The Absolute Truth is as timeless as the Baobab. Its roots deep in Mother Earth connecting all living things. It carries the profound wisdom of our ancestors from the beginning of time. It’s passed on to a select group of wisdom keepers. Credo Mutwa was one them.
Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa was born on 21 July 1921 in Zululand, Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal). His father’s first wife with whom he had three children died of influenza.
Credo Mutwa’s parents met in 1920. At the time his father was a builder belonging to the Christian faith, while his mother (a young Zulu girl) practiced the ancient religion of the Zulu people. The missionaries forbade his father to marry his mother unless she converted to Christianity. Her father (Mutwa’s maternal grandfather), however, was a hardened warrior who had fought against the British and, in turn, forbade her to become a Christian.
Caught between two irreconcilable belief systems, the couple had no choice but to separate, even though Credo Mutwa’s mother was already pregnant. During that time it was still a great shame to have a child born out of wedlock. When the pregnancy was discovered, a scandal broke loose and his mother was chased out of his grandfather’s house. One of her aunts took her in and the child was born in her own village. After a while, her father forgave Credo Mutwa’s mother and they were allowed to return to his homestead – on condition that she will never see his father again.
When he was a year old, a younger brother of Credo Mutwa’s father came to ask his grandfather permission to take him away. He was taken to his father’s home in the south of Kwa-Zulu Natal on the bank of the Umkumazi River. While growing up he discovered that he had prophetic powers, as well as an artistic inclination evident in his drawings and sculptures. His stepmother did not like this and tried to suppress his artistic talent.
His father’s profession as a builder meant that they never stayed long in any one place. In 1935 he found a major building job which took the family to the Transvaal (now Gauteng) and at the age of 14, Credo Mutwa started to attend school. He attended different schools on and off in 1937 and was violently attacked by a gang of mineworkers, which caused him to be ill for a long time. When the white doctors failed to cure him, his uncle took him back to his mother’s village where his grandfather brought him back to health. He began questioning his Catholic upbringing with those who had taught him that people like his grandfather were ungodly savages and heathens.
At this point his Credo Mutwa’s grandfather told him that his illness was in fact a sacred illness that beckoned him to become a “shaman” or healer. He was initiated and became a Sangoma. When his father and stepmother heard about this, he was told never to set foot in their house again.
Credo Mutwa’s travels began right after this. Having no home to go back to, he left for Swaziland and developed a love for travel. It gave him an opportunity to gain sacred knowledge and to search for the truth about his people. He gained experience that only those who walk the path of an African healer could experience. He listened to stories told by storytellers that dated back to the remotest of times.
Gradually he came under the impression that Africa was changing and that the culture of his people would soon be forgotten. Credo Mutwa sought a way to preserve this disappearing culture and friends advised him to write books about it which he did. After several failed attempts to find money from banks and donor organisations, he finally succeeded in 1975 to establish a living museum right in the heart of Soweto, Kwa-Khaya Lendaba. He was severely criticised by many Black people who misunderstood his intentions and accused him of “glamorising the Soweto ghetto”. In the 1976 youth uprising, parts of the cultural village was burnt down by militant youths and they attacked his home, and murdered his wife and son. He was lucky to have escaped. During a strike in 1980, striking workers burnt down parts of Kwa-Khaya Lendaba. He left the area soon after this incident.
Mutwa was revered for his predictions of world events, including the destruction of New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001, the 1976 June 16 uprising, HIV, Chris Hani’s assassination, load shedding and the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki.
By the age of 91, Mutwa was living in Kuruman and had all but completely disappeared from the public eye.
Much of Mutwa’s writing focused on African mythology and traditional Zulu folklore. He was the author of the books Indaba, My Children (1964), Let Not My Country Die (1986), Song of the Stars: Lore of the Zulu Shaman (1996), Zulu Shaman: Dreams, Prophesies and Mysteries (2003), and Woman of Four Paths: The Story of a Strange Black Woman in South Africa (2007).
Please click on the button below to have a sneak preview of a comic book adaptation of Credo Mutwa’s literary masterpiece – Indaba, My Children:
Credo Mutwa on Extraterrestrials
In his writings of the early 1960s, Credo Mutwa referred to “aliens” and “the Strange Ones” who came from outside of Africa. Beginning with the ancient Phoencians, the “Strange Ones” arrived in unfamiliar ships from unknown lands across the sea. European colonizers, also referred to as the “Strange Ones,” had established alien empires in Africa. In the postcolonial era, as Mutwa advised, Africans had to resist the “schemes of the Strange Ones,” which included communism and parliamentary democracy, but apparently not the divine and natural law of apartheid, by maintaining indigenous African traditions (1964: 559). In these terms, indigenous authenticity was established in opposition to the aliens and Strange Ones who came from outside of Africa.
During the 1990s, however, Credo Mutwa used the term, “aliens,” for beings from outer space, those extraterrestrials that supposedly featured prominently in African myths, legends, and traditions. According to Mutwa, Africans have long known about many species of extraterrestrials. Some are evil, bringing harm to human beings, such as the Muhondoruka, fifteen-foot high, cylindrical, column like creatures who cause violence, or the Mutende-ya-ngenge (also known as Sekgotswana or Pubwana), green creatures, with large heads, chalk-white faces, and large green eyes, who capture people, cut them up, and put them back together again. The most dangerous aliens, however, were the Mantindane, who are “star monkeys” and “tormenters,” the powerful extraterrestrial reptiles known as the Chitauri, and the Greys, the small servants of the Chitauri. The Chitauri’s evil schemes to harm humanity included supporting institutionalized religions. “They like religious fanatics,” he observed. “Ones who are burdened with too much religion are very popular with the Chitauri” (Martin 1999). Working through institutionalized religions, the evil Chitauri seek to divide and conquer human beings.
By contrast to these dangerous aliens, other extraterrestrials are good. The Mvonjina are three-feet high creatures, looking like a “caricature of a white person,” who act as “a messenger of the gods” by bringing knowledge to humanity. Other races of beneficent extraterrestrials frequently appearing in Africa included the friendly Sikasa, the timid Mmkungateka, the beloved Nafu, and the ape-like Mbembi. Besides trying to communicate with human beings, these aliens from outer space have often mated with African women. “There have been many women throughout Africa in various centuries who have attested to the fact that they have been fertilized by strange creatures from somewhere” (Mutwa 1996: 152). Although apartheid had criminalized interracial relations in South Africa, aliens from outer space were apparently engaging in interspecies sexual relations throughout Africa.
By his own account, Credo Mutwa has experienced many encounters with extraterrestrial beings. As early as 1951, in what is now Botswana, he witnessed a falling star, a strange vehicle in the sky, and two alien creatures disappearing into the spaceship. In the bush where the spaceship had landed, these aliens had left behind extraterrestrial rubbish. Along with the local people who witnessed this event, Mutwa made sure that the rubbish was buried, “That is the African tradition,” he explained (Mutwa 1996: 135). He also encountered a variety of aliens from outer space in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Zambia during his travels in the 1950s. Besides seeing extraterrestrials, he also claimed to have eaten them, describing the smell and taste of their cooked flesh. According to Credo Mutwa, the ritual consumption of extraterrestrial flesh was common in Africa, sometimes causing severe illness, but sometimes resulting in mind-altering experiences of great beauty, harmony, and transcendence.
Visiting what is now Zimbabwe in 1959, however, Credo Mutwa underwent his most dramatic encounter with extraterrestrials. While digging for medicinal herbs, he was suddenly confronted by five “little fellows,” strange, unfamiliar beings, small dull-gray creatures, with large heads, but thin arms and legs, who captured him and took him to a metallic room, shaped like a tunnel, where they probed and tested his body. The aliens then forced him to have sex with a female of their species, an experience that Mutwa reported as cold, clinical, and humiliating. “I felt like a victim at a sacrifice,” he recalled (Mutwa 1996: 142). After this ordeal, he was deposited back on earth, with his clothing torn, only to discover that he had been missing for three days.
Based on these encounters, Credo Mutwa emerged as an authority on extraterrestrial beings. In a book on alien abductions, Professor John Mack of Harvard University devoted a chapter to Credo Mutwa’s meetings with beings from outer space. Although he recounted his humiliating treatment by his extraterrestrial tormenters, Mutwa stressed the positive potential of human exchanges with aliens. “I just get furious,” he declared, “because the people from the stars are trying to give us knowledge, but we are too stupid” (Mack 1999: 198-218). As confirmation of his global recognition as an authority on aliens from other worlds. Credo Mutwa was invited to deliver the keynote address at an international “Conference on Extraterrestrial Intelligence” in Australia during March 2001.
Below is a collection of paintings by Credo Mutwa of some alleged extra-terrestrials.
For a rare and astonishing conversation between Credo Mutwa and Rick Martin please CLICK HERE.
In establishing Credo Mutwa as an African authority on extraterrestrials, the New Age conspiracy researcher, David Icke, played a significant role. A former sports broadcaster in Great Britain, Icke developed a distinctive blend of personal spirituality and political paranoia that he promoted through books, public lectures, and an elaborate website. Although he seemed to embrace every conspiracy theory, David Icke identified the central, secret conspiracy ruling the world as the work of shape-shifting reptilians from outer space. As Icke revealed in his book, The Biggest Secret, these extraterrestrial reptiles interbred with human beings, establishing a lineage that could be traced through the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the Merovingian dynasty of medieval Europe, the British royal family, and every president of the United States. Although they plotted behind the scenes in the secret society of the Illuminati, the aliens of these hybrid bloodlines were in prominent positions of royal, political, and economic power all over the world. Occasionally shifting into their lizard-like form, these aliens maintained a human appearance by regularly drinking human blood, which they acquired by performing rituals of human sacrifice. In The Biggest Secret, David Icke invoked the indigenous African authority of Credo Mutwa to confirm this conspiracy theory about blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptiles from outer space. Reportedly, Mutwa declared, “To know the Illuminati, Mr. David, you must study the reptile” (lcke 2001; see Icke 1999). In two videos produced and distributed by David Icke, “The Reptilian Agenda: Volumes 1 and 2,”Credo Mutwa confirmed that extraterrestrials, the Chitauri, were a shape-shifting reptilian race that has controlled humanity for thousands of years. Icke and Mutwa appeared together on a popular American radio program, “Sightings,” to explain the alien reptile conspiracy. In his lectures in the United States, Icke insisted that Credo Mutwa provided proof for his conspiracy theory, as one observer noted, in the “pure voice of a primitive belief system” (Molloy 1999). In Credo Mutwa, therefore, David Icke found indigenous authentication for an alien conspiracy.
Please watch the video below for the Icke/Mutwa discussion below:
Credo Mutwa on Dolphin Secrets
Credo Mutwa tells the story of his initiation.
Credo Mutwa on Creativity.
Credo Mutwa and the Zulu Necklace of Mysteries.
Credo Mutwa on the Human Soul.
The following extract is taken from Indaba, My Children. Credo Mutwa recounts his experience:
My instructor proceeded to explain that I, as a Chosen One, must know more about our actual concept of God. I cannot repeat his actual words as it would occupy far too much space, and he explained everything in symbolism which many of my readers would fail to comprehend. Briefly, he compared the Universe with a gigantic anthill. The structure as a whole is God and us, and everything we see about us is merely the ants and the sand-grains inside the anthill.
He explained that God created Himself and then slowly expanded to fill the entire Universe – or rather. He Himself grew in size. I have in the meantime learnt that this view is supported by modern astronomy. All bodies and materials within the Universe once originated at a central point and even this day they are expanding in all directions away from this point. According to other religions the creation of all these bodies and materials is part of God’s handiwork, but according to our Great Belief these things are part of God’s Being. It would be more correct to say that these things created God, or that God created Himself – like all the atoms and molecules in our bodies contributing their bits towards creating ourselves.
His analysis was extremely elaborate and to illustrate certain points, quite far-fetched comparisons were drawn; these illustrations are all part of our mythology and, contrary to ‘Western’ religions, our mythology forms part of our Great Belief.
When my instructor had finished with this section, he sat down and a Wise Woman took over. She wore a headdress with a fringe that covered the upper part of her face. She rose and took me into her arms and kissed both my cheeks; then she took a few steps back and sat down.
‘My son, you have heard what the Honourable High Instructor had to say to you, and you have memorised and will remember until you die his every word. Now listen to what I, your Spiritual Mother, have to say. Remember each one of my words, because now we are coming to the most important part of our ancient creed – the part that has to do with the soul.
‘My son, you have been a Christian, you have been one of those who have turned their backs on the religion of their forefathers to follow the religion of the aliens, and so you will understand so much better the vast difference that exists between the belief of your forefathers and that of the aliens, and also that of the Hyaena people, whom you know as Arabs.
‘They tell you that God created Man in His image; they also tell you that God gave Man a special, separate soul, which He is prepared to punish or reward according to the good or bad things the soul does while it inhabits a body on earth. My son, the aliens are misleading our people. God is certainly not so unwise as to spend his time trying and sentencing all these millions of souls that appear before Him in heaven.
Man does not possess a special soul, exclusive to himself. All souls are the same, and Man is but one of the many forms, or re-incarnations that a soul must pass through. The soul of the impala that you have seen disappearing into a thick bush while walking in the forest may once have been a tenant in the body of someone you knew. The crocodile that nearly ate you while you were crossing the river may have been carrying the soul of one of your ancestors, or one of the enemies of your family. But I shall explain this in greater detail later.
‘You will be wondering by now, my son, just what a soul is and what it looks like. And I, your spiritual foster-mother, shall take you by the hand and show you a human soul. Now hold my hand and look straight into my eyes; … look and do not be afraid. Your brain shall gradually feel numb and you shall take a brief journey … into the land of Tura-ya-Moya … and you shall see a man’s soul … with your own eyes. Do not be afraid … you shall not get lost … for I am holding your hand … Look into my eyes … your brain sleeps … your brain sleeps …’
Gradually the voice of the Wise Woman recedes into the dim distance; eventually it sounds as if she is whispering from beyond the farthest star. I feel a great weakness steal over me like some dark cloud creeping over a green Valley…
Fear! Cold naked fear seizes me and great grows my urge to get up and run. The eyes of the Wise Woman seem to grow large – until they fill the whole sky. I am caught in a powerful spell. I have to give up … surrender … no use … I will only go mad…
I see through those eyes – through those windows. I see a plain, as barren and as bleak as the Ka-Lahari desert….
I can see clearly now. The plain is so barren – there is not even soil. There is only a flat stretch of grey granite, criss-crossed by yawning fissures. In the shimmering distance I can see mountains of tremendous height and frightening cragginess.
From the dark blue heavens I see large spheres of transparent ice slowly floating down. There are scores of them, and some have pairs of shimmering wings, like the wings of a dragonfly. This is a fantastic sight and my heart longs to be among those things. I want to be one of them, I want to go wherever they go. Something rebels inside me, something wants to escape from within. But it cannot … it flutters like a captive bird …
From the very Beyond comes the voice of the Wise Woman, and dimly, faintly she says: ‘My son, you are seeing them now… you are seeing souls … look well at each of them … observe them clearly and closely, for you shall never get a chance like this again. Look closely…’
I strain my eyes to see through the shimmering haze that covers the plain. I strain my soul to interpret one of those floating spheres clearly and miss no detail. Each sphere is about the size of a man’s head, transparent and perfectly round. But inside each of these orbs, these bubbles of shimmering luminescence, are two worms, one red and the other a bright royal blue. These worms are never still for one moment. They move constantly – they intertwine, separate, intertwine, again and yet again. It is a nerve-shattering – a frightening sight.
The vision fades and I am conscious of being back on earth; the Wise Woman is still holding my hand, and her eyes are piercing mine. She is covered with perspiration and she pants as though she has been running for a long distance. The Great Ones are sitting like silent statues of so many gods in a shrine – their expressions unreadable in the dim light of the lamp. The Wise Woman, gasping for breath, asks me what I have seen — she wants me to explain loudly so that all the Hidden Ones can hear…
‘My son, you have seen with your own eyes what a soul looks like. You saw a sphere of the purest transparency and perfect roundness, and you saw that some of these had wings like those of a mosquito. You also saw that inside each one of these spheres were two worm-like creatures that constantly moved and were never still. These spheres you saw with wings were the souls of females, and those you saw with no wings were male souls. The two “worm-like” creatures you saw inside each soul were Good and Evil. But let me explain this in greater detail. The red “worm” stands for all the bad things in a man or a woman – dishonesty, cruelty, pride, low cunning, spiritual and corporal perversity, cowardice, low morality. The royal blue worm stands for all the good in a human being or an animal – loyalty, courage, honesty, love and charity. These worm-like components help to balance the soul. A combination of good and evil, equally balanced, is essential – for all souls that exist, like all living creatures, must have a perfect balance between Life and Death. If a man, for instance, should have only good qualities, without any bad qualities for balance, he would have no reason for existing at all. The same with a soul – if it has only the blue worm, the soul becomes automatically destroyed.
“This is why people who are really good, never live long. The two “worms” are always quarrelling and when the one hurts the other, the soul is temporarily unbalanced. If it happens to be the red worm that hurts the blue worm, then the man inhabited by the soul becomes evil – he becomes a thief, a murderer, and even worse. The laws of our fathers say that we must kill such a man, kill him so that the soul also may be destroyed. If a man becomes very good, the highest example of virtue, then we must pray to the gods to bring this man to an early grave, because although he is good, his body and soul have lost their balance and such a man has forfeited his right to exist in a world in which anything can happen when people are not normal and balanced. I have spoken.’
My readers will no doubt be amazed at the weird symbolism used in the instruction. To many it may sound like ever so much nonsense But the minds of our Wise Ones have not been narrowed down by a degree course at a conventional university; many of them cannot read or write. Yet, they have all been to university – to the University of Life! They have all studied human nature, and the nature of natural history.
The High Instructor sits down and the Wise Woman speaks once more:
‘My son, the aliens teach you that God created the soul, and we say this is not so. The soul is an integral part of God and all souls were created when God created Himself. The soul exists simply because God exists. The soul, like God, has no reason for existing, neither has it any reason for not existing. One can neither deny nor prove the existence of a soul …
‘But listen very carefully now, my son, for your spiritual foster-mother will tell you more secrets which you must pass on to future generations of the Chosen. A human being, and an animal, has something else in addition to the soul, which exists within him. We can call this something else a self.
‘When a child is born, it does not possess a self* The self builds up slowly of the memories and thoughts and the experiences as it grows up into a man or a woman. If you were to see your Ena you would find that it looks exactly like you, but it is not of flesh-and-blood – it is a ghost of transparent mist. When you see what many fools think is a ghost of a departed person, you do not see the soul, but that person’s Ena. The Ena is not immortal; it lives on for some time after death of the body, and can often be seen. It is this the High Witchdoctor summons up from the land of the spirits, and this is what we honour and consult in times of trouble to pray to the gods for us.
“An Ena must eat to grow and live, the same as you must eat to grow and live. While you live you eat for both your body and for your Ena but when you die your Ena will also die unless it can continue to eat. If we do not sacrifice cows and goats regularly so that the Enas of these animals can go to feed our ancestors’ spirits, they will go into a state of non-existence. It is therefore very important that we make these sacrifices regularly. Our ancestors’ spirits must remain alive because we must regularly ask their advice about problems we encounter, and they must take our problems and plead for us with the gods – just as the common people must have the Indunas who can plead for them with the chiefs. I shall now ask the Second Instructor to tell you more about this.’
The old man known as the Second Instructor rises to his ancient feet and, after uttering a prayer to the gods to help me to remember all I will be told, he stands over me looking down at me. I am lying on my back on a holy mat.
“Listen very well my son, listen with all your soul and with all your heart for I am now going to tell you something that is of the utmost importance. When a baby is born, it is born with only a body, a mind and a soul, but not with an Ena. The Ena grows like a flower as the child grows and is formed and nourished by the experiences of the growing child. It is shaped by the child’s own character and also the characters of those whom the child chooses to imitate, such as a parent or a tribal hero.
The Ena rides across the lake of time on the Soul, just as a man rides in a canoe. However, both the soul and the Ena (character is a combination of the two) are always a few days ahead of the body. I shall explain this more clearly:
“All living things are swimming across a great lake, called Time, and those things that are of flesh-and-blood are outdistanced in the race across the lake of Time by those things that are spirit, such as souls and Enas. And these go through experiences first, which afterwards overtake the body. For instance, if man is going to fall victim of an accident in one or two days’ the soul and the Ena are the first to fall victim of that. And when this happens the soul sends a warning to the body through the mind, in the form of a premonition or a dream.
“The reason many people are killed, in spite of the warnings they get from their Enas in the form of forebodings or dreams, is that their bodies are untrained in the essential art of co-operating closely with their souls and Enas. As you already know, this is the first thing we teach witchdoctors.
‘Animals co-operate perfectly with their Enas, and nowhere is found better proof of this than among the little birds. No matter how well you hide yourself in the bushes a bird will know of your presence and your intentions long before he has seen you.
‘It is this Ena that is known by the ignorant common people as the ‘Spirit of a dead person’, and which the strangers from beyond the seas falsely believe that we worship. In fact, far from our worshipping the so-called spirits of our ancestors, it is these ancestral spirits who worship us. We who combine flesh, mind, soul, Ena, and life, are much more fortunate than the Enas of those who are dead. Although the Ena is a spirit, it is neither immortal nor indestructible; in the land of Forever-Night where all Enas go after death, the Ena is the most helpless thing in all creation. As you know, nothing grows in the cold deserts that are the land of Forever-Night, and there the Gods allot each Ena a given length of time in which to continue existing. If, at the end of that period, none of the relatives has sacrificed a cow or a goat, it goes into a state of non-being. Enas must continue to eat the Enas of the animals they used to eat when still with the people in whose bodies they were formed. This is why it is so important that all your forefathers’ Enas should continually be nourished by the Enas of the cows and goats you slaughter in their name. In return for this kindness they intercede with the Gods on your behalf, and the Gods give you wealth and luck in everything you do, and they also keep enemies from the threshold of your life. To keep the Enas of his ancestors alive is the greatest and most important duty a man has in life. To ensure that the chain is never broken and that ancestors’ Enas will not die through lack of descendants, each man must, besides slaughtering a cow at least once a year, ensure that he has at least three wives and as many children as his loins and the Gods allow him.
‘The first sign that a man gets of the Enas of his ancestors being hungry is the number of dreams of old men and old women that assail him every night. If he ignores these dreams he easily falls a victim to accidents; people take a dislike to him and beat him up for no apparent reason; the keepers of the law hound him every day; his wives run away with other men; he is persecuted until he meets with death himself and when his Ena arrives in the land of Forever-Night, it is devoured by those of his ancestors.
‘Urge the people, Oh my son, urge them always to slaughter a goat or a cow for the helpless spirits of their ancestors. Tell them that a man who tries to live without his ancestors is like a tree struggling without roots, and that a man who is ignored by his ancestors is a disgrace in the eyes of the Gods.
Credo Mutwa writes in his book Indaba, My Children: The power of the soul and the mind is infinite. The soul is omnicient and omnipotent like the great God of whom it forms an infintesimal granule. The brain is something the human uses for thinking about and controlling his immediate mostly materialistic needs. But if properly linked to the soul with the mind, the brain could exploit all the powers of the soul. The ideal is in fact to weld the body, brain, mind, ena and soul into one co-ordinated whole instead of so many scattered entities. Where a person can achieve this, he will reach ultimate perfection.
Credo Mutwa on the mysterious deaths of Baobab Trees.
The Mashona are regarded as a good tribe because baobabs occur most frequently in their land. It is also noted with concern that the baobab is fast disappearing over great areas and this is the basis of a belief that good people will become fewer and that we are heading for a period of evil in which the Essence of Evil will rule the world. Eventually this Essence of Evil will be overthrown by Lumukanda and Luzwi and Marimba, with whom they will produce a new race of Immortals known as the Witchdoctors of Light. These will rule Mankind in peace and the happiness of paradise for ever.
It is also believed that the baobab is a direct descendant of the Tree of Life and that it will be a baobab that will shelter the Last Woman of the Zulus, Nozala the Pure, when all the Bantu south the Limpopo are destroyed by the Great Flood. Chief of the Bull. Nozala the Pure will be the mother of Luzwi.
It stands to reason that any form of damage to this tree is not tolerated. In the past and the bark are used in a purgative mixture for babies. Presentation of a baobab seed is regarded as a sign of highest esteem, even today, before seeds, bark or leaves are procured from the baobab, permission must be asked of the Gods.
And if the person concerned trips over a stone on the way to the tree, or he sees a snake, he must know that permission has not been granted. Among our ten thousand tree legends there is one which claims that the baobab had breasts and produced milk for mankind before it was learnt that it could be obtained from cows.
