Makombe · wild pig
Makombe is not an animal's name but an ancestor's: the Humba Nyanguru poem calls its clan the children of Makombe, and the Mitupo 2025 collection prints that poem in a section it pairs with Nguruve, the pig. The animal is humba, the wild pig or warthog. It is kept by the Makombe Nyanguru clan.
The Makombe Nyanguru poem is the same text as the Humba Nyanguru one. It thanks Makombe as forefather (tateguru wangu Makombe) and greets the clan as Humba, Nguruve, Chiunga, Chomera, Mutakurwa and Nyanguru, the child of Matope, at Barwe, at Nyadekese and by the Zambezi. Beside the ancestors it keeps a few proud lines: the hoes are there, but you give them to your servants, and you wiped out another people with bees.
Makombe izita retateguru, kwete remhuka. Detembo reNyanguru rinoti vana vaMakombe, richivakudza seHumba naNguruve. Mhuka yavanoera ihumba, nguruve yomusango. Rinovakwazisa kuBarwe nokuZambezi.
The Humba Nyanguru poem calls its clan the children of Makombe and greets it at Barwe. Bourdillon's study The Shona Peoples gives Makombe as the dynastic title of the rulers of the Barwe state, which held the trade routes from Sena to the interior. It records that the Portuguese defeated the Barwe in 1646 and afterwards treated the Makombe as a subject ruler, though the Barwe kept their independence in practice, and that the Barwe rose against the Portuguese in the late nineteenth century and were finally defeated only in 1917. None of the sources used here says which totem the Makombe kept.
Mitupo: A Collection of Some of Zimbabwe's Totems, p. 24; The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona, With Special Reference to Their Religion, p. 33; The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona, With Special Reference to Their Religion, p. 34
The wild pig or warthog, humba, also called nguruve. Makombe itself is an ancestor: the poem thanks him as its forefather. A study note on totems glosses humba as the wild pig or warthog.
In the poem, the clan's forefather. Bourdillon's study The Shona Peoples gives Makombe as the title of the rulers of the Barwe state, and the poem greets the clan at Barwe; none of the sources used here ties the Barwe rulers to this totem.
Makombe Nyanguru.
Traditionally, people of the same mutupo and chidawo do not marry: they are counted as one family. Between different Makombe clans some families allow it, often after a ceremony that cuts the kinship (kucheka ukama).
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