Qwabe

This account was passed down by word of mouth.

The amaQwabe descend from Qwabe, eldest son of Malandela kaLuzumana and his wife Nozidiya (Nozinja) of the Zungu clan, making Qwabe the senior branch of the same royal house that produced the Zulu clan itself, through Qwabe's younger brother, Zulu. Oral tradition holds that after a dispute involving succession and a herd of prized white cattle inherited from their mother, the two brothers separated: Zulu remained at the family homestead in the Mfule valley, while Qwabe moved to build a new home, eMthandeni, beneath the Ngoye hills.

By the eighteenth century the Qwabe kingdom, ruled in turn by ancestors including Khondlo and later Phakathwayo kaKhondlo, had grown into one of the most powerful and ancient polities in what became Zululand and Natal, organised around seven large villages each led by a senior member of the ruling lineage, an unusually decentralised structure that also, notably, permitted women's regiments (isigodlo).

The Qwabe kingdom rivalled the Mthethwa and Zulu for regional supremacy before being absorbed into Shaka's expanding Zulu state in the early nineteenth century. Surnames descending from the Qwabe royal line include Gumede, Mnguni, Khuzwayo, Simamane, Makhanya, and Nqetho. The historical relationship between the Qwabe and Zulu royal houses, and the question of seniority between them, remains a live topic of cultural and academic discussion in KwaZulu-Natal today.

Recorded from: Zulu oral-history archives (see sources)