Modjadji I

Modjadji I, personally named Maselekwane, was the first of the Lovedu rain-queens, born of Mugodo's founding act early in the nineteenth century. She was a sacred and secluded person, seldom seen, held to embody the rainmaking power of the royal ancestors and to govern the coming of the rains. Good rains signalled her benevolence and inner calm; drought, hail and storm signalled her anger or the disorder of the realm, so that distant chiefs sent tribute and daughters to secure her favour. Her fame for weather-control reached far across southern Africa and is generally taken to lie behind the immortal white queen of Rider Haggard's novel She. By custom the queen never dies publicly but is said to be transformed; the death of Modjadji I was concealed in the manner that became standard for the dynasty.

Parentage

• parent: MugodoE. J. Krige & J. D. Krige, The Realm of a Rain-Queen (Oxford University Press, 1943). (primary)

Children

• Modjadji II

Domains

• rain
• sky
• fertility
• drought

Powers

• makes the rain
• withholds the rain in anger
• transforms the clouds

Relations

• parent: MugodoE. J. Krige & J. D. Krige, The Realm of a Rain-Queen (Oxford University Press, 1943). (primary)
• child: Modjadji IIE. J. Krige & J. D. Krige, The Realm of a Rain-Queen (Oxford University Press, 1943). (primary)

Sources

• Modjadji I (Maselekwane) was the first Lovedu rain-queen, a secluded divine rainmaker whose reputation for controlling the weather spread far beyond her borders in the early nineteenth century.: E. J. Krige & J. D. Krige, The Realm of a Rain-Queen (Oxford University Press, 1943). (primary); E. Jensen Krige, 'Divine Kingship, Change and Development,' in Studies in African Social Anthropology (Academic Press, 1975). (secondary)