Bantu peoples

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Bantu
Bantu zones.png
Bantu-speaking areas of Africa, divided into zones following the Guthrie classification.
Regions with significant populations
African Great Lakes, Central Africa, Southern Africa
Languages
Bantu languages (over 535)
Religion
predominantly: Christianity, traditional faiths; minority: Islam
Related ethnic groups
Other Niger–Congo peoples

The Bantu peoples are the speakers of Bantu languages, comprising several hundred indigenous ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa, spread over a vast area from Central Africa across the African Great Lakes to Southern Africa.[1] Linguistically, the Bantu languages belong to the Southern Bantoid branch of Benue–Congo, one of the language families grouped within the Niger–Congo phylum.

The total number of Bantu languages ranges in the hundreds, depending on the definition of "language" vs. "dialect" estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages.[2] The total number of Bantu speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the total population of Africa, or roughly 5% of world population).[3] About 60 million Bantu speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone.

The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g. the Shona of Zimbabwe (12 million as of 2000), the Zulu of South Africa (12 million as of 2005) the Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (7 million as of 2010), the Sukuma of Tanzania (9 million as of 2016), or the Kikuyu of Kenya (7 million as of 2010).

Name[edit]

Map of the major Bantu languages (shown in purple), with the non-Bantu Southern Bantoid languages indicated in violet (northwestern corner)

The word Bantu for the language families and its speakers is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Bantu term for "people" or "humans". It was first introduced (as Bâ-ntu) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858, and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862.[4] The name was coined to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing "people", and the root *ntʊ̀ - "some (entity), any" (e.g. Zulu umuntu "person", abantu "people", into "thing", izinto "things"). There is no native term for the group, as populations refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms but did not have a concept for the larger ethno-linguistic phylum. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups self-identifying as "people" or "the true people".[5] 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, also known as hunhu in Chishona or botho in Sesotho, rather than just referring to all human beings.

The root 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 watu in Swahili; bantu in Kikongo; anthu in Chichewa; batu in Lingala; bato in Kiluba; bato in Duala; abanto in Gusii; andũ in Kamba and Kikuyu; abantu in Kirundi, Zulu, Xhosa, Runyakitara,[6] and Ganda; wandru in Shingazidja; abantru in Mpondo and Ndebele; bãthfu in Phuthi; bantfu in Swati; banu in Lala; vanhu in Shona and Tsonga; batho in Sesotho, Tswana and Northern Sotho; antu in Meru; andu in Embu; vandu in some Luhya dialects; vhathu in Venda; bhandu in Nyakyusa; and mbaityo in Tiv.

History[edit]

Origins and expansion[edit]

1 = 2000–1500 BC origin
2 = ca. 1500 BC first migrations
     2.a = Eastern Bantu,   2.b = Western Bantu
3 = 1000–500 BC Urewe nucleus of Eastern Bantu
47 = southward advance
9 = 500 BC–0 Congo nucleus
10 = 0–1000 AD last phase[7][8][9]

Bantu languages derive from a Proto-Bantu language, estimated to have been spoken about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago in West/Central Africa (the area of modern-day Cameroon). They were supposedly spread across Central, Eastern and Southern Africa in the Bantu expansion, a rapid succession of migrations during the 1st millennium BC,[10] in one wave moving across the Congo basin towards East Africa, in another moving south along the African coast and the Congo River system towards Angola.[11]

The geographical origin of the Bantu expansion is somewhat open to debate. Two main scenarios are proposed, an early expansion to Central Africa, and a single origin of the migration radiating from there, or an early separation into an eastward and a southward wave of migration. [12] Genetic analysis shows a significant clustering of Bantu peoples by region, suggesting admixture from local populations, with the Eastern Bantu forming a separate ancestral cluster, and the Southern Bantu (Venda, Xhosa) showing derivation from Western Bantu by Khoisan admixture and low levels of Eastern Bantu admixture.[13]

According to the early-split scenario described in the 1990s, the southward migration had reached the Central African rain forest by about 1500 BC, and the southern Savannahs by 500 BC, while the eastward migration reached the Great Lakes by 1000 BC, expanding further from there, as the rich environment supported a dense population. Movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region were more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, due to comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Pioneering groups had reached modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa by about AD 300 along the coast, and the modern Northern Province (encompassed within the former province of the Transvaal) by AD 500.[14]

The Bantu peoples assimilated and/or displaced a number of earlier inhabitants that they came across, such as Pygmy and Khoisan populations in the centre and south, respectively. They also encountered some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly Cushitic),[15][16] as well as Nilo-Saharan (mainly Nilotic and Sudanic) groups. As cattle terminology in use amongst the few modern Bantu pastoralist groups suggests, the Bantu migrants would acquire cattle from their new Cushitic neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that Bantus likely borrowed the custom of milking cattle directly from Cushitic peoples in the area.[17] Later interactions between Bantu and Cushitic peoples resulted in Bantu groups with significant Cushitic ethnic admixture, such as the Tutsi of the African Great Lakes region; and culturo-linguistic influences, such as the Herero herdsmen of southern Africa.[18][19]

Later history[edit]

The Bantu Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1630

Between the 14th and 15th centuries, Bantu-speaking states began to emerge in the Great Lakes region and in the savannah south of the Central African rain forest. On the Zambezi river, 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 in Mozambique.

From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This was probably due to denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power, while making emigration more difficult); to technological developments in economic activity; and to new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualization of royalty as the source of national strength and health.[20] Some examples of such Bantu states include: in Central Africa, the Kingdom of Kongo, Lunda Empire, Luba Empire of Angola, the Buganda Kingdoms of Uganda and Tanzania; and in Southern Africa, the Mutapa Empire, the Danamombe, Khami, and Naletale Kingdoms of Zimbabwe and Mozambique[21] and the Rozwi Empire.[22]

On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian traders, Zanzibar being an important port in the Arab slave trade. The Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many Afro-Arab 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 loan-words as a result of these interactions.[23] The Arab slave trade also brought Bantu influence to Madagascar,[24] the Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their Malagasy language Bantu loans.[25] Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj (Bantu) slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the Omani Sultanate of Zanzibar, based in Zanzibar, Tanzania. 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[edit]

Country Total population
(millions, 2015 est.)
% Bantu Bantu population
(millions, 2015 est.)
Zones Bantu groups
Democratic Republic of the Congo 77 80% 62 B, C, D, H, J, K, L, M Kongo people, Mongo, Luba, numerous others ( Ambala, Ambuun, Angba, Babindi, Baboma, Baholo, Balunda, Bangala, Bango, Batsamba, Bazombe, Bemba, Bembe, Bira, Bowa, Dikidiki, Dzing, Fuliru, Havu, Hema, Hima, Hunde, Hutu, Iboko, Kanioka, Kaonde, Kuba, Kumu, Kwango, Lengola, Lokele, Lupu, Lwalwa, Mbala, Mbole, Mbuza (Budja), Nande, Ngoli, Bangoli, Ngombe, Nkumu, Nyanga, Pende, Popoi, Poto, Sango, Shi, Songo, Sukus, Tabwa, Tchokwé, Téké, Tembo, Tetela, Topoke, Tutsi, Ungana, Vira, Wakuti, Yaka, Yakoma, Yanzi, Yeke, Yela, total 80% Bantu)
Tanzania 51 90%? c. 45 E, F, G, J, M, N, P Sukuma, Gogo, Nyamwezi, Nyakyusa-Ngonde, numerous others (majority Bantu)
South Africa 55 75% 40 S Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Ndebele), Basotho (South Sotho), Bapedi (North Sotho), Venda, Tswana, Tsonga, total 75% Bantu
Kenya 46 80% 37 E, J Kikuyu, Luhya, Kamba, Kisii, Meru, Kuria, Aembu, Ambeere, Wadawida-Watuweta, Wapokomo and Mijikenda, numerous others (80% Bantu)
Uganda 37 70%? c. 25 D, J Nkole, Tooro, others (majority Bantu)
Angola 26 97% 25 H, K, R Ovimbundu, Ambundu, Bakongo, Chokwe, Lunda, Ganguela, Ovambo, Herero, Xindonga (97% Bantu)
Malawi 16 99% 16 N Chewa, Nyanja, Tumbuka, Yao, Lomwe, Sena, Tonga, Ngoni, Ngonde
Zambia 15 99% 15 L, M, N Nyanja-Chewa, Bemba, Tonga, Tumbuka, Lunda, Luvale, Kaonde, Nkoya and Lozi, about 70 groups total.
Zimbabwe 14 99% 14 S Shona, Ndebele, numerous minor groups.
Rwanda 11 85% 11 J Hutu
Burundi 10 85% 10 J Hutu
Cameroon 22 30–70% c. 7–15 A more than 130 groups, c. 30% Bantu and 40% Semi-Bantu
Republic of the Congo 5 97% 5 B, C Kongo, Sangha, M'Bochi, Teke
Botswana 2.2 90% 2.0 R, S Tswana or Setswana, Kalanga, 90% Bantu
Equatorial Guinea 2.0 95% 1.9 A Fang, Bubi, 95% Bantu
Lesotho 1.9 99% 1.9 S Sotho
Gabon 1.9 95% 1.8 B Fang, Nzebi, Myene, Kota, Shira, Puru, Kande.
Namibia 2.3 70% 1.6 K, R Ovambo, Kavango, Herero, 70% Bantu
Swaziland 1.1 99% 1.1 S Swazi, Zulu, Tsonga
Somalia 14 7% 1 E Somalian Bantu
Comoros 0.8 99% 0.8 E, G Comorian people
Sub-Saharan Africa 970[26] c. 37% c. 360

Use of the term "Bantu" in South Africa[edit]

A Zulu traditional dancer in Southern Africa

In the 1920s, relatively liberal South Africans, missionaries, and the small black intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native" and more derogatory terms (such as "Kaffir") to refer collectively to Bantu-speaking South Africans. After World War II, 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. 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 led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all non-European South Africans (Bantus, Khoisan, Coloureds, and Indians).

Examples of South African usages of "Bantu" include:

  1. One of South Africa's politicians of recent times, General Bantubonke Harrington Holomisa (Bantubonke is a compound noun meaning "all the people"), is known as Bantu Holomisa.
  2. The South African apartheid governments originally gave the name "bantustans" 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.
  3. The abstract noun ubuntu, 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.
  4. 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 of South Africa had a newspaper called Abantu-Batho from 1912–1933, which carried columns in English, Zulu, Sotho, and Xhosa.

Gallery[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Butt, John J. (2006). The Greenwood Dictionary of World History. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-313-32765-0.
  2. ^ "Guthrie (1967-71) names some 440 Bantu 'varieties', Grimes (2000) has 501 (minus a few 'extinct' or 'almost extinct', Bastin et al. (1999) have 542, Maho (this volume) has some 660, and Mann et al. (1987) have c. 680." Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, p. 2. Ethnologue report for Southern Bantoid lists a total of 535 languages. The count includes 13 Mbam languages which are not always included under "Narrow Bantu".
  3. ^ Total population cannot be established with any accuracy due to the unavailability of precise census data from Sub-Saharan Africa. A number just above 200 million was cited in the early 2000s (see Niger-Congo languages: subgroups and numbers of speakers for a 2007 compilation of data from SIL Ethnologue, citing 210 million). Population estimates for West-Central Africa were recognized as significantly too low by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in 2015 ("World Population Prospects: The 2016 Revision – Key Findings and Advance Tables" (PDF). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. July 2016. Retrieved 26 June 2017.). Population growth in Central-West Africa as of 2015 is estimated at between 2.5% and 2.8% p.a., for an annual increase of the Bantu population by about 8 to 10 million.
  4. ^ Raymond O. Silverstein, "A note on the term 'Bantu' as first used by W. H. I. Bleek", African Studies 27 (1968), 211–212, doi:10.1080/00020186808707298.
  5. ^ R.K.Herbert and R. Bailey in Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa (2002), p. 50.
  6. ^ Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom; ARKBK CLBG. "Banyoro – Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom (Rep. Uganda) – The most powerful Kingdom in East Africa!". Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  7. ^ The Chronological Evidence for the Introduction of Domestic Stock in Southern Africa Archived March 25, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "Botswana History Page 1: Brief History of Botswana". Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  9. ^ "5.2 Historischer Überblick". Archived from the original on 17 January 2010. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
  10. ^ Philip J. Adler, Randall L. Pouwels, World Civilizations: To 1700 Volume 1 of World Civilizations, (Cengage Learning: 2007), p.169.
  11. ^ Pollard, Elizabeth; Rosenberg, Clifford; Tignor, Robert (2011). Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present. New York: Norton. p. 289.
  12. ^ Vansina, J. (1995). "New Linguistic Evidence and the Bantu Expansion'". Journal of African History. 36 (2): 173–195. doi:10.1017/S0021853700034101. JSTOR 182309.
  13. ^ Tishkoff, SA; et al. (2009). "The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans". Science. 324 (5930): 1035–44. Bibcode:2009Sci...324.1035T. doi:10.1126/science.1172257. PMC 2947357. PMID 19407144. "African Genetics Study Revealing Origins, Migration And 'Startling Diversity' Of African Peoples". Science Daily. 2 May 2009. Retrieved 2011-09-05. see also: De Filippo, C; Barbieri, C; Whitten, M; et al. (2011). "Y-chromosomal variation in sub-Saharan Africa: Insights into the history of Niger–Congo groups". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 28 (3): 1255–69. doi:10.1093/molbev/msq312. PMC 3561512. PMID 21109585.
  14. ^ Newman (1995), Ehret (1998), Shillington (2005)
  15. ^ Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Adisa Usman, Movements, borders, and identities in Africa, (University Rochester Press: 2009), pp.4-5.
  16. ^ Fitzpatrick, Mary (1999). Tanzania, Zanzibar & Pemba. Lonely Planet. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-86442-726-7.
  17. ^ J. D. Fage, A history of Africa, Routledge, 2002, p.29
  18. ^ Was there an interchange between Cushitic pastoralists and Khoisan speakers in the prehistory of Southern Africa and how can this be detected? Archived January 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ Robert Gayre, Ethnological elements of Africa, (The Armorial, 1966), p. 45
  20. ^ Shillington (2005)
  21. ^ Roland Oliver, et al. "Africa South of the Equator," in Africa Since 1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 21-25.
  22. ^ Isichei, Elizabeth Allo, A History of African Societies to 1870 Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-521-45599-2 page 435
  23. ^ Daniel Don Nanjira, African Foreign Policy and Diplomacy: From Antiquity to the 21st Century, ABC-CLIO, 2010, p.114
  24. ^ Cambridge World History of Slavery The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The ancient Mediterranean world. By Keith Bradley, Paul Cartledge. pg. 76 (2011), accessed February 15, 2012
  25. ^ On the Origins and Admixture of Malagasy: New Evidence from High-Resolution Analyses of Paternal and Maternal Lineages
  26. ^ Population of all of Sub-Saharan Africa, including the West African and Sahel countries with no Bantu populations. Source: 995.7 million in 2016 according to the 2017 revision of the UN World Population Prospects, growth rate 2.5% p.a.

References[edit]

  • 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. ISBN 0-300-07280-5.
  • 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, "New linguistic evidence on the expansion of Bantu", Journal of African History 36:173–195, 1995

External links[edit]