Untombi-yapansi (Zulu folktale)

Author: Traditional Zulu

Time Period: 1701 CE–1850 CE

Country or Culture: Africa

Genre: Folktale

Overview

“Untombi-yapansi” is a Zulu folktale that provides an alternate feminist look at an oppressed female character. Suffering from her brother’s wrath after he kills their sister, Untombi-yapansi runs away to another sister’s village. In response to their son’s heinous crime, Untombi-yapansi’s parents request to be burned in their house with their son as punishment. Before they are killed, they tell Untombi-yapansi to travel to her sister’s village. The sister is a chief’s wife, and Untombi-yapansi will be cared for and protected.

While traveling to the village, Untombi-yapansi meets an imbulu, a Zulu mythological lizard-shaped animal that is able to take the shape of humans (Werner 84), who tricks her into exchanging places. When the exchange is complete, Untombi-yapansi essentially loses her true identity—that of a chief’s daughter, a princess, with status and beauty. Dirt and rags now disguise Untombi-yapansi and she takes on the role of a servant. Because her sister does not recognize her in this condition, Untombi-yapansi is no longer able to claim her position in her culture. Instead, the imbulu becomes sister to the chief’s wife and is treated as such after they arrive at the village.

Untombi-yapansi’s sister sends her with another village woman, who is named Udalana, to the garden each day to chase away the birds that are eating the crops. Untombi-yapansi is successful in this task, but she accomplishes it with a chant that states who she truly is. Each midday, Untombi-yapansi leaves the garden to go alone to the river to wash and to return briefly to a royal state. She calls up from the ground her deceased family and the deceased people of her village so that they may rejoice, sing, and eat together: a celebration that allows her to maintain her true nature, even in hiding. She plays the role of the oppressed woman who is not allowed to speak her mind or exert her status and independence by explaining to the chief or her sister (those in positions of power) who she is. Udalana soon becomes aware of Untombi-yapansi’s secret and eventually Untombi-yapansi reveals to the chief her family connection as well as her royal status.

She went to the river; when she came to it, she went into a pool and washed; she came out with her whole body shining like brass, and holding in her hand her brass rod. She smote the ground and said, ‘Come out, all ye people of my father, and cattle of my father, and my food.’ There at once came out of the earth many people, and many cattle, and her food.

“Untombi-yapansi”

The tale of “Untombi-yapansi” in many ways reflects the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale “The Goose-Girl” and contains elements of the earth mother motif found in many myths. “Untombi-yapansi” characterizes female strength in its portrayal of a woman who loses her social position by trickery, uses her intelligence and resources to survive, is then discovered, and has her social standing and family bond reinstated with the help of another woman.

Summary

Untombi-yapansi is the one of three children of a Zulu chief. One day, the oldest child, a son named Usilwane, brings a leopard home from a hunting trip, decides to keep it, and refers to it as his “dog.” He tells the family to feed his “dog” a particular way, always a cold meal. As the leopard grows, the people of the village worry that it will soon attack and kill them. They fear that Usilwane is becoming an “umtakati,” a witch or someone with evil powers (Samuelson 31). The second oldest child of the chief, a daughter named Usilwanekazana, becomes concerned by the village gossip, and she worries that if the villagers believe the chief’s son is an umtakati, it will affect her family’s reputation.

One morning while Usilwane is out, Usilwanekazana decides to feed the leopard hot food in order to kill it. When Usilwane returns and discovers that his “dog” is dead, he stabs and kills his sister. He puts her blood in a pot, washes her body, and then covers it with a blanket to give the illusion that she is sleeping. Usilwane then slaughters a sheep and combines its blood and organs in the same pot containing his sister’s blood, and cooks it all to present as a meal. That evening, when his youngest sister, Untombi-yapansi, comes home, Usilwane offers her food from the pot. Untombi-yapansi notices her sister lying on the floor under the blanket, but Usilwane assures her the sister is just sleeping.

Untombi-yapansi sits down to eat and as she is about to taste the food, a fly bothers her, saying “Boo! boo! give me, and I will tell you” (Callaway 299), asking for some food in exchange for information. Untombi-yapansi ignores the fly, but it continues to bother her. Finally, the fly tastes some of Untombi-yapansi’s food, and it tells her that Usilwane has killed their sister. After Untombi-yapansi looks under the blanket and sees that her sister is dead, she leaves the house in fear. Her brother follows her with an assagai (a spear) in order to catch and kill her, but Untombi-yapansi opens the earth and hides there. When she emerges a few days later, she travels throughout her village announcing the murder.

An old woman and an old man working in the royal garden hear her statements, but both are punished when they tell the king: The old woman is killed and the old man is cast out of the garden. Eventually all of the village people hear Untombi-yapansi’s declaration and they go to the king with the news. He has no choice now but to look into the claim. The men of the village capture Usilwane, and the king states the punishment: Death by fire for Usilwane, the king, and Usilwane’s mother. Before they are killed, the king tells Untombi-yapansi to leave the village and travel to a nearby village to live with her other sister.

Untombi-yapansi rides her ox out of town, and when she reaches a river, she meets an imbulu, a shape-shifting lizard with the body and limbs of a human, who tricks her into switching places. Once the imbulu is on Untombi-yapansi’s ox, she assumes Untombi-yapansi’s name and gives Untombi-yapansi a new name: Umsila-wezinja. When they arrive at the sister’s village and the imbulu claims to be Untombi-yapansi, the sister questions her and says, “I do not recognise you . . . [Untombi-yapansi’s] body glistened, for she was like brass” (Callaway 305). The imbulu convinces the sister that she has been sick, which is why her body does not glisten, and the transformation is accepted.

The sister sends a female servant named Udalana with Untombi-yapansi to watch over the garden and to keep the birds from eating the crops. While throwing stones to chase the birds out of the garden, Untombi-yapansi always chants the same words, which make the birds leave the garden and stay away all day: “Tayi, tayi, those birds which devour my sister’s garden, although she is not my sister truly, for I am now Umsila-wezinja. I was not really Umsila-wezinja; I was Untombi-yapansi” (Callaway 307).

In the afternoon, Untombi-yapansi asks Udalana to watch the garden while she goes into the river to bathe. She washes off the dirt that conceals her copper-colored skin. Afterward, “her whole body [is] shining like brass, and [she is] holding in her hand her brass rod” (Callaway 307). She strikes the brass rod on the ground and says, “Come out, all ye people of my father, and cattle of my father, and my food” (307). Her ancestors, food, and many animals come out of the ground, and Untombi-yapansi eats and spends time singing with them, returning to her original self and cultural status. Before she returns to the garden, she strikes the earth with the rod, and the people, animals and food return to the ground. She again covers her skin with dirt and goes back to the garden.

The next day, Udalana follows Untombi-yapansi down to the river and watches as Untombi-yapansi enters the water and washes off the dirt. Udalana sees Untombi-yapansi emerge “with her body glistening, and carrying in her hand her brass rod” (Callaway 310). She sees Untombi-yapansi call up her people and the animals and food from the earth and then put everything back. That night, Udalana tells the chief what she has seen that day at the river, and she asks the chief to go early the next morning, hide, and then see for himself Untombi-yapansi’s transformation as well as the animals, food, and people she calls from the ground.

During the second day of watching, the chief witnesses Untombi-yapansi make her statement to the birds in the garden, wash in the river so that her skin shines “like brass,” and then call up her ancestors, he realizes who she really is and he tells her, “Do not fear, my sister-in-law. For a long time you have been troubled without ceasing, for since you came here you have concealed yourself” (Callaway 314). The chief then sends Untombi-yapansi and Udalana back to the village and tells Udalana to keep Untombi-yapansi in her home where he will bring Untombi-yapansi’s sister that evening.

When the chief learns that it was an imbulu that had switched places with Untombi-yapansi, he makes plans to destroy it. The next morning he orders all the women in the village to leap across a deep hole, which they do. But the imbulu does not know there is a bowl of milk in the hole, and when she leaps, she sees the milk and falls into the hole in order to get at it. The chief orders that hot water be poured on the imbulu in order to kill it. The hole is then filled with dirt. By the end of the tale, the chief decides to make Untombi-yapansi one of his wives. The marriage ceremony is a huge celebration that is filled with dancing and food, and Untombi-yapansi lives happily with her sister and with everyone in the village.

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