Zulu Lesson Murder She Wrote

Murder is bulala in Zulu. A murderer is um-bulali.

Bu-la-la. You say the first part like Fubu clothing, the rest like London.

Um-bu-la-li.  You say the first part like oomph! The second like Fubu clothing, the third like London and the last part like lick.

Television viewers love murder shows: how to commit murder at home or at work. They are also educational, because they give budding murderers the how-to. Television networks say they are just meeting a demand for entertainment.

Animals are not that fortunate. At creation, they lived in the forests, grasslands and rivers. They shared the earth with humans. Humans kept on ‘developing’ so they hogged more space, encroaching on land naturally set aside for animals. Land scarcity continues so tigers and lions kill villagers and people crossing rivers from time to time. We shoot them dead. Zoos kill animals to reduce what they call ‘over-population’.

Governments also kill through the death penalty and other methods designed to eliminate certain races. The bison provided shelter, food, clothing, canoes everything, for indigenous people in north America, so governments exterminated the herds. They wanted the land to plant railway lines to ‘expand civilization.’

ZULU	ENGLISH
Ba bulala izingane.	They are killing kids.
Babulala izizwe ngotshwala.	They kill nations by plying them with liquor.
U-Trump ubulala ukhetho.	Trump is killing democracy.
Ngi-bulawa indlala.	Hunger is killing me.
U-baba u-bulawa isizungu.	Loneliness is killing dad.
Wa-bulawa ubani?	Who killed her?
Wa-bulawa izidaka mizwa.	She was killed by drugs.
U-Derek Chauvin wabulala George Floyd.	Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.
I-kati libulala amagundane.	The cat kills mice.
Sizo bulalana layi-khaya.	We’ll kill each other in this house (husband and wife fighting).

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.