Abatwa

A man walks the uplands with his eyes on the ground ahead, watching for a man or a wild beast, because either would be easy to see. The grass is high around his legs and still wet from the mist. He feels the arrow before he sees anything at all, and when he turns to look there is nobody there. That, according to a Zulu narrator speaking in the 1860s, is the whole dreadfulness of the Abatwa.

Nearly everything known about them comes from two short chapters in one book: Henry Callaway’s Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, published in 1868 from material taken down from Zulu narrators, with their own Zulu printed beside his English (pages 352 to 355). Callaway was frank about how thin his material was. Abatwa, he noted, was the ordinary Zulu name for the Bushmen, the San hunter-gatherers of the region, yet the beings described were not Bushmen but “apparently pixies,” far smaller than any real people. He thought the tales preserved a memory of the first meetings between the Zulu and the San, and he admitted he had not managed to collect any further details.

What the narrators did give him is precise. The Abatwa are smaller than all other small people. They go under the grass and sleep in anthills. They travel in the mist and live in the up-country among the rocks, and they have no village anyone could point to. Their village is wherever they have killed game. They eat the whole animal and walk away. When the game runs out they climb onto a horse, the first one sitting on its neck and the rest in a line behind him all the way to the tail, and ride off to find more. If they find none, they eat the horse.

The story everyone remembered was about a greeting. A traveller comes suddenly upon an Umutwa, and the Umutwa asks, “Where did you see me?” In the early days, before anyone knew better, a man told the truth and said he had seen him right there, in that very spot. The Umutwa decided he was being despised for his smallness, drew his bow and shot the man dead. Honesty got people killed. So travellers learned a different answer. “I saw you!” a man would call out, and when the Umutwa asked when, he would point to the mountain on the horizon and say he had seen him from all the way up there. The Umutwa was delighted. “O, then, I have become great.” After that, it was simply how the Abatwa were greeted.

The second chapter explains why they were feared, and it does so with an unusually exact image. Nobody feared them for their bodies, which had no size and no look of manhood about them. They were feared the way a flea is feared. A flea comes from nowhere anyone can see and rules a man all night, until he cannot lie down or sleep or settle his heart, because the flea is small and a man’s hand is large and can only catch hold of something it can feel. The Abatwa had the same mastery in high grass. They saw men and were never seen by them, and a man hit by one of them died without ever facing the one who killed him.

Their arrows did the rest. The narrator is careful to say the bow alone would not kill anyone. The arrowhead was smeared with poison, so that once it entered, blood ran from the whole body and the man died at once, and elephant hunters, he adds, knew many kinds of that poison. Callaway’s text never describes the Abatwa themselves beyond their smallness. No faces, no clothing, no women or children, no language are recorded, and no story tells where they came from.

The word itself is not folklore. Across a wide band of Bantu languages, forms of Twa name hunter-gatherer peoples, from the San of the south to the Batwa of the central African forests. In the Drakensberg today, Zulu-speaking families of San descent, among them the Duma of the Kamberg valley, call themselves Abatwa. The anthropologist Michael Francis, who lived among them from 2003 to 2005 for his doctoral thesis at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2007), recorded that they prefer the name to “Bushman,” while Swazi speakers told him abaThwa is an insult. He also recorded a longer name, Ongibonabonephi, “where did you see me?”, which the local rock-art guides explained as an old greeting between Zulu and Abatwa, answered with a far-off place so as not to offend. Callaway’s story, in other words, was still in circulation 140 years later, though Francis cites a 1915 publication alongside his fieldnotes, and how much of the guides’ version came back from print is not on record.

The question travels well beyond Natal. Alice Werner’s Myths and Legends of the Bantu (1933) reports that the Giryama of East Africa tell of a very short being, the katsumbakazi, that asks anyone it meets “Where did you see me?” Answer “just here” and you will not live many days; answer “over yonder” and you are spared, and may even have some luck. Werner also mentions little people in Nyasaland known by a name meaning “Where did you see me?”, and notes that the Zulu told the same story of the Bushmen, with a poisoned arrow on the spot.

A great deal else now travels under the name. English-language books and websites add that the Abatwa ride on ants, hide under single blades of grass, and can be seen only by small children, magicians and pregnant women, and that a woman in her seventh month who sees a male Umutwa will bear a son. None of this is in Callaway, and no older source for it has been traced. The horse, at least, is in the record.

Their power is concealment and poison: they see and are not seen, and one poisoned arrow is enough. Their weakness is the same smallness that makes them dangerous. They cannot bear to be reminded of it, and a traveller who knows the right lie can walk away from a meeting that should have killed him. They also keep nothing. With no village and no stores, an Umutwa band lives from one kill to the next, and when the game fails there is nothing between them and hunger but the horse they are riding.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Abatwa in Zulu folklore?

The Abatwa are a race of extremely small hunters in Zulu tradition, smaller than any other small people. They hide under the grass, sleep in anthills and kill with poisoned arrows. The main record of them is Henry Callaway’s Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, published in 1868.

Why should you never tell an Umutwa you saw him up close?

An Umutwa hates being reminded that he is small. In the Zulu story, the first traveller who said he had seen one right where he stood was shot dead for the insult. Travellers learned to say they had seen the Umutwa from a distant mountain, which made him happy and kept them safe.

Are the Abatwa the same as the San or Bushmen?

Abatwa is the ordinary Zulu word for the San, and some Zulu-speaking families of San descent in the Drakensberg call themselves Abatwa today. Henry Callaway, who recorded the folklore in 1868, said the tiny beings of the tales were not the San themselves. He believed the stories remembered the first meetings between the Zulu and the San.

How do the Abatwa kill their victims?

The Abatwa shoot from hiding in high grass with arrows smeared with poison. In the Zulu account, the poison makes blood run from the whole body and the victim dies at once. The victim never sees who shot him.

Do the Abatwa really ride on ants?

No early source says so. In Callaway’s 1868 Zulu account, the Abatwa ride a horse, sitting in a line from its neck to its tail, and eat it if they find no game. The ant-riding detail, along with the claim that only children, magicians and pregnant women can see the Abatwa, appears only in later English retellings and has not been traced to an older source.

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