Kweneng descendants come forward
In this third supplment of our articles on the historic settlement of Kweneng, Kathorus Mail has managed to trace several residents around Katlehong who claime to be descendants of the people of Kweneng.
The settlement is part of an archaeology project currently being run by Prof Karim Sadr of the University of the Witwatersrand’s (Wits) history and archaeology department.
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Following two previous articles about the settlement, a number of people starting calling the newspaper’s offices and laying claim to their forebears being Kweneng settlers.
A few of them said they knew the settlement by other names, but they all agreed the site Sadr mentioned in his findings was indeed the same settlement their forebears had told them about. Others mentioned they often visit the graves of their grandparents who were buried in a graveyard located on the settlement.
Scores of the older living descendants of the settlement, who have been traced to several townships around Ketlehong, told Kathorus MAIL they still have vivid memories of their youth days on the surrounding farmlands in the area.
Tshidiso Madia of Katlehong said his grandfather told him the settlement was called “Tebang”. Madia explained, according to his grandfather, the settlement stretched from the Tamboekiesfontein farms behind Kathorus to as far as Ratanda in Heidelberg.
“My grandfather said the area was under the rule of the Bakwena ba Monaheng, twin brothers called Tsholo and Tsholwane,” said Madia. According to Madia, the brothers established the settlement after fleeing clan wars in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
After the settlement was razed to the ground during the difaqane tribal wars in the mid-1800s, the two brothers and their followers abandoned the settlement and fled west, towards Botswana, where, according to Madia’s grandfather, the twins were later buried.
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Madia recalls a river that ran through the kloof in the mountain, while growing up near Kweneng.
“My great-grandparents were buried next to the river and I am proud to be part of this great heritage of our history,” explained Madia.
Bataung clan members around Katlehong also claim to have been part of the larger part of Kweneng. Some of the clan members invited Kathorus MAIL to a family gathering to explain their link to Kweneng.
Kathorus MAIL has also found that an estimated 11 600 hectares of land on the settlement were demarcated to establish the Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve in 1974, following the purchase of a number of farms in the area by the old Transvaal Provincial Administration Department of Nature Conservation.
Next issue: More families speak about their memories of Kweneng.
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