By show of hands, have you ever had this experience? You’re breathless, sweating profusely and flustered because it’s 1.57pm and you’re trying to get to Incredible Connection at Menlyn Mall before it closes at 2pm. But you’re hopelessy lost like 90% of folks who have ever been inside Menlyn Mall. Come on, we’ve all been lost inside Menlyn Mall. You run up to a security guard and rap your query in rapid fire, Eminem, M134 Minigun machine gun fashion.
When you’re done talking they give you that languid, “It’s not possible for me to be more disinterested” belligerent stare. And then they respond with the most defiant, exaggerated and sarcastic: “Good afternoon to you too!” No? You haven’t had this happen to you? Your ancestors, gods and other imaginary friends must be really looking after you.
Ahead of my inaugural foray into that tiny island with quarrelsome inhabitants who once wanted to rule the world, I was warned about one of their most peculiar peculiarities. No, not consuming 17 cups of tea a day. And no, not consuming that crumbly pile of tasteless dung called Yorkshire pudding.
I’m talking about their obsession with observing “proper” greeting etiquette. After reading Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, I felt ready to tackle London. It’s only when I got there that I realised the English are nowhere near on the same level of fussiness of black South Africans when it comes to greeting. The poor Poms just get a bad rap. And among all the darker-hued folks around here, the “Zoeloes” take the cake. Zulu people’s greeting game is on steroids.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how anything ever gets done in KwaZulu-Natal. To the best of my estimation, Zulu people spend an average of three hours and 42 seconds a day just greeting each other. Failure to greet properly and observe all the strict greeting protocols in KZN is a crime far more severe than being so horrible at maths you end up demanding a trillion rand from Treasury to fix flood-damaged infrastructure.
You could be viciously attacked by armed thugs on South Beach at 1.38am, your eyeball dangling out of its socket, your brain exposed, and approach random Zulu people screaming: “They went that way” and their response would be: “Kuyabingelelwa kuqala wensizwa!” (First, we greet before talking). And you don’t just greet any old way you wish. You can’t interrupt a group of Zulu women selling boiled maize meal in Durban with “Yo moms, whassup!”
First of all, when greeting, everyone involved from yourself to the object of your greeting needs to be plural. Generations of white people have been lied to about the proper way to greet in isiZulu. It’s not “sawubona”. That word means “I see you”". The proper Zulu is “Sanibona”. That means “We see all of you” because no Zulu person is ever alone. There are always their ancestors, other random dead people, family totems, tokoloshes and other creatures residing within their aura. This is also true of most of the other indigenous languages, which is why you never say “Dumela” to a Motswana but “Dumelang”. But I’m focusing on my people because I believe that they have elevated greeting to a higher plane.
If you were lucky, the greet-a-thon would be over after three days
Back in the day, before the Industrial Revolution was gently introduced to the Zulus through the sharp end of bayonets and the thunder of muskets at the Battle of Ulundi in July 1879, this is how things went down. You would be minding your own business in your village in Mzumbe on the South Coast when your father would send you to deliver the message that your aunt had had a baby to your uncles in KwaDukuza. After the three-day hike you'd get to your uncle’s homestead.
Then your cousins would usher you into the visitors’ rondavel, offer you water to wipe yourself down, then mageu or maas to drink before spending half an hour greeting you. And they would take turns greeting you. All 37 of them. By noon the following day when you were certain that you’d exhausted all the greetings possible in the Zulu language as approved by all the ancestors old and new, it would be your uncle’s nine wives’ turn to start greeting you.
If you were lucky, the greet-a-thon would be over after three days and then you’d get to meet and greet your uncle and finally get to tell him that he had a brand new one-week-old niece … oh, wait … two-week-old niece by this point. And that’s just your first uncle out of the six that you have to tell.
Winding up my deceased father’s estate has taken me much longer than anticipated because he left us within three weeks of the commencement of the very first Covid lockdown. The year 2020 was a virtual write-off when it came to doing any business with state institutions. A year into it, and having to deal with home affairs, the GEPF provident fund, GEMS medical aid, the RAF, the department of justice, all in KZN, I am ready to never greet anyone “properly” and “with respect” again, for the next 20 years.
Service delivery levels in KZN depend almost exclusively on how well you're able to navigate the greeting process. For starters, you can’t just walk in, with a straight back, upright posture or anything that even remotely hints at self-assuredness.
You need to make every attempt at shrinking, making yourself as short and as apologetic as you can. Hunch those shoulders and clasp your hands in front of your chest and in the most timid voice you can muster, whisper “Sanibona”, the same way you would confess to having emitted flatulence in polite company. Nod furiously at everything they say, even if during the small talk, they say “It’s sad how that evil Putin raided Ireland and chased Boris Becker from being prime minister”.
Failure to heed this most sagely of advice will likely lead to you buffing the waiting room benches until three minutes before lunchtime, which always coincides with “the system is down” for the next two hours which is always miraculously shayile time. Oh, and by the way, sanibonani.
