Makuleke tribe
The Makuleke are a Tsonga tribe living in the Pafuri Triangle of South Africa at the confluence of the Luvuvhu river and Limpopo river in what is now the Kruger National Park. The Tsonga-speaking agricultural and fishing tribe settled the area in the seventeenth century with decentralized homesteads. When the park was created they were exiled outside the gates, but had title to their lands restored as part of post-apartheid restitution laws. There are about 12,000 members of the clan and they are part of an eco-tourism economic development with the land they received from the park.
The Makuleke tribe are part of the Maluleke Clan who also include the Mhinga, Xikundu, Mulamula, Xigalo, Hlaniki and others. Historical records show that these people have been in the area of Phafuri and the other parts around the Kruger National Park well over a thousand years. These tribes, who have been living in parts of Mozambique and the Kruger National Park since arriving from the central parts of Africa around AD200, today form a majority among the Tsonga people of South Africa.
History
The history of the Maluleke tribe can be traced to the time of the Bantu expansion between 100AD and 200AD when African tribes experienced attacks from Arabs from the North of the Great Lakes. The Beja Tonga tribes migrated from those parts and re-established themselves in countries such as Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique. The Maluleke tribe is one of the first of the Beja Tonga tribes which emerged at around 500AD and formed part of the first Chopi and Tsonga Valenge groups in Mozambique and South Africa.The Maluleke tribe, together with their near-relatives, finally settled at the Limpopo river and parts of South Africa led by their tribal leader King Mashakadzi between the 1500s and middle 1600s. Harries indicates that the Maluleke tribe settled at the Kruger National Park which had not been claimed by any other African tribe and was outside the scope of European settlement throughout history; but by the 1890s their territory was incorporated into the European-led Transvaal Republic. This led to the Maluleke tribe being forcefully removed from the Kruger National Park by the Apartheid regime to make way for the establishment of the conservation area in 1969.