Thembuland, af, Temboeland, is a

natural region A natural region (landscape unit) is a basic geographic unit. Usually, it is a region which is distinguished by its common natural features of geography, geology, and climate. From the ecological point of view, the naturally occurring flora an ...

in the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

. Its territory is the

traditional region Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which at some point in time had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis, regardless of latterday borders. They are used as delimitations for studying and analysing social ...

of the abaThembu, one of the states of the Xhosa nation. It was formerly also known as "Tamboekieland" or "Tambookieland". The area of Thembuland proper includes present-day

Mthatha Mthatha , formerly Umtata, is the main city of the King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality in Eastern Cape province of South Africa and the capital of OR Tambo District Municipality. The city has an airport, previously known as the K. D. Matan ...

Mqanduli Mqanduli is a town in OR Tambo District Municipality in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Village 30 km south of Mthatha and 22 km north-east of Elliotdale. Named after a nearby hill; of Xhosa origin, the name is said to mean ' ...

Ngcobo Ngcobo (formerly Engcobo) is a town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Ngcobo is the main town of the Engcobo Local Municipality, which falls within the Chris Hani District Municipality of the Eastern Cape. It is situated in the weste ...

, Mjanyana,

Dutywa Dutywa (formerly Idutywa) is a town in Mbashe Local Municipality, Eastern Cape province, South Africa, that was founded in 1858 as a military fort after a dispute between a Natal Colony raiding party and its local people.Willowvale as well as their surroundings.

Geography

Thembuland was historically defined as the area between

Umtata Mthatha , formerly Umtata, is the main city of the King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality in Eastern Cape province of South Africa and the capital of OR Tambo District Municipality. The city has an airport, previously known as the K. D. Matan ...

and the upper

Kei River The Great Kei River is a river in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is formed by the confluence of the Black Kei River and White Kei River, northeast of Cathcart. It flows for and ends in the Great Kei Estuary at the Indian Ocean ...

. As such it formed an area of 50 by 120 miles, although its boundary was considered disputable with

Pondoland Pondoland or Mpondoland (Xhosa: ''EmaMpondweni''), is a natural region on the South African shores of the Indian Ocean. It is located in the coastal belt of the Eastern Cape province. Its territory is the former Mpondo Kingdom of the Mpondo p ...

on the coast, and with Fingoland just to the south. The definition of the area has also changed over time. Before colonial conquest, it was divided into Tembuland Proper, Emigrant Tembuland and Bomvanaland — the

Bomvana According to their own tradition, the Bomvana originate from the Amangwane, a people from Kwa-Zulu Natal. The AmaBomvana are descended from Nomafu, the first of the AmaNgwana tribe and from Bomvu, who gave rise to the AmaBomvu tribe. Bomvu's Great ...

were a related people who lived on the east bank of the Bashee River, in what was later the district of Elliotdale. In colonial times it was defined as consisting of the districts of Emjanyana, Engcobo,

, St Marks, Southeyville and Xalanga.

History

Early history

The hunter-gatherer San and

Khoikhoi Khoekhoen (singular Khoekhoe) (or Khoikhoi in the former orthography; formerly also '' Hottentots''"Hottentot, n. and adj." ''OED Online'', Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. ...

people inhabited the region in scattered nomadic groups from 30,000 BCE. In the 16th century, iron-working Nguni farmers entered the area from the north-east. A sub-group of the Nguni peoples became the

Thembu people The AbaThembu (''abaThembu ababhuzu-bhuzu, abanisi bemvula ilanga libalele'') are a Xhosa-speaking Bantu people who were under the Thembu Kingdom. According to Bantu oral tradition, the AbaThembu migrated along the east coast of Southern Africa ...

. Although originally self-identifying as a separate Nguni nation, the Thembu subsequently assimilated to a large degree with the neighbouring

Xhosa people The Xhosa people, or Xhosa-speaking people (; ) are African people who are direct kinsmen of Tswana people, Sotho people and Twa people, yet are narrowly sub grouped by European as Nguni ethnic group whose traditional homeland is primarily t ...

. Thembuland became an independent kingdom, ruled by the Hala royal clan. Beginning in the 19th century, Thembuland become embroiled in conflict with the neighboring

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

. From 1871 the Thembu became engaged in a protracted war against an alliance of neighbouring Xhosa-speaking peoples, including the Pondo, the

and the

Gcaleka The Gcaleka House is the Great house of the Xhosa Kingdom in what is now the Eastern Cape. Its royal palace is in the former Transkei and its counterpart in the former Ciskei is the Rharhabe, which is the right hand house of Phalo. The Gcaleka H ...

. The Thembu Paramount-Chief, Ngangelizwe, had sought to unite the various Thembu clans but had come under increasing military pressure from

Sarhili King Sarhili ( about 1810 - 1892) was the King of Xhosa nation from 1835 until his death in 1892 at Sholora, Bomvanaland. He was also known as "Kreli", and led the Xhosa armies in a series of frontier wars. Early life and family Sarili was the ...

, King of the Xhosa. The conflict had a personal side, as Ngangelizwe's Chief Wife Novili was the daughter of Sarhili, and rumours had been spread that Ngangelizwe had ill-treated her. Facing severe military pressure from the combined armies of his enemies, Chief Ngangelizwe and his Ministers approached the nominally-independent

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with ...

to negotiate alliance and possible incorporation.

Incorporation into the Cape Colony

The Cape Colony, having recently achieved a degree of independence from Britain under the system of

Responsible Government Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive br ...

, operated under a relatively inclusive system of multi-racial franchise - whereby qualifications for suffrage applied equally to all male residents, regardless of race. Its laws also forbade any white settlement in traditional "Native territory". The Cape was therefore viewed by Ngangelizwe and his ministers as a satisfactory entity to merge with. Ngangelizwe however, was a highly controversial leader in the Xhosa-speaking community. He was hated by many in the neighbouring Pondo and Gcaleka states, and accused of a range of crimes. The Cape Government demanded his resignation, as a precondition for any annexation. According to Cape Parliamentary records, the Thembu leaders demanded, among other things, 4 magistracies with equal access to the Cape's current system of multiracial franchise, and military support in the event of a conflict with the British and their Gcaleka enemies. If these conditions were incorporated into law, together with respect for the traditional authority of the chiefs, then they would request incorporation. The Cape government agreed to these terms and signed them into law with the ''Tembuland Annexation Act (1876)'', creating the magisterial districts of Xalanga, St. Marks, Elliot and Engcobo. Additional stipulations of the 1876 act were that the Thembu traditional government system was to get full government recognition; Thembu King, Chiefs and Subchiefs were to earn government salaries; normal taxation would only begin in 1878; the boundaries of Thembuland were final and were not to be altered in any way; and that the sale of alcohol be prohibited to Thembu subjects. The resignation of the controversial Thembu King Ngangelizwe, in favour of his successor, had initially been demanded by the Cape government as a precondition for annexation, but this condition was waived as being impractical. Otherwise, the terms of the incorporation were implemented as stated. Traditional land ownership was fully recognised and, with the exception of a few missionaries and white traders, Thembuland was preserved for Thembu occupation, as part of the "Transkeian territories". However, the

Colonial Office The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created to deal with the colonial affairs of British North America but required also to oversee the increasing number of c ...

's overthrow of the elected Cape government in 1878 and assumption of direct rule over the Cape Colony caused the Confederation Wars, and the later disruption of the treaty's peaceful implementation. The annexation was only finally completed in 1885. Thembuland was defined at the time as being the territory between Umtata and the Tsomo River, and home to 60,000 people. Thembuland also submitted troops to the Frontier Armed forces of the Cape Colony, who, in this capacity, fought several victorious campaigns against their

and

Mpondo The Mpondo People or simply AmaMpondo, is one of the kingdoms in what is now the Eastern Cape.Mpondo people
...

enemies.

Early political restrictions

According to the original laws of the Cape Colony, as well as the terms of the Annexation Act, Europeans were prohibited from owning land in the Thembu territories. This was initially intended to prevent the dispossession of the Thembu by aggressive settlers, however in the ensuing political upheavals, the law was badly enforced. From the 1880s, the pro-imperialist governments of Prime Ministers

John Gordon Sprigg Sir John Gordon Sprigg, (27 April 1830 – 4 February 1913) was an English-born colonial administrator, politician and four-time prime minister of the Cape Colony. Early life Sprigg was born in Ipswich, England, into a strongly Puritan fa ...

and

Cecil Rhodes Cecil John Rhodes (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his Bri ...

turned a blind eye to white incursions. Already by 1882, white settlers had illegally moved north of the Great Kei River and, in the same year, Chief Ngangelizwe himself sold territory within Umtata district to white land owners. In 1894, the ''Glen Gray Act'' constituted the Thembu chiefs as leaders of "District Councils", thereby establishing a system of proxy rulers. The Government of

passed legislation, such as the ''Parliamentary Registration Act'', that severely curtailed the voting rights of the Thembu and all Black African citizens of the Cape. However it was the Union of South Africa, in the Twentieth Century, that was to oversee the greatest growth in oppression against the people of Thembuland.

The Union of South Africa and Apartheid history

Later, in the lead up to the

Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Tr ...

and the beginning of

Apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

, the franchise and property rights of the Thembu were gradually revoked, and what rights remained were applied only in their original homeland. Later still, under apartheid, the

Transkei Transkei (, meaning ''the area beyond he riverKei''), officially the Republic of Transkei ( xh, iRiphabliki yeTranskei), was an unrecognised state in the southeastern region of South Africa from 1976 to 1994. It was, along with Ciskei, a Ba ...

was turned into a

bantustan A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (n ...

. In the ethnic theory underpinning

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

, the Transkei was regarded as the "homeland" of the Xhosa people. Although some state that Thembu people are a separate Nguni peoples, they are categorised as Xhosa people as they practice Xhosa culture and use isiXhosa as their home language.

Secession dispute

The current Thembu king is King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, son of

Sabata Jonguhlanga Dalindyebo Sabata Jonguhlanga Dalindyebo (1928–1986) was the ruler of the Thembu Kingdom. He was the son of Jongilizwe Sampu Dalindyebo. His rule was marked by conflict with Kaiser Matanzima. This political conflict escalated until Sabata was arrested in ...

, and his praise name is ''Zwelibanzi''. The King caused controversy in 2009, by calling for secession from South Africa, as a response to a criminal case against him. In December 2009 King Buyelekhaya was convicted of offences including

culpable homicide Culpable homicide is a categorisation of certain offences in various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth of Nations which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular j ...

kidnapping In criminal law, kidnapping is the unlawful confinement of a person against their will, often including transportation/asportation. The asportation and abduction element is typically but not necessarily conducted by means of force or fear: the p ...

arson Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wate ...

and

assault An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in cr ...

. In response he proposed secession from South Africa and later demanded that the South African government pay the king R900m and the tribe a further R80bn in compensation for the humiliation caused by the criminal trial. Dalindyebo was imprisoned in December 2015, has since been customarily dethroned, and is expected to be administratively dethroned in the near future.

References

{{Authority control Regions of Africa Natural regions of South Africa Geography of the Eastern Cape Xhosa Historical regions