Nwampfundla
Tsonga · numen · Tsonga traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Nwampfundla, the Hare, is the master trickster of Tsonga oral literature. Small and physically weak, he prevails through cunning, deceiving the elephant, the lion, the hyena and the crocodile, and turning the strength of larger creatures against them. Junod gathered many of these tales among the Ronga of Delagoa Bay, where the hare cycle forms one of the richest bodies of Tsonga narrative; the same trickster travelled with enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, where he is cousin to Brer Rabbit. The stories are at once entertainment and a school of wit, teaching that intelligence outmatches force.
Domains
- trickery and cunning
Powers
- outwits stronger animals through cunning
- escapes danger by trickery and disguise
Sources
- Nwampfundla, the Hare, is the master trickster of Tsonga oral literature, small and weak yet prevailing through cunning over the elephant, lion, hyena and crocodile; Junod gathered many of these tales among the Ronga of Delagoa Bay.: Henri-Alexandre Junod, Les Chants et les Contes des Ba-Ronga de la baie de Delagoa (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1897) (primary); Henri-Alexandre Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 2: Mental Life (1927), chapter on folklore (primary)
- The hare trickster travelled with enslaved Africans to the Americas, where he is cousin to Brer Rabbit.: Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa (Heinemann/Witwatersrand UP, 1994), on Tsonga oral culture and its diffusion (secondary)