Lightning Birds and Thunder Trees by Adrian Koopman Introduction the summer of 2010/2011.1 It was not that IGHTNING kills again”. this specific summer was particularly “Lightning: Eight killed characterised by fatal weather. Such in Easter Cape”. “Don- storms occur every summer, and “L every summer a considerable number nybrook: mother and young son die in hut blaze after strike”. “Smoke at- of people, especially in rural South tracts lightning”. “How to deal with a Africa, are killed by lightning, while million bolts a month”. “Tornado and crops and infrastructures are ruined hailstorms ravage Free State”. by vicious hailstorms and flooding. In The Witness of Friday 11 March, a report in The Witness of 9 November 2011 had a headline reading “Lightning 2010, Sanjeev Sewnarain of the South kills five members of one family”. The African Weather Service is quoted as story noted that a 37-year-old mother saying that South Africa is a lightning- died with four children in her arms in prone country and lightning-related eMahlwazini village in the Bergville deaths are about four times higher region. Three days later the Monday than the global average. A report in edition of The Witness had the headline, the Mail & Guardian of 28 January “Durban: Two killed by lightning”. 2011 quotes Deon Terblanche, the These are just a few of the headlines Weather Services’ senior manager for referring to storms and lightning in research, as saying, “South Africa is KwaZulu-Natal during the first part of well-known for the clustering of storms 40 Natalia 41 (2011), Adrian Koopman pp. 40 – 60 Natalia 41 (2011) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2011 Lightning Birds and Thunder Trees … The combination of the density of the Mail & Guardian (28 January 2011) strikes and the currents involved make that reported her words said that wide us meteorologically high risk.” In yet derision followed her announcement, another report, from the Independent it also pointed out that there were a on Saturday dated 8 January 2011, the number of facts about lightning that Weather Service is quoted as saying were not generally known, such as the that “South Africa has one of the “gamma rays and antimatter produced highest lightning ground-flash densities by lightning storms”, “step potentials”, in the world”, and that the “upward streamer effect”, and the At any one given time there are difference between “classic negative- approximately 2 000 thunderstorms in downward lightning” and “positive progress around the world, producing lightning”. The article concluded: anywhere from 30 to 100 cloud- The only way to protect against to-ground flashes of lightning each such strikes is expensive: enclose second – up to five million flashes a everything in a grid of interconnected day. South Africa can account for up to conductors, preferably a tight one, 10 percent of the global daily statistics. then connect as much of that grid as The same Mail & Guardian report you can to conductors buried deep in quoted above points out that that light- the ground. Then cower inside any time a cloud comes within 100 km ning flashes are not evenly distributed and you’re safe – at least until we in South Africa: learn something new about the nature The Western Cape has so few ground of lightning. strikes that they are barely worth Lightning has been a mortal danger counting, while parts of densely populated Gauteng and KwaZulu- to the Zulu community since time im- Natal light up like a Christmas tree. memorial, and it goes without saying that although they have known nothing Every summer the number of fatal about gamma rays, antimatter, step po- lightning strikes prompts newspapers tentials, and classic negative-downward and television producers to issue in- strikes, they have always known that structions and advice to people on how lightning can be fatal. And it is also true to protect themselves against lightning. that although they may not have had the “Do not shelter under trees”, “If caught technology to “enclose everything in a in the open, avoid high places”, “Get grid of interconnected conductors” they out of water if there is a storm about”. have always known that steps should be Every year these warnings are issued, taken for protection against lightning. and every year people die from light- Some idea of such steps comes from a ning strikes. In the first week of Janu- very early description by R.U. Sayce, ary 2011, lightning-related deaths had MA, a lecturer at the Natal University reached such a high that Nomsa Dube, College: the KwaZulu-Natal Minister of Co- operative Governance and Traditional A piece of dolerite, which appears to have been artificially shaped, was Affairs, promised that provincial gov- recently picked up, on the ridge on ernment would talk to “the Department which the Natal University College of Science and Technology on what is stands, overlooking the town of the cause of the lightning”. Although Pietermaritzburg, by one of my 41 Natalia 41 (2011) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2011 Lightning Birds and Thunder Trees students. The stone was shown Lightning in Zulu culture by Mr Edward Bird to one of his Callaway (1970)2 and Berglund (1976) native servants … who immediately have much to say about Zulu fears described it as a ‘lightning stone’. (1926:69) relating to thunder-storms, with their potential threats of lightning and hail. Further investigation by Mr Sayce, There are strong suggestions that aided by the well-known Zulu linguists such storms are mentally linked with of the time, Carl Faye and D. McK. fears of unknown evil (ubuthakathi Malcolm, shows a systematised ap- “witchcraft” and ibhadi “misfortune”). proach to protection against the dangers Callaway, for example, talks of people of lightning: being “struck by terror” (op.cit., 117) Towards the end of winter, or in early when thunder, lightning and “aerial spring, when the winter anti-cyclone changes” approach. He quotes a source is breaking up, and just before the (op.cit., 375) as saying “Isikqoto a first storms are expected, the natives s’ahlukene kakulu nonyazi; si ti kokubili take precautions to protect the huts ku impi yenkosi e si tshaywa ngayo from lightning, which is often of great lapa emhlabeni … [We do not make severity, and is responsible every year a great distinction between hail and for a considerable number of deaths. lightning; we say, each is an army of The Umgoma [sic], or witch doctor, is called in, and receives a preliminary the Lord who smites us in this world.]” fee of £1. A footnote here enlarges on the idea that the heavens intend to do evil on earth, Sayce goes on to talk of the medicated and the resultant fear in the hearts of pegs which are driven into the ground the people: and encircle the huts. He gives details of their placing and the medicines with Heaven-herds are said to herd the heavens because when it is overcast, which they are smeared, and we will they at once see that the heaven is return to these later in the article. bad, and has ceased to be calm, and This present article will look at vari- has gone out to do evil; and the hearts ous ways in which the Zulu community of the herds are kindled; they are no seek to protect themselves and their longer happy, are unable to swallow possessions against lightning, hail, and any food, and are struck by fear, as other adverse forms of weather. We though an enemy was coming to kill will look at the role of the professional them. inyanga yezulu (the “heaven-herd” or However, once the heaven-herds “sky doctor”) as well as the role of a activate their professional training, they number of indigenous plants as a source conquer their fear and go out to do battle of protective charms against weather. with the elements: The article will investigate the link between weather and evil, and consider At last they become brave when the lightning begins to flash. They quit beliefs that weather can be directed their huts and drive it away, trying to maliciously against enemies. Finally, make it return to whence it came; they we will attempt to identify the mysteri- forbid the hailstones to fall, because ous “lightning bird” and the even more they know that they will destroy the mysterious “thunder tree”. food, the grass, and the trees. They are therefore herders who herd the heaven, 42 Natalia 41 (2011) Copyright © Natal Society Foundation 2011 Lightning Birds and Thunder Trees that it may not break out and do its will shades as is the case with the isangoma, on the property of the people. They do or diviner) but not turn back the rain, for it is good; they turn back the lightning and the … in practice it is required that a hail; they turn back the lightning from possible candidate be able to refer to the village where they live. some incident whereby he can prove that the sky has called him for service. Let us look a little more closely at A man who has seen lightning both the training of a “heaven-herd”, and the enter and leave his hut without being manner in which they attempt to control killed is received for preparation to threatening weather. become a heaven-herd. Berglund (1976:47-51) gives de- The role of the inyanga yezulu tails of the initiation and training of a The word inyanga (“traditional doctor”) heaven-herd. At the time of the new is used in the same way as the word moon a qualified inyanga yezulu takes “doctor” in English, that is to say, un- a novice to the top of a mountain and less specified to the contrary, a “doctor” after making incisions on the body of is assumed to be a doctor of medicine.