Mamlambo

Mamlambo is a deity in South African and Zulu mythology known as the 'goddess of rivers', typically described as a large snake-like creature.Over the years there have been many sightings of Mamlambo, including one in 1997, wherein villages reported that they had seen a creature with the head of a horse, the lower body of a fish, short legs, and the neck of a snake, and that it shone with a green light at night. During the period between January and April 1997, as many as nine deaths had been attributed to the Mamlambo. According to police, the victims had been in the water a while and had the soft parts of their head and necks eaten by crabs; local villagers, on the other hand, claimed that these mutilations had been caused by the Mamlambo's habit of eating faces and brains. For this reason, the Mamlambo is often referred to as 'the Brain Sucker'. The Mamlambo tends to be associated with Western forms of prosperity, like money, so she is often depicted as a Western mermaid. She has arisen in part from a sense of disconnection to a traditional, communal way of life, inequalities and imbalances in the social order, and the lure of Western materialism.