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.