Zulu Lesson Polls

Polls don't have a crystal ball to see into the future. In fact, does such a ball exists, or it was just a prop on a movie set?

Polls about the 2024 presidential election in the U.S. are in top gear, #5 in your car if you drive stick-shift. I don’t do polls because of how they are conducted. Answers of a few people do not represent the opinion of 339 million, estimated to be in America.

To predict is ‘bhula’ in Zulu. Political staff that babysit candidates also predict jaundiced outcomes, based on their own stats. Therefore, in a way, polls u-ku-bhula. 

Bhu-la comes from how amaZulu lived before Christianity, polls, television and the internet. Traditional societies in Africa, Asia and Australia have soothsayers, people who ‘see’ into the future.  

Old movies had women who used round glass objects to ‘see’ the present and future. Nigerian movie directors love scenes where native doctors throw bones on a grass mat, to predict what will happen. 

Once upon a time, ama-Zulu had a powerful king, u-Shaka ka Senzangakhona.  When his brothers assassinated him to hijack the throne, he told them that they will never be kings because ocean birds were circling the land. He predicted the coming of white men from England, France and the Netherlands, (wa-bhu-la). It came to pass in the form of colonization.

Bhu-la.  You say the first part like booze and the second like lass.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.