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Illustration of South African witchcraft zombie
Original AI-made illustration based on the descriptions in the sources. Not an official design.
Faylka No. 438 ee 446

South African witchcraft zombie

Sidoo kale loo yaqaan: xidachane, maduxwane, witch-train zombies
Khuraafaad iyo ugaarsiDhintaySixir

In parts of South Africa, witchcraft belief includes people turned into zombies to labour for a witch. The victims are thought of as the stolen dead: small, mute and put to work at night. Stories of 'witch trains' staffed by zombies spread once railways began carrying migrant workers to the mines and cities. Scholars treat the belief as a commentary on labour exploitation, which is the same anxiety that produced the Haitian zombi.12

Dagaal geli
Asal
South African (Tsonga, Sotho, Venda)
Koonfur Afrika
Waxa sababa
Sixir
A witch kills the victim, or makes them seem to die, and takes control of the body for forced labour.
Sida aad mid u noqotid
A witch's spell; in some accounts even a small child can zombify a dead person.
Caqli
Maskax la'
Meelaha daciifka ah
  • a sufficiently powerful sangoma (traditional healer) can break the spell
qoraallada goobta

Waxa ilaha yidhaahdaan

1

Called xidachane in Sotho and Tsonga and maduxwane in Venda12

2

Imagined as shrunken in size, with the tongue cut out so that it cannot speak or protest12

3

Witch trains, ordinary-looking trains crewed by zombies, were said to abduct people at night12

4

Passengers were either zombified or beaten and thrown off far from home12

5

Anthropologist Isak Niehaus reads the belief as a picture of migrant labour and domination12

Ilaha

  1. Zombie - Wikipedia
  2. Zombies - Encyclopedia.com

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Quudi kooxda zombiyada. Xayeysiis ma jiro, raadraac ma jiro, hal qof baa bixiya. Tibiriq yar ayaa ka dhigaya shabakadda mid furan.Tibiriq reeb

Khuraafaad ka yimid dhulalkaas

UmkhovuZulu, 1875

Wax la mid ah

GhoulArabicPocongJavanese / Indonesian and MalayRo-langsTibetanToyolMalay and IndonesianXiangxi walking corpsesChinese (western Hunan; attributed to Miao sorcery)CondenadoAndean (Peru and Bolivia)
Quudi kooxda zombiyadaTibiriq reeb