Intulo

Also Known As: Zulu, also intulwa; inulwa among the Lala, as recorded by Henry Callaway in 1868; the lizard of the Zulu tale of how death came into the world
Region/Culture: Southern Africa
Mythos: Zulu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: Intulo is the swift lizard that outran the chameleon and brought people the word that they must die.
Role in Mythos: It is the second of Unkulunkulu’s two animal messengers, the one whose message arrived first and so became the law for every human life.
Relation to Humans: People took its message as final and refused the chameleon’s later promise of life, so in the tale the lizard is the reason anyone dies at all. Zulu speakers of the nineteenth century hated it for this and killed it on sight whenever they could catch it.

A man walking past a sun-warmed rock sees a small shape flatten itself against the stone. He reaches for a stick. The lizard is already gone, a dry scratch of claws and a flicker into a crack, and the man mutters an old complaint after it: there goes the ugly little thing that ran ahead at the start of the world and told everyone to die.

That grudge is the whole of Intulo, and it is a grudge with a long memory. In the 1860s the missionary and linguist Henry Callaway sat with Zulu speakers in Natal and wrote down, in their own words and with his English beside them, what they said about Unkulunkulu, the first ancestor, the one who broke off from the reed bed at the beginning of things. His book, The Religious System of the Amazulu, was printed in parts from 1868 to 1870, and the story of the lizard sits near its very start. Intulo is not a god, a spirit or a monster in the usual sense. The word is simply the Zulu name for a kind of lizard, intulwa in another form, and among the Lala people inulwa. What made this particular lizard famous was one errand.

Unkulunkulu, so the tale goes, sent a chameleon first. It carried the good news: people were not to die. The chameleon set off at a chameleon’s pace, which is to say barely at all, and it did not keep even that. It stopped at a shrub called ubukwebezane, heavy with clusters of sweet, purplish berries of the kind children still like to pick, and it ate. It ate for a long time.

Some while later Unkulunkulu sent a second messenger after the first. This was Intulo, and the message was the opposite: people were to die. The lizard did what lizards do. It ran. It made great haste over the hot ground, reached the people, gave its word, and turned round and was back with Unkulunkulu before the chameleon had even arrived. When the chameleon finally came, berry-stained and in no hurry, and called out that people were not to die, the people refused it. They had already taken hold of the lizard’s word, they said, and they would not hear another. Through the lizard’s word, death came.

That is the story in its plainest form. It is also more or less the whole of what the record says. No source gives Intulo a voice, a family, a home or a later adventure. It has one run, and it wins.

The tale was already old when Callaway heard it, and it was not confined to one storyteller. Three decades earlier, in 1836, the naval officer and missionary Allen Gardiner had published an account of his journey into the Zulu country. He recorded a version in which a higher being he called Villenangi, the First Appearer, sent two messages to a lesser heavenly figure visiting the earth: the first by chameleon, promising that people would not die, the second by lizard, with the contrary verdict. The lizard outran the slow chameleon and spoke first. Callaway also put the question to a young Bhaca guide on the road back from the Umzimkulu, and the guide knew the ordinary tale too, only with the chameleon sent by a figure he called Unsondo. Not every listener believed it. A group of Zulu Christians told Callaway bluntly that the story was a mere fable, and asked why any creator would send creatures that crawl on their bellies to carry news to people.

The grudge, though, was real, and Callaway was careful to record what it did on the ground. The chameleon was disliked and often killed, but it was also useful. Its slowness made it a garden medicine: mixed with other things, it was used to doctor the fields so that birds would come to the corn as sluggishly as the chameleon had come to humankind. The lizard got no such reprieve. It was hated far more, and anyone who saw one and could kill it did so. Killers spoke to it as they struck, naming it as the ugly thing that had run in the beginning to say people should die. The lizard, people said, escaped only by its cunning, and the record agrees that it often did.

The tale has close neighbours. Among the Basotho, as the French missionary Eugène Casalis reported, the same two animals carried the same two messages with the roles reversed: a grey lizard was the slow bearer of the promise of rising again, and the chameleon was the swift, wicked one who beat it. The Khoikhoi told of the Moon sending an insect with a message of renewal, which a hare took over and twisted on the way. Callaway set all of these side by side. What they share is a rule older than any of the animals in them: the first word is the one that counts.

Intulo’s power lies wholly in that rule. It has no venom, no size, no magic in any telling. It simply arrived before the one sent ahead of it, and the people it reached treated the first message as binding. Its gift is speed, the quick dart that every Zulu child would have seen a lizard make across a rock or a wall, and the story builds the fate of the human race on nothing more than that dart.

Its weakness is that it is small, and visible, and hated. Every lizard of its kind that a person could catch paid a little more of the debt. Callaway also noted, a long way further into his book, a different lizard called isalukazana, said to be the ancestral spirit of an old woman. His informants were firm that it resembled the intulwa but was not one, and the two should never be confused. Intulo carries no ancestor inside it. It carries only the memory of a race it won, and the bad name that came with winning.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Intulo in Zulu mythology?

Intulo is the lizard in the Zulu story of the origin of death. Unkulunkulu sent it after the chameleon with the message that people must die, and because Intulo arrived first, people accepted its message. The word intulo is the ordinary Zulu name for a kind of lizard.

Why did the chameleon lose the race to Intulo?

The chameleon was sent first with the message that people would not die, but it moved slowly and stopped to eat berries from a shrub called ubukwebezane. Intulo was sent later and ran the whole way. By the time the chameleon arrived, people had already accepted Intulo’s message and refused to hear another.

Where does the story of Intulo come from?

The best-known record is Henry Callaway’s The Religious System of the Amazulu, printed from 1868 to 1870 from the words of Zulu speakers in Natal. An earlier version appears in Allen Gardiner’s 1836 account of his journey into the Zulu country, where the two messages come from a being called Villenangi, the First Appearer.

How did Zulu people treat lizards because of the Intulo story?

According to Callaway’s informants, the lizard was hated and killed whenever someone could catch it, with the killer naming it as the creature that ran ahead to say people should die. The chameleon was also disliked and often killed, but it was used as a garden medicine because of its slowness.

Is Intulo the same as the isalukazana lizard?

No. Callaway recorded the isalukazana as a separate kind of lizard, said to be the ancestral spirit of an old woman. His informants said it resembled the intulwa but was not one, and Intulo is never described as an ancestral spirit.