Kholokoe people
The Kholokoe people are historically found in the eastern Free State (Harrismith, Wetsieshoek, Vrede, Kestel, Deneysville, etc.
Each son broke away from the Bakgatla tribe to form their own group: Pedi (Bapedi), the Kholokoe, Batlôkwa, Maphuthing, and Basia, respectively.
The Kholokoe tribe claims lineage from the Ba-Hurutshe clan, which was formed following the death of Morolong's 4th-generation great-grandson Malope of Masilo in the 14th century.
The leadership crisis that resulted from Malope's death led to the formation of the Ba-Hurutshe and Ba-Kwena clans, upon the tribe got split between the daughter in the main house and the son Kwena in the 2nd house which resulted in followers of Mohurutshe called Bahurutshe and followers of Kwena as Bakwena, these are the children of Malope son of Masilo of Melore of Mhete.
During the 1600s, Kgetsi/Khetsi took his group and moved eastward and north of Lekoa (Vaal), settling near Seratoe, today Standerton, at a mountain that, since their occupation, became Thaba Kholokoe.
One group under the leadership of Morena Wetsi (Oetsi) went to Natal Nqutu and settled in today's Wetsieshoek, where many of the Kholokoe were killed inside a cave during a war against the Boers.
Although one would love to hear the anecdotal side of the Kholokoe Tribe history, it is unfortunately heavily clouded by the ever-present and festering issue of land and property dispossession and subsequent brutal oppression and painful suffering of the Kholokoe Tribe, first from the Dutch ―Boer‖ Government (Volksraad) of the Free State, and subsequently from the British Orange River Colony Administration and even in the modern times, especially under the Bantustan (Native Homelands) system of the nineteen seventy's and the nineteen eighty's, during which period people like the late Qwaqwa Homeland Prime Minister T.K.Mopeli, ruthlessly sought to and nearly achieved destroying the Kholokoe Tribe!
In 1856, the Kholokoe tribe, under Morena Wetsi, was forcefully dispossessed of this part of their territory by the Free State Dutch Government, on wholly unjustifiable pretenses, only two years after the Convention of Bloemfontein of 1854.
[7] In 1866 Commandant C. de Villiers, also popularly known as Masoothonyane, who was then in charge of the Thaba Nchu, i.e., Harrismith district, and a member of the Volksraad, requested the tribes to assist the Free State Government in the war against Moshoeshoe.
Chief Letlatsa Moloi of the Kholokoe Tribe became a thorn in the flesh for Captain John Quayle Dickson, the Advisor for Native Affairs in the British Colonial Orange Free State government.
On the 5th of September 1903, Captain John Quayle Dickson wrote to Sir Harry Smith from his office in Bloemfontein indicating that he had visited Thabantsu, where he and the Regional Magistrate of the Thaba Nchu territory had personally met and informed Paramount Chief Letlasa of the Kholokoe Tribe that from then onwards he would be granted no special privileges whatsoever and that he was now stripped of his position as one of the well-known and respected Morena oa Kholokoe, declaring him to be just another native and therefore, in his opinion, Paramount Chief Letlatsa will give no further trouble.
Mr. F. Van Reenen also testified to the fact that Commander De Villiers had cheated these native Chiefs in dealing with them, and when this was brought to the knowledge of the Free State government, it forced his resignation from the Volksraad.
