Gumbo · leg
Gumbo, the leg, is a totem taken from part of an animal rather than a whole one, and its poem makes clear which leg: its people keep away from the leg of the cow but eat the rest of the beast. It is kept by the Gumbo Madyirapanze clan, greeted as Madyirapanze, Chitova and Godzamuto.
The Madyirapanze poem, which the Mitupo 2025 collection prints under Madyirapanze and again spelt Madyirapazhe, spells out what a cow gives: its meat is eaten, its milk drunk, its fat used to anoint, its horn made a gonamombe, its tail a fly whisk and its dung smeared on the floors. It greets the clan at Masakadza, Njaidza, across the Nyazvidzi, at Hwiru, Raubwi and the hill of Mabwazhe, and closes by linking it with the Korekore.
Many of its praise names are pictures of the leg itself, and a Shona dictionary explains them: Matangakumwa, because when cattle come to the water the leg is the first to step in; Matakuradumbu, because the leg carries the heavy belly; Mhandamakan'a, for a hoof strong enough to break hard ground; Matsikapasi, for the leg that keeps walking and rests only when the body lies down. The same dictionary gives Chinemukutu as one of the Gumbo chiefs, said to have walked with a quiver of arrows until the name stuck.
Gumbo mutupo unobva panhengo yemhuka, gumbo. Detembo ravo rinoti vanoera gumbo remombe asi vanodya mutumbi wayo. Mazita akaita saMatangakumwa naMatakuradumbu anorumbidza gumbo nokuti ndiro rinotakura muviri. Detembo rinopedzisa richivabatanidza namaKorekore.
The leg of the cow. The Madyirapanze poem says the clan keeps away from the leg of the cow but eats the rest of its body.
Those who eat outside. The poem says the clan ate outside for fear of the Shiri people (vaidyira panze nokutya vaera Shiri). A Shona dictionary reads the other spelling, Madyirapazhe, as a name for not being stingy, and Gumbo-Madyirapanze as a name saying the clan's ancestors keep guard over the family against its enemies.
No. Gumbo is the leg, a part of an animal. The Wikipedia article on the Shona and a study note on totems count it among the body-part totems, with Moyo, the heart.
Gumbo Madyirapanze.
Traditionally, people of the same mutupo and chidawo do not marry: they are counted as one family. Between different Gumbo clans some families allow it, often after a ceremony that cuts the kinship (kucheka ukama).
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