Hungwe · fish eagle
Hungwe is the fish eagle, a bird totem also called Shiri. A Shona dictionary describes it as a white-headed eagle that lives by catching fish, and the Zimbabwe Bird on the national flag is modelled on it. It is kept by the Hungwe Matapatira clan, greeted as Hungwe, Chasura and Maokomavi.
The Matapatira poem greets its clan as Shiri, the bird, and as Hungwe and Matapira, the child of Chasura, and calls it the one who travels by the sky (Ziendanomudenga, Chifambanokudenga). It calls the hungwe a white bird and a bird that brings no ill omen to people, praises the clan as Mudyanavana, one who eats with the children, and warns that to withhold from children brings bad luck.
The Mitupo 2025 collection prints a second poem in its Hungwe section, Zenda Simbirori, for a clan that also calls itself Hungwe and Matapatira. It shares the flight through the sky (vanofamba nomudenga) but names its own people: the child of Buru, the people of Chipadze, resting at Chipinduramhuka, their hill.
Hungwe mutupo weshiri, inonziwo Shiri. Duramazwi rinoti hungwe ishiri yorudzi rwegondo ine musoro muchena, inorarama nokubata hove. Detembo reMatapatira rinoiti shiri chena isina shura nomunhu, Ziendanomudenga. Shiri yeZimbabwe iri pamureza inomirira hungwe.
The Wikipedia article on the Shona names the Hungwe (fish eagle) dynasties among those that ruled from Great Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe Bird on the national flag, the coins and school badges is the hungwe: a stone carving whose image was taken from Great Zimbabwe, modelled on the African fish eagle, linked with the nation's ancestral spirits and sometimes called Shiri yaMwari.
Shona people (Wikipedia print), p. 3; Dada Nerurimi RwaAmai, Danho II Vol. 2, p. 89; Dada Nerurimi RwaAmai, Danho II Vol. 2, p. 90
The fish eagle. The Wikipedia article on the Shona and a study note on totems gloss hungwe that way, and a Shona dictionary describes it as a white-headed eagle that lives by catching fish. It is not the warthog: that is humba, a separate totem.
Yes. The stone bird on the flag, the coins and school badges is the hungwe, modelled on the African fish eagle and sometimes called Shiri yaMwari.
A Shona school textbook says the hungwe foretold death or the coming of rain, and that fighters in the liberation war watched it, with the chapungu, to tell where the enemy was coming from. The Matapatira poem, by contrast, calls it a bird that brings no ill omen to people.
Hungwe Matapatira.
Traditionally, people of the same mutupo and chidawo do not marry: they are counted as one family. Between different Hungwe clans some families allow it, often after a ceremony that cuts the kinship (kucheka ukama).
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