous government. It was chaired by Professor Nkhumeleni Victor Ralushai.
What the sources say
Its work. Lufuno Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis says the Commission began in April 1996, handed an interim report to the Premier in 1997, which was made public, and a final report in 1998, which was not. Traditional leaders from Sekhukhune took the national minister of provincial and local government to court to see the final report, and Mulaudzi says that even then it remained hard for scholars to get; the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs eventually allowed him access. He thinks the report was withheld because it went beyond its mandate. On the Venda, the Commission dealt together with the claims to vhuhosivhuhulu (kingship) by the Mphephu, Tshivhase and Davhana houses and the claim to vhuhosi (chieftainship) of the Mphaphuli (ch. 9, pp. 199 to 201).
The hearings. The Mphephu Ramabulana case rested on the claim that the Ramabulana were the senior house, which Mulaudzi finds in places distorted but partly supported by the fact that the Tshivhase did not dispute that the Ramabulana installed Tshivhase rulers. The Tshivhase’s representative, Mr Ligege, argued for two kingships and claimed jurisdiction over the Mphaphuli; the Mphaphuli’s spokesman said that the Mphaphuli, Tshivhase and Ramabulana each had their own territory and none paid homage to another, which Mulaudzi finds contradicts a claim to kingship. The Commission’s genealogy for Mphaphuli is quoted on our Gole page. Mulaudzi records that Ralushai privately told him around 2001 that the kingship belonged to the Ramabulana, the senior Masingo house, though he could not confirm that from the report (ch. 9, pp. 201 to 211).
The Mphaphuli later lodged a claim to a kingship at the Nhlapo Commission, which Mulaudzi sees as a change of tactics possibly linked to the stakes; he writes that many Nhlapo claims were motivated by aspirations for money and infrastructure. See also Mushasha Commission.
Overview article
See Venda kingship disputes, 1890s to 2020s for the wider history.
Cautions
We have not read the Ralushai reports themselves and rely on Mulaudzi’s account, in which his own opinions (such as that the Tshivhase presentation was “full of distortions”) are mixed with the record. 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
See also Masingo, Ramabulana and Tshivhase.
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