kaChungwa Genealogy and kaChungwa Family History Information

The house of Khwane

Khwane was son of Lungane and Lungane’s father was Depe. Khwane’s son was Bane, and Bane’s son was Tshaka and his son was Chungwa, Chungwa’s son was Pato and Kama. Pato’s mother was Malishe a daughter of Nqeno from Mambali clan. Pato’s son was Dilima and her mother was Noxina a daughter of Gasela from Toyise clan. Dilima’s son was Namba and his mother was a daughter of Ndileka from Dushane clan. Namba had four sons Khangelanzima, Sofutha, Mkhanya and Dyosini. Khangelanzima and Sofutha unfortunately died at the younger age without getting married. Mkhanya had a son by the name of Silimela, Mkhanya had a dispute with with his wife and she left with her son Silimela and she never came back with the boy. Mkhanya never bordered to go and search for his son. Even Silimela never came back home in order to go for secamsegione school. Dyosini the younger brother was always around home helping his father and right hand man of his older brother Mkhanya. When Mkhanya passed away Dyosini become the inhailer. He had two sons Ramncwana and Nompempe. Rhamncwana was reinstated as chief of Amagqunukhwebe aselwandle by Ciskei government under the leadership of Sebe in 1975. Rhamncwana’s son was Ntlanganiso and her mother was Nontozimbi a daughter of Rhatsha from Giqwa clan. When Nontozimbi was laying in hospital bad, she ordered Rahmncwana to look for someone who is going to look after him and the children. Ramncwana get married to Nondenze (Nongenile) a daughter of Mbutiyakhe Twani from Qhinebe clan and they give birth to two sons Xolani and Gcobani. Nongenile is still acting as chieftaincy. Ntlanganiso was married to Nondumiso a daughter of Petros Namba from Twecu village and their son was Zolani. Their marriage never last, and the lobola cattle’s were returned together with Zolani still a chilled. In 1982 Ntlanganiso get married to Noxolo a daughter of King Mxolisi Sandile of the Rharhabe’s. They give birth to a baby girl by the name of Ntombolwaqndle and Nomonde. He get sick and he was hospitalized, and passed away in 1990.

The collection of information of Gqunukhwebe Tribe (Extracts)

Book Frontiers The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People by Noel Mostert

The Gqunukhwebes regarded the Zuurveld as theirs by conquest or outright purchase from Koikoi. Tshaka’s Gqunukhwebe were already concentrated along the cost up to the bushman’s river, and it was them who felt the fullest impact of the flowing colonists. They were wholly surrounded by enemies. Of all the frontier chiefs they were the most resolute in resisting Ndlambe’s attempt to make them submit to him. The Gqunukhwebe were sorely tried people, but the use the thick bush of the Zuurveld’s river valleys as their main deference, and vanish inside its seemingly impenetrable canopy, where they also sheltered their cattle’s. (page237)

The first frontier war had ended in 1781 with the belief that Adriaan van Jaasveld had expelled the Gqunukhwe and Mbalu from the Zuurveld Through the 1780’s, however both this people gradually move back; it was doubtful that Tshaka’s Gqunukhwebe had ever left. Apart from believing they had a right to the territory, drought throughout that part of southern Africa was driving Xhosa’s into the Zuurveld pastures. The Gqunukhwe we still harassed and pursued by Ndlambe’s Rarabe warriors.Ndlambe who sought the subjugation of both the Gqunukhwebe and Mbalu’s, practice a classic strategy of facilitating the task by using one against the other. He used Langa and his Mbalu against the Gqunukhwebe and defited them.This through the Gqunukhwebe back against the Boers. When Chungwa son of Gqunukhwebe chief Tshka, was asked why his people will not leave Zuurveld, he answered that ‘this tract of country was life to them and that if they were to be deprived of it they will lose their life’; and when a patrol sent from Graafrainet Reinent asked him in a friendly manner to leave the Zuurveld he refused. While the landdrosts of Graaf Reinet preached caution, the Boers began taking matters into their own hands from the end of 1780’s through into the early 1790’s. The Gqunukhwebe and the Mbalu now found themselves sharing apprehension. Langa and Tshaka saw their cattle and households raided at whim and their people short when they compained. Server humiliation was to be suffered by the leaders of both Mbalu and Gqunukhwebe. Among the woman seized by de Buys was one of Langa’s wave’s, who was pressed into service as a concubine. When Langa, on a hunting expedition, stopped at a house of Boer, he was given a reception somewhat different to the traditional hospitality he might have been expecting. The Boer lock him up in the house took away his assegais and would force him to barter cattle. One of the infamous Bezuidenhouts lock up Chungwa in his mill and under serve threats ordered him to turn it in person. These were unheard-of insults and aggressions against Xhosa chiefs and their heirs and for a man like Langa, son of Phalo and a brother of the great Rarabe and himself renowned in his days, such an assault against his person, his establishment, his lineage and chiefly integrity was unprecedented. Around this time too, he began paying the price of his alliance with Ndlambe against the Gqunukhwe, for the former now saw him as the quarry. Like the first war it was a brief ind inconclusive affair. All were losers. Langa of the Mbalu Tshaka of the Gqunukhwebe repaid the humiliation and the insults they had sufferd from Coenraard de Buys, the Bezuidenhousts and others. They laid a west the country, and de Buys whom Langa blamed outright for the war lost all his property, as William Prinsloo had done in the first war. But Langa and Tshaka became the victims as well. The two chiefs retreated before the commandos and went across the Fish Rive, where Ndlambe was waiting. Tshaka was killed in the battle and Langa was taken to prisoner. Maynier refused to stand down, but resentment against him continued to grow after the commando operations wound down towards the end of November 1793. Chungwa, Tshaka’s son was the new chief of the Gqunukhwebe, and Nqeno Langa’s son had succeeded to the chieftaincy of the Mbalu.

274 Chungwa who had succeeded his father Tshaka as Chief of the Gqunukhwebe, not only refused to leave the Zuurveld but even insisted that he would not again discuss the matter Apart from the Mbalu and Gqunukhwebe, by now long establish users and occupants of the Zuurveld, the territory also contained those of Ndlambe’s people who had fled from Ngqika’s increased power and naturally supposed that they would be subject to him the moment they cross the Fish river.

290 Chungwa a man of prepossessing countenance, and tall muscular figure, give them a kind of reluctant assent. Close to where they had first met Chungwa they run into him again and the order to leave the Zuurveld was repeated, possible in more threatening terms. Chungwa refuse to absolutely to go and his warriors become so hostile that Vandeleur used two or three rounds to disperse them It was the opening short of Britains entry into the frontier wars of South Africa.

In Octorber 1799 Maynier go unarmed to into the Koikhoi kemp in the Zuurveld and on to see Chungwa of Gqunukhwe, out of this intersession they came up with peace agreement. Chungwa had precisely got what he had always been wanting throughout the past decade: recognition of his rights to remain in the Zuurvald, which he conceded to be his own country by inheritance, and he responded to this by willingly co-operating with the colonial authorities in trying to police the region against cattle thieves, and continued to do so even through the difficult times that followed. (302)

The cardinal emphases of frontier policy for all governments from the late 1770’s had been to remove all the Xhosa from the Zuurveld, and to get them all across the great Fish River. The DEIC had tried and so had the British, and Maynier had saved as the ineffectual agent in this for both. The Gqunukhwebwe under their chief Chungwa, and the other miner chiefdoms such as the Mbalu and Dange, who had settled on this grassy and hilly costal territory between the Sundays River and the Great Fish rives, had successfully resisted every effort to dislodge them, and in October 1799 had worn the recognition from the British of their right to remain. Around 1808 Chungwa had established kraals some 150 miles west of Algoa Bay. One of the Dange chief was on the edge of Karoo, half way to Cape Town from the eastern districts

Cuyler’s destination on the Christmas 1811was Chungwa’s Great place a few miles beyond. He arrived and fined the Gqunukhwes’s assembled in battle dress, wearing the blue crane feather, the Xhosa cap of war. The old chief was confined to his couch, ill and slowly dying. He sand a massage of concession, and Cuyler told him that the Gqunukhwebe had until the next day to move out of the Zuurveld and across the Great Fish River.(381)

The following day, 27 December 1811, Graham revised his strategy. Cayler had appealed for reinforcements because he belive that he was facing the main body of the Zuuveld Xhosa forces. He also had decided that Chungwa’s indication to him on Christmas day that he was willing to move simply had been a ruse to stall for time until Ndlambwe and his warriors arrived. Ndlambe and the Zuurvald Xhosa had established themselves in a dance section of forest into which they had driven sufficient cattle for their substance during any siege. Graham was convinced; from all the intelligent he had received, that if Ndlambe could be driven out, then the rest of Zuurveld Xhosa would follow. He there for decided to concentrate his forces around the wood where the Xhosa had establish themselves and that day sent massages to his flanking groups to regroup there for an assolt.