Nyaminyami, the Zambezi river god

A river god of the Tonga people along the Zambezi, pictured with a serpent's body and a fish's head. A 2020 study reports that many believed he opposed the building of the Kariba dam.

Nyaminyami, also written Nyami Nyami, is a god of the Zambezi River. Wikipedia counts him among the chief gods of those living along the river, a protector who sustains them through hard times, and says he is usually shown as male. Alexandra Campbell and Michael Paye (Humanities, 2020), citing Chikozho and colleagues (2015), describe him as central to Tonga cosmology, guarding river communities and the health of the Zambezi, with a serpent's body and a fish's head. Jono Terry's 2021 photo essay for PhMuseum gives him a tiger fish head.

The travel site Zambia Tourism says the name Kariba comes from kariva, meaning trap, the name of a rock that juts from the water at the mouth of the gorge close to where the dam wall was built, and which now lies more than 30 metres under water. In many stories, the site says, that rock was Nyaminyami's home, and he pulled under for good anyone who came close. PhMuseum gives kariva as a local name for a stone beside the gorge, under the rapids 350 miles below Victoria Falls, where the god was believed to live.

Campbell and Paye write that, according to Chikozho and colleagues, the local Tonga took the severe floods that hit the dam's construction as Nyaminyami's doing. He was called on as a figure of resistance, since many held that he opposed the dam and would bring it down.