Growing up in the village of Ingwavuma in northeastern rural KwaZulu-Natal, on South Africa’s southeastern coast, there was never a shortage of stories about water divinities. Some of the folklore the elders told us weren’t merely for entertainment; there were some lessons and truths within. When we went to the beach, my grandfather, Mkhulu, would always give us silver coins to toss into the water and ask permission from Amakhosi Amanzi—the water gods—to enter the sea. He said the sea is a sacred space where the divine Inzuza, which is the highest amongst all spirits, dwells. It is a water spirit associated with cleanliness and righteousness. “We’re sinners, and when we enter their dominion, we contaminate their space; therefore, it is wise to be respectful,” Mkhulu warned. He further claimed that Omkhulu bomkhulu bethu, our ancestors, can be accessed through water as a medium because they are mediators of the Inzuza spirit. I believe many of the water myths in our Nguni-speaking communities are not unfounded; they emanate from a place of truth. Our uncertain relationships with water, in some way, has informed our characterisation of water divinities.

Seawater & Storms

There is a belief among Ingwavuma community residents that a home with seawater in the yard will be spared when a tornado strikes; Inkanyamba, a tornado spirit, will not blow away a house with seawater placed around the yard because it identifies it as home. 

I have a vivid memory of a violent storm that we experienced in Ingwavuma in 1998. The elders claimed that Inkanyamba was passing through. All I remember seeing was a huge dark cloud in the shape of a serpent flying over. The Inkanyamba left a messy trail where it passed—it blew people’s roofs off and sent our school’s 5000-litre rainwater tank into our yard.

Whenever someone he knew was going to the beach, my late uncle, Phungalenja, would give that person a 5-litre container to fetch seawater. He would either sprinkle the seawater around his yard or pour it into little transparent bottles that used to lie scattered across it. He told me that it prevented dogs from polluting his yard with poop. I only discovered years later that by ‘dogs’ he meant ‘witches’. The seawater cleansed the home and kept bad spirits away. If there were any evil activity within the house or around the yard, the bottled seawater would change colour, become darker, and finally die. When the water dies, it ceases to be living water and becomes useless. This is another crafty method by the community to detect witchcraft. 

Living Water

“When I look into my past, the river seems to meet my eyes, staring back, as if to ask, Do you recognise me, wherever you are?” – The Great Derangement: climate change and the unthinkable, Amitav Gosh.

One early morning in September 2019, I was jogging along the shoreline of Durban South Beach. I spotted black people, ankle-length, congregated in the water, praying. A spiritual diviner adorned in a brightly coloured gown embroidered with multiple crosses and the wording ‘Zion Pentecost Holy Messengers’ was leading the cleansing proceedings. Each of his subjects tossed silver coins into the water before they gracefully entered it, where he was waiting ahead.

A few days prior, I had witnessed an Indian family come to sprinkle the ashes of their cremated loved one into the same sea. They slowly filed toward the far end of the beach; one of them carried an urn while others held candles and a photo (probably of the deceased). They lit the candles and prayed briefly before scattering the ashes into the sweeping waves to carry back. I thought of my friend’s nephew, Thabiso, who had drowned at the same beach a year ago, and an intense wave of emotion watered down my adrenaline. Later, a colony of white surfers ran towards the ocean’s outstretched arms. I marvelled at their breezy performances. I realised the sea is many things to different people. It is for the living as it is for the dead, and it can be living as it can be dead.

I cannot distinctly tell living water from normal water, but Dothi River in Mombeni once displayed signs of living water, and this even extended to the forest in which the river was enclosed. Dothi River was both a stream and a deep pool that split off from the upper river. Further down the pool, a waterfall shot downward to the treetops below. Some nights I’d wake up drenched in sweat because I’d dreamt the waterfall was sweeping me down to this virgin lower land. The deep pool of Dothi River was self-cleansing, and it didn’t show that the entire village washed their laundry there. If you heard the villagers describing Dothi River, you’d think they were referring to a person if you didn’t know better. The respect that they accorded the river rendered it an elevated level of stature that preceded its already evident magnificence. 

I was six the first time I encountered the living water in Mombeni. Another uncle, Siyabonga, had taken me along on one of his ritualistic afternoon baths. The river was hidden in the woods located just below my grandfather’s cattle kraal. The very same forest I’d sometimes accompany my older sisters and cousins to gather firewood. I was familiar with Dothi River. We often descended to the river when my mother and aunts went to wash blankets and clothes. I sat on the rocks and busied myself with locating crabs. I herded them with my stick and directed them toward an imaginary kraal. 

Later, my uncle called for me to undress and get inside the pool. I was terrified and thrilled. I entered. He placed his firm hands on my shoulders and deliberately shoved me underwater for a few seconds. It felt like eternity. The pool’s depth caught me by surprise. My head was completely underwater, yet my feet didn’t touch the riverbed. This was a different realm altogether. I felt the weight of the entire river on my scrawny shoulders – my breath was replaced by a deep-lying shudder that stirred my gut peaceably before it extended up my shoulders, where it gained momentum. The convulsions persisted long after my uncle had ejected me from the water. It was as if the water hadn’t left me after I’d left it. 

At 21, I visited my grandparents’ home in Mombeni after being away for years. I was eager to take my little brother, Musa, to Dothi River I had experienced as a child. My grandmother warned me that the river was now dead, but I did not pay much attention to her. In my mind, I was taking Musa to the Mecca of all living organisms. We descended toward the site along the old footpath, once enveloped by a dense, burgeoning family of trees. There was now a heap of stones among the tall grass where Uncle Ma-Wat’s hut once was. The air was replaced by an intolerable mugginess. The surrounding ecosystem had been shaved off. New homes had miraculously sprung out from nowhere. I proceeded toward the river but with less conviction; my brother’s eyes widened with expectation, and mine, with horror. There was nothing I recognised about the place.

The vegetation around the river had been replaced by improvised, withering vegetable gardens that were merely there because of easy access to water. The rare birds of exotic feathers and melodious chirps had long migrated after being rendered homeless. I had been keen to show my little brother a waterfall, for him to hold a crab. The once-glistening rocks, where water would effortlessly glide, were now a depressing sight of elongated thirstiness. I returned home defeated. My heart wept for Dothi River. “The villagers decided to clear the woodland for their cattle to graze near water, where they could also keep an eye on them.” My grandmother’s explanation only aggravated me. It exposed our disregard for nature.

Religion of Water

I grew up in a Christian household in a predominantly traditionalist community. My grandparents seamlessly incorporated Christianity and Nguni traditions into their everyday lives. After our evening prayers, we’d flock into our great-grandmother’s hut, where we’d gather to listen to her stories. I observed the high regard both the religious and the traditionalist community members had for water. The Christians dismissed fellow Christians who hadn’t been baptised, just as the traditionalists distrusted diviner healers who weren’t initiated in the water. Water appeared to be a common feature across these two worlds, a mediator for the existing discordances between Christianity and African spirituality. In both baptism and initiation (ukuthwasa), the subject enters the water and exits it a different person; reborn. 

There is an ongoing tug-of-war between these two belief systems within me. I feel obligated to pick a side: my father is a traditionalist, and my mother is a Christian. When I stayed away from church, Mama asked, “Who will bury you if you don’t have a pastor?” And when I once questioned my father’s over-reliance on traditional medicine, he asked me to name the Nguni word for a tree (I told him it is umuthi, which also means medicine). However, my grandparents struck a reciprocal balance between Christianity and African spirituality, and they thrived in this equilibrium. They flowed like calm waters around rocks, adapting to life situations with flexibility. 

A Voice Inhabiting Water

Solitude 102

if I may say two words

River Congo, I won’t drink your water

as long as you keep the secret

as long as you don’t

spit out the bodies of my loved ones

at Brazza and Mbamu.

– The River in the Belly, Fiston Mujila.

Between the years 2016 – 2019, without fail, every September, a boy drowned in Phophopho Dam. The community of Ingwavuma were convinced that an evil creature,  a mystical snake called umnumzane, had been placed inside the dam, and it was feasting on human blood to sustain and prosper its owner. They threatened to burn to the ground whoever owned the umnumzane that inhabited the dam if found. According to the local inyanga, Mkhonyovu, “Once umnumzane calls you, you will go,” a notion I liken to a diviner-healer’s calling to underwater initiation. 

Phophopho Dam was every village boy’s dream – one could fish and swim there. My friends would always rave about the dam’s depths and mighty wall. They would return with baby sardines, and they promised to make a serious catch the following weekend. Still, I was not sold. I feared the confluence between the river flowing within my body and the dam’s waters would be turbulent. The dam had a reputation for calling its victims. A non-swimmer who has never been to Phophopho Dam will suddenly get the urge to visit it and swim. 

The fishing and swimming craze of the Phophopho Dam came to a halt in the wake of a bizarre drowning that occurred in 2003. Sonke, a classmate from primary school whom we all knew could not swim, decided to jump into the dam when his cousin, Mabheshu, a seasoned swimmer, appeared to be struggling to stay afloat. “I will not watch my cousin drown!” were Sonke’s final words as narrated by my cousin, Mpendulo, who was an eyewitness. Both boys drowned.

In 2017, a mutual friend, Ye, introduced me to Masiya at a drinking spot, and we instantly connected. Masiya was bursting with excitement as he’d just returned from what seemed to have been a successful trip to Sodwana Bay. I didn’t know much about his background, and I never got to ask him about his family because the life we were leading was just too fast. He stayed with us from the night we met up until the day we had a fight three weeks later. He had developed a crush on our landlord’s daughter, Thandi. One drunken night, he went to the main house, shouting for Thandi. The following day, the landlord gave my brother and me an ultimatum: either Masiya leaves, or we all leave. He left on a Wednesday. On Friday of the same week, Masiya drowned at Phophopho Dam. It didn’t make sense at all. He was too old to be swimming at the dam; guys his age had long graduated to swimming in liquor instead. Among the boys he had gone swimming with, he was the oldest. The boys said that he just “vanished” from their eyes.

When hours passed without Masiya resurfacing, the people began to assume that the boys were lying about his drowning. The local emergency department couldn’t do anything but wait. Eventually, divers were called from Richards Bay, a 4-hour drive to Ingwavuma, to retrieve the body. The divers failed. After two days, Masiya’s body resurfaced, but his skull was an empty shell according to the pathologists. His brain had been sucked out. By whom or what remains a mystery still. 

Masiya had a lean frame, yet his coffin was so heavy that I couldn’t take more than four strides while holding it. It was as if water filled the coffin. At his funeral, his coffin wasn’t brought through the family home’s gate to get to the yard. The nature of his death had to be blocked so that it didn’t occur again. 

Baptism & Healing

“We have come to be baptized here. We have come to stir the other world here. We have come to cleanse ourselves here. We have come to connect our living to the dead here.” – Water, Koleka Putuma.

In July 2023, I met Mkhulu Xulu, a middle-aged diviner-healer from Pantus Hill in Durban. I first came across his post on Facebook and had only intended for him to cleanse me of sexual ties and any baggage I might have been carrying from my previous encounters. As I was well on my celibacy journey, I figured spiritual cleansing was necessary. He’d made mention of seawater and prayer as the chief ingredients of his healing practices. I was intrigued by this strange combination.

Mkhulu Xulu’s healing methods are almost identical to those of Mama Mbongwa, an umthandazi—a syncretic healer who combines prayer and water—from eMachobeni, a village in Ingwavuma. Water seems to be her main ingredient, though. Mama Mbongwa breathes life into ordinary water by praying over it, transforming it into living water that can give life. When patients come to her home for consultations, they must bring 2-litre plastic bottles of water from their homes, regardless of their ailment or issue. She strikes a match and inserts the matchstick into the bottle of water before praying over it. She does not have a fixed price for her services; she accepts whatever her patients offer. Patients are required to mix the living water with their bathing water. They can also sprinkle the water around their house and yard. 

After I’d made contact with Mkhulu Xulu, he asked me to bring a white chicken for my cleansing ceremony. He slaughtered it in my presence and mixed some of its innards with the muthi he had also brewed in my presence. Since we were supposed to go to the beach very early in the morning, I slept at his place. He said I had a good foot because that evening was going to be a prayer night. I was tired from my six-hour trip from Ingwavuma to Durban, but I had to join the lively singing and dancing amid vigorous drumbeating. It lasted for about four hours. The cleansing would be two-fold, he told me. The first segment occurred in a dream; I had an extraordinary dream that morning, and immediately after it ended, I woke up, startled. Mkhulu Xulu calmly told me that his ancestors had cleansed me spiritually, and all that was left was for me to cleanse with seawater, where I’d discard the unwanted dirt I was carrying. It was as if he’d been observing the dream I’d had. When we went to the beach for the second and final segment of the cleansing, he told me to wear clothes that I’d have to discard afterwards. Some of his deputies were accompanying us, and they were carrying buckets of the muthi he’d concocted the previous night and other cleansing essentials.

We arrived at the beach at 04:30 AM while it was still quiet. Mkhulu Xulu gave me silver coins and instructed me to go forward, toss them into the water, and ask Amakhosi Amanzi, the guardians of the sea, for permission to enter the water. He instructed me to kneel further up into the water, and he prayed for me while his deputies sang. He smeared me with the muthi, and the rushing waves washed it away from my body. Afterwards, he told me to bury the clothes I was wearing in the sand. He poured the remaining muthi into a 5-litre plastic bottle bought from the opportunistic hobos hovering about the beach. He then filled the plastic bottle with seawater and advised me to blend it into my washbasin for my ablutions.

I remember Mkhulu Xulu telling me that most people do not know that water is a realm, and not a vacuum. He said that water has its own ecosystem and hierarchy, and that the water divinities that inhabit the sea work in conjunction with one’s ancestors, and that the ancestors work with the Supreme Being as our intermediaries. 

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Mthobisi Myeni is an emerging writer who hails from a small rural town of Ingwavuma in KZN, South Africa. He is currently reading for his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. His short story, The Denizens, appears in the Power: Stories that Light the Dark anthology by Short.Sharp.Stories. Mthobisi’s writing is informed and inspired by his immediate surroundings, with his storytelling embedded in Nguni culture and traditions. He considers his writing to represent the ordinary people whose voices are somehow dormant.

Cover credit: Victor Ola-Matthew.