Gwambe

Tsonga origin tradition holds that humankind issued from a reed: the proverbial phrase 'hi humile hi hlanga', 'we came out of the reed', encapsulates the belief. In the fuller tellings recorded from the region the first human pair are named Gwambe and his wife Dzavana, the primordial ancestors from whom the living are descended. Sources differ over the age and the precise ownership of these names, which recur in cognate forms among neighbouring Tsonga-Tonga groups, and the reed-emergence motif is shared widely across the Bantu-speaking world.

Domains

• origins and first ancestors

Powers

• fathers the first human beings

Relations

• spouse: Dzavana

Sources

• Henri-Alexandre Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 2: Mental Life (1927), on the origin of man
• Henri-Philippe Junod, Bantu Heritage (Johannesburg: Hortors, 1938), on Tsonga origin traditions