Anita Nettleton (Africa the Art of a Continent, 1995, p.226) writing about the present figure states: A similar figure to this in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna [see Barbara Plankensteiner, austausch, Kunst aus dem südlichen Afrika um 1900, 1998, p.118, fig.77] has a much more secure provenance, having been collected by Adolf Eppler in the 1880s among the 'Shangana Kaffirs', i.e. the Transvaal Tsonga. It was also one of a pair, pairs of male and female being typically produced for use in initiation ceremonies.

It might be suggested that this type of figure constitutes the output of a single, highly individualistic carver. The protuberant breasts and marked genitals suggest that this figure was not carved for European patrons, but for use in the community in which it was made. It was possibly made for use in initiation of young men among groups, such as the North Sotho, or of young women among the Venda-speakers, both of whose carving styles appear to have been quite diverse, and whose contacts with vassal Tsonga-speakers in the eastern Transvaal spanned over a century.

These groups used wooden figures as didactic aids in initiation schools, and the explicitness of this figure's genitalia suggest this as the most likely context for its use. It is also likely that, if such figures were made for indigenous use, they would have been clothed with cloth, leather or bead aprons to hide their genital areas when they were not in use, as is the case with many of the securely provenanced Tsonga and Venda figures.

Despite their small size and use of clothing, and contrary to popular belief and academic nomenclature, figures of this type were not used as 'dolls', i.e. as playthings. Moreover, as such figures have never been unambiguously provenanced to Natal, it does not make sense to perpetuate the myth of the notion of 'Zulu' figurative art, through attributing them to this, albeit famous, southern African political grouping.