Though in all this there is considerable romance, there is no evidence
of romantic love. But how about love-charms, poems, and stories?
According to Grout (171), love-charms are not unknown in Zulu land.
They are made of certain herbs or barks, reduced to a powder, and sent
by the hand of some unsuspected friend to be given in a pinch of
snuff, deposited in the dress, or sprinkled upon the person of the
party whose favor is to be won. But love-powders argue a very
materialistic way of regarding love and tell us nothing about
sentiments. A hint at something more poetic is given by the Rev. J.
Tyler (61), who relates that flowers are often seen on Zulu heads, and
that one of them, the "love-making posy," is said to foster "love."
Unfortunately that is all the information he gives us on this
particular point, and the further details supplied by him (120-22)
dash all hopes of finding traces of sentiment. The husband "eats
alone," and when the wife brings him a drink of home-made beer "she
must first sip to show there is no 'death in the pot.'" While he
guzzles beer, loafs, smokes, and gossips, she has to do all the work
at home as well as in the field, carrying her child on her back and
returning in the evening with a bundle of firewood on her head. "In
the winter the natives assemble almost daily for drinking and dancing,
and these orgies are accompanied by the vilest obscenities and evil
practices."
As regards poems Wallaschek remarks (6) that "the Kaffir in his poetry
only recognizes a threefold subject: war, cattle, and excessive
adulation of his ruler." One Kaffir love-poem, or rather
marriage-poem, I have been able to find (Shooter, 236), and it is
delightfully characteristic:
We tell you to dig well,
Come, girl of ours,
Bring food and eat it;
Fetch fire-wood
And don't be lazy.