As we round off Women’s Month celebrations, lest we forget that female leadership is not a recent phenomenon, or an innovation of the modern democratic era. Let us not curtail celebrations to the current and recent female leaders only. African herstory tells a story of the continent that has been led by matriarchs, albeit behind the scenes, with few others in the forefront. This is not because men rule the world as they have strength, the money and the power and that women rule men because of one weakness common to all men.
Long before corporate boardrooms, national and provincial parliaments, as well as ministerial portfolios existed, African societies were led, defended, and transformed by women. From the Queen of Sheba in the biblical era to Queen Nandi (c. 1760 – 1827), Queen Nonesi (mid-1800s), and, of course, the Amazon, Manthatisi, Queen of the Wild Cat people.
Queen Manthatisi (c.1784 – 1847) of the Batlokwa governed as regent between 1813 and 1824 during one of the most turbulent periods in Southern African history. She is described by oral historians and historians as a beautiful, light-skinned woman from the Basia tribe, the daughter of Chief Mothaba. Her name was Monyalue, and she was a maternal cousin to Mokotjo, her husband. She became known as Manthatisi to celebrate the birth of her daughter, Nthatisi and to honour her status as a mother.
The leadership of Manthatisi is best reflected in the Northern Sotho paremiology that says “Mmago ngwana o tshwara thipa ka bogaleng,” which loosely translated that “a mother holds the knife by the sharp blade.” The proverb means that a mother will endure great pain, extreme hardship, and make ultimate sacrifices to protect and provide for her children. Manthatisi held the “knife by the sharp blade” during difficult times of the scatterings in the history and herstory of southern Africa.
Following the death of her husband, Chief Mokotjo (1785 – 1813), she assumed leadership as a regent for her eldest son, Sekonyela, the crown prince who was not yet of age to succeed his father, Mokotjo. In a political environment where public affairs were largely regarded as the domain of men, Manthatisi consolidated power through extraordinary political acumen, military leadership, and force of character amid much opposition.
Manthatisi first protected her son by taking him to the circumcision rites among her own people, the Basia. In 1824, when she felt that Sekonyela had reached maturity, Manthatisi retired, and her son took over as the sole ruler of the Batlokwa social structures and military.
A beauty with brains, this larger-than-life woman was known to be a strategist and good with a battle-axe. She commanded over 14 000 troops and fought different kinds of battles, achieving victories and losing tiny battles. Historians and herstorians describe her as a courageous and capable leader who successfully protected and guided her people during the upheavals of the Lifaqane period.
During council meetings, she would sit on the largest stone circle to be able to face those who were opposing her in decision-making. As a strategist whom the commanders were able to implement, she led her people to many victories. Yet her story and those of other Valkyries are often relegated to footnotes in our national consciousness and commemorations. Only stories of contemporary women leaders are celebrated as exceptional anomalies breaking through historically and herstorical male spaces.
This framing may inadvertently reproduce a colonial misconception that African societies were exclusively patriarchal and that women occupied only marginal political roles. Historical and herstorical evidence suggests otherwise. Manthatisi was not merely a symbolic figurehead, she commanded armies, negotiated alliances, and exercised sovereign authority over her people. Her leadership challenged social conventions and demonstrated that women could occupy positions of power and command respect in precolonial Africa.
Her legacy is an epitome of what scholar and historian Tlhabaki Modise defines as “queenly power”. To Modise, women from the royal councils were often in the inner circle, privy to the world of men. Since she was of royal blood, it could possibly mean that Manthatisi enjoyed the privileges that shaped her political beginning, mental aptitude and military prowess.
If there were recordings of her own life delivered by her personhood, she would claim to have sat in on her father’s councils when she was a child. The queendom was the shrine of the people’s soul. To remove and separate the queenly power and authority from kingship is to rupture the people’s soul, to break the link between the not-yet-born and the living in the memory of the ancestors, and to cut off the kingdoms’ instrument of life support.
This herstory matters because representation without herstorical memory can become superficial. Celebrating contemporary women leaders is necessary, but it should not come at the expense of forgetting the women who laid the foundations upon which present achievements stand.
Queen Manthatisi reminds us that women have long occupied positions of political authority in Africa. She should therefore not be remembered simply as a warrior queen of the Batlokwa. With other women leaders, she should be recognised as part of a much longer African tradition of female leadership, a tradition that predates modern governments and corporations. When we celebrate women leaders today, we do not celebrate the beginning of a story, we celebrate the continuation of one.
Prof Mpho Ngoepe is Acting Vice-Principal: Research, Postgraduate Studies, Innovation and Commercialisation at Unisa.
Chepape Makgato is the Chief Curator of the William Humphreys Art Gallery (WHAG) and a PhD candidate at Unisa.
