Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II 1st Edition
by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon
Queer Places:
Rebeccastraat begraafplaas, 322 Rebecca St, Philip Nel Park, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa
Mzuzephi Mathebula (1867 – December 1948), widely known by his alias Jan Note and his legendary moniker Nongoloza, was born in Zululand in 1867 and lived until 1948. He occupies a mythic and foundational space in South African social history as the outlaw king who established the Ninevites, a powerful criminal syndicate operating on the outskirts of the rapidly industrializing Witwatersrand during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rejecting the oppressive labor systems, pass laws, and mining compounds designed to exploit Black migrant workers, Nongoloza chose a life of highway robbery and banditry. Over time, he organized his followers into a strict, paramilitary hierarchy structured around adaptations of colonial judicial and Boer military systems. His criminal empire eventually fractured and evolved within the South African prison system, laying the structural groundwork for the notorious Numbers Gangs (the 26s, 27s, and 28s) that persist to this day.
The links between Nongoloza and LGBTQ+ history are deeply embedded in the oral histories, structural codes, and foundational folklore of these South African prison gangs. Within the mythology of the Numbers, same-sex practices and gendered divisions of labor became central—and often coercive—organizing principles. According to early gang lore, a major rift occurred early in Nongoloza's criminal career when he and a co-founder, Kilikijan (Ngeleketshane), split after Nongoloza was discovered engaging in sexual acts with another male gang member. While Nongoloza defended the practice within the harsh, isolated realities of a male-dominated outlaw subculture—arguing that relations between bandits served to prevent contact with women—it catalyzed deep ideological divisions.
When Nongoloza and his rivals were later incarcerated in colonial prisons such as Durban's Point Prison, these sexual politics were institutionalized into the architecture of the 26 and 28 gangs. The 28s became historically associated with internal same-sex relationships, where a rigid and often violent hierarchy emerged, designating certain members (frequently referred to as "wyfies" or wives) to perform domestic or female-gendered roles and occupy positions of sexual submission within the prison ecosystem. Conversely, the 26s were formed partly in resistance to these sexual dynamics, establishing strict codes prohibiting same-sex practices among their own members.
While these historical prison dynamics cannot be uncoupled from systemic violence, coercion, and the totalizing deprivation of liberty under institutional incarceration, modern sociologists, queer historians, and legal researchers frequently analyze Nongoloza's legacy when examining the complex intersections of race, forced homosociality, gender performance, and non-normative sexualities in South Africa's carceral history.
Nongoloza Mathebula (Jan Note) is buried in a shared pauper's grave (number 1438) located in the "native section D" of the Rebecca Street Cemetery in Pretoria, South Africa. Following his death in December 1948 at the age of 81, his body went unclaimed and was interred there.
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Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II 1st Edition by Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon |
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