Buffalo means Fertility

Africans call the Cape buffalo an extremely interesting name, one that shows the depth of knowledge that they possessed regarding this animal. The Zulu speakers call this animal ‘Inyathi,’ while the Tswana and Sotho-speakers call it ‘Nari’ and in both Zulu and Tswana, the word has to do with fertility and nutrition.  A long time ago, buffalo in their thousands, and their cousins the wildebeest, in their tens of thousands, criss-crossed the Southern African landscape in endless migration exactly as they still do in the Masai Mara plains of Kenya. Africans observed in those long-gone years how the dung of these huge animals brought fertility to the land, and they named the buffalo by the name it still carries to this day: ‘The one who fertilises the land and gives us good eating.’

The Zulu word for buffalo, ‘Inyathi,’ comes from the verb ‘Nyatha’ or ‘Nata,’ which means to eat or to ingest something, be it solid food or water. There is a very colourful tribe in South Africa, an offshoot of the Zulus, a tribe whose members were – and still are – employed in large numbers in the cleaning and wastedisposal establishment of South African mines and municipalities. These have transferred the word ‘Inyathi’ or ‘Inyatsi’ from the buffalo to human waste: they call it ‘Ukugwata Inyatsi’ – that is ‘Stabbing the Buffalo.’ It is because human waste fertilises the land and is often used as an organic fertiliser, that the Bacas call it by the name that their forebears called the buffalo.

Zulus and people of other tribes used to hunt buffalo for their meat in times of famine, and when the meat was shared out, the person whom the hunters did not like was given the extremely hard, muscular and totally uncookable lower legs and hooves of the beast. Even today, when people come together and conspire to get another person into trouble, Zulus say: “They tied a buffalo’s lower legs in a bundle for him.”

The fat of a buffalo, its dried eyes, testicles and penis are much valued by African shamans, and tough township gamblers will sometimes put their illgotten winnings in the tanned scrotums of Cape buffalo, it being the belief that the scrotum of a buffalo attracts money and prevents it from departing too quickly.

Even dreaming of a buffalo has significance: It is said that if you are in trouble and dream of a buffalo standing and facing you and chewing grass, it means that you will meet a powerful friend who will help you out of trouble. The worst dream that one can dream about a buffalo is that of being chased by one! This means that you will be attacked and defeated by a very powerful enemy. Zulus have a saying: “He who dreamt of an angry buffalo must wake up and run away.”

Some years ago a man I knew, who ran a fleet of taxis in Soweto, was engaged in a lawsuit against another man and was about to win it when he twice had a dream of being chased up a tree by a very big buffalo, and he lost the case when his enemy acquired the service of a powerful advocate who ran rings around his own attorneys.

A story by Credo Mutwa