In this widely told southern African account of how death came into the world, uNkulunkulu, moved by concern for the people he has created, decides to send them word that they will not die, and chooses the chameleon as his messenger, since the chameleon was present at creation and is treated in many regional versions as an animal of particular, if slow, significance. The chameleon sets out toward the people carrying this message of life, but moves with its characteristic deliberate slowness, and further delays itself along the way by stopping to eat purple berries, or in some tellings amasi, curdled milk, losing valuable time it does not realize it cannot spare.
Growing impatient at the chameleon's slow progress, or in some versions simply reconsidering the wisdom of promising humanity immortality at all, uNkulunkulu changes his mind and sends a second messenger, the lizard, after the chameleon, this time carrying the opposite news: that people will indeed die, a message the lizard is instructed to deliver, or in some tellings simply decides to deliver, without the chameleon's knowledge that its own errand has been overtaken.
Some regional retellings vary the pair of messengers, substituting a snail or a toad for the chameleon and a different fast-moving lizard or salamander for the second messenger, but the underlying structure, one slow herald carrying good news and one fast herald carrying bad news, remains constant across the versions that circulate in different Zulu- and Xhosa-speaking communities.