The Labyrinth in Southern Africa
Jeff Saward
Labyrinthine traditions among the native cultures of Southern Africa, principally in the modern day countries of South Africa and Namibia, have received scant attention over the years. Little published information exists, but that such as Caerdroia currently has on file is presented here as stimulus for further correspondence with anyone knowledgeable in these matters. Further information, ideas or further contacts that readers may have would be welcome.
L.H.Samuelson's book Some Zulu Customs and Folk-lore, published in 1912, is a often quoted source and records that:
The Zulus are very fond of drawing mazes, usogexe, on the ground with the finger, or (after smoking hemp) with saliva passed through a hollow stem of tambootie grass and so made to trace a labyrinth, tshuma sogexe, on a smooth floor. The one who draws generally asks someone else to find the way into the royal hut. And this he does with a pointer of tambooti, or failing to follow the right course and getting cornered, is greeted with a general shout of Wapuka sogexe! (you are done for in the labyrinth), and has to go back to the start and begin the quest again.
This game is a great favourite, and is often played for hours at a time... They would vary it sometimes by dotting rows of warriors on the outside, and then success depended on the positions that the combatants were made to assume, the great triumph being to bring an army into the shape of a bull's head and horns, when he whose horn first touched the adversary's line was acclaimed as the winner. 
 A labyrinth made by Ulutyetye, a Zulu, (late 19th/early 20th century). It is noticeable for having two huts to be reached, the Royal hut at centre. An illustration published by Samuelson in 1912.
Dudley Kidd writing in Savage Childhood, published in London by Adam & Charles Black six years earlier in 1906, adds further valuable information on South African labyrinths. In a chapter on childrens games he mentions on p.170:
Labyrinths in the sand are made by the clever boys, who make their design with amazing rapidity. Duller boys are lost in wonder when they see big boys making these things. The big boy kneels down on one knee, and, reaching out with his forefinger, makes a thin groove in the sand with his finger. The chief's hut is supposed to be in the centre, and a maze is built around it; the other boys have to trace the way in. Some of these designs are very clever and ingenious. This is one of the few boyish games which survive into adult life. When natives smoke Indian hemp, they inhale the smoke into their lungs and blow it out on to the earth in bubbles formed of saliva and smoke. They are fond of smoking in couples; they make labyrinths with the smoke bubbles, or else try to outflank one another, pretending that their bubbles are armies of soldiers advancing against a chief.
 Kidd's note is accompanied by an excellent photograph of a Zulu boy drawing such a labyrinth in the sand. The labyrinth would appear to consist of a series of linked concentric circles, but the design is unclear. This photograph appears to have previously slipped the net of labyrinth researchers. It is not clear enough to show fine detail of the design, but it is obviously a series of interconnecting concentric circles, as are all labyrinths, whatever their actual design.
The suggestion that the Zulu interpreted their labyrinth designs as a depiction of the defences around the chief's hut, the central point of their tribal territory - provides interesting parallels with other 'early' labyrinth legends from America, Africa and Europe. The following item reproduced in National Geographic, June 1982, provides an additional insight into the relevance of the labyrinth in tribal cultures in Southern Africa. This aerial photograph, presumably photographed in the early 1980's, of an Ovambo encampment in northern Namibia is surrounded and divided up with stick walls which can moved "to change the passageways leading to the headman's hut, a way of deceiving raiders during earlier tribal conflicts." These labyrinthine compounds are built on high ground, safe from flooding, from where the Ovambo still herd cattle and grow millet, along what is now the Namibia/Angola border.
 Ovambo encampment, Northern Namibia, Reproduced from National Geographic, June 1982. Photo by J. Brandenburg.