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Nguni diviners function as bricoleurs. Amongst other things, the diviner manipulates a repertoire of traditionalist southern Nguni concepts concerning the ancestors, witches, and associated beliefs and rites to recreate, at one and the same remove, the social and symbolic orders of clients. Typical of the bricoleur is the use of whatever is handy and accessible - myths, beliefs, traditions, concrete objects, culture in the widest sense of the term - to communicate ideas and convey understandings to others. The bricoleur manipulates the received idiom and thus works predominantly with signs and symbols, metonymy and mataphor, switching between these codes to convey the requisite message (Herst 1990:156). The bricoleur or diviner frequently repositions these elements and, in their new use, they become condensed expressions of necessary relations. The diviner thus builds structures by fitting together the remains of events (Levi-Strauss 1966). (Prins 1996:216)

"The characteristic feature of mythical thought is that it expresses itself by means of a heterogeneous repertoire which, even if extensive, is nevertheless limited. It has to use this repertoire, however, whatever the task in hand, because it has nothing else at its disposal. Mythical thought is therefore a kind of intellectual 'bricolage'...Like 'bricolage' on the technical plane, mythical reflection can reach brilliant unforeseen results on the intellectual plane." -- Levi-Strauss, THE SAVAGE MIND, p. 17.