Abstract
This articles examines the Msane chieftaincy, a small polity located in the vicinity of the White and Black Mfolozi Rivers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This article makes two contributions. One, it presents a coherent narrative of the history of the Msane chiefdom in south-eastern Africa. It does so by looking at how it was challenged, then disintegrated and migrated, and finally assimilated itself into other groups over the course of the nineteenth century. Two, it contributes to the ongoing conversation about the historiography of groups in southern Africa, especially as regards the question of how to reconstruct precolonial (and colonial) histories that were dismissed in the accounts about Zulu nation-building accounts and swept under the carpet in written accounts in the mid- and late nineteenth century. The article discusses developments in the broad area south of Delagoa Bay and how these led to the rise of the paramount kingdoms such as the Ndwandwe under Zwide, Mthethwa under the Dingiswayo and the Zulu Kingdom. Amongst the chiefdoms that were affected by these developments was the Msane chiefdom.