Herkoms en geskiedenis van Die Tlhaping

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Abstract
The Tlhaping may be described as a number of. politically independent but genealogically and culturally closely related tribes belonging to the Tswana cluster of the so‐called Sotho group of Bantu speaking peoples. Most of the Tlhaping inhabit the area known as British Bechuanaland, but small sections are also found in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, in the Western Transvaal, and in some parts of the Orange Free State. The overwhelming majority of the Tlhaping, howevtr, counting about 22,000 souls, are to‐day organised into two independent political sections or tribes known by their ancestral names as the Phuduhu‐tSwana which is the main section consisting of more or less 15,000 members, and the Maidi which is the smaller section consisting of about 7,000 members. These two sections each under its own chief jointly occupy an area of land about 200,000 morgen in extent officially designated as the Taung Native Reserve which is about one half portion of the magisterial district of Taung, the other half being occupied by Europeans. On the origin of the Tlhaping various theories have bet n assumed by the earlier writers. Barrow e.g. was of the opinion that the Tlhaping were of Arab descent because of “ their pastoral life, their feeding principally on milk, their hospitality to strangers, their practice of circumcising male children, and the general cast of the countenance.” S. S. Dornan reckoned that they migrated from the North, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Great Lakes “ the original home of the Bantu.” Theal simply stated that the Tlhaping were the first TSwana tribe to settle in the South during the early centuries, closely followed by the Rolong who similarly came from the North. Modern research, however, has brought to light that the Tlhaping originated during the last decade of the 16th or the first decade of the 17th century during which time they hived off from their ancestors, the Rolong, in two sections under the leadership of PhuduhutSwana and Maidi respectively, and that they obtained full political independence during the reign of the well known Rolong Chief Tau who died in the year 1760. The Tlhaping first settled at Dikgatlhong near the junction o! the Hartz and Vaal River where thejr lived in such dire poverty that they were compelled to subsist chiefly on fish caught in the Vaal River. On account of this they were aptly nicknamed Ba‐tlhapi‐ng (men of the fish place) by the Rolong. It may be pointed out in passing that the fish (tlhapi) has no totemic significance to the Tlhaping, as some would assert, their only totemic animal being the koodoo (thSlo) the same as that of the Rolong. In their desolation the Tlhaping wandered from one place to the other freely mixing with Bushmen and Hottentot until they finally settled at Kuruman under their distinguished chief Molehabangwe who died in March, 1812. It was during the reign of this chief that the Tlhaping for the first time came into contact with Europeans. Molehabangwe was succeeded by Mothibi under whose bad rule the tribe began to split up into several'sections (1830). In addition they were continuously being harassed by the Bushmen, Hottentots and Griquas, and in 1836 they decided to shift.their headquarters from Kuruman to Taung where it is still situated to‐day. Subsequent to that the Tlhaping became involved in difficulties with governments and peoples of an higher order : first with the Dutch of the Transvaal, then with the Cape Government and finally with the British Government who proclaimed their country as British territory in 1885 and annexed it to the Cape Colony in 1895. All these events considerably disturbed the normal social, economic and political life of the Tlhaping causing not only dispersion but also spiritual degeneration of the tribe. The history of the Tlhaping clearly illustrates how all factors beyond the absojute control of the political head of the tribe, viz. the chief, can easily lead to the disintegration rather than the reintegration of the tribal organisation and culture.

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