Bantu
Narrow Bantu
Geographic distribution:	Subsaharan Africa, mostly Southern Hemisphere
Linguistic classification:	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu
Subdivisions:	Zones A–S (geographic) (Jarawan–Mbam) Manenguba Sawabantu Basaa Bafia Beti Pomo–Bomwali Kele–Tsogo Teke–Mbere Mboshi–Buja Bangi–Tetela Mbole–Enya Lega–Binja Boan Lebonya Nyanga–Buyi Northeast Bantu Tongwe-Bende Mbugwe–Rangi Kilombero Kongo–Yaka–Sira Kimbundu Chokwe–Luchazi Luyana Mbukushu Pende Luban Lunda Rukwa Sabi–Botatwe Nyasa Rufiji–Ruvuma Umbundu Kavango – Southwest Bantu Yeyi Shona Southern Bantu (unclassified): Guru, Ngbinda, Kare, Nyanga-li, Bwela, Ngbee, Lwalu
ISO 639-2 and 639-5:	bnt
Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu vs. other Niger–Congo languages.

The Bantu languages, technically the Narrow Bantu languages, constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility,^[1] though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages.^[2] Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of Cameroon; i.e., in the regions commonly known as central Africa, east Africa, and southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families (see map).

The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili. It has over 80 million speakers across eight countries and this number is growing.^{[citation needed]} But most of its speakers use it as a second language; Swahili is the mother tongue of only five million people.^{[citation needed]} According to Ethnologue, Shona is the most widely spoken as a first language;^[3] there are 11 to 15 million speakers, depending on definition. Zulu comes second with 10 million.^[4]

Bantu languages are believed to have originated in what is now Cameroon in West Africa.^[5] An estimated 2500–3000 years ago, speakers of the proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them. This Bantu expansion is played a significant role in populating the Sub-Saharan region outside West Africa, an area where Bantu peoples now constitute the dominant population.^[5][6]

The technical term Bantu, simply meaning "people", was first used by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (1827–1875), as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for "person", and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with mu- (class 1) in most languages is ba- (class 2), thus giving bantu for "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages.

Classification[link]

The approximate locations of the sixteen Guthrie Bantu zones, including the addition of a zone J. The Jarawan languages are spoken in Nigeria.

The term 'narrow Bantu' was coined by the Benue–Congo Working Group to distinguish Bantu as recognized by Malcolm Guthrie in his seminal 1948 classification of the Bantu languages from Bantoid languages not recognized as Bantu by Guthrie (1948). In recent times, the distinctness of Narrow Bantu as opposed to the other Southern Bantoid groups has been called into doubt (cf. Piron 1995, Williamson & Blench 2000, Blench 2011), but the term is still widely used. A coherent classification of Narrow Bantu will likely need to exclude many of the Zone A and perhaps Zone B languages.

There is no genealogical classification of the (Narrow) Bantu languages. The most widely used system, the alphanumeric coding system developed by Guthrie, is mainly geographic. However, based on reflexes of proto-Bantu tone patterns, zones A–C and part of D are grouped together as Northwest Bantu (or Forest Bantu), and zones D–S as Central Bantu (or Savanna Bantu). Northwest Bantu is more divergent internally than Central Bantu, and perhaps less conservative due to contact with non-Bantu Niger–Congo languages; however, Central Bantu is likely the innovative line cladistically, with Northwest being the non-Central languages, not a family in their own right. Most attempted classifications are problematic as they consider only languages which happen to fall within traditional Narrow Bantu, rather than South Bantoid, which has been established, as a whole.

The only attempt at a detailed genetic classification to replace the Guthrie system is the 1999 "Tervuren" proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann.^[7] However, it relies on lexicostatistics, which, because it relies on similarity, rather than shared innovations, can lead to grouping together conservative languages which are not closely related. Meanwhile, Ethnologue has added languages to the Guthrie classification that Guthrie overlooked, while removing the Mbam languages (much of zone A), and shifting some languages between groups (much of zones D and E to a new zone J, for example, and part of zone L to K, and part of M to F) in an apparent effort at a semi-genetic, or at least semi-areal, classification. However, zone S (Southern Bantu) does appear to be a coherent group. The languages which share Dahl's Law may also form a valid group, Northeast Bantu. The infobox at right lists these together with various low-level groups that are fairly uncontroversial, though they continue to be revised. The development of a rigorous genealogical classification of many branches of Niger–Congo, not just Bantu, is hampered by insufficient data.

Language structure[link]

Guthrie reconstructed both the phonemic inventory and the core vocabulary of Proto-Bantu.

The most prominent grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages is the extensive use of affixes (see Sotho grammar and Ganda noun classes for detailed discussions of these affixes). Each noun belongs to a class, and each language may have several numbered classes, somewhat like genders in European languages. The class is indicated by a prefix that's part of the noun, as well as agreement markers on verb and qualificative roots connected with the noun. Plural is indicated by a change of class, with a resulting change of prefix.

The verb has a number of prefixes, though in the western languages these are often treated as independent words.^[8] In Swahili, for example, Mtoto mdogo amekisoma, (also Kamwana kadoko kariverenga in Shona language) means 'The small child has read it [a book]'. Mtoto 'child' governs the adjective prefix m- and the verb subject prefix a-. Then comes perfect tense -me- and an object marker -ki- agreeing with implicit kitabu 'book'. Pluralizing to 'children' gives Watoto wadogo wamekisoma (Vana vadoko variverenga in Shona), and pluralizing to 'books' (vitabu) gives Watoto wadogo wamevisoma.

Bantu words are typically made up of open syllables of the type CV (consonant-vowel) with most languages having syllables exclusively of this type. The Bushong language recorded by Vansina, however, has final consonants,^[9] while slurring of the final syllable (though written) is reported as common among the Tonga of Malawi.^[10] The morphological shape of Bantu words is typically CV, VCV, CVCV, VCVCV, etc.; that is, any combination of CV (with possibly a V- syllable at the start). In other words, a strong claim for this language family is that almost all words end in a vowel, precisely because closed syllables (CVC) are not permissible in most of the documented languages, as far as we are aware. This tendency to avoid consonant clusters is some positions is important when words are imported from English or other non-Bantu languages. An example from Chichewa: the word "school", borrowed from English, and then transformed to fit the sound patterns of this language, is sukulu. That is, sk- has been broken up by inserting an epenthetic -u-; -u has also been added at the end of the word. Another example is buledi for "bread". Similar effects are seen in loanwords for other non-African CV languages like Japanese. However, a clustering of sounds at the beginning of a syllable can be readily observed in such languages as Shona,^[11] and the Makhuwa variants.^[12]

Reduplication[link]

Reduplication is a common morphological phenomenon in Bantu languages and is usually used to indicate frequency or intensity of the action signalled by the (unreduplicated) verb stem [2]

• Example: in Swahili piga means "strike", pigapiga means "strike repeatedly".

Well-known words and names that have reduplication include

• Bafana Bafana
• Chipolopolo
• Eric Djemba-Djemba
• Lualua
• Ngorongoro
• Polepole (Swahili for slowly, or slowly-slowly). – In swahili pole means sorry, to express sympathy.
• Haraka-haraka (Swahili for quickly, or quickly-quickly, compare with vite-vite in French, that has the approximate meaning to 'fast-fast' in English).

Repetition emphasizes the repeated word in the context that it is used. For instance, "Mwenda pole hajikwai," while, "Pole pole ndio mwendo," has two to emphasize the consistency of slowness of the pace. The meaning of the former in translation is, "He who goes slowly doesn't trip," and that of the latter is, "A slow but steady pace wins the race." Haraka haraka would mean hurrying just for the sake of hurrying, reckless hurry, as in "Njoo! Haraka haraka" [come here! Hurry, hurry].

On the contrary to the above definition, there are some words in some of the languages in which reduplication has the opposite meaning. It usually denotes short durations, and or lower intensity of the action and also means a few repetitions or a little bit more.

• Example 1: in isiZulu and SiSwati hamba means "go", hambahamba means "go-go meaning go a little bit, but not much".

• Example 2: in both of the above languages shaya means "strike", shayashaya means "strike-strike, meaning strike a few more times lightly, but not heavy strikes and not too many times"

Notable Bantu languages[link]

Following are the principal Bantu languages of each country.^[13] Included are those languages that constitute at least 1% of the population and have at least 10% the number of speakers of the largest Bantu language in the country.

Most languages are best known in English without the class prefix (Swahili, Tswana, Ndebele), but are sometimes seen with the (language-specific) prefix (Kiswahili, Setswana, Sindebele). In a few cases prefixes are used to distinguish languages with the same root in their name, such as Tshiluba and Kiluba (both Luba), Umbundu and Kimbundu (both Mbundu). The bare (prefixless) form typically does not occur in the language itself, but is the basis for other words based on the ethnicity. So, in the country of Botswana the people are the Batswana, one person is a Motswana, and the language is Setswana; and in Uganda, centred on the kingdom of Buganda, the dominant ethnicity are the Baganda (sg. Muganda), whose language is Luganda.

This list is incomplete; an attempt at a full list of Bantu languages (with various conflations and a puzzlingly diverse nomenclature) was found in The Bantu Languages of Africa, 1959.^[14]

Geographic areas[link]

Localization of the Niger–Congo languages

Bantu words popularised in western cultures[link]

Some words from various Bantu languages have been borrowed into western languages. These include:

• Bomba
• Bongos
• Boogie-woogie
• Bwana
• Candombe
• Chimpanzee
• Conga
• Goobers
• Gumbo
• Hakuna matata
• Impala
• Jenga
• Jumbo
• Kalimba
• Kwanzaa
• Mamba
• Mambo
• Mbira
• Marimba
• Rumba
• Safari
• Samba
• Simba
• Ubuntu

A case has been made out for borrowings of many place-names and even misremembered rhymes such as "Here we go looby-loo ... " – chiefly from one of the Luba varieties – in the USA.^[15]

See also[link]

• Bantu peoples
• Gullah
• Guthrie classification of Bantu languages
• Kavango – Southwest Bantu
• Luban languages
• Malcolm Guthrie
• Meeussen's rule
• Noun class
• Northeast Bantu
• Rufiji–Ruvuma languages
• Rukwa languages
• Southern Bantu

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Biddulph, Joseph, Bantu Byways Pontypridd 2001. ISBN 978-1-897999-30-1.
• Guthrie, Malcolm. 1948. The classification of the Bantu languages. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.
• Guthrie, Malcolm. 1971. Comparative Bantu, Vol 2. Farnborough: Gregg International.
• Heine, Bernd. 1973. Zur genetische Gliederung der Bantu-Sprachen. Afrika und Übersee, 56: 164–185.
• Maho, Jouni F. 2001. The Bantu area: (towards clearing up) a mess. Africa & Asia, 1:40–49.
• Maho, Jouni F. 2002. Bantu lineup: comparative overview of three Bantu classifications. Göteborg University: Department of Oriental and African Languages.
• Piron, Pascale. 1995. Identification lexicostatistique des groupes Bantoïdes stables. Journal of West African Languages, 25(2): 3–39.

External links[link]

• Comparative Bantu Online Dictionary – includes a comprehensive bibliography.
• Maho 2009. Guthrie 1948 in detail, with subsequent corrections and corresponding ISO codes
• Bantu online resources by Jacky Maniacky, including
  • List of Bantu noun classes with reconstructed Proto-Bantu prefixes (in French)
• Ehret's compilation of classifications by Klieman, Bastin, himself, and others
• Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
• List of Bantu language names with synonyms ordered by Guthrie number.
• Introduction to the languages of South Africa
• Journal of West African Languages: Narrow Bantu
• Bantu Languages of Uganda

Bantu (Somalia)

Bantu farmers near Kismayo.
Total population
80,000[1]–900,000[2]
Regions with significant populations
Somalia  United States  Tanzania  Kenya
Languages
Mushunguli, other Bantu languages
Religion
Animism, Islam, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Bantu peoples

The Somali Bantu (also called Jareer, Gosha or Mushunguli) are an ethnic minority group in Somalia who primarily reside in the southern part of the country, near the Juba and Shabelle rivers. They are descendants of people from various Bantu ethnic groups, most of whom were captured from Southeast Africa and sold into slavery in Somalia and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia as part of the 19th century Arab slave trade.^[3][4] Bantus are ethnically, physically, and culturally distinct from Somalis, and they have remained marginalized ever since their arrival in Somalia.^[5]

These Bantu are not to be confused with the members of Swahili society in coastal towns, such as the Bajuni, who speak dialects of the Bantu Swahili language.

All in all, the number of Bantu inhabitants in Somalia before the civil war is thought to have been about 80,000 (1970 estimate), with most concentrated between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in the south.^[1] However, recent estimates place the figure as high as 900,000 persons.^[2]

Etymology[link]

The term "Somali Bantu" is an ethnonym that was invented by humanitarian aid-supplying agencies shortly after the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia in 1991. Its purpose was to help the staff of these aid agencies better distinguish between, on the one hand, Bantu minority groups hailing from Somalia and thus in need of immediate humanitarian attention, and on the other hand, other Bantu groups from elsewhere in Africa that did not require immediate humanitarian assistance. The neologism further spread through the media, which repeated verbatim what the aid agencies' increasingly began indicating in their reports as the new name for Somalia's ethnically Bantu minorities. Prior to the civil war, the Bantu were simply referred to in the literature as Bantu, Gosha, Mushunguli or Jareer, as they still, in fact, are within Somalia proper.^[6]

History[link]

Origin[link]

Between 2500–3000 years ago, speakers of the original proto-Bantu language group began a millennia-long series of migrations eastward from their original homeland in the general Nigeria and Cameroon area of West Africa.^[7] This Bantu expansion first introduced Bantu peoples to central, southern and eastern Africa, regions where they had previously been absent from.^[8][9]

Some Bantus in Somalia are believed to be direct descendants of these early migrants from West Africa. Most, however, are descended from Bantu groups that had settled in Southeast Africa after the initial expansion from Nigeria/Cameroon, and whose members were later captured and sold into the Arab slave trade.^[8]

Arab slave trade[link]

A Bantu slave woman in Mogadishu (1882–1883).

The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, black slaves captured by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.^[3][4]

From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000–50,000 black African slaves are thought to have been sold from the slave market of Zanzibar to the Somali coast.^[10] Most of the slaves were from the Majindo, Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zalama, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. Collectively, these Bantu groups are known as Mushunguli, which is a term taken from Mzigula, the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "slave").^[3]

19th and 20th centuries[link]

Bantu slaves were made to work in plantations owned by Somalis along the Shebelle and Jubba rivers, harvesting lucrative cash crops such as grain and cotton.^[11]

In the 1840s, the first fugitive slaves from the Shebelle valley began to settle in the Jubba valley. By the early 1900s, an estimated 35,000 former Bantu slaves settled there.

The Italian colonial administration abolished slavery in Somalia at the turn of the 20th century. Some Bantu groups, however, remained enslaved well until the 1930s, and continued to be despised and discriminated against by large parts of Somali society.^[12]

The Bantus were also conscripted to forced labor on Italian-owned plantations since the Somalis themselves were averse to what they deemed menial labor,^[13] and because the Italians viewed the Somalis as racially superior to the Bantu.^[14]

Contemporary situation[link]

Profile[link]

A Bantu man working in the fields.

Bantus simply refer to themselves as Bantu. Those who can trace their origins to Bantu groups in East Africa refer to themselves collectively as Shanbara, Shangama or Wagosha. Those who trace their origins to Bantu tribes inhabiting areas further south call themselves Mushunguli.^[15]

While some Bantus adopted the Somali language, speaking for the most part a Bantu version of the southern Somali dialect of Af-Maay, a number still speak a dialect of their ancestral Bantu languages (e.g. Zigua, Mushunguli).^[3]

Unlike Somalis, most of whom are nomadic herders, Bantus are mainly sedentary subsistence farmers. Sharp physical differences also distinguish the two groups: Bantus have kinkier hair than the soft-haired Somalis, and are shorter, darker, and more muscular with broader features.^[6][8]

The majority of Bantus have converted to Islam, which they first began embracing in order to escape slavery.^[16] Starting in the colonial period, some also began converting to Christianity.^[17] However, whether Muslim or Christian, many Bantu have retained their ancestral animist traditions, including the practice of possession dances and the use of magic and curses.^[16] Many of these religious traditions closely resemble those practised in Tanzania, similarities which also extend to hunting, harvesting and music, among other things.^[8]

Many Bantu have also retained their ancestral social structures, with their Bantu tribe of origin in southeastern Africa serving as the principal form of social stratification. Smaller units of societal organization are divided according to matrilineal kinship groups, the latter of which are oftentimes interchangeable with ceremonial dance groupings.^[15]

Primarily for security reasons, some Bantus have attempted to attach themselves to groups within the Somalis' indigenous patrilineal clan system of social stratification.^[18] These Bantus are referred to by the Somalis as sheegato or sheegad (literally "pretenders"^[19]), a term used to denote the fact that they are not ethnically Somali and are attached to a Somali group on an adoptive, client basis. Bantus that have retained their ancestral southeast African traditions have likewise been known to level sarcasm at other Bantus who have tried to associate themselves with their Somali patrons, albeit without any real animosity (the civil war has actually served to strengthen relationships between the various Bantu sub-groups).^[15][20][21]

All told, there has been very little co-mingling between Bantus and Somalis. Intermarriage is also extremely rare, and typically results in ostracism the few times it does occur.^[8][22]

Post-1991[link]

During the Somali Civil War, many Bantu were forced from their lands in the lower Juba River valley, as militiamen from various Somali clans took control of the area.^[23] Being visible minorities and possessing little in the way of firearms, the Bantu were particularly vulnerable to violence and looting by gun-toting militiamen.^[8]

To escape war and famine, tens of thousands of Bantus fled to refugee camps like Dadaab in neighboring Kenya, with most vowing never to return to Somalia. In 2002, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) moved a large number of Bantu refugees 1500 km northwest to Kakuma because it was safer to process them for resettlement farther away from the Somali border.^[3]

Resettlement in the United States[link]

A Bantu refugee boy in Florida.

In 1999, the United States classified the Bantu refugees from Somalia as a priority and the United States Department of State first began what has been described as the most ambitious resettlement plan ever from Africa, with thousands of Bantus scheduled for resettlement in America.^[24] In 2003, the first Bantu immigrants began to arrive in U.S. cities, and by 2007, around 13,000 had been resettled to cities throughout the United States with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the U.S. State Department, and refugee resettlement agencies across the country.^[24]

Among the resettlement destinations, it is known that Salt Lake City, Utah received about 1,000 Bantus. Other cities in the southwest such as Denver, Colorado, San Antonio, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona have received a few thousand as well. In New England, Manchester, New Hampshire and Burlington, Vermont were also destinations selected for resettlement of several hundred. Plans to resettle the Bantu in smaller towns, such as Holyoke, Massachusetts and Cayce, South Carolina, were scrapped after local protests. There are also communities of several hundred to a thousand Bantu people in cities that also have high concentrations of ethnic Somalis such as the Minneapolis-St. Paul area,^[25] Columbus, Ohio,^[26] Atlanta,^[27] San Diego,^[28] Boston,^[29] and Seattle,^[30] with a notable presence of about 1,000 Bantus in Lewiston, Maine.^[31][32] The documentary film Rain in a Dry Land chronicles this journey, with stories of Bantu refugees resettled in Springfield, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia.^[33]

Return to ancestral home[link]

Prior to the United States' agreement to accommodate Bantu refugees from Somalia, attempts were made to resettle the refugees to their ancestral homes in southeastern Africa. Before the prospect of emigrating to America was raised, this was actually the preference of the Bantus themselves. In fact, many Bantus voluntarily left the UN camps where they were staying, to seek refuge in Tanzania. Such a return to their ancestral homeland represented the fulfillment of a two-century old dream.^[24]

While Tanzania was initially willing to grant the Bantus asylum, the UNCHR did not provide any financial or logistical guarantees to support the resettlement and integration of the refugees into Tanzania. The Tanzanian authorities also experienced additional pressure when refugees from neighbouring Rwanda began pushing into the western part of the country, forcing them to retract their offer to accommodate the Bantus.^[8][24]

Mozambique, the other ancestral home of the Bantu, then emerged as an alternative point of resettlement. However, as it became clear that the United States was prepared to accommodate the Bantu refugees, the Mozambican government soon backed out on its promises, citing a lack of resources and potential political instability in the region where the Bantu might have been resettled.^[24]

By the late 2000s, the situation in Tanzania had improved, and the Tanzanian government began granting Bantus citizenship and allocating them land in areas of Tanzania where their ancestors are known to have been taken from as slaves.^[2][8][34]

See also[link]

• Arab slave trade
• Bantu peoples

Notes[link]

External links[link]

General:

• UNHCR Publication Refugees about the Somali Bantu
• The Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture
• Differences That Matter: The Struggle of the Marginalised in Somalia

In the U.S.:

• The Somali Bantu Experience
• Refugees USA
• Somali Bantus Arrive In Salt Lake City
• Somali Bantu Community – Development Council of Denver