Page 96 - Heritage Streets of KwaMashu 2025

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HERITAGE STREETS OF KWA-MASHU
SECTION K
EZINYONINI
I“if you kill a tree, you are killing a bird”
n Adriaan Koopman’s book Zulu Bird Names and Birl Lore (2019), there is an interesting focus on Zulu traditional oral literature that details the roles birds have played in Zulu praise poetry (including the praise poems of certain
birds themselves) and proverbs, riddles and children’s games. Also considered is traditional bird lore (wisdom), examining the role played by various species as omens and portents, as indicators of bad luck, good luck, and evil, as forecasters of rain and storm, and as harbingers of the seasons. Here we see that the Bateleur Eagle (ingqungqulu) is linked to war, the Southern Ground Hornbill (insingizi) to thunder and heavy rain, the Red- chested Cuckoo (uphezukomkhono) to give signal for the start of the ploughing season, and the Jacobin Cuckoo (inkanku) to the start of summer. Some explanations are onomastic based, relating to the study of the history and origin of proper names.
“Our people, throughout Africa, believed many strange things regarding birds. First of all, our general name for a bird in Zulu is inyoni, while in Sesotho and Tswana it is ngonyani. These are
beautiful, strange and mystical African words, which mean ‘fat’ and ‘fattening’” (Credo Mutwa).
Now... what has a bird to do with being fat? One may ask! African people believed that, like the animal herds that used to crisscross the face of Africa, birds were the bringers of fertility. They believed that the great bird migrations that used to come into our skies at certain times of the year brought fertility to or ‘fattened’ the land. For this reason, a bird, any bird, is called the fertilizer or the fattener...Another belief regarding birds is that they are the souls of human beings who have reached a high state of perfection. When you have been reincarnated seven times on Earth, as either a human being or an animal, you are raised by the Gods to the state of a bird, the freest creature in the world; a creature that is a friend to the air, friend to the land and friend to the water. This is the inyoni - the freest of the free, the fattener, the fertilizer. For these reasons, African people protected birds with very, very strict laws hence some birds were not touched at all and respected. African people also