Umkhonto is the Zulu word for SPEAR, the traditional weapon of war that the Zulus used. The sharp points of the letters face upwards and represent the sharp points of the dangerous spears. The font includes a full 256 character set: all upper and lower case letters, as well as all numerals and punctuation. It also includes the most commonly used characters used in non-English European languages such as Spanish, French, German and Portuguese.

The numerals are mono-spaced so that they will line up correctly in columns of figures. The letters of the alphabet are spaced according to their width and are carefully kerned.