Sifundza in the Swazi record
Bonner places the Sifundza, with the Mahlalela, Maziya and Masilela, in the Lubombo mountains among the Tsonga or partly Tsonga-ised Sotho chiefdoms of the east (p. 42). Our earlier listing, from Wikipedia, named them among the Emakhandzambili, the clans found in the area before the Swazi kingdom.
What the books say
Bonner says Mswati’s forces attacked the Sifundza among others (p. 97), that the Sifundza chief Shewula is said to have compounded his offences by asserting ritual autonomy (p. 98), and that when Mswati sent a party to collect tribute from the Sifundza and Masilela during a drought, it was intercepted on the way back and stripped of what it had taken (p. 100). He adds that both the Mahlalela and Sifundza are said to have paid tribute to a neighbouring chief of the Madolo, and that the Sifundza were attacked again shortly before the 1855 or 1858 Swazi invasion of Madolo, after which Shewula fled to the Madolo for sanctuary (pp. 106 to 107).
Sources and cautions
This page summarises two scholarly histories of the Swazi kingdom: Philip Bonner’s Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (read from SAHO’s scanned PDF by OCR; page numbers below are PDF pages), and D. Hugh Gillis’s The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (read from SAHO’s scanned PDF by OCR; page numbers below are PDF pages). We found no Sifundza account of these events in the books; the stories are Bonner’s reconstruction from oral evidence and colonial records.
We read these two books only through machine OCR of a scanned copy, so names and dates may contain OCR errors, and we have not checked them against the printed pages or against the other histories they cite (Matsebula, Bryant, Kuper, Stuart’s archive). Both books rely heavily on oral evidence collected in the 1970s from clan informants, and they present contested episodes from a particular scholarly point of view.
Izithakazelo and totem
We are printing no Sifundza praises or totem because none has been confirmed. If you belong to the Sifundza and recite your izithakazelo, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Philip Bonner: Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (SAHO scan)
- D. Hugh Gillis: The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History (SAHO scan)
- Wikipedia: Swazi people (clan lists)
Do you belong to the Sifundza? 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.