The Mabelane is a Northern Sotho, Sepedi speaking, tribe that had settled in an area north-east of the town of Lydenburg (between the towns of Burgersfort on the north and Ohrigstad on the east) in South Africa.
The origin of the tribe is Cabo Mabelane, a coastal town in Southern Mozambique from where the founder of the tribe, Mokgadi, came from. Mokgadi's two sons, Mareologo (eldest) and Tshegwane are thought to have been the first to use the town of their father's origin as an official written surname.
The tribe was forcibly moved in the early 1960s as part of South African government's apartheid policy of settling blacks into what became known as homelands. In recent times (2005 to date) the tribe has lodged a successful land claim and have registered a Communal Property Association called Batau Baga Mabelane to administer their land. A process of compiling an official demographic of the tribe has begun.
Famous quotes containing the word tribe:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)