54-620: The Kalanga or BaKalanga are a southern Bantu ethnic group mainly inhabiting Matebeleland in Zimbabwe , northern Botswana, and parts of the Limpopo Province in South Africa . The BaKalanga of Botswana are the second largest ethnic group in the country, and their Ikalanga language being the second most spoken in the country (most prevalent in the North).The TjiKalanga language of Zimbabwe
108-464: A disastrous drought soon struck Mapungubgwe, and the Shashe - Limpopo region was uninhabited between A.D 1300 and 1420, forcing the ordinary population to scatter. Mapungubgwe had become a ghost town by AD 1290. Its golden era lasted no more than 50 years culminating in the rise of Great Zimbabwe . Later, in the 15th century, the centre of power moved back west, from Great Zimbabwe to Khami/Nkami and in
162-905: A number of tribal dialects depending on which part of the tribal territory you are situated. There are among others the Talaunda dialect, the Lilima dialect, Jawunda dialect, the Nanzwa dialect, Tjigwizi dialect as well as Tjindodondo dialect (dominant in Zimbabwe ). Together with the Nambya language , these varieties form the western branch of the shona group (Guthrie S.10) that also includes Central Shona . Kalanga-speakers once numbered over 1,900,000, though they are now reduced, often speaking Ndebele or Central Shona languages in Zimbabwe, Tswana in Botswana, and other local languages of
216-479: A publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). " Hottentots ". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. Mzilikazi Mzilikazi Moselekatse, Khumalo ( c. 1790 – 9 September 1868) was a Southern African king who founded the Ndebele Kingdom now called Matebeleland which is now part of Zimbabwe . His name means "the great river of blood". He
270-576: A result of these interactions. The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to Madagascar , the Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their Malagasy language Bantu loans. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the Sultanate of Zanzibar . With the arrival of European colonialists,
324-736: A safe distance from all surrounding kingdoms. The death toll has never been satisfactorily determined, but it is believed that the region was so depopulated that the Voortrekkers were able to occupy and take ownership of the Highveld area without opposition in the 1830s. Voortrekkers began to arrive in the Transvaal where Mzilikazi was king for 10 years. Voortrekkers discover that there was gold in Johannesburg area in 1836. This resulted in several confrontations of which Mzilikazi won several, until at length
378-548: A section of the Ndebele across the Limpopo without Mzilikazi. Further attacks caused Mzilikazi to move again, at first westwards into present-day Botswana and then later northwards towards what is now Zambia . He was unable to settle the land there because of the prevalence of tsetse fly which carried diseases fatal to oxen. Mzilikazi therefore travelled again, this time southeastwards into what became known as Matabeleland (situated in
432-833: A significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. Bantu speakers of South Africa (Xhosa, Venda) showed substantial levels of the SAK and Western African Bantu AACs and low levels of the East African Bantu AAC (the latter is also present in Bantu speakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda). The results indicate distinct East African Bantu migration into southern Africa and are consistent with linguistic and archeological evidence of East African Bantu migration from an area west of Lake Victoria and
486-479: A vast genomic analysis of more than 2,000 samples taken from individuals in 57 populations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to trace the Bantu expansion. During a wave of expansion that began 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Bantu-speaking populations – some 310 million people as of 2023 – gradually left their original homeland West-Central Africa and travelled to the eastern and southern regions of the African continent. During
540-1786: 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 , Kituba , Tshiluba and Kiluba ; watu in Swahili ; ŵanthu in Tumbuka ; anthu in Chichewa ; batu in Lingala ; bato in Duala ; abanto in Gusii ; andũ in Kamba and Kikuyu ; abantu in Kirundi , Lusoga , Zulu , Xhosa , Runyoro and Luganda ; wandru in Shingazidja ; abantru in Mpondo and Ndebele ; bãthfu in Phuthi ; bantfu in Swati and Bhaca ; banhu in kisukuma ; banu in Lala ; vanhu in Shona and Tsonga ; batho in Sesotho , Tswana and Sepedi ; antu in Meru ; andu in Embu ; vandu in some Luhya dialects; vhathu in Venda and bhandu in Nyakyusa . Within
594-587: Is the headquarters for the Hosanna's of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Bantu peoples The Bantu peoples are an indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages . The languages are native to countries spread over a vast area from West Africa, to Central Africa, Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. Bantu people also inhabit southern areas of Northeast African states. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on
SECTION 10
#1732851644194648-453: Is the plural of the word 'umuntu', meaning 'person', and is based on the stem '--ntu', plus the plural prefix 'aba'. In linguistics, 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 into modern academia (as Bâ-ntu ) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. The name
702-516: Is the third most spoken language in the country, however, being recognized as a Western Shona branch of the Shona group of languages. It is likewise used in mass media. The most notable Kalanga clans are the boSungwasha, boMndambeli, boNeswimbo, boNtombo, boKumbudzi, boKadzasha, and boPhizha na boNebukhwa. The native language of the Kalanga people is referred to as Ikalanga or TjiKalanga . The language has
756-574: The Bakwena territory in the northwestern Transvaal , near Rustenburg . At the time the Bakwena were struggling to repel repeated attacks from a neighbouring king, who laid claim to the territory that they occupied. Nkulumane assisted the Bakwena by leading his impi in a battle in which Nkulumane himself killed the neighbouring chief. Following this victory, the Bakwena convinced Nkulumane to settle in their territory, arguing that it would be futile to return to
810-888: The Congo rainforest by about 1500 BC and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the Great Lakes 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
864-656: The Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g.the large majority of West Africa, notably the most populous African nation Nigeria , Rwanda , Tanzania , Uganda , Kenya , Burundi (25 million), the Baganda people of Uganda (5.5 million as of 2014), the Shona of Zimbabwe (17.6 million as of 2020), the Zulu of South Africa (14.2 million as of 2016 ),
918-667: The Indian Ocean 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 loanwords as
972-622: The Kingdom of Butua came as a result of a series of invasions, beginning with the Bangwato Kgosi Kgari's ill-fated incursion of around 1828 and culminating in the onslaught of Mzilikazi 's Amandebele . The Kalanga people are known for their rain-making abilities through their Supreme Being Mwali/Ngwali. These abilities have always been a part of the BaKalanga people history as well as all those other related groups. The rain-making has always been
1026-627: The Kingdom of Matamba the Kuba Kingdom , the Lunda Empire , the Luba Empire , Barotse Empire , Kazembe Kingdom , Mbunda Kingdom , Yeke Kingdom , Kasanje Kingdom , Empire of Kitara, Butooro , Bunyoro , Buganda , Busoga , Rwanda , Burundi , Ankole , the Kingdom of Mpororo , the Kingdom of Igara , the Kingdom of Kooki , the Kingdom of Karagwe , Swahili city states , the Mutapa Empire ,
1080-690: The Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.8 million as of 2010 ), the Sukuma of Tanzania (10.2 million as of 2016 ), the Kikuyu of Kenya (8.1 million as of 2019 ), the Xhosa people of Southern Africa (9.6 million as of 2011), batswana of Southern Africa (8.2 Million as of 2020) and the Pedi of South Africa (7 million as of 2018). Abantu is the Xhosa and Zulu word for people. It
1134-521: 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 ethnic-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans , at about
SECTION 20
#17328516441941188-606: The South African Republic to sign a peace treaty with Mzilikazi in 1852. While Mzilikazi was generally friendly to European travellers, he remained mindful of the danger that they posed to his kingdom. In later years he refused some visitors access to his realm. The Europeans who met Mzilikazi included Henry Hartley , hunter and explorer; Robert Moffat , missionary; John Mackenzie , missionary; David Hume , explorer and trader; Andrew Smith , medical doctor, ethnologist and zoologist; William Cornwallis Harris , hunter; and
1242-570: The Zulu Kingdom , the Ndebele Kingdom , Mthethwa Empire , Tswana city states , Mapungubwe , Kingdom of Eswatini , the Kingdom of Butua , Maravi , Danamombe , Khami , Naletale , Kingdom of Zimbabwe and the Rozwi Empire . On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian traders, Zanzibar being an important part of
1296-491: The 17th century to Danan'ombe (Dlodlo). The moves were accompanied by changes of the dominance from one clan to another. In the 17th century, the rozvi established southern BaKalanga became a powerful competitor, controlling most of the mining areas. The Rozvi even repelled Portuguese colonists from some of their inland posts. In south-western Zimbabwe (now Matabeleland ) and adjacent parts of present-day Botswana, Kalanga states survived for more than another century. The fall of
1350-412: The 3rd century AD along the coast and the modern Northern Cape by AD 500. 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 and Cushitic -speaking neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in
1404-696: 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 Monomotapa 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
1458-537: The African continent. Mzilikazi was originally a lieutenant of Shaka . He left Zululand during the period largely known as mfecane with a large kraal of Shaka's cattle. Shaka had originally been satisfied that Mzilikazi had served the Zulu nation well and he rewarded Mzilikazi with cattle and soldiers. But after some time King Shaka of the Zulu Kingdom, assassinated the twins of Mzilikazi's sister— Ntombizodwa Ka Mashobana, who
1512-562: The Bantu expansion, Bantu-speaking peoples extirpated and displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as Pygmy groups in Central Africa, the Hadza people in northern Tanzania, and various Khoisan populations across southern Africa remaining in existence into the era of European contact. Archaeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Researchers have demonstrated that
1566-476: The Indian Ocean coast for goods such as glass beads and cotton clothes. The majority of these prehistoric Bakalanga villages have been discovered in Botswana and Zimbabwe in areas close to major rivers and were usually built on terraced hilltops with stone walls built around them. The Kalanga are linked to such early African States as Mapungubgwe , Khami, and the Rozvi Empire . The early Bakalanga people living in
1620-614: The Khoisan of the Kalahari are remnants of a huge ancestral population that may have been the most populous group on the planet prior to the Bantu expansion. Biochemist Stephan Schuster of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and colleagues found that the Khoisan population began a drastic decline when the Bantu farmers spread through Africa 4,000 years ago. Before the Bantu expansion had been definitively traced starting from their origins in
1674-686: The Ndzundza king Magodongo and others were kidnapped and subsequently killed at the Mkobola river. For the next ten years, Mzilikazi dominated the Transvaal. Mzilikazi eliminated all opposition and reorganised the captured territory to suit the new Matabele order. In 1831, after winning a battle against the Griqua people , Mzilikazi occupied the Griqua lands near the Ghaapse mountains. He used scorched earth methods to maintain
Kalanga people - Misplaced Pages Continue
1728-474: The Shashe-Limpopo basin monopolised trade due to their access to the Indian Ocean coast. By around AD 1220 a new and more powerful kingdom developed around Mapungubgwe Hill, near Botswana's border with South Africa. Some of the early Bakalanga people living in the lower Shashe-Limpopo valley probably moved towards or became part of this newly formed kingdom. But studies of climatic data from the area suggest that
1782-572: The Voortrekkers over powered Mzilikazi. The battle took two years during which the Matabele suffered heavy losses. By early 1838, Mzilikazi and his people were forced northwards and out of Transvaal altogether, across the Limpopo River . He decided to split his group in two. One of these groups moved north under military leader by Nkulumane, Mzilikazi's first born son, and Gundwane Ndiweni , who conducted
1836-436: 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. In the 1920s, relatively liberal South Africans, missionaries, and the native African intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native". After World War II ,
1890-471: The Zulu Kingdom as his father's enemies would probably kill him. Nkulumane settled and lived with his family in that area until his death in 1883. His grave, covered in a concrete slab, is on the outskirts of Rustenburg in Phokeng. The site of Nkulumane's grave is incongruously referred to as Mzilikazi's Kop , even though it is his son who is buried there. After resuming his role as king, Mzilikazi founded his nation at Ntabazinduna mountain and his first capital
1944-555: 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
1998-409: The chiefs who had chosen him were put to death on his orders. A popular belief is that they were executed by being thrown down a steep cliff on the hill now called Ntabazinduna [ hill of the chiefs ]. Another account claims that Nkulumane was not killed with the chiefs, but was sent back to the Zulu Kingdom with a sizeable delegation which included warriors. During his journey south, he passed through
2052-412: 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
2106-401: The duty of the Hosanna's or AmaWosana (the high priests in Mwali/Ngwali's church). The traditional attire of the Kalanga/BaKalanga people clearly shows the importance of rain to BaKalanga. They put on black skirts which represent dark clouds heavy with rain, and the white shirts to represent rain droplets. This is the attire worn when they go and plead for rain at Njelele shrine in Zimbabwe, which
2160-588: The fierce debate among linguists about the word "Bantu", Seidensticker (2024) indicates that there has been a "profound conceptual trend in which a "purely technical [term] without any non-linguistic connotations was transformed into a designation referring indiscriminately to language, culture, society, and race"." Bantu languages derive from the Proto-Bantu reconstructed 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, East and Southern Africa in
2214-411: The incorporation of Khoekhoe ancestry into several of the Southeast Bantu populations ~1500 to 1000 years ago. Bantu-speaking migrants would have also interacted with some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly Cushitic ), as well as Nilotic and Central Sudanic speaking groups. According to the early-split scenario as hypothesized in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached
Kalanga people - Misplaced Pages Continue
2268-518: The larger ethnolinguistic 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 , also known as hunhu in Chishona or botho in Sesotho , rather than just referring to all human beings. The root in Proto-Bantu
2322-442: The missionary explorer David Livingstone . After he was defeated by the Voortrekker Boers in Transvaal during the tribe's wanderings north of the Limpopo, Mzilikazi became separated from the bulk of the tribe. They gave him up for dead and hailed his young heir Nkulumane as his successor. However, Mzilikazi reappeared after a traumatic journey through the Zambezi Valley and reasserted control. According to one account, his son and all
2376-782: The range of Cushitic speakers. Based on dental evidence, Irish (2016) concluded: Proto-Bantu peoples may have originated in the western region of the Sahara , amid the Kiffian period at Gobero , and may have migrated southward, from the Sahara into various parts of West Africa (e.g., Benin , Cameroon , Ghana , Nigeria , Togo ), as a result of desertification of the Green Sahara in 7000 BCE. From Nigeria and Cameroon, agricultural Proto-Bantu peoples began to migrate , and amid migration, diverged into East Bantu peoples (e.g., Democratic Republic of Congo ) and West Bantu peoples (e.g., Congo, Gabon ) between 2500 BCE and 1200 BCE. Irish (2016) also views Igbo people and Yoruba people as being possibly back-migrated Bantu peoples. Between
2430-460: The region between Cameroon and Nigeria, two main scenarios of the Bantu expansion were hypothesized: 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 system toward Angola. Genetic analysis shows
2484-450: 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 ). 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: [REDACTED] This article incorporates text from
2538-413: The so-called Bantu expansion , comparatively rapid dissemination taking roughly two millennia and dozens of human generations during the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, together with a broad international consortium, retraced the migratory routes of the Bantu populations, which were previously a source of debate. The scientists used data from
2592-407: The southwest of present-day Zimbabwe ) and settled there in 1840 where he reunited with the splinter group led by Ndiweni and Nkulumane Mzilikazi. After his arrival, he organised his followers into a militaristic system with regimental kraals , similar to those of Shaka; under his leadership, the Matabele became strong enough to repel the Boer attacks of 1847–1851 and persuade the government of
2646-588: The surrounding peoples of southern Africa . The BaKalanga are one of the largest ethnolinguistic groups in Botswana . The 1946 census indicated that there were 39,773 (49% of the numerically largest district) BaKalanga in the Bamangwato (Central) District. According to Huffman (2008), the original Bakalanga people descended from Leopard's Kopje farmers. These people occupied areas covering parts of north eastern Botswana , western and southern Zimbabwe , adjacent parts of South Africa and Mozambique by around AD 100. They traded in ivory , furs and feathers with
2700-487: Was at Inyathi where he ended up meeting his old friend Robert Moffat whom he had met in the Transvaal Republic when he was coming from Kuruman which was the year when his son (Nkulumane) was born, Inyathi was abandoned in 1859 when one of his senior wives, Queen Loziba, died. His next capital was established at Mhlahlandlela in Matopo District where he is buried. This became his second and last capital until he died at eNqameni near Gwanda on September 5, 1868. In 1970,
2754-402: Was born the son of Mashobane kaMangethe near Mkuze , Zululand (now known as KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa ), and died at Ingama , Matabeleland (near Bulawayo , Zimbabwe). Many consider him to be the greatest Southern African military leader after the Zulu king, Shaka . In his autobiography, David Livingstone referred to Mzilikazi as the second most impressive leader he encountered on
SECTION 50
#17328516441942808-439: Was later was known as Mafakašane. This led to a greater division between Mzilikazi and Shaka. It is unclear if Mzilikazi stole Shaka's cattle or if he raided them from neighbouring tribes. He first travelled to Mozambique but in 1826 he moved west into the Transvaal due to continued attacks by his enemies. He absorbed many members of other tribes as he conquered the Transvaal. He attacked the Ndzundza kraal at Esikhunjini, where
2862-557: Was said to be 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. Xhosa umntu "person" abantu "people", Zulu umuntu "person", abantu "people"). There is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an ethnic group . People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms, which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for
2916-449: Was the result of several factors such as a 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 ritualisation of royalty as the source of national strength and health. Examples of such Bantu states include: the Kingdom of Kongo , Anziku Kingdom , Kingdom of Ndongo ,
#193806