imported>Belbury: Changing short description from "South African Deity" to "South African deity"

2025-04-25T12:06:01Z

Changing short description from "South African Deity" to "South African deity"

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{{Short description|South African deity}}
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{{more citations needed|date=April 2012}}
{{cleanup rewrite|date=December 2019}}
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'''Mamlambo''' is a deity in [[South Africa]]n and [[Zulu mythology]], the "goddess of rivers",<ref>Dictionary of Gods & Goddesses, 2nd Edition by Michael Jordan, Facts on File, Inc., 2004</ref> described as a large snake-like creature.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kiernan |first1=James |title=The power of the occult in modern Africa : continuity and innovation in the renewal of African cosmologies |date=2006 |publisher=LIT Verlag Münster |isbn=3825887618 |page=93}}</ref>

In 1997, South African newspapers (including [[Johannesburg]]'s ''[[The Star (South Africa)|The Star]]'' and [[Cape Town]]'s ''[[Cape Argus]]'') reported on sightings of a "giant reptile" monster in the [[Mzintlava River]] near [[Mount Ayliff]] in South Africa. Villagers in the area claimed that the creature was about 20 meters (65.62 feet) long, had the head of a horse, the lower body of a fish, short legs, and the neck of a snake, and that it shined with a green light at night. During the period between January and April 1997, as many as nine deaths had been attributed to the Mamlambo.<ref name="news">{{Cite web|url=http://web.ncf.ca/bz050/mamlam.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070505072201/http://web.ncf.ca/bz050/mamlam.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=May 5, 2007|title=Articles on the 1997 Mamlambo "sightings" (from ''The Star'' and ''Cape Argus'')}}</ref> According to police, the victims had been in the water a while and had the soft parts of their heads and neck eaten by crabs; local villagers, on the other hand, claimed that these mutilations had been caused by the mamlambo's habit of eating faces and brains. For this reason, the Mamlambo is often referred to as "the Brain Sucker".<ref name="news"/>{{Deadlink|date=October 2023}} As Felicity Wood points out in ''The Extraordinary Khotso'' (2007), "the mamlambo tends to be associated with Western forms of prosperity, like money, so the fact that she is often depicted as a Western [[mermaid]]. She has arisen in part from a sense of disconnection to a traditional, communal way of life, inequalities and imbalances in the social order, and the lure of Western materialism. Like the [[Mami Wata]], she is a dangerous, seductive figure, offering wealth and power but able to bring about terrifying ruin".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wood |first=Felicity |date=2008 |title=The Occult, the Erotic and Entrepreneurship: An Analysis of Oral Accounts of Ukuthwala, Wealth-giving Magic, Sold by the Medicine Man Khotso Sethuntsa |url=https://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/Files/docs/15.1/16%20Wood.pdf |journal=Alternation |pages=338-366 |issn=1023-1757}}</ref>

==Film and television==
* An expedition in search of the mamlambo was done on the SyFy Show ''[[Destination Truth]]''; the mission found no evidence of the creature's existence.
* The [[Cartoon Network]] animated series [[Secret Saturdays]] features a cryptid inspired by the Mamlambo in an episode.

==See also==
* [[Hippocampus (mythology)]]
* [[List of hybrid creatures in mythology]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Culture of South Africa]]
[[Category:Zulu legendary creatures]]
[[Category:Zulu goddesses]]
[[Category:Snake goddesses]]
[[Category:Mythological hybrids]]

Mamlambo - Revision history

imported>Belbury: Changing short description from "South African Deity" to "South African deity"