Mugodo

Mugodo is the transformative figure who stands at the turn from Lovedu chieftainship to rain-queenship. In the tradition preserved by the Kriges he was the last man to rule. His sons conspired against him, and, warned by the ancestors and by his own mother that the dynasty could be saved only through the female line, he begot a daughter by a woman of his own house. That daughter became Modjadji, the first rain-queen, and Mugodo passed to her the rain-medicines before taking poison so that his power should not die with him. His act established the enduring rules of the institution: succession through a royal woman, secrecy surrounding the queen's person, and the queen's obligation to end her own reign by ritual death. Sources differ over the precise kinship of the woman through whom the first queen was born.

Children

• Modjadji I

Domains

• kingship
• rainmaking

Powers

• instituted the sacred rain-queenship
• transmitted his rain-power by ritual death

Relations

• child: Modjadji IFather of the first rain-queen by a daughter of his own house.E. J. Krige & J. D. Krige, The Realm of a Rain-Queen (Oxford University Press, 1943). (primary)

Sources

• Mugodo was the last male ruler of the Lovedu; betrayed by his sons and counselled by the ancestors, he begot a daughter in the royal female line and transmitted the rainmaking to her, thereby founding the sacred queenship before ending his own life.: 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)