uQamata

uQamata, also called uThixo, uMdali or uMenzi, is the supreme creator of Xhosa traditional religion, held to have made the sky and the earth and to sustain the moral and natural order. He is a remote high god who, having established creation, is not the object of direct sacrifice or petition; instead he is approached through the ancestral shades, who mediate between the living and the source of being. Scholars trace the name uThixo to a Khoikhoi term for the deity, absorbed into Xhosa cosmology before the arrival of missionaries, who in turn took it up to render the Christian God. Sources differ on how far the pre-Christian conception was personal or providential, uQamata often standing closer to an impersonal originating power than to an anthropomorphic ruler.

Children

• uNomkhubulwana

Domains

• creation
• supreme being

Powers

• creates the world and its order
• withdraws from direct dealings with humankind

Epithets

• uMdali
• uMenzi

Relations

• child: uNomkhubulwana

Sources

• Janet Hodgson, The God of the Xhosa: A Study of the Origins and Development of the Traditional Concepts of the Supreme Being (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1982)
• J.H. Soga, The Ama-Xosa: Life and Customs (Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1931)
• Janet Hodgson, The God of the Xhosa (1982), on Khoisan origins of the supreme-being concept