uMajola is the ancestral snake of the amaMpondomise, one of the Cape Nguni peoples, and the totem of the royal Jola or Majola clan whose name it bears. Appearing as a harmless mole-snake, it visits the homesteads and especially the newborn children of its people, and its coming is received not with fear but with welcome, for it signals that the ancestors have acknowledged the child and taken it under their protection. To kill or spurn the snake is held to bring severe misfortune upon the clan. The belief is famously dramatised in A.C. Jordan's Xhosa novel Ingqumbo Yeminyanya, 'The Wrath of the Ancestors', in which the rejection of the ancestral snake precipitates tragedy.