Crime in Zulu
This is a general blog about everything under the sun. It is also a classroom where visitors get a whiff of isi-Zulu, a language spoken in South Africa.
I-si-ge-be-ngu = one criminal
I-zi-ge-be-ngu = two criminals
Ge-be-ngu. You say the first part like gap, the second like Zubeida, a girl’s name and the last like Ngugi Wathiong’o, the Kenyan writer. Ge-be-ngu is crime in general: stealing, insider trading, buying and selling drugs, selling human beings, hacking information online etc.
Hollywood has always been about crime especially thieves, but Hong Kong filmmakers like John Woo excelled, giving us projects like Once A Thief, starring Yun-fat Chow and Leslie Cheung.
Thieves used to be caught because they committed crimes in a specific area, like a house, a bank or around town. Not online thieves. They cannot be caught because they are anonymous. They work alone or in gangs, holed up in hotels for weeks, with the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.
We also make things easier for them because we volunteer information like bank details, especially if it is a brand we trust like phone companies hydro or department stores. I read somewhere that they hacked information from a whole airline.
I laughed recently because a site that has been pursuing me for years claimed that I had read a certain academic paper, the same site that created a profile for me and even claimed that I had followers. Is lying legal?
In real life, people can be wrongly accused of u-bu-ge-be-ngu (crime), one aspect I don’t like about Yoruba movies in Nigeria. Somebody shouts thief or murder and people rush out with knives and sticks to kill somebody. Worse still, they come with an old car tyre, douse it with petrol, throw a match, ready to place it on the neck of the accused.
This is the South African legacy called ‘necklacing’, when people lived in fear of being burnt for not belonging to a certain political party, something that was not even done to black people in the deep South, in the United States. History books call it liberation and the country builds monuments for perpetrators.
Stealing sometimes happens inside our heads as we accuse people of stealing our hearts and running away to marry someone else. There is also insider trading associated with Wall Street, where confidential information is passed on to make the right move i.e. buy or sell stocks.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
I-si-ge-be-ngu = one criminal
I-zi-ge-be-ngu = two criminals
Ge-be-ngu. You say the first part like gap, the second like Zubeida, a girl’s name and the last like Ngugi Wathiong’o, the Kenyan writer. Ge-be-ngu is crime in general: stealing, insider trading, buying and selling drugs, selling human beings, hacking information online etc.
Hollywood has always been about crime especially thieves, but Hong Kong filmmakers like John Woo excelled, giving us projects like Once A Thief, starring Yun-fat Chow and Leslie Cheung.
We also make things easier for them because we volunteer information like bank details, especially if it is a brand we trust like phone companies hydro or department stores. I read somewhere that they hacked information from a whole airline.
I laughed recently because a site that has been pursuing me for years claimed that I had read a certain academic paper, the same site that created a profile for me and even claimed that I had followers. Is lying legal?
In real life, people can be wrongly accused of u-bu-ge-be-ngu (crime), one aspect I don’t like about Yoruba movies in Nigeria. Somebody shouts thief or murder and people rush out with knives and sticks to kill somebody. Worse still, they come with an old car tyre, douse it with petrol, throw a match, ready to place it on the neck of the accused.
This is the South African legacy called ‘necklacing’, when people lived in fear of being burnt for not belonging to a certain political party, something that was not even done to black people in the deep South, in the United States. History books call it liberation and the country builds monuments for perpetrators.
Stealing sometimes happens inside our heads as we accuse people of stealing our hearts and running away to marry someone else. There is also insider trading associated with Wall Street, where confidential information is passed on to make the right move i.e. buy or sell stocks.
| ZULU | ENGLISH |
| I-zi-gebengu za-semoyeni. | Online thieves. |
| I-si-gebengu se-zinkukhu. | Chicken thief. |
| Safa u-bu-gebengu ezweni. | There is so much crime in the land. |
| U-Tim no-Tom izigebengu. | Tim and Tom are criminals. |
| Na-ma-ntombazane i-zi-gebengu. | Girls are also criminals. |
| Ba-yi-zi-gebengu badayisa i-zi-daka mizwa. | They are criminals. They sell drugs. |
| Zibanjiwe i-zi-gebengu ezidayisa izingane phesheya. | They caught criminals that sell kids abroad. |
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