The House of Tshatshu: Power, Politics and Chiefs North-West of the Great Kei River, c1818–2018, by Anne K. Mager and Phiko J. Velelo

Abstract

This book is a detailed account of the peaks and troughs of an independent chiefdom over a lifespan linking colonial southern Africa and post-apartheid South Africa. It identifies the chiefdom of amaTshatshu as a sub-house of the kingdom of abaThembu, which, in the 1820s, left the increasingly turbulent Mbashe area (later referred to as “Thembuland proper”) and crossed over Tsomo River into “Bushmanland,” a territory between Stormberg and Amathole Mountains. By the 1830s “Bushmanland” had become turbulent too, due to the passage of more Thembu groups into the territory, the eastward and southward colonial advances by the British and the Boers, and the clashes between the newcomers and the “Khoesan” groups inhabiting the territory. From the 1830s to the 1880s, the amaTshatshu were embroiled in the bloody conflicts of the eastern frontier, and were severely weakened by land dispossessions, the cattle-killing movement between 1856 and 1857, and colonial imposition.