Mtubatuba

Richard’s Bay is a city in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, located on a lagoon of the Mhlatuze River, which makes it one of the country’s largest harbors and the deepest natural harbor on the African continent. The town was laid out on the shores of the lagoon in 1954 and in 1976 the deep-water harbor opened and a new railway and oil/gas pipeline connecting to Johannesburg was completed. In the 70’s and 80’s a beautiful residential area was developed in Richard’s Bay (see photos). The population of 12 million people is broken down as follows: Whites account for 40% of the population, followed by Black Africans at 36%, Asians/Indians 20% and Colored 4%. Interestingly, 75% of the population is under 34 years old with 4% over 65. Although there are 11 languages, mostly everyone speaks a version that is Click and/or Zulu.

We learned about the people here and how they lived and how the government supported them when they made under $3000/year (sadly not uncommon). Unemployment is high and housing can take 10 years for the average family to get government housing. Although school is free, some children walk 10+ miles to school daily.

We took an adventure of an immersive day of Zulu culture by going to the DumaZulu Village about 1.5 hours away from Richards Bay where everyone including all the surrounding towns was Zulu but depending on the village, there were a wide range of the practices still followed (like all religions). There are over 3 million Zulus.

DumaZuly is the permanent residence of more than 50 tribal traditional people (the largest village of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere), the only Zulu community to be opened for tourists to visit by King Goodwill Zwelithini since 1984. The DumaZulu people invited us into their kraal (village of huts), where we learned and participated in tribal traditions, including basket-weaving, spear-and shield-making, beadwork, pottery-sculpting, sangoma bone throwing (used to diagnose your condition), medicine men (fill in as the local “court”), medicine woman (use trees, leaves, stems and herbs to make potions to cure almost any disease) and tribal dancing. It was so interesting to learn, and their intenseness was infectious. One of the more interesting things we learned was about their respect for ancestors. When you enter a village or a house you bow and thank the ancestors and when you leave you go out a different exit and thank them again. The Zulus speak with their ancestors all the time for advice. Zulu believe they can talk to their ancestors and have specific places set aside where they can communicate.

When people are greeted, you hear: “Gentlemen & Ladies” which sounds awkward from what we are used to hearing but in this culture men always “lead”. We learned a lot about families, marriage and love and life. The music, dancing, stick fighting and rituals we saw were all about family life. Many families have men with 6 wives and therefore many children and sadly are very poor. The marriage process takes many years, where men and women meet at the river and are proposed to there (the beaded head ring show their availability as we saw: white/blue=available, black=ready, white=virgin, yellow=jealous). Zulu men save up to get married which is quite expensive since they need to pay at least 11 cows ($1000/cow) as a dowry which can be many years of savings. For the wedding, the dress and suit are made by the fathers from cow hide. The entire process is very formal and takes many years but marriage is for life and the men take care of the women who have very traditional roles.

We learned some ZULU in order to communicate with those we met in the village:
Philah = Alive

Kiela =Stop
Giobonka= Thanks
Sanbonan=Hello
Yabu= Praise
Ninjani = How are you?
Giapena=Sorry
Sukuleki=stand up
Sala kahle=stay well
Omuzi=Villages homeRead more