Tsianda in the sources
Tsianda is a Venda territory of the Vhalaudzi, founded by the sons of Govhamasenga, maternal uncle of Thohoyandou. It was split in the 1880s between the brothers Mukhesi, who ruled the northern, mountain part from Mikondeni as Netsianda, and Mugivhi, whose southern territory is Hamutsha. The Tsianda community is named, separately from the Ha-Mutsha community, on the 1991 Proclamation roll.
What the sources say
Origins. M. H. Nemudzivhadi’s 1998 thesis calls the inhabitants of Tsianda “the Vhalaudzi”, part of the Senzi whose rule consolidated at Dzata. In the Hamutsha tradition he follows, Govhamasenga, brother of the mother of Thohoyandou, was advised by his nephew to leave Dzata so that his many sons would not contest the succession with Thohoyandou’s descendants, Makhado among them; he went south, leaving sons along the way (Maphaha at Phahwe, Netshivhulana at Tshivhulana, Nengodzi at Tshimbupfe, Masie at Tshiphuseni, Makumbane at Tshisahulu, Muungufhala on the Vhembe), and settled with his youngest son Tshipetane at Tshituwani (pp. 165 to 166). See Govhamasenga.
Territory. After the 1885 settlement Mukhesi’s territory lay north of the Tswororo stream and took in Magidi and Dzananwa up into the mountains, bordering Tshakhuma at Tshavhavha, Tshivhazwaulu and the Luvuvhu River; Mugivhi’s lay to the south, around Hamutsha (pp. 175 to 176). Nemudzivhadi stresses that this division has lasted unchanged to the present, despite attempts by the South African government and the Republic of Venda to merge the two into one territorial council (p. 177). The Tsianda and Ha-Mutsha communities are listed as separate communities on the roll of the 1991 Proclamation in Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis (see the Proclamation page).
Rulers and events. Dingana ruled until his death in 1881; his sons Mugivhi and Mukhesi then fought over the succession, and Makhado intervened (see Tsianda succession war, 1882 to 1885 and Matamela Mulelu). Nemudzivhadi lists Netsianda among the rulers whom Albasini counted as tributaries in the 1860s (p. 63). He also notes that the missionary Schwellnus extended his work from Tshakhuma to Tsianda and Lwamondo, and that a convert, Madima, was later posted to a sub-station at Tsianda (pp. 132, 135). After the war Netsianda also claimed that Lwamondo had once been his, until Makhado ruled that each should govern his own territory (p. 182; see Lwamondo).
People and language. Hugh Stayt’s 1931 The Bavenda says the Vhalaudzi sib has a section with mountains at Masia and Tsianda that adopted the goat as its totem and is “probably of BaThonga stock”, and that the people of Tshimbupfe, Masia and Tsianda speak a Tsonga-influenced dialect he calls Tshironga because of close contact with the BaThonga living among them. This differs from Nemudzivhadi, who makes them Senzi from Dzata; we take no side. See Vhalaudzi.
Cautions
Almost all of this is from one thesis and an older ethnography, and the two do not agree on the origin of the Tsianda people. The Hamutsha-side account dominates Nemudzivhadi’s informants. The account of the Tsianda succession rests chiefly on two elderly informants from Hamutsha (B. Mugivhi, about 73 in 1985, and Makhadzi Ramphiri, about 90 in 1986), on a 1906 Location Commission paper on the tribe of “Netseanda and Mogibi”, and on N. J. van Warmelo’s 1940 report on the Sinthumule chieftainship, as Nemudzivhadi cites them; they favour the Hamutsha view of events, and we have not seen the commission paper or the report. A Venda typescript by M. Mugivhi on Govhamasenga and his sons (1939) is in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria; we have not read it. Nemudzivhadi is a Venda historian whose subject is Makhado’s reign; he built on oral interviews done between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s and on colonial archive papers, and he often says where his informants and the written sources disagree, as do we.
Izithakazelo and totem
Stayt (1931) records the goat as the totem of the Masia and Tsianda section of the Vhalaudzi, and a tshikodo (praise) of the Masia section that addresses the ancestor as Khwinde MuLaudzi; we reproduce no more. If you belong to the Tsianda or Hamutsha communities and recite your praises, we would like to record them, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Mphaya Henry Nemudzivhadi, “The attempts by Makhado to revive the Venda kingdom, 1864-1895”, PhD thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (1998), chapter 7; open access at the North-West University repository (a scanned copy; we read it by OCR, and page numbers cited are the thesis’s printed numbers)
- Hugh A. Stayt, The Bavenda (Oxford University Press for the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, 1931); open access at the University of Pretoria repository
- 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 8 (the 1991 Proclamation roll)
- M. Mugivhi, “Gwamasenga na vhana vhawe” (Venda typescript, 1939, published in Mudededzi II, pp. 73 to 77), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, not read
See also Tsianda, Hamutsha, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Lwamondo.
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