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The Bantu peoples, or Bantu, are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct
ethnic groups An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
who speak
Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...
. They are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from
Central Africa Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo ...
to
Southeast Africa Southeast Africa or Southeastern Africa is an African region that is intermediate between East Africa and Southern Africa. It comprises the countries Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania ...
and into
Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number o ...
. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of the total world population). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g. the people of Rwanda and Burundi (25 million), the
Baganda The Ganda people, or Baganda (endonym: ''Baganda''; singular ''Muganda''), are a Bantu ethnic group native to Buganda, a subnational kingdom within Uganda. Traditionally composed of 52 clans (although since a 1993 survey, only 46 are official ...
people A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
of Uganda (10 million as of 2019), the
Shona Shona often refers to: * Shona people, a Southern African people * Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today Shona may also refer to: * ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing * Shona (given name) * S ...
of Zimbabwe (15 million ), the Zulu of South Africa (12 million ), the
Luba Luba may refer to: Geography *Kingdom of Luba, a pre-colonial Central African empire * Ľubá, a village and municipality in the Nitra region of south-west Slovakia *Luba, Abra, a municipality in the Philippines *Luba, Equatorial Guinea, a town ...
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (7 million ), the Sukuma of Tanzania (9 million ), the
Kikuyu Kikuyu or Gikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) mostly refers to an ethnic group in Kenya or its associated language. It may also refer to: * Kikuyu people, a majority ethnic group in Kenya *Kikuyu language, the language of Kikuyu people *Kikuyu, Kenya, a town in Cent ...
of Kenya (8.1 million ), the
Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...
people of Southern Africa (8.1 million as of 2011), or the Pedi of South Africa (5.7 million as of 2017) and the tonga illa and lenge of Zambia at about (4.2 million)


Etymology

Abantu is the Zulu word for people. It is the plural of the word 'umuntu', meaning 'person', and is based on the stem '--ntu', plus the plural prefix 'aba'. In Latin, the words "Abantea", "Abanteum", and "Abanteus" have been found in ancient writings having various meanings, one of which is "an Ethiopian". In linguistics, the word ''Bantu'', for the language families and its speakers, is an artificial term based on the reconstructed
Proto-Bantu Proto-Bantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Bantu languages, a subgroup of the Southern Bantoid languages. It is thought to have originally been spoken in West/Central Africa in the area of what is now Cameroon.Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. ( ...
term for "people" or "humans". It was first introduced into modern academia (as ''Bâ-ntu'') by
Wilhelm Bleek Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (8 March 1827 – 17 August 1875) was a German linguist. His work included ''A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages'' and his great project jointly executed with Lucy Lloyd: The Bleek and Lloyd Archive o ...
in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his ''Comparative Grammar'' of 1862. The name was said to be coined to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural
noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some a ...
prefix '' *ba-'' categorizing "people", and the
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
''*ntʊ̀ -'' "some (entity), any" (e.g. Zulu "person", "people", "thing", "things"). There is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an
ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
. People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms, which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for the larger ethno-linguistic phylum named by 19th century European linguists. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups self-identifying as "people" or "the true people". That is, idiomatically the reflexes of *''bantʊ'' in the numerous languages often have connotations of personal character traits as encompassed under the values system of
ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...
, also known as ''hunhu'' in
Chishona Shona (; sn, chiShona) is a Bantu language of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It was codified by the colonial government in the 1950s. According to ''Ethnologue'', Shona, comprising the Zezuru, Korekore and Karanga dialects, is spoken by about 7 ...
or ''botho'' in
Sesotho Sotho () or Sesotho () or Southern Sotho is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken primarily by the Basotho in Lesotho, where it is the national and official language; South Africa (particularly the Free ...
, rather than just referring to all human beings. The
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
in Proto-Bantu is reconstructed as ''*-ntʊ́''. Versions of the word ''Bantu'' (that is, the root plus the class 2 noun class prefix ''*ba-'') occur in all Bantu languages: for example, as ''bantu'' in
Kikongo Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Angola. It is a tonal language. It was spoken by many of those who were taken from th ...
and Kituba; ''watu'' in Swahili; ''anthu'' in Chichewa; ''batu'' in
Lingala Lingala (Ngala) (Lingala: ''Lingála'') is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree in ...
; ''bato'' in
Kiluba Luba-Katanga, also known as Luba-Shaba and ''Kiluba'' ( lu, Kiluba), is a Bantu language ( Zone L) of Central Africa. It is spoken mostly in the south-east area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by the Luba people. Kiluba is spoken in th ...
; ''bato'' in Duala; ''abanto'' in Gusii; ''andũ'' in
Kamba Kamba may refer to: *Kamba people The Kamba or Akamba (sometimes called Wakamba) people are a Bantu ethnic group who predominantly live in the area of Kenya stretching from Nairobi to Tsavo and north to Embu, in the southern part of the f ...
and
Kikuyu Kikuyu or Gikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) mostly refers to an ethnic group in Kenya or its associated language. It may also refer to: * Kikuyu people, a majority ethnic group in Kenya *Kikuyu language, the language of Kikuyu people *Kikuyu, Kenya, a town in Cent ...
; ''abantu'' in
Kirundi Kirundi, also known as Rundi, is a Bantu language spoken by some 9 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, as well as in Kenya. It is the official language of Burundi. K ...
,
Lusoga Soga, or Lusoga, is a Bantu language spoken by the Soga people of the Busoga region in Eastern Uganda. With over three million speakers, it is one of the major languages of Uganda, after English, Swahili, and Luganda. However, it is largely re ...
, Zulu,
Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...
,
Runyoro The Nyoro language (autonym: ''Runyoro'') is a Bantu language spoken by the Nyoro people of Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by th ...
and
Luganda The Ganda language or Luganda (, , ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 10 million Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda including ...
; ''wandru'' in Shingazidja; ''abantru'' in
Mpondo The Mpondo People or simply AmaMpondo, is one of the kingdoms in what is now the Eastern Cape.Mpondo people
and
Ndebele Ndebele may refer to: *Southern Ndebele people, located in South Africa *Northern Ndebele people, located in Zimbabwe and Botswana Languages * Southern Ndebele language, the language of the South Ndebele *Northern Ndebele language Northern ...
; ''bãthfu'' in
Phuthi Phuthi (''Síphùthì'') is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border. The closest substantial living relative of Phuthi is Swati (or ''Siswati''), spoken in Eswatini and the Mp ...
; ''bantfu'' in Swati and Bhaca; ''banhu'' in kisukuma; ''banu'' in
Lala Lala may refer to: Geography * Lala language (disambiguation) Places * Lala (Naples Metro), an underground metro station in Naples, Italy * Lala, Assam, a town in Assam, India * Lala, Ilam, a village in Ilam Province, Iran * Lala, Lanao del ...
; ''vanhu'' in
Shona Shona often refers to: * Shona people, a Southern African people * Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today Shona may also refer to: * ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing * Shona (given name) * S ...
and
Tsonga Tsonga may refer to: * Tsonga language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa * Tsonga people, a large group of people living mainly in southern Mozambique and South Africa. * Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (; born 17 April 1985) i ...
; ''batho'' in
Sesotho Sotho () or Sesotho () or Southern Sotho is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken primarily by the Basotho in Lesotho, where it is the national and official language; South Africa (particularly the Free ...
,
Tswana Tswana may refer to: * Tswana people, the Bantu speaking people in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern Africa regions * Tswana language, the language spoken by the (Ba)Tswana people * Bophuthatswana, the former ba ...
and
Northern Sotho Northern Sotho, or as an endonym, is a Sotho-Tswana language spoken in the northeastern provinces of South Africa. It is sometimes referred to as or , its main dialect, through synecdoche. According to the South African National Census o ...
; ''antu'' in
Meru Meru may refer to: Geography Kenya * Meru, Kenya, a city in Meru County, Kenya ** Meru County, created by the merger of *** Meru Central District *** Meru North District *** Meru South District * Meru National Park, a Kenyan wildlife park T ...
; ''andu'' in Embu; ''vandu'' in some
Luhya Luhya or Abaluyia may refer to: * Luhya people * Luhya language Luhya (; also Luyia, Luhia or Luhiya) is a Bantu language of western Kenya. Dialects The various Luhya tribes speak several related languages and dialects, though some of them are ...
dialects; ''vhathu'' in
Venda Venda () was a Bantustan in northern South Africa, which is fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black homeland, Gazankulu. It is now part of the ...
and ''bhandu'' in Nyakyusa.


History


Origins and expansion

Bantu languages are theorised to derive from the Proto-Bantu reconstructed language, estimated to have been spoken about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago in
West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
/
Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
Africa (the area of modern-day Cameroon). They were supposedly spread across Central,
East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
and Southern Africa in the so-called Bantu expansion, a comparatively rapid dissemination taking roughly two millennia and dozens of human generations during the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD, This concept has often been framed as a mass-migration, but
Jan Vansina Jan Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017) was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was ...
and others have argued that it was actually a cultural spread and not the movement of any specific populations that could be defined as an enormous group simply on the basis of common language traits. The geographical shape and course of the Bantu expansion remains debated. Two main scenarios are proposed: an early expansion to Central Africa and a single origin of the dispersal radiating from there, or an early separation into an eastward and a southward wave of dispersal, with one wave moving across the Congo Basin toward East Africa, and another moving south along the African coast and the
Congo River The Congo River ( kg, Nzâdi Kôngo, french: Fleuve Congo, pt, Rio Congo), formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge ...
system toward Angola. Genetic analysis shows a significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. According to the early-split scenario as described in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached the Congo rainforest by about 1500 BC and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the
Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lak ...
by 1000 BC, expanding further from there as the rich environment supported dense populations. Possible movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region could have been more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, because of comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Recent archeological and linguistic evidence about population movements suggests that pioneering groups would have had reached parts of modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa sometime prior to the 3rd century AD along the coast and the modern Northern Cape by AD 500. Under the Bantu expansion migration hypothesis, various Bantu-speaking peoples would have assimilated and/or displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as
Pygmy In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a pop ...
groups in Central Africa, the
Hadza people The Hadza, or Hadzabe (''Wahadzabe'' in Swahili), are a Tanzanian indigenous ethnic group mostly based in southwest Karatu District of Arusha Region. They live around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau ...
in northern Tanzania, and various
Khoisan Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in t ...
populations across southern Africa retaining autonomous existence into the era of European contact. Archeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Bantu speaking migrants would have also interacted with some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly
Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
),Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Adisa Usman, ''Movements, borders, and identities in Africa'', (University Rochester Press: 2009), pp.4-5. as well as
Nilotic The Nilotic peoples are people indigenous to the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. Among these are the Burun-sp ...
and Central Sudanic speaking groups. Cattle terminology in use amongst the relatively few modern Bantu pastoralist groups suggests that the acquisition of cattle may have been from Central Sudanic,
Kuliak The Kuliak languages, also called the Rub languages,Ehret, Christopher (2001) ''A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan'' (SUGIA, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika: Beihefte 12), Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, . are a group of lan ...
and
Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
-speaking neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in the area. Cattle terminology in southern African Bantu languages differs from that found among more northerly Bantu speaking peoples. One recent suggestion is that Cushitic speakers had moved south earlier and interacted with the most northerly of Khoisan speakers who acquired cattle from them, and that the earliest arriving Bantu speakers in turn got their initial cattle from Cushitic influenced Khwe speaking people. Under this hypothesis, larger later Bantu speaking immigration subsequently displaced or assimilated that southernmost extension of the range of Cushitic speakers.


Later history

Between the 9th and 15th centuries, Bantu speaking states began to emerge in the Great Lakes region and in the savanna south of the Central African rainforests. The Monomatapa kings built the Great Zimbabwe complex, a civilisation ancestral to the Shona people. Comparable sites in Southern Africa include Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and
Manyikeni Manyikeni is a Mozambican archaeological site, around 52 km west of the coastal city of Vilanculos. The archaeological site dates from the twelfth to seventeenth century. It is believed to be part of the Great Zimbabwe tradition of architec ...
in Mozambique. From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This was the result of several factors such as denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power, while making emigration more difficult); technological developments in economic activity; and new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualization of royalty as the source of national strength and health. Examples of such Bantu states include: the Kingdom of Kongo,
Anziku Kingdom The Anziku Kingdom, also called the Teke Kingdom, the Tyo Kingdom or Tio Kingdom, was a pre-colonial West Central African state of modern Republic of Congo, Gabon and Democratic Republic of Congo. Origins The word Anziku comes from the KiKongo ...
,
Kingdom of Ndongo The Kingdom of Ndongo, formerly known as Angola or Dongo, was an early-modern African state located in what is now Angola. The monarchy, Kingdom of Ndongo is first recorded in the sixteenth century. It was one of multiple vassal states to King ...
, the
Kingdom of Matamba The Kingdom of Matamba (1631–1744) was an African state located in what is now the Baixa de Cassange region of Malanje Province of modern-day Angola. It was a powerful kingdom that long resisted Portuguese colonisation attempts and was only in ...
the
Kuba Kingdom The Kuba Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Bakuba or Bushongo, is a traditional kingdom in Central Africa. The Kuba Kingdom flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries in the region bordered by the Sankuru, Lulua, and Kasai rivers ...
, the
Lunda Empire The Nation of Lunda (c. 1665 – c. 1887) was a confederation of states in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, north-eastern Angola, and north-western Zambia, its central state was in Katanga. Origin Initially, the core of what would ...
, the Luba Empire, Barotse Empire, Kazembe Kingdom,
Mbunda Kingdom The Mbunda Kingdom ( Mbunda: ''Chiundi ca Mbunda'' or ''Vumwene vwa Chiundi'' or Portuguese: ''Reino dos Bundas'') was an African kingdom located in west central Africa, what is now south-east Angola. At its greatest extent, it reached from Mit ...
,
Yeke Kingdom The Yeke Kingdom (also called the ''Garanganze'' or ''Garenganze'' kingdom) of the Garanganze people in Katanga, DR Congo, was short-lived, existing from about 1856 to 1891 under one king, Msiri, but it became for a while the most powerful st ...
,
Kasanje Kingdom The Kasanje Kingdom (1620–1910), also known as the Jaga Kingdom, was a Central African state. It was formed in 1620 by a mercenary band of Imbangala, which had deserted the Portuguese ranks. The state gets its name from the leader of the band, Kas ...
,
Empire of Kitara The Kingdom of the Banyakitara, also known as Union of Kitara (Union of Chwezi) or Chwezi Union, and better known as the Kitara Empire, was an empire in East Africa. It existed in the region from around the early bronze age to about 500 C.E. ...
, Butooro,
Bunyoro Bunyoro or Bunyoro-Kitara is a Bantu kingdom in Western Uganda. It was one of the most powerful kingdoms in Central and East Africa from the 13th century to the 19th century. It is ruled by the King ('' Omukama'') of Bunyoro-Kitara. The cur ...
, Buganda, Busoga,
Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
, Burundi, Ankole, the Kingdom of Mpororo, the
Kingdom of Igara The Kingdom of Igara traces its origin from the Kingdom of Mpororo in southwest Uganda. Igara is now the name of a county in Bushenyi District, surrounding the town of Ishaka. The Kingdom of Mpororo dates back in 1650 and was established by great ...
, the Kingdom of Kooki, the
Kingdom of Karagwe Karagwe Kingdom is in north-western Tanzania between Rwanda and Lake Victoria. Karagwe Kingdom was influential kingdom in the history of East Africa led by a hereditary of Kings and chief said to have descended from the Bachwezi. It enjoy ...
, Swahili city states, the
Mutapa Empire The Kingdom of Mutapa – sometimes referred to as the Mutapa Empire, Mwenemutapa, ( sn, Mwene we Mutapa, pt, Monomotapa) – was an African kingdom in Zimbabwe, which expanded to what is now modern-day Mozambique. The Portuguese term ''Mon ...
, the Zulu Kingdom, the Ndebele Kingdom,
Mthethwa Empire The Mthethwa Paramountcy, sometimes referred to as the ''Mtetwa'' or Mthethwa Empire, was a Southern African state that arose in the 18th century south of Delagoa Bay and inland in eastern southern Africa. "Mthethwa" means "the one who rules". ...
, Tswana city states,
Mapungubwe The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (or Maphungubgwe) (c. 1075–c. 1220) was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda ...
, Kingdom of Eswatini, the
Kingdom of Butua The Kingdom of Butua or Butwa (c. 1450–1683) was a pre-colonial African state located in what is now southwestern Zimbabwe. Butua was renowned as the source of gold for Arab and Portuguese traders. The region was first mentioned in Portugues ...
,
Maravi Maravi was a kingdom which straddled the current borders of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, in the 16th century. The present-day name " Maláŵi" is said to derive from the Chewa word "malaŵí", which means "flames". History At its greatest ex ...
,
Danamombe Danangombe (formerly Dhlo-Dhlo or Ndlo Dlo, alternative spellings Danamombe per National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, Dananombe and Danan'ombe) is a Zimbabwean archaeological site, about eighty kilometres from Gweru, in the direction of Bula ...
,
Khami Khami (also written as ''Khame'', ''Kame'' or ''Kami'') is a ruined city located 22 kilometres west of Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe. It was once the capital of the Kingdom of Butwa of the Torwa dynasty. It is now a national monument, and became a UN ...
,
Naletale Naletale (or Nalatale) are ruins located about 25 kilometres east of Shangani in Matabeleland north, Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi ...
,
Kingdom of Zimbabwe The Kingdom of Zimbabwe (c. 1220–1450) was a medieval Shona ( Karanga) kingdom located in modern-day Zimbabwe. Its capital, today's Masvingo (meaning fortified), which is commonly called Great Zimbabwe, is the largest stone structure in p ...
and the
Rozwi Empire The Rozvi Empire (1684–1866) was a Shona state established on the Zimbabwean Plateau by Changamire Dombo. The term "Rozvi" refers to their legacy as a warrior nation, taken from the Shona term ''kurozva'', "to plunder". They became the mos ...
. On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
traders,
Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islan ...
being an important part in the
Indian Ocean slave trade The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the East African slave trade or Arab slave trade, was multi-directional slave trade and has changed over time. Africans were sent as slaves to the Middle East, to Indian Ocean islands (including Ma ...
. The
Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people inhabiting the Swahili coast. This littoral area encompasses Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique, as well as the adjacent islands of Zanzibar and Comoros and some parts of Malawi. They speak Swah ...
that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many
Afro-Arab Afro-Arabs are Arabs of full or partial Black African descent. These include populations within mainly the Sudanese, Emiratis, Yemenis, Saudis, Omanis, Sahrawis, Mauritanians, Algerians, Egyptians and Moroccans, with considerably long est ...
members of the Bantu Swahili people. With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Zanzibar, Kenya, and Tanzania – a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast – the Bantu Swahili language contains many
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s as a result of these interactions. The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
,Cambridge World History of Slaver
The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The ancient Mediterranean world. By Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge. pg. 76
(2011), accessed February 15, 2012
the
Malagasy people The Malagasy (french: Malgache) are an Austronesian-speaking African ethnic group native to the island country of Madagascar. Traditionally, the population have been divided by subgroups (tribes or ethnicities). Examples include "Highlander" ...
showing Bantu admixture, and their
Malagasy language Malagasy (; ) is an Austronesian language and the national language of Madagascar. Malagasy is the westernmost Malayo-Polynesian language, brought to Madagascar by the settlement of Austronesian peoples from the Sunda islands around the 5th c ...
Bantu loans. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of
Zanj Zanj ( ar, زَنْج, adj. , ''Zanjī''; fa, زنگی, Zangi) was a name used by medieval Muslim geographers to refer to both a certain portion of Southeast Africa (primarily the Swahili Coast) and to its Bantu inhabitants. This word is al ...
slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the
Sultanate of Zanzibar The Sultanate of Zanzibar ( sw, Usultani wa Zanzibar, ar, سلطنة زنجبار , translit=Sulṭanat Zanjībār), also known as the Zanzibar Sultanate, was a state controlled by the Sultan of Zanzibar, in place between 1856 and 1964. The Su ...
. With the arrival of European colonialists, the Zanzibar Sultanate came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili Coast, leading eventually to the fall of the Sultanate and the end of slave trading on the Swahili Coast in the mid-20th century.


List of Bantu groups by country


Use in South Africa

In the 1920s, relatively liberal South Africans, missionaries, and the small black intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native". After
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the National Party governments adopted that usage officially, while the growing African nationalist movement and its liberal allies turned to the term "African" instead, so that "Bantu" became identified with the policies of
apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
. By the 1970s this so discredited "Bantu" as an ethno-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans, at about the same time that the
Black Consciousness Movement The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Afri ...
led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all non-European South Africans (Bantus, Khoisan,
Coloureds Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...
and Indians). In modern South Africa the word's connection to apartheid has become so discredited that it is only used in its original linguistic meaning. Examples of South African usages of "Bantu" include: # One of South Africa's politicians of recent times, General Bantubonke Harrington Holomisa (Bantubonke is a
compound noun A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their ...
meaning "all the people"), is known as
Bantu Holomisa Bantubonke Harrington Holomisa (born 25 July 1955) is a South African Member of Parliament and President of the United Democratic Movement. Holomisa was born in Mqanduli, Cape Province. He joined the Transkei Defence Force in 1976 and had b ...
. # The South African apartheid governments originally gave the name "
bantustan A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now ...
s" to the eleven rural reserve areas intended for nominal independence to deny indigenous Bantu South Africans citizenship. "Bantustan" originally reflected an analogy to the various ethnic "-stans" of Western and Central Asia. Again association with apartheid discredited the term, and the South African government shifted to the politically appealing but historically deceptive term "ethnic homelands". Meanwhile, the anti-apartheid movement persisted in calling the areas bantustans, to drive home their political illegitimacy. # The abstract noun ''
ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...
'', humanity or humaneness, is derived regularly from the Nguni noun stem ''-ntu'' in Xhosa, Zulu and Ndebele. In Swati the stem is ''-ntfu'' and the noun is ''buntfu''. # In the Sotho–Tswana languages of Southern Africa, ''batho'' is the cognate term to Nguni ''abantu'', illustrating that such cognates need not actually look like the ''-ntu'' root exactly. The early
African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...
had a newspaper called ''Abantu-Batho'' from 1912 to 1933, which carried columns written in English, Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa.


Gallery

File:Kongo people2.jpg,
Kongo Congo or The Congo may refer to either of two countries that border the Congo River in central Africa: * Democratic Republic of the Congo, the larger country to the southeast, capital Kinshasa, formerly known as Zaire, sometimes referred to a ...
youth and adults in Kinshasa,
Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
File:Kikyuyu-woman.jpeg, A Kikuyu woman in
Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...
File:Mozambique001.jpg, A
Makua Makua may refer to: * Makua (person), an alaafin of the Oyo Empire * Makua people, an ethnic group in Mozambique and Tanzania * Makhuwa language, a Bantu language spoken in Mozambique * Makua languages, a branch of Bantu languages * Makua Rothman ...
mother and child in
Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
File:Bubi children.jpg,
Bubi BuBi (officially: MOL BuBi) is a bicycle sharing network in Budapest, Hungary. Its name is a playful contraction Budapest and Bicikli (bicycle in Hungarian), meaning "bubble" in an endearing manner. As of May 2019 the network consists of 143 dock ...
girls in Equatorial Guinea


See also


Notes


References

* Christopher Ehret, ''An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400'', James Currey, London, 1998 * Christopher Ehret and Merrick Posnansky, eds., ''The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History'', University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982 * April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon, ''Understanding Contemporary Africa'', Lynne Riener, London, 1996 * John M. Janzen, ''Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa'', University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992 * James L. Newman, ''The Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Interpretation'', Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995. . * Kevin Shillington, ''History of Africa'', 3rd ed. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005 * Jan Vansina, ''Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa'', University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1990 *
Jan Vansina Jan Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017) was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was ...
, "New linguistic evidence on the expansion of Bantu", ''Journal of African History'' 36:173–195, 1995


External links


bantu vibes
a Facebook page for Bantu people {{Authority control