According to Zulu folklore, Abatwa is a mythical people of dwarfs who move under the tall grass and sleep in anthills.

The Abatwa are very much smaller people than all other small people; they go under the grass and sleep in anthills; they go in the mist; they live in the up-country, in the rocks; they have no village of which you may say «There is a village of the Abatwa». Their village is where they kill game; they consume the whole of it and go away. That is their mode of life.

But it happens if a man is on a journey and comes suddenly on an Umutwa (singular of Abatwa), the Umutwa asks, «Where did you see me?» But at first through their want of intercourse with the Abatwa a man spoke the truth and said, «I saw you in this very place». Therefore the Umutwa was angry, through supposing himself to be despised by the man, and shot him with his arrow, and he died. Therefore it was seen that they like to be magnified and hate their littleness. So then, when a man met with them, he saluted the one he met with, «I saw you!» (the customary Zulu greeting, «Sa-ku-bona»). The Umutwa said, «When did you see me? ’ The man replied, «I saw you when I was just appearing yonder. You see yon mountain? I saw you then, when I was on it». So the Umutwa rejoiced, saying, «O, then, I have become great». Such then became the mode of saluting them.

Given to the late Bishop Callaway by Umpengula Mbanda (1477: p.262)

There is a little addition to this account, which, whether originally a part of it or not, belongs to a comparatively recent period, since it assumes, as a matter of course, that the Abatwa possess horses.

It is said, when Abatwa are on a journey, when the game is come to an end where they have lived, they mount on a horse, beginning on the neck, till they reach the tail, sitting one behind the other. If they do not find any game, they eat the horse.

Given to the late Bishop Callaway by Umpengula Mbanda (1477: p.262-263)

Their «dreadfulness», according to Umpengula, lies in their very insignificance:

They are little things, which go under the grass. And a man goes looking in front of him, thinking, «If there come a man or a wild beast, I shall see». And, forsooth, an Umutwa is there, under the grass; and the man feels when he is already pierced by an arrow; he looks, but does not see the man who shot it. It is this, then, that takes away the strength.

Given to the late Bishop Callaway by Umpengula Mbanda (1477: p.263)

Their arrows, too, are always poisoned, so that the slightest wound is fatal, and thus it is no wonder if they were felt to be something not altogether human.

Bishop Callaway adds in a note: «But they are not Bushmen which are here described, but apparently pixies or some race much more diminutive than the actual Bushmen. Yet the resemblance is sufficiently good to make it almost certain that we have a traditional description of the first intercourse between the Zulus and that people.»

Further comparative research shows that the doubt here conveyed was needless. These Abatwa are certainly the real Bushmen, though they have passed into the region of mythology.

This name, under various easily recognisable forms, is found in many parts of Africa; sometimes applied to actual pygmies, sometimes to people who are not particularly dwarfish, but also resemble the Bushmen in their mode of life, or have other characteristics in common with them. Thus the (Bantu) Pokomo of the Tana River call the Wasanye Wahwa, and there are people called Batwa living in the marshes of Lake Bangweolo, who cannot be described as pygmies.

But everywhere, the name seems to be given by the present population of the country to some earlier inhabitants. The Watwa of Urundi consider themselves, says Père Van der Burgt, «the true aborigines of the country. They are ... hunters, smiths, potters, ... nomad, timid, cruel, irascible, greatly given to magic arts, very black, lean, below the middle height, hairy... The Warundi despise them, considering them not men hut beasts».

On the writer’s own showing, however, this can scarcely be accepted as an exhaustive description of the Warundi’s attitude, since the Watwa seem to have the same uncanny attributes as their congeners elsewhere. In their own ritual chants, they call themselves «sons of the stone-men», which, whatever it may mean, seems to hint at a different origin from that of the people among whom they dwell. It is a pity that no further explanation is forthcoming. We have seen that, when African cosmogonies take any account of people other than the narrators, these are frequently said to have «come otherwise» — like the stars in the idea of Browning’s Caliban — also the Hill Damara and the Bushmen.

The Pygmies (Batwa) of the Kasai also «came otherwise» — their progenitors are held to have been the offspring of trees, and the Bangongo informed Mr. Torday that you can still see the great cracks in some trees from which they came out. Tradition tells that Woto, the fourth chief of the Bushongo, having left his people and retired into the forest, on account of the misdeeds of his relations, found himself very lonely and uttered an incantation. Thereupon the trees opened and sent forth a multitude of little beings who, when he asked them what people they were, answered: «Binu batwe!» («we are men») — whence their name. «At the present day», said the informant, «they are human beings and have children like other people, but at that time they were only phantoms in human shape, being the children of the trees».

They are regarded with superstitious terror; even those who have left the forest and settled down to agricultural life are considered more or less dangerous, and the other tribes never intermarry with them (1477: p.262-265).