At his final departure to war, knowing he would not return, he left his children in the hands of Nowisile, the wife of the young Falo Mgudlwa and the daughter of the Gcaleka King Sarili kaHintsa.
Molteno believed that divisions and disagreements made the Xhosa speaking nations vulnerable, and his main policies were to use traditional structures and diplomacy to unite the different Chiefs, at a turbulent time in Thembuland due to a series of conflicts with occurred in the region in the later half of the 19th century.
The internal and external conflicts called for Molteno's constant work, for the rest of his long life, up until his death.
[2] He died of pneumonia that he contracted in his old age, while riding horseback over great distances in extreme cold still to arrange meetings between local leaders.
Even on his deathbed he summoned his children and instructed them to continue the task of uniting the Xhosa-speaking peoples, because he believed that harder times were still to come.
Through this he made the court of Chief Falo into the major repository of history for the Thembu and Qwathi nations.
[5] He is honoured by the later imbongi, the poet Melikhaya Mbutuma, in his 1963 poem against the Apartheid government and its puppet ruler Kaiser Matanzima: