Who were the descendants of Thembu?

According to the Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims, Thembu had two principal sons:

1. Ndilo – the heir whose descendants established the main abaThembu royal line in the Eastern Cape.
2. Mvelase (also known as Qhudeni/Qudeni in some traditions) – who separated from the main royal house and established his own community in what is now KwaZulu-Natal.

This distinction is historically important because it explains the existence of two major branches descending from Thembu:

1. The House of Ndilo

This is the line from which the abaThembu kings descended:

• Zwide (Nanzinzaba)
• Mbulali
• Njanya
• Thembu
• Ndilo
• Ntongakazi (Dumakazi)
• Bhomoyi
• Cedume
• Mnquti
• Ntoyi
• Ntande
• Nxeko
• Dlomo
• Hala
• Madiba
• Tato
• Zondwa
• Ndaba
• Ngubengcuka
• …and the later kings.

2. The House of Mvelase

Mvelase did not succeed to the main kingship. Instead, he established a separate branch of the abaThembu in present-day KwaZulu-Natal. Many families bearing the Mthembu and Mvelase  trace their ancestry to this house, and it became known as the abaThembu bakwaMvelase

The Themba or Temba surname is found amongst both the Thembu of Ndilo and the Thembu of Mvelase. The earliest known records of the Themba surname point to a marriage between Samuel Temba and Nina Kunene who married in Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape in 1854. The oldest recorded Temba person was named George Temba, born in Natal, in 1818. He died in 1918 in Johannesburg.