Tracing the rigin of the four-legged serpent in SA rock art

According to rock art recorder Victor Biggs, the Nguni belief in river-dwelling serpentine monsters was appropriated from San mythology as depicted in their rock art.

- Mike Burgess

In 1987, the former Xhosa homeland of Ciskei launched a series of first-day cover stamps and postcards depicting a giant mythical snake in the Keiskamma River. The malevolent snake or inabulele formed part of the ‘The Story of Sikulume’, recorded by the historian George McCall Theal (1837 to 1919) in his Xhosa Folklore volume of 1882. In this folk tale, the human swallowing inabulele is eventually killed in its watery lair by the boy-hero Sikulume.

Although this story is fictional, of course, to many Xhosa and Zulu speakers, these monster snakes of the subconscious sometimes slither into the conscious world, as was the case in 1997 when the Eastern Cape government in Bhisho demanded that conservation officials capture a serpentine monster in the Mzintlava River. The alleged inabulele, known as inkanyamba in historic Pondoland, had allegedly killed several children, as their faces had been mutilated. However, post-mortems established that the children had simply drowned, and their injuries were the grizzly work of river crabs rather than the rumoured part-horse, part-fish inkanyamba.

In fact, a key characteristic of these frightening mythological serpents is said to be their ability to metamorphose into other forms.

LOCAL ROCK ART EXPERT

Victor Biggs (77), who records rock art in the Eastern Cape, grew up and farmed for most of his life in the Border region of the Eastern Cape. He got to know these serpentine monsters by the Xhosa names of umamlambo (mother of the river) or ichanti. He is convinced that the Nguni folklore about these serpents can be traced back to the San, who were painting huge mythical serpents in their shelters before the Nguni migrated down to south-eastern Africa.