Tshishonga clan names and clan praises

Tshishonga in the sources

Tshishonga is a figure in E. Mudau’s account of Venda early history who, Lufuno Mulaudzi argues, has not been properly acknowledged by historians: the grandson of Dyambeu who avenged him, killed Bele-la-Mambo, and ran the Venda state from behind Dimbanyika. Mulaudzi says the Tshishonga people are still honoured among the Venda.

What the sources say

In Mudau’s telling, Tshishonga recovered the sacred drum from the Vhatavhatsindi with a horn his ancestor Mwali gave him, and afterwards the ancestor insisted on a new khosikhulu, the first time a makhadzi took part in choosing one. She picked Bele-la-Mambo, and the choice began the disputes about the kingship. Tshishonga, his cousin, felt displaced at the homestead and plotted to kill Bele-la-Mambo with poison; the plot was discovered, he was banished, and the two fought a war between kinsmen from the same royal house, which Tshishonga won; Bele-la-Mambo was killed with his men, and Tshishonga took the drum, the first time its authority was openly challenged (ch. 3, pp. 56 to 60).

Tshishonga then installed Dimbanyika as king but, in Mudau’s account, was the real power at the royal homestead until his death, with Dimbanyika merely occupying a ceremonial position and doing what Tshishonga wished. Mudau says Tshishonga gave Dimbanyika a bone flute for frightening enemies, which Mulaudzi notes contradicts Mudau’s own statement that the sacred objects had lost their power after Bele-la-Mambo’s death (pp. 60 to 62). Mulaudzi observes that Nemudzivhadi, Tempelhoff and others never mention Tshishonga’s role. See Dyambeu and Vele-la-Mbeu.

Cautions

Tshishonga is known only through Mudau’s contribution to Van Warmelo and Mulaudzi’s reading of it, and Mulaudzi points out inconsistencies within it. This is early oral history, collected by a government ethnologist from a handful of Venda informants in the 1930s, read critically by a historian in 2020. The informants contradict one another on names, order and relationships, and Mulaudzi says so and weighs them; he also gives his own judgements. The extracted text of his thesis has stray spaces and unreadable characters, so page numbers are approximate. We are not printing details of sacred objects or sites. Venda early history is told differently by each narrator, and where they differ we say so and take no side.

Sources and further reading

• Lufuno J. P. Mulaudzi, “Historicising the politics of vhuhosivhuhulu: the Venda polity and state formation in South Africa, c.1800s-2020”, DPhil thesis, University of Pretoria (2020), chapter 3, “Early history and the contestation of the Venda vhuhosivhuhulu until the early 1800s”, citing the contributions of E. Mudau, S. M. Dzivhani, O. S. Radzilani, M. M. Motenda and J. M. Mugivhi to N. J. van Warmelo, The Copper Miners of Musina and the Early History of the Zoutpansberg (1940), and the work of M. H. Nemudzivhadi

See also Masingo, Vhangona and Dimbanyika.

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