FIELD FILE · MNGWABIG CATREGIONAL LEGEND

Mngwa

Also known as Nunda, “The Strange One”, Brindled cat of the Tanzanian coast

A donkey-sized, tabby-striped man-eating cat of Tanzania’s southern coast, blamed for killings in colonial-era Lindi but never identified.

The mngwa – sometimes called the nunda – is a giant, silent cat said to stalk the dense coastal bush and coconut groves of southern Tanzania. Swahili-speaking fishing communities describe it as grey or brindled like a tabby, as big as a donkey, and more fearsome than any lion. Its name is often glossed as “the strange one”, which captures how it is spoken of: not a lion, not a leopard, but something else.

Its best-known champion in English was Captain William Hichens, a former colonial intelligence and administrative officer in Tanganyika. In a 1937 article for the London magazine Discovery, he insisted that local hunters, who could tell a lion from a leopard at a glance, named the mngwa as a separate animal in their songs and stories. He quoted an old Swahili hunting verse that mentions being devoured by the mngwa, and claimed the beast had been feared on the coast for centuries.

Hichens described two cases he handled himself. At Mchinga, a small coastal village, a respected local hunter was carried in on a litter, terribly mauled, and swore a mngwa had attacked him. At Lindi, a beast prowled the town for nights, killing several villagers and finally a police officer on duty at the market; the police were too frightened to stand guard, and the animal was never caught. Later cryptozoology books added details – grey hairs clutched in victims’ hands, enormous pug marks – that are hard to trace to any original record.

No specimen, photograph or skin of a mngwa has ever been produced, and modern reports are essentially absent. The legend survives in Tanzanian folklore and in the cryptozoology literature, where it is often discussed alongside the king cheetah – a striped “mystery cat” of Zimbabwe that did turn out to be real, though only as a rare coat pattern of a known species.

Type

Big cat

Status

Regional legend

First reported

1937

Best-known location

Coastal forest near Lindi and Mchinga, southern Tanzania

Also called

Nunda, “The Strange One”, Brindled cat of the Tanzanian coast

Reported in

Tanzania

What witnesses describe

A huge cat, said to be the size of a donkey, with grey or brindled, tabby-like stripes that look almost uniform from a distance. It is described as silent, stealthy and extremely aggressive, attacking people at night.

Where and when it’s seen

Thick coastal thicket, forest patches and coconut plantations around fishing villages on the southern Tanzanian coast, especially near Lindi and Mchinga. Attacks are reported at night.

Notable sightings

1. December 1937Hichens describes the Lindi killings Lindi, Tanganyika Territory (now Tanzania)

   In Discovery magazine, William Hichens recalled that while he was serving on the coast, an animal locals called a mngwa prowled Lindi at night, killing several villagers and a police officer posted at the market. Patrols were doubled but the animal was never trapped or shot.

2. December 1937The hunter of Mchinga Mchinga, Lindi Region, Tanzania

   In the same article Hichens described a skilled local hunter brought to him terribly mauled, who insisted the attacker was a mngwa rather than a lion or leopard. Hichens took this as strong evidence because the man had often tracked big cats for Europeans.

What could explain it?

• Lions or leopards: unusually large, pale or oddly marked individuals – including man-eaters – are the most obvious candidates, and mauling injuries from big cats are hard to tell apart.
• Unusual coat patterns: the king cheetah, once thought to be a mystery species, proved to be a cheetah with a rare striped mutation, showing how a known cat can look entirely new.
• Larger-than-usual African golden cats were suggested by the cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, though this forest species is far smaller than the mngwa is said to be.
• Human killers and fear of sorcery: colonial-era Africa had documented cases of killings staged to look like big-cat attacks, and a mysterious beast can be a way of talking about violence attributed to witchcraft.

Legend, culture and tourism

The mngwa belongs to the oral tradition of the Swahili coast, where it appears in hunting songs and night-time stories. It has a modest afterlife in cryptozoology books and is often grouped with other “mystery cats” of Africa. There is no tourism around it, but Lindi and nearby Kilwa are rich in Swahili history.

Places to visit

Where it’s reported

Tanzania Lindi

Mngwa in the news

No recent headlines about the Mngwa. Our news desk checks every day — see all cryptid news.

First published October 13, 2026 · Updated October 14, 2026