Izibongo is a genre of oral literature among various Bantu peoples of Southern Africa, including the Zulu[1] and the Xhosa.
[3] Noleen Turner distinguished four different categories: the praise of ordinary people (izibongo zabantu kumbe izihasho), of inanimate things (izibongo zezinto ezingaphili); of kings, and of great people (nezibongo zamakhosi/izibongo zabantu abakhulu abagqamile); and of clans (izithakazelo kanye nezibongo).
[1] Opland recognized three topics: people, animals, and objects, and noted that izibongo "is a poetry rooted, in subject and imagery, in the concrete", and that it does not treat landscape or emotion "in the manner of romantic or lyric poetry".
[3] Somadoda Fikeni points out that regarding izibongo as pertaining only to famous people (a Eurocentric paradigm) discredits common people, women, young people—Fineki argues that izibongo is a central element in the life of the people, and that while not everyone can have an "imbongi-public poet", everyone practices izibongo one way or another, since "izibongo form a collective memory, conscience and soul of an African society, and they are spiritually-centered oral narratives which are repositories of Indigenous wisdom".
Izibongo, according to Fikeni, express both a oneness with the universe and a collective memory, and an individuality rooted in history.