Tshaba in the sources
Tshaba, one of the four great wards of Mapela, is Tlhaloga, with the crocodile (kwena) as totem. Jackson says their name used to be Manamela.
What the sources say
Jackson says Tshaba ranks next after Mabusela because Tshaba’s section was the first alien section to join the Langa, when the Langa were still at Thaba Tshweu. By one account the Tshaba lived in the country of the Moletsi chiefdom, of the same stock, and fled when the Moletsi moved in (about p. 129 to 130). They recite a praise poem in which the crocodile swallows the Ndebele, which the book prints.
The ward had about 200 households. Sub-headman Matshoga has 93 of them, of whom 33 are Lemba, the group that supplied the Langa smiths and potters; the Lemba families named are Tloubatla, Matshoga, Sathekge, Koka, Pale, Phakgadi, Rapetswa, Senwamadi and Thubakgale. There are no marriage ties between the Tshaba headmen’s family and the Langa chiefs, though the headman married into the Makgoba family, who have long been related to the chiefs by marriage.
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 Tshaba 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 Tshaba? 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.