A DESCRIPTION OF THE MODDERPOORT NEIGHBOUR- 

 HOOD ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 



By Rev. Father Norton, S.S.M. 



At ]\Iodderpoort we have a very decre]iit old woman who passed 

 out of the circumcision school just at the time of the inroads of 

 the Eastern tribes in 1822. which were owing to the Lifaqane 

 or disturbances due to Tshaka's tyranny in Zululand. As she 

 was about 16 in 1822. she must have been born about 1806. the 

 year in which the Holy Roman Empire was suppressed by Napoleon. 

 She is now, therefore, about 103 years old. 



She w'as taken captive by the Mankoane, who swept down the 

 country in pursuit of Pakalitha and his Mahlubi, whose ruined 

 kraals may still be traced at Mabolela on the right of the line 

 before reaching Clocolan, and who had themselves come on from 

 Natal to avenge the death of one of them on young Sikonyela. 

 chief of the Batlokoa, who were at that time beyond Bethlehem, 

 and who afterwards settled at Ficksburg. after causing consider- 

 able disturbance and displacement further West. A useful sum- 

 mary of these wars appears in the Mori j a Suto Almanac. They 

 produced far off eddies, even among the Becoana tribes on the 

 border of the Kalahari, as one may see in Dr. Moffat's (of Kuruman. 

 fa her-in-law of Livingstone) vivid account of Lithako attacked 

 by the Mantatees. This was probably a Colony name for the 

 Basuto tribes in general, derived from a well-known character, 

 Mantati, chieftainess of the Batlokoa, a sort of African Boadicea.* 

 The chief ingredient of their horde, however, was probably 

 Bafekeng. another branch of which adventurous race went north- 

 ward with Sebetoane to Lake Ngami and the Zambesi, in 1823. 

 The name of th's clan means Men of the mist or dew, and in legend 

 they appear as the first to step forth from the hole in the earth 

 called Ntsoanatsatsi, or the Dayspring, still regarded as the home 

 of the ancestors, facing which (to North or East) corpses are buried 

 in a sitting posture (among the Zulus, I am told, only chiefs ; 

 among the Bushmen lying on one side, but still towards the East). 



They brushed off the early dew as they came out of Tsoanatsatsi 

 and have been in the forefront ever since, though a mild and gentle 

 people. It is their language which forms literary Sesuto, They 

 made alliance in marriage and war with the Bakoena or Men of 

 the Crocodile. I have photos of a member of the royal family 

 of that clan, the Ba Monaheng. from a widow out of which Moshesh's 

 father c me through an irregular union with a Zulu. He is 

 grandson to the old prophetess who died at Modderpoort in 1905. 

 cousin to ]\Iakelele, the subject of my paper, with whom she was 

 coeval. This man would have been chief at Modderpoort if the 

 country had not been conquered. I ha\'e also a portrait of 

 the brother of the chief of the BaTaung of Ramokhele, who formerly 



* Just opposite Modderpoort Mantati frightened away the Zulus pursuing 

 her by drawing up the women and children, armed, behind the herd, when 

 the men were out foraging. 



