'There's no mango here with a face'

The Vhavenda people are wonderful storytellers, but when the spotlight fell on the village of Tshikundamalema for a tall, twisted tale involving a mango, shaped like a human face, and then some more insinuations about witchcraft besides, the traditional leader of the village was furious.

Sometime in June this year, a story about the shock discovery by residents from an “unidentified community” started to circulate on social media. The original story really does not seem to have much detail to it, except that these residents had discovered a mango, shaped like a human face, hanging from a tree.

Video recordings of people jostling and shouting as they tried to catch a glimpse of this strange-looking, or “miracle” mango hanging from the tree, started to go viral on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms. The comments came from users as far afield as Nigeria and Kenya.

Now, another (fake) version of the original story is doing the rounds on Facebook. This time, though, it comes with all the juicy details the first version seemed to lack. The story goes as follows:

In Tshikundamalema village lives an 88-year-old lady who is still very active and can even still move around without a walking stick. The old lady lives with her cat and dog, whom she named after her deceased children, Itani and Salphina. She cooks from a big pot every day and does very dirty laundry, which no one knows whom it belongs to.

About a year ago, some guys who wanted to make atchar stole mangoes from the old lady’s mango trees. She went to the chief and asked him to summon a traditional court, so that whoever had stolen her mangoes should come forth and apologise, but no one attended the court. This year, the old woman’s mango trees bore no fruit at all, until 5 October, when one of the trees suddenly produced a mango that grew unusually fast and changed into the shape of the face one of the guys who had stolen the old lady’s mangoes. According to the tale, the fruit is bleeding. 

Thovhele Vho-Hanyani Tshikundamalema said he would not tolerate this “fake news” that was now tarnishing his village’s good name. “I feel disrespected, and this post is denting the good image of my village,” he said in an interview with Limpopo Mirror. “If they imply that there is a witch in my village, it means that I am a witch too, because I lead this person. If you know who is spreading these lies, I will make sure that they regret it,” he said.

The post was, however, copied and shared so many times that the original author could not be traced.

Date:15 October 2021

By: Maanda Bele

Maanda  Bele, born and raised in Nzhelele Siloam, studied journalism at the Tshwane University of Technology.

He is passionate about current news and international affairs.

He worked as part of the Zoutnet team as an intern in 2017.

He is currently a freelance journalist specialising in news from the Vhembe district.

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