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76-516: The Somali Bantus (also known as Jareerweyne or Gosha ) are a Bantu ethnic minority group in Somalia who primarily reside in the southern part of the country, primarily near the Jubba and Shabelle rivers. The Somali Bantus are descendants of enslaved peoples from various Bantu ethnic groups from Southeast Africa , particularly from Mozambique , Malawi , and Tanzania . The East African slave trade

152-555: A white supremacist group demonstrated in support of the mayor's letter, which prompted a counter-demonstration of about 4,000 people at Bates College , as chronicled in documentary film The Letter . Despite such adversity, the Somali Bantu community in central Maine has continued to flourish and integrate in years since. Prior to the United States' agreement to accommodate Bantu refugees from Somalia, attempts were made to resettle

228-465: A depression between the Eastern and Western Rifts, formed by the uplift of the rifts to either of its sides. Around two to three million years ago, Lake Turkana was larger and the area more fertile, making it a center for early hominids . Richard Leakey led numerous anthropological excavations in the area, which yielded many important discoveries of hominin remains. The two-million-year-old Skull 1470

304-408: A great amount of hostility from local Lewiston residents. In 2002, former Mayor Laurier Raymond wrote an open letter to Somali Bantu residents in an effort to dissuade them from further relocation to Lewiston . He proclaimed their resettlement to the town had become a "burden" on the community and predicted an overall negative impact on the town's social services and resources. In 2003, members of

380-514: A new name for Somalia's ethnically Bantu minorities. Prior to the civil war, the Bantu were referred to in the literature as Bantu , Gosha , Mushunguli , Oggi and especially as Jareer , which they still, in fact, are within Somalia proper. 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

456-634: A publication now in the public domain :  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). " Hottentots ". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. African Great Lakes Countries in the area which are bounded by the lakes of the Great Lakes region include Burundi , the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Ethiopia , Kenya , Malawi , Mozambique , Rwanda , Zambia , Tanzania , and Uganda . The following are included on most lists of

532-687: A region with great potential after independence, the Great Lakes region has suffered from civil war and conflict in the four decades around the turn of the 21st century ( c.  1980 –2020). In 2022 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees commended Tanzania for consistently welcoming and aiding refugees from other countries in the region. The highlands are relatively cool, with average temperatures ranging between 17 °C (63 °F) and 19 °C (66 °F) and abundant rainfall. Major drainage basins include those of

608-576: 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,

684-785: 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

760-436: 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 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

836-479: 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

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912-606: Is mutually intelligible with the Zigula language still spoken in Tanzania. Mushunguli's closest sister languages are Shambala , Bondei , and Ngulu which are languages originating from Tanzania and largely confined to it. The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, black Africans from southeastern Africa bought by Somali , Omanis , Benadiri & Swahili slave traders & were sold in cumulatively large numbers over

988-577: Is a term taken from Mzigula , the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "slave"). 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. Since the very end of the eighteen century, fugitive slaves from the Shebelle valley began to settle in

1064-407: Is home to hundreds of species of birds endemic to Kenya. The flamingo wades in its shallows. The East African rift system also serves as a flyway for migrating birds, bringing in hundreds more. The birds are essentially supported by plankton masses in the lake, which also feed the fish there. Vegetation ranges from rainforest to savanna grasses. In some lakes, rapidly growing invasive plants, like

1140-536: Is hot and very dry. A short rainy season in October is followed by a longer one from April to May. The Western Rift Valley lakes are freshwater and home to an extraordinary number of endemic species. More than 1,500 cichlid fish species live in the lakes, as well as other fish families. The lakes are also important habitats for a number of amphibian species. Nile crocodiles are numerous. Mammals include elephants , gorillas and hippopotamus . The Lake Turkana area

1216-471: 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 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

1292-645: The Arab world . Marginalized Black African ethnic minorities with an ethnogenesis in slavery can be found in nearby countries such as the Al Akhdam ethnic minority in Yemen paralleling social dynamics in Somalia. Alternative theories suggest that some Somali Bantu tribes migrated to the riverine parts of the southern Horn of Africa as agriculturalists taking part in the millennia long ongoing Bantu expansion . However, no reliable historical documentation exists directly linking

1368-806: 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 ), 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

1444-781: 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

1520-667: 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

1596-756: The International Organization for Migration (IOM) moved a large number of Bantu refugees 1500 km to Kakuma in northwest Kenya because it was safer to process them for resettlement farther away from the Somali border. 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. In 2003,

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1672-676: 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 ,

1748-521: 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

1824-494: The Pedi of South Africa (7 million as of 2018). Abantu is the Xhosa and 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 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

1900-605: The Shebelle region, while Bantu linguistic and cultural traditions tend to be stronger in Somali Bantus of the Juba region. Politically, the Somali Bantu of different tribes form ethnic alliances in the parliament of Somalia. The Somali Bantu are not to be confused with the members of Swahili society of Somalia in coastal centers, such as the Bajuni or the Bravanese , who speak dialects of

1976-505: The Swahili language but have a culture, tradition, and history separate of the Somali Bantu. The number of Somali Bantu in Somalia is estimated to be around 900,000 persons and is mainly concentrated in the south, but they can be found in urban areas throughout the country. Although ref world minority rights website cites a figure of 1 million Somali Bantus in Somalia who made up 15% of the population in an article published in 2011 and taken from

2052-570: 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

2128-412: 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

2204-795: 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

2280-482: The African Great Lakes, grouped by drainage basin . The exact number of lakes considered part of the African Great Lakes varies by list, and may include smaller lakes in the rift valleys, especially if they are part of the same drainage basin as the larger lakes, such as Lake Kyoga . The Great Lakes region (rarely: Greater Lakes region) consists of ten riparian countries: Burundi , the Democratic Republic of

2356-562: 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

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2432-792: 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, Columbus, Ohio , Atlanta , San Diego , Boston , Pittsburgh , and Seattle , with a notable presence of about 1,000 Bantus in Lewiston, Maine . Making Refuge follows Somali Bantus' strenuous journey towards eventual resettlement in Lewiston and details several families' stories of relocating there. Upon their resettlement in Lewiston , however, Bantus were met with

2508-586: The Bantu might have been resettled. 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. General: In the U.S.: 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

2584-577: 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. On the other hand, the Bantus who spoke kizigula had already started arriving in Tanzania since before

2660-413: The Congo , Ethiopia , Kenya , Malawi , Mozambique , Rwanda , Tanzania , Uganda , and Zambia . The adjective interlacustrine ("between lakes") can refer to the region, or more specifically, the nations or area bounded by the lakes. The Swahili language is the most commonly spoken language in the African Great Lakes region. It also serves as a national or official language of five nations in

2736-576: The Congo-Zaire, Nile, and Zambezi rivers, which drain into the Atlantic Ocean , Mediterranean Sea , and Indian Ocean , respectively. Forests are dominant in the lowlands of the Congo-Zaire Basin, while grasslands and savannas (dry grasslands) are most common in the southern and eastern highlands. Temperatures in the lowlands average about 35 °C (95 °F). Around Lake Turkana , the climate

2812-739: The Jubba valley. By the late 1890s, when Italians and British occupied the Jubaland area, an estimated 35,000 former Bantu slaves were already settled there. The Italian colonial administration abolished slavery in Somalia at the turn of the 20th century by decree of the King of Italy. Some Bantu groups, however, remained enslaved until the 1910s in the areas not totally dominated by the Italians, and continued to be despised and discriminated against by large parts of Somali society. After World War I , many Somali Bantus, mainly

2888-614: 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

2964-639: The Somalis consider them different. One of the Bantu customs still observed by Gosha people is the Gulu Nkulu ("Great Dance") of the Yao in Mozambique and Malawi. All told, there has been very little co-mingling between Somali Bantus and Somalis. Formal intermarriage is extremely rare, and typically results in ostracism the few times it does occur. During the Somali Civil War , many Bantu were forced from their lands in

3040-559: The Somalis from Mogadishu called them with a discriminatory word all together Mushunguli . Unlike Somalis , most of whom are traditionally nomadic herders , Somali Bantus are mainly sedentary subsistence farmers . The Somali Bantus' predominant " Negroid " physical traits also serve to further distinguish them from Somalis. Among these phenotypic characteristics of the Bantu are kinky ( jareer ) hair, while Somalis are soft-haired ( jilec ). The majority of Somali Bantus have converted to Islam , which they first began embracing. Starting in

3116-585: The Somalis' indigenous patrilineal clan system of social stratification. These Bantus are referred to by the Somalis as sheegato or sheegad (literally "pretenders"), meaning they are not ethnically Somali and are attached to a Somali group on an adoptive, client basis. Somali 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

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3192-466: The UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) in 2010. Various terms differentiating the Somali Bantu from ethnic Somalis have been in usage for a long time. However, the term "Somali Bantu" in specific is an ethnonym that was created by humanitarian agencies shortly after the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia in 1991. Its purpose was to help staff of these aid agencies better distinguish between, on

3268-453: The United States. There are many different Somali Bantu clans such as the Majindo, Makua, Malima, Mayasa, Mayao, Kiziguas, Kabole, Shabelle, Shiidle, Makane, Hintire, Eeyle, Sedah Omar, Digil Afaaf and Mirifle Afaaf, Biimaal Afaaf, and Some Moobleen. which all contain clans and subclans. Assimilation into mainstream Somali society tends to be stronger for Somali Bantus living in urban areas and

3344-605: 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 ,

3420-649: The anti-slavery activist and explorer Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti informed the Italian public about the local slave trade and the indifferent attitude of the first Italian colonial government in Somalia toward it. Somali Bantus simply refer to themselves as Bantu . Those who can trace their origins to Bantu groups in southeast Africa refer to themselves collectively as Shanbara , Shangama or Wagosha . Those who trace their origins to Bantu tribes inhabiting areas further south call themselves Zigula , Makua , Yao , Nyassa , Ngindo , Nyamwezi , Mwera and other names, although

3496-555: 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

3572-727: The centuries to customers in Morocco , Libya , Somalia , Egypt , Arabia , the Persian Gulf , India , the Far East and the Indian Ocean islands . 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. Most of the slaves were taken from the Majindo , Makua , Nyasa , Yao , Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania , Mozambique , and Malawi . Collectively, these Bantu groups are known as Mushunguli , which

3648-604: The colonial period, some also began converting to Christianity . However, whether Muslim or Christian , many Bantu have retained their ancestral animist traditions, including the practice of possession dances and the use of magic . Many of these religious traditions closely resemble those practised in Tanzania , similarities which also extend to hunting, harvesting and music, among other things. Many Somali Bantus have also retained their ancestral social structures, with their Bantu tribe of origin in southeastern Africa serving as

3724-434: The descendants of former slaves, became Catholics. They were principally concentrated in the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi and Genale plantations. Indeed, in 1895, the first 45 Bantu slaves were freed by the Italian colonial authorities under the administration of the chartered Catholic company Filonardi . The former were later converted to Catholicism. Massive emancipation and conversion of slaves in Somalia only began after

3800-588: 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

3876-426: 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. Among the resettlement destinations, it is known that Salt Lake City, Utah received about 1,000 Bantus. Other cities in

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3952-482: The general Nigeria and Cameroon area of West Africa . This Bantu expansion first introduced Bantu peoples to central , southern and southeastern Africa , regions where they had previously been absent from. The Somali Bantu largely trace their origins from the Somali slave trade (sometimes also referred to as the ' Arab ' or ' Indian Ocean ' slave trade). This was a centuries long trade which brought Southeast African populations to Somalia and other parts of

4028-411: 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

4104-544: The lower Juba River valley, as militiamen from various Somali clans took control of the area. Being visible minorities and possessing little in the way of firearms, the Bantu were particularly vulnerable to violence and looting by gun-toting militiamen. 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 1991, 12,000 Bantu people were displaced into Kenya, and nearly 3,300 were estimated to have returned to Tanzania. In 2002,

4180-442: The main livelihood for people in the region. With four Great Lakes on its borders, Uganda ranks as one of the world's largest producers of freshwater fish. The climate and rich volcanic soils in the highlands also sustain intensely cultivated croplands. The economies of the Great Lakes region states have different structures and are at various stages of development. The GDP real growth rate ranges from 1.8 percent in Burundi to 4.4 in

4256-483: 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 large majority of West Africa, notably the most populous African nation Nigeria , Rwanda , Tanzania , Uganda , Kenya , Burundi (25 million),

4332-406: The one hand, Bantu origin ethnic minority groups hailing from Southern Somalia and thus in dire need of humanitarian attention and on the other hand, versus 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

4408-413: The present-day Somali Bantu to the premodern civilizations of Somalia. Medieval travellers visiting Southern Somalia at the time described its inhabitants as being mostly ethnically similar to the inhabitants of Northern Somalia and made no ethnic distinctions besides noting the presence of Arab , Persian , and Indian traders. The Mushunguli language is the sole surviving Somali Bantu language and

4484-527: The principal form of social stratification . Smaller units of societal organization are divided according to matrilineal kinship groups, the latter of which are often interchangeable with ceremonial dance groupings. Meanwhile, they do maintain some traditions of their own, such as the common act of basket weaving. Another important cultural aspect of the Bantu people consists art using bright colors and fabrics. Primarily for security reasons, some Somali Bantus have attempted to attach themselves to groups within

4560-782: 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

4636-1117: 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 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

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4712-429: 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. While Tanzania was initially willing to grant

4788-460: 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

4864-402: The region: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Because of its high population—estimated to be 107 million people —and the agricultural surplus in the region, the area became organized into a number of small states. The most powerful of these monarchies were Buganda , Bunyoro , Karagwe , Rwanda, and Burundi. Being the long-sought source of the Nile and

4940-450: 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

5016-418: The separation of two tectonic plates , often accompanied by a graben , or trough, in which lake water can collect. This rift began when East Africa, impelled by currents in the mantle , began separating from the rest of Africa, moving to the northeast. The basins that resulted from the geological uplifts filled with water that now flowed north. Lake Victoria is not actually within the Rift Valley. It occupies

5092-413: 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

5168-448: 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. The documentary film Rain in a Dry Land chronicles this journey, with stories of Bantu refugees resettled in Springfield, Massachusetts and Atlanta , Georgia. Plans to resettle

5244-404: The surface-choking water hyacinth and shore-clogging papyrus , are problems. Water hyacinth have thus far affected only Lake Victoria. Until 12 million years ago, the bountiful waters of the equatorial plateau either flowed west into the Congo River system or east to the Indian Ocean . This was changed by the formation of the Great Rift Valley. A rift is a weak place in Earth's crust due to

5320-422: The various Bantu sub-groups). Most Gosha gradually accepted Islam in the early decades of the 20th Century. Most Somali Bantus now consider themselves members of Somali Digil or Rahanweyn clans. However, marriage patterns still tend to follow the original ethnic lines of the various original Bantu groups. This has perpetuated the non-Somali physical characteristics of the Jubba Valley farmers. Because of this

5396-403: The war due to discrimination experienced in Somalia. 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

5472-450: The watershed triple point between the rivers Nile, Congo and Zambezi, the region had long been of interest to Europeans. The first Europeans to arrive in the region in any numbers were Christian missionaries who had limited success in converting the locals, but did open the region to later colonization. Increased contact with the rest of the world led to a series of devastating epidemics affecting both humans and livestock. While seen as

5548-465: 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 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

5624-562: Was found in 1972. It was originally thought to be Homo habilis , but some anthropologists have assigned it to a new species, Homo rudolfensis , named after the lake (previously known as Lake Rudolf). In 1984, the Turkana Boy , a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo erectus boy was discovered. In 1999, a 3,500,000-year-old skull was discovered there, named Kenyanthropus platyops , which means "flat-faced man of Kenya". Fishing—primarily of tilapia species but also of Nile perch —provides

5700-482: Was not eliminated until the early parts of the 20th century. Somali Bantus are not ancestrally related to the indigenous ethnic Somalis of Cushitic background and have a culture distinct from the ethnic Somalis . The Somali Bantu have remained marginalized ever since the establishment of Somalia. Some Somali Bantu people have been displaced into Kenya, and a small number have returned to Tanzania. An overseas diaspora community of Somali Bantus can be found primarily in

5776-449: 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 ,

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