ZombieWiki
Zombie Wiki / All zombies / Folklore and myth
Illustration of South African witchcraft zombie
Original AI-made illustration based on the descriptions in the sources. Not an official design.
File No. 438 of 446

South African witchcraft zombie

Also called: xidachane, maduxwane, witch-train zombies
Folklore and mythUndeadSorcery

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

Battle it
Origin
South African (Tsonga, Sotho, Venda)
South Africa
What causes it
Sorcery
A witch kills the victim, or makes them seem to die, and takes control of the body for forced labour.
How you become one
A witch's spell; in some accounts even a small child can zombify a dead person.
Intelligence
Mindless
Weak spots
  • a sufficiently powerful sangoma (traditional healer) can break the spell
field notes

What the sources say

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

Sources

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

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at [email protected].

Feed the horde. No ads, no trackers, paid for by one person. A tip keeps it online.Leave a tip

Folklore from the same lands

UmkhovuZulu, 1875

More like this

GhoulArabicPocongJavanese / Indonesian and MalayRo-langsTibetanToyolMalay and IndonesianXiangxi walking corpsesChinese (western Hunan; attributed to Miao sorcery)CondenadoAndean (Peru and Bolivia)
Feed the hordeLeave a tip