Makhado appears as a Venda chief in the Zoutpansberg region during the 1860s. His political career developed within a frontier society shaped by elephant hunting, migrant labour, firearms trading, and conflict between African chiefdoms and Boer settlements. The extract identifies him as a former swartskut, an African marksman who had acquired military and gun-maintenance skills while serving white hunters.

African hunters in the region were often loaned firearms by white merchants and became skilled in hunting on foot as the elephant zone receded toward the tsetse-fly zone of the Limpopo valley. Many guns were not returned and were instead used against the Boer settlement at Schoemansdaal. This circulation of weapons gave local communities new means of challenging the military and administrative power of the Zoutpansberg Boers.

In 1867 Makhado led an uprising that proved sufficiently effective to force the Boers to abandon the Zoutpansberg district. His revolt formed part of wider African resistance to Boer demands, tribute, forced labour, and unprovoked warfare. The episode demonstrates how military knowledge acquired through hunting and labour could be redirected against settler expansion.