The Strength of a Crocodile is Water: Thought in Tsonga Proverbs

This article discusses how Tsonga proverbs have engaged coloniality of knowledge—or the legacies and practices of the logic of colonialism in social sciences in Africa, particularly in Mozambique—to reassert African thought. Established after the Scramble for the continent as part and parcel of colonialism, the late eighteenth-to-mid-twentieth century anthropological discourse on the Tsonga ethnic group of Southern Mozambican has reproduced Tsonga thought and subjectivity as other, establishing new forms of knowledge and systems of knowing. However, a rereading of Tsonga proverbs through the lens of critical theory shows that these proverbs—literary records that distill Tsonga thought—have rationalized the environment on their own right and created ethical and metaphysical insights with which to order their society—before, during, and after colonialism. Such sayings as Matimba ya ngwenya i mati [The strength of a crocodile is water.], U nga nwe mati u setela hlowo; mudjuku u ta nwa kwini [Do not close the well after drinking from it. Where would you drink tomorrow?], Mumiti wa nhengele a dumba nkolo wa kwe [He who swallows a large stone has confidence in the size of his throat.], and Mbuti ya shihaha a yi beleki ntlhambini [A good goat does not bring forth in the midst of the flock.] address universal questions of integration versus alienation, mastering nature, and living an ethical life by avoiding harm within a social
community. Tsonga proverbs have continued to critique coloniality of knowledge—even long after being translated into Portuguese and intertextualized in other Mozambican languages—providing an alternative way of viewing and talking about the world and being human. Through critical theory, this argument rereads the Tsonga proverbs towards social transformation, particularly the eradication of African dehumanization.