
Umkhovu
The umkhovu is the Zulu form of the witch's zombie: a body taken from the grave, revived by magic and kept as a familiar. Its tongue is removed so that it cannot speak. Colonial-era writers recorded the belief in the 1870s, half a century before The Magic Island popularised the Haitian zombi. It belongs to the same family as the zombie beliefs reported from South Africa in the late 20th century.1
E hlahile neng ka lekgetlo la pele?
Described in D. Leslie's Among the Zulus (1875)
Seo mehlodi e se buang
The Zulu word means an exhumed corpse revived as a witch's servant1
The witch cuts out its tongue, so that it can only make a wailing sound1
English writers of the 19th century rendered the plural as 'Esemkofu'1
H. Rider Haggard used them in his Zulu novel Nada (1895), haunting a 'Ghost Mountain'1
The Dictionary of South African English records the term from 1875 to 19251
Mehlodi
Ntlha e nngwe le e nngwe leqepheng lena e tswa mehloding ena, e ngotswe ka mantswe a rona. O bone phoso? Re bolelle ho [email protected].