Unwabu

Unwabu, the chameleon, is one of the two mythic animal messengers in the origin-of-death narrative that the Ndebele of Zimbabwe carried north with the rest of their Nguni religious inheritance. In the tale first recorded at length by Henry Callaway among the Zulu and documented across the Nguni-speaking world, the First Being Unkulunkulu sent the chameleon to tell people that they would not die; it loitered on the road, and the lizard Intulo, sent afterwards with the contrary decree, arrived first, so that death became irrevocable. The chameleon's fatal slowness remains proverbial in isiNdebele and isiZulu, and the animal itself is treated with superstitious aversion as the messenger who failed humankind.

Domains

• life and immortality

Powers

• to carry the creator's promise of deathlessness to humankind

Relations

• subordinate to: UnkulunkuluUnwabu acts solely as the messenger of Unkulunkulu, the First Being, who charged it to announce that people would not die.Henry Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu, Part I: Unkulunkulu, Springvale: Blair, 1870 (secondary)
• rival: IntuloThe slow chameleon and the swift lizard raced with opposing messages; the lizard's arrival first fixed death upon humankind, and both animals are consequently disliked in Nguni communities.Alice Werner, Myths and Legends of the Bantu, London: George G. Harrap, 1933, ch. 2 (secondary)

Sources

• Unwabu the chameleon is the messenger sent by Unkulunkulu to grant humankind everlasting life, whose slowness allowed death to enter the world in the origin-of-death myth shared by the Ndebele and other Nguni peoples.: Henry Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu, Part I: Unkulunkulu, Springvale: Blair, 1870 (secondary); Alice Werner, Myths and Legends of the Bantu, London: George G. Harrap, 1933, ch. 2 ('Where Man Came From, and How Death Came') (secondary); Wallace Bozongwana, Ndebele Religion and Customs, Gweru: Mambo Press, 1983 (secondary)