(JOURN) What zombies are really like in South Africa

A train rambles by suspiciously slowly. The moon lights on fingers that curl gingerly around the frame of an open compartment. The wind rips a nail from greying flesh. A face swims out of the gloom, teeth gnarled, eyes glazed, blood dripping from flapping, putrid lips.

It is a zombie train, and if you're standing close enough to the tracks, it has come for you.

This might sound like the scene from another bad zombie movie, but in some societies in South Africa, this is a real fear. The word “zombie” is derived from zonbi (Haitian Creole) and nzumbe (North Mbundu), which refer to the reanimation of the dead through mystical means. Zombies have a distinguished presence in pop culture, but few realise that the cult is based on lore from all over the world. Our recent Writing and Editing project on the tag game Humans vs. Zombies, which was played on Rhodes’s campus last week, inspired me to take a look at South Africans’ belief in the undead.

In South Africa, it is believed that witches turn people into zombies by kidnapping and killing them, cutting out their tongue and sending a magical image (what is actually a plant stem, but which appears as the victim’s body) to the family of the victim in order to avoid suspicion. By cutting out the tongue of the victim, he or she cannot scream or ask for help. Zombies are subdued by strong potions when they are reanimated, which rob them of their memories, willpower and sex drive. Thus, contrary to the Western idea of brain/flesh-craving zombies, South African zombies have no desires other than to eat porridge and work. It is generally believed that zombies are kept for labouring by night, and are stored away during the day. It is also believed that a small child can turn the dead into a zombie.

Actually called a witch train, the above scene was thought to be common (minus the rotting flesh and ripping nails) after railways had been built in South Africa to transport migrant workers. People believed that the witches who created the zombies used trains that did not run on tracks to transport their real-life zombie armies. Niehaus (2005) wrote:

“Witches’ trains are believed to abduct people who wander about at night. Should they board, the conductor will ask them ‘Single or return?’ Those who reply ‘Single’ disappear forever. They are killed, join the zombies on the train, and are forced to work for the witch. Those who say ‘Return’ are beaten and thrown from the train at a distant location.”

While zombies had always featured in traditional folklore, the instigation of apartheid laws, some of which separated communities and forced many people to rely on migrant work for subsistence, exacerbated the fear of community members turning others into zombies. According to Niehaus, this was due to deteriorating standard of living and conditions among black communities in South Africa. “Zombie-keeping”, an accusation freely meted out, was a way of surviving when you couldn’t afford workers.

The persistence of belief in zombies in South Africa was recently showcased when a man claimed to be the traditional singer Khulekani Kwakhe "Mgqumeni" Khumalo three years after his death. The man claimed that he had been kept in a cave full of zombies by a witchdoctor and put under a spell. According to Global Post, crowds gathered in Khumalo’s home village and grew hysterical. Police used truncheons and a water cannon to keep the crowd under control. The man’s DNA and fingerprints didn’t match that of Khumalo’s, and he was later proven to be one Sibusiso John Gcabashe. 

Khumalo pictured next to his impersonator. 

Despite being a fraud, the crowd’s reaction to the news, and Gcabashe’s success in fooling even a few of Khumalo’s family members, is a testament to the strong belief South Africans still hold in zombies. We might sneer at Hollywood gore and blood, but who knows what really happens in the South African night?

Sources:
Niehaus, Isak. "Witches and Zombies of the South African Lowveld: Discourse, Accusations and Subjective Reality". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp.191-210
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/khulekani-mgqumeni-khumalo-back-from-dead-musician-video
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/us-safrica-zombie-crime-idUSTRE8161IG20120207
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie#South_Africa

Prologue to Smoke and Dust

I wrote this when I was about 15. It has undergone many an edit, and I fear will undergo many still before I am completely satisfied with it. It's the start to one of the few stories I have finished. I haven't really paid attention to this story for a few years.

At first I didn’t know whether it was smoke or dust. A thick haze of vapor hung over the city, masking the setting sun.

It was something I had seen many times. Something I had looked at for hours on end. And every time I looked at it, I felt the compulsion – the forbidden longing.

I stepped forward. My mind was too busy admiring the scene to notice where my feet were taking me.

The blazing buildings rose like giants. In the grips of sunset they looked like they were burning. Orange-red flames licked at their feet, turning smoothly into silver as the buildings climbed the sky. Their heads disappeared into a thick cloudbank, windows masked by gray clouds.

My feet led me to a broad road that seemed to stretch the length of the deserted city.

In the hollow silence I could hear nothing but my own breathing, my own insignificant footsteps on the gravel – and the faint strains of a whisper. It was soft enough to be imagined, like a song I couldn’t get out of my head.

But as my feet continued to move, the strains grew louder. It buzzed blearily in my ears and turned my attention to the only break in the sheets of glass: an old, rusted gate.

It stood out blandly against the new buildings beside it, gray tendrils of steel twisted in an intricate design. A chill touched my spine.

I peered through the thick tendrils. A broken swing set, the remains of a slide and a gravelly sandpit were all that remained of a playground. The park shared the same lack of color as the rest of the city. Everything was a mottled, windswept gray, only occasionally flecked with the brilliance of the sunset.

The buzz had turned into notes. A jumble of half mumbled, half hummed words made me stand on tiptoe and clutch the gate in an attempt to see where it was coming from.

But as my small fingers curled round the cold iron, I felt it move forward. I let go and stood back hastily.

It swung open, creaking ominously.

A little girl sat cross-legged in the sandpit. She rocked back and forth, long black hair swishing with the motion. I took a tentative step forward. She didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps she was too busy scooping up sand and letting it siphon through outstretched fingers.

I stepped closer still. A threadbare peach dress hung limply on her body, which was bony and almost under-developed. The dress was frilly and childish, and I could imagine being forced to wear it to a party.

I took another step.

Then another. 

The girl’s fingers raked through the sand in an unending cycle. They were small, frail like the rest of her.

With another step I noticed her hair was completely masking her face. The long black curtain swung in front of her nose, never showing any skin.

The little girl hypnotized me. Maybe it was the swaying motion or the fact that the song she was humming sounded slightly familiar, or perhaps her strange appearance.

Even her skin seemed weird, as though she had bad sunburn. But that couldn’t be it – her skin looked as lifeless as everything around it.

I swallowed and stepped ever closer.

A piercing crack tore me from my trance. Something stabbed into the sole of my foot and I cried out in pain. Through the tears in my eyes, I slowly looked down at my foot.

A jagged piece of porcelain stuck out of the soft flesh. The half-smashed head of a porcelain doll lay inches from my foot, covered in blood. Its nose, right eye and cheek were smashed beside the otherwise perfect face. The remaining eye gleamed. I began shaking.

I looked at the girl.

She had stopped humming. In one swift movement, her head snapped up, sending hair flying in all directions.

I screamed. Pale red skin stretched taught over a small skull. Her eyes, pouchy and swollen, seemed to burst out of their sockets, not white but blood red with ice blue irises.

Blackened, cracked lips peeled back in a mad yell that came out as a strangled gurgle. Blood dribbled out of her mouth, leaking over and between sharp black teeth. It trickled down her chin, seeping into the collar of her party dress.

I moved before she had the chance to twitch. I turned on my heel and ran. Gurgling screams followed me. Pain thudded in my foot as I ran, but I couldn’t stop. Bloody footprints mapped my path.

I bounded up the hill. The cries receded until I couldn’t hear them anymore. At the top of the hill I stopped. My legs were shaking. I could hardly breathe. I turned slowly around to look back at the city.

Where the street started and the grass began, stood a little girl in a peach party dress. Hair flew around her head, seeming to crackle with static. In the distance thunder rumbled.

Our eyes connected. For a second I was bound again by the strange girl. The breath was knocked out of my body.

For that second that we looked at each other – I felt my heart stop.

And then I was running down the hill. Sprinting. Somewhere on the downward slope I tripped. I lost all footing and flew through the air. Pain shuddered through my body once again as my head connected with a boulder, and the last thing I saw was a blur of green, slowly fading to black.