Talk:Bantu peoples

Kommentar

Your History is good, only that I get the feeling you need to research wider and avoid dwelling only on the written one sided ancient colonial stories and basing only on South Africa. Bantu is an all inclussive word standing for Humanity. The researchers were all Europeans if i am not wrong, What about Indigenous History, is it Because Humanity leaves in self denial that we use this to corrupt other peoples descent and ancestral dignity. history Attests that Zimbabwe was UnIhhabitable and Swampy Years down the line. Did the Bantu originate from the swamp?? Jkaranikataka 10:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Maps

I made a diagram of the Bantu expansion and added it to the article. Any comments or suggestions? Also, I will soon create a vector version of the image on de (Verbreitung der Bantu-Sprachen und potentielle Urheimat), which is a rather fine-grained map of the presence of Bantu peoples in sub-Saharan Africa. — mark ✎ 11:23, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nice map! More artfully done than usual. I personally can find no fault with it. Its a bit vague, but then I guess the facts are a bit vague too. Thanks.Peregrine981 12:20, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you! Indeed, the facts and hypotheses are not very specific either.

I re-made the map of the German Wikipedia into Image:Bantu present distribution.png. As I first want to trace the original source, I won't add it to the article yet. I guess it could also be used at Bantu languages. However, that one needs other maps as well (distribution of different Bantu languages, etc.). We'll see. — mark ✎ 16:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This map (and others like it) has problems, in that it implies there are no Bantu west of what looks like the Fish River in South Africa. That may have been true in historical times, as that's where the British settlers met the advancing Xhosa, but is no longer the case, as there's been large scale migration of people from the Eastern to the Western Cape. How useful is a map like this? There are Bantu in Europe these days. What is the criteria for the dividing line?

posted by Greenman (talk · contribs), 16:53, June 11 2005

See Image:Bantu present distribution.png for sources used in creating this map. The southern African part of the map is for the most part based on the map by Irene Tucker found in Nurse (2001) A SIL Survey Report for the Bantu Languages (link), which I think is a reasonably accurate rendering of present-day Bantu homelands. That map is meant as an ethnolinguistic map and therefore focuses on homelands, not taking into account recent migration patterns. If you have better sources, be sure to let me know so that I can try to update the map. — mark ✎ 16:46, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC).

I see the original source [1] is based on research from 1948, however it has a disclaimer that puts me more at ease. The Wikipedia version claims that this represents current distribution, which is not true at all, and needs to change. 1948 is an interesting date to use, as it's the year the National Party came to power in South Africa, with their policy of apartheid, and creating homelands along with attempts to claim that Africans did not historically exist in other areas. See also African languages for an alternative map that takes the distribution further westward. I don't have better sources unfortunately, just suggest more care with the wording of what's being described. -- Greenman 14 June 2005

I've removed the map for now, mainly because of its anachronistic name. I could re-upload it under a different name, but I would prefer a really recent map instead of a map based on a 1948 linguistic classification (shame on me). I guess I've been too bold; we should wait for more accurate data before adding a map like this. — mark ✎ 13:11, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In its current form, at least on my monitor, it's very difficult to distinguish between "dull yellow" and yellow. It took me several seconds before I realized that there were two different shades there. Maybe different colors, or at least a greater variation? AbdiViklas

Recent addition

Recently the following paragraph was added to the article:

They couldn't spread southwards because their cattle and plants were not adapted to the Mediterranean climate. It was Huguenots who brought the Mediterranean techniques to South Africa.

I think this comment needs some references. I'm not an agriculture expert, so I don't know much about it. — mark ✎ 09:46, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

From memory, something similar appears in Guns, Germs and Steel. --Error 04:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Early Nomadic Bantu

I'm a loser and I recall learning about the Bantu in relation to their significance as a society with relatively egalitarian status between men and women prior to their settling. They represented a social phenomenon because the change was observable as the last remaining nomadic groups settled down in . . . the 1970s? This was for a class I took last year, so I will try to dig up some materials. Is this familiar with any of you? I'd be interested to see what you think/its relevance to this article. This is my first attempted contribution to wikipedia so if you have any suggestions r.e. either material -or- conduct please tell. Thanks!

Welcome, Heymay! It doesn't ring a bell, but that doesn't say much as I didn't take such a class nor read anything solid on the Bantu peoples (I'm more at home in their languages at present). However, especially the 1970 date makes me curious — I don't know of any nomadic Bantu groups in recent years. By all means dig up some materials, I've been thinking for a while that this article is in need of expansion! — mark ✎ 00:56, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Merge?

I propose this article be merged with Bantu languages article. I think (as the current article says) that using this linguistic term to denote 'peoples' or 'races' is pretty offensive nowadays.

Thoughts? Guinnog 20:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's best to keep them separate. Referring to people as Bantu is only offensive in South Africa, as far as I know; elsewhere it seems to be okay. Geschiere uses it frequently in his Modernity of Witchcraft, and Turnbull doesn't shy from it in The Forest People. Even if you find the term offensive, it has a long history of usage as a term for peoples, so it's worthwhile to keep the article separate to discuss the historical aspects, if nothing else. — BrianSmithson 20:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I'm not convinced by your answer: it's a little like saying 'yid' is only offensive to Jews, and is often used in books, so therefore it's ok! I'll see what I want to do next. Meantime I'm posting it on Editing Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board/to do to see if we can stimulate some more debate. Guinnog 18:21, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's the point. I don't think the term is offensive to Bantu speakers outside of South Africa. In Cameroon, people weren't offended if I asked them if they were Bantu. Is "yid" ever used in an academic context? "Bantu" is. — BrianSmithson 19:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Do not merge. Referring to people as Bantu is not (always) offensive, many people self identify as Bantu. It is a term that is widely used, not only by linguists. Even if the term were offensive (which it isn't), it still warrants its own article – nigger and kike have articles too.--Ezeu 21:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Good point. So lets make the Bantu article more like the kike article. In South Africa, where I heard it very often, it was as offensive to me as nigger, and it still is. Guinnog 22:49, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

You're ignoring the point that outside of South Africa it's not offensive. I have no problem with the article stating point blank "Using this term to label people is offensive in South Africa". But using "Bantu" to refer to people is commonly done by Bantu-speakers themselves. — BrianSmithson 02:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not ignoring this 'fact' but disputing it. It is offensive to *anyone* who knows that 'races' (which is what this article presently is about) are an outmoded unscientific 19th century term. See the article on Caucasian as another example. The use of Bantu as a racial term is exactly equivalent to the use of Aryan. Some black Americans refer to themselves as nigger too, I wouldn't justify the use of this word in an encyclopedia. It would be interesting to hear from any 'Bantu' reading this whether they consider this term preferable or not! Guinnog 07:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

No one is refuting that the term is percieved by some as pejorative. I am a Bantu, and in Uganda where I am from, the term does not carry any negative connotations. Bantu, abantu, ngabantu and other variants means people in many bantu languages. --Ezeu 08:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

The main problem, I think, is that Guinnog is coming here from a South-African perspective, where Bantu indeed has a pejorative connotation. However, as early as June last year I noted that it might in fact be better to split the article into one about Bantu in the S-A context and about Bantu as an ethnolinguistic term (largely outside S-A). With Brian and Ezeu I want to stress that it is absolutely not the case that this term in ethnolinguistic use is pejorative. All non-SA Bantu people I know feel like Ezeu on this issue. — mark ✎ 08:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a very sensible solution. — BrianSmithson 12:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I've revised the opening para to reflect that the use of this term to denote a race is offensive in all Southern Africa, not just South Africa. In my experience, people in Botswana and Zimbabwe would be just as offended to be called Bantu. I still have reservations about labelling people with old-fashioned racial terms like this: it is uncomfortably close to Aryan or Caucasian with all the trouble these terms have caused. However, this is a compromise position I can live with - for now! Guinnog 14:29, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

That's just it; it's not racial, it's linguistic. The article is basically saying "These people speak similar languages and have some similarities of culture." But I think the current wording is a reasonable compromise. — BrianSmithson 15:25, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The opening paragraph is written in a non-objective non-encyclopedic manner. I'm assuming this stems from this current discussion? Should this be rewritten so that it is more objective but with reference made to Bantu as an offensive term in the context of South Africa? Bigheadjer 02:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

As everyone knows, "races" don't exist. However I don't think that the article claims that βantu (in Kintu, the root of "bantu" and "bantoid" languages, the "b" was actually a voiced bilabial fricative, like Tshivenda "vh") are a "race". This would be similar to saying that the Ethiopians are a "race distinct from" βantu, this is as dumb as saying that the French are not Germanic simply because they speak a Romance language. The Ethiopians (and ancient Egyptians) speak a "Semitic" language, they don't look Jewish to me. Language does not define "population group".

But of course, since "distinct population groups" are a figment of many peoples collective immaginations, let's not have the article say that βantu are a "distinct" grouping of people. I strongly belive that people should be vey careful what names they call themselves, especially when using ill-defined names which people can intrepet any which way they choose. -ZyXoas 198.54.202.226 11:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC) (sorry, I forgot my password 8-))

Meaning of the word

On the article it is said:

Strictly speaking, the term "Bantu" is a contraction of two Nguni words - "Ba" ("people") and "ntu" (who speak").

How true is this?

As far as I know "ba" is just a prefix for the plural human nominal class, and as so it means "people" as much as the sufix "a" in Catalan, Italian or Spanish means "female". It is, not at all. Also, "ntu" would not mean "who speak" but the root for "human" or "people" or "person"...

--83.44.190.12 22:45, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It's untrue, and your explanation is better. Be bold.

SteveH 14:12, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

usa

bantus in the us are predominately muslim and from somolia. this article is lacking.

I think you are confusing some things here. — mark ✎ 07:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

no, it's true, american immigrant bantus are muslim and refugees from somolia.

The unidentified contributor is half right. U.S. immigration policy in recent years has provided for special immigration of Somali refugees from primarily agricultural communities in southern & southwestern Somalia, in contradistinction to primarily pastoralist Somali & urbanites with pastoralist history or heritage, who are widely referred to as "Somali Bantu." However, this is a neologism from outside, although in the U.S. context many of the people concerned may use the term now as it is important to their standing in the U.S.

During the warfare of the early 1990s associated with the collapse of the Somali state and with devastating famine, the agricultural communities were particularly targetted, having already been regarded as racially distinct by other Somali, but within a system of racial classification that does not correspond to that in the U.S. or derive from the reifications of "race" associated with the European "Enlightenment." In particular the key distinguishing feature used for discrimination has been translated by one anthropologist, Catherine Bestemann, as "hard hair," i.e. curly or nappy, whereas other Somali generally have straight hair.

Some of the agricultural community members are descended from enslaved persons imported from further south; there is some debate as to whether some may have locally autochthonous ancestry. The denomination of them as "Bantu" refers to this southern origin. In a very few locations some of the very oldest people actually speak a Bantu language, but nearly all so-called "Somali Bantu" speak Somali as their home language, albeit a distinct dialect. Likewise "Somali Bantu" identify themselves with clans in the elaborate Somali clan structure, but this identification seems to derive from patron-client relationships that developed as slavery declined in the colonial era. Agricultural production was socially disdained by Somali pastoralists in the past, and there has been a continuing linkage among the "racial", occupational and descent-from-slaves elements of external identification and discrimination of these communities and their members within Somali society.

The inversion of that discrimination into advantaged access to immigration with refugee status to the U.S., based on U.S. American sensitivities about racism & projection of U.S. racial concepts into Africa, has caused a degree of tension and defensiveness in older Somali immigrant communities in the U.S.

However, the comments by the anonymous writer also illustrate the pitfalls of treating "Bantu" as an ethnonym. It is not true that "the Bantus" in the U.S. are all and only Muslim "Somali Bantu." Apart from African-Americans whose ancestors were enslaved, many of whom spoke Bantu languages (the most famous example of dialect persistence, the Gullah communities of Georgia & Caroliina sea islands, seems to relate to Angola, as their name itself indicates), a great many recent African immigrants of the so-called neo-diaspora had or have a Bantu language as their home language and might accept the term as referring to themselves at least in the sense of "a person" or "people" perhaps indicated by Ezeu above. If a Ugandan is a Bantu, presumably so is a Ugandan immigrant. And if Somali people whose enslaved ancestors are presumed to have spoken a Bantu language (though not a single one for all in the category), usually no longer identifiable, but who themselves only speak Somali, then it would seem that many African-Americans of more temporally distant African ancestry might also be called Bantu. In these latter two cases "Bantu" becomes divorced from language and most elements culture & thus appears logically to reduce to a racial term in a biologistic sense that I, like Guinnog, would regard as spurious.

Moreover it is quite clear that the term Somali Bantu was created to capture a view of their history of enslavement and racial discrimination, which may be fair enough. But there are many instances of its use by both government sources and in the general press where it clearly is taken to refer to a "real" or "biological" racial distinction. This is somewhat paradoxical in that it reinforces though transvalues the discriminatory racialization, but within a U.S. context where other Somali people are not a superordinate group, but instead are likely to be identified as "black" along with "Somali Bantu", recent African and Diaspora immigrants, and African-Americans of long U.S. American ancestry. Clearly identification as "Bantu" is at present a powerful source of access to resources for Somali people who have survived devastating and harrowing experiences of a very particular sort. However other Somali immigrants, particularly those who would like to bring in relatives & who may also have had pretty harrowing lives in Somali civil conflict & refugee camps, may resent the "Bantu" preference, as they see it. Over the long run it will be interesting to see if common Somali cultural features (especially language & Somali inflected Islam) wear away at the distinction, or whether its legal and policy institution will persist, perhaps at a cost to other culturally-linked resources for the new immigrants. Ngwe 09:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Bantus aren't dead!

This article is written in the past tense, as if Bantu people are not still living! I'm sure a lot of the statements made about ancient Bantu peoples that are not true today. I came to this article looking for information on Somali Bantus. Not only is there no mention of them here, the article implies that there are no living Bantu peoples. Lagringa 21:02, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

You are quite right. Although the very first paragraph hints at the current existence of some 400 Bantu ethnic groups, the rest of the article doesn't discuss this at all. The real problem is that the rest of the article is about the term Bantu in a South African context. I have suggested before (and do so again now) that we split off the Bantu (South Africa) part (which currently makes up for 90% of the article content) and start writing an article here on Bantu in general, as used outside South Africa. (On a sidenote: what we have here is an instance of systemic bias: because South Africans are by far the most internet-savy on the African continent, our coverage of Africa in certain cases is biased towards South Africa.) — mark ✎ 19:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Split article per previous discussions

I have split the article and created Bantu peoples of South Africa, and also posted a note to Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board requesting expansion of this article. --Ezeu 14:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, Ezeu. — mark ✎ 19:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the {{limitedgeographicscope}} tag, which doesn't apply anymore. — mark ✎ 19:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Recent addition

The following was recently added to the article. I've pulled it out mainly because it sounds like a non-notable 'fringe' theory, so WP:NPOV#Undue weight applies here. Besides, it is not clear where the source is to be found, and what claims to reliability it, or its author, has.

It is quite possible that the popularity of the Bantu languages is due at least in part to the teachings of the sage Bentu, an apprentice of Mohit, who is believed to have had an indo-afro linguistic influence on the earlier South African tongues.[1]

1. Mbembe, Kuinto. "Time As a Metaphor of History: Early India and the African Connection". pp 45-49.

First, I couldn't locate that author and that article. Second, it is unclear what the teachings of the apprentice of Mohit could possibly have to do with the popularity of the Bantu languages. Third, it is equally unclear what the relation is between the spread of the Bantu languages and some 'indo-afro linguistic influence' (whatever that may be) on other (namely earlier) South African languages. In sum, it seems to me that the allusions made in this piece of text are too vague, and the source too unnotable, to include it in an encyclopedic article about the Bantu people or their languages. — mark ✎ 21:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Oranges and Peaches

The article states:

It could be that the Southernward expansion of the Bantu into Tsetse fly country had to wait until their cattle evolved to be resistant to the Nagana disease.

I don't think so. This was obviously written by someone who doesn't understand either Evolution, common farming and breeding practices, or even the simple fact that different societies constantly interact. It also sounds suspiciously to me like one of those delightful "You bantus were not here when our forefathers arrived in South Africa" theories. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 19:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Zyxoas, you are quite right. Linguistic & archaeological evidence concerning the Khoekhoe in southern Africa has led scholars (e.g. Christopher Ehret, Richard Elphick) to argue since the 1970s that cattle were adopted by some hunting-foraging people ("San" or "Bushmen") south of the Orange River several centuries before immigrant communities of livestock-keeping farmers presumed to speak Bantu languages arrived in the area (ca. beginning of the common era for the cattle & perhaps 4th c. CE for the farming communities along the coasts & somewhat later on the highveld). Presumably these most southerly hunting-foraging communities got them from others intermediary to the then furthest extent of settlement by Bantu-speaking farmers.

There are of course large areas where Bantu-speaking peoples live and lived historically where cattle aren't/weren't kept due to nagana (isiZulu word) a.k.a. trypanosomiasis (a term reflecting the Greco-Roman invasions of the 19th c. ;->). There's no automatic link between Bantu-speaking and cattle-keeping. Spread of cattle to previously tsetse-ridden areas wasn't due to cattle resistance but to bush clearing connected to shifting cultivation & population growth, creating a new ecology which grazing helped to maintain. Leroy Vail had an article in the Journal of Southern African Studies in the 1980s documenting how colonial land-use and labor practices in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) led to a reexpansion of the tsetse zone. Ngwe 10:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. It was observed no later than the publication of Vol. I of The Oxford History of South Africa (1969 I think) & possibly considerably earlier that the limit of pre-industrial settlement by Bantu-speakers in southern Africa approximated the 15" per year rainfall isohyet; i.e. the constraint on settlement for such communities wasn't livestock but cultivation. Likewise the earliest phase of far southern farming settlement was focused on coastal and riverside areas with particular soil types & perhaps ease of cultivation -- both iron tools and cattle numbers in proportion to sheep & goats were much more restricted in this early phase than they came to be by the 9th or 10th century CE according to the archaeological evidence. Ngwe 10:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems bigger than expanding article?

Hi, I am new to Wikipedia & have some concerns that I may unintentionally violate etiquette by overly strong statements. If I do so, please have forbearance and give me guidance as to better approaches.

In my view this article has problems bigger than needing expansion. Let me raise two key ones.

1) Bantu is in fact a language classification and not an ethnonym, so that it is quite wrong to refer to "the Bantu" as if speakers of Bantu languages constitute or ever constituted a single social collectivity (as the discussion of expansion does), or even as a collection of ethnic groups a la the first sentence of the article.

2) The timeline for the spread of populations of speakers of Bantu languages is simply mistaken, being approximately 40 years out of date. (Somewhat relatedly, the descripton of the controversy between Greenberg and Guthrie, while not wrong, does not reflect the fact that it has been superseded). Bantu-speakers arrived in eastern southern Africa, i.e. southern Mozambique, Swaziland & Mpumalanga & KwaZulu-Natal provinces in S. Africa no later than the 5th century of the common era and probably a bit earlier, & were in what is now Botswana and the northerly S.A. provinces west of of Mpumalanga & maybe the Free State by the 8th or 9th centuries. A similar revision of dates would apply to the "western stream" of population movements along the Atlantic coast and westerly regions of south central Africa in Angola, Namibia, & parts of the DRC and Zambia. A good synthetic source on the eastern dynamics is Christopher Ehret's recent book _An African Classical Tradition_. A variety of writings by Jan Vansina bear on the western side & also on a debate over how to conceptualize the "two streams" spatially -- to simplify, one version would work with arrows sort of like those on one of the maps now up, while Vansina argues for recursive dispersals from centers, in which we would see arrows going west, east and north as well as south.

But at this point I come up against a question about Wikipedia's common acceptance principle. I believe that both of the points above in fact represent the great weight of current scholarly views, if not absolute consensus (the basic dating point would be close to consensus though dynamics remain more debated). However, point 1) is not commonly accepted in more general journalistic usage or what we might call serious popular literature, which tends, like the current Wikipedia article, to treat "Bantu" as an ethnonym in itself or as an umbrella term for a category of ethnic groups rather than a classification of languages.

In other words, the most commonly accepted scholarly views diverge from the most commonly accepted "serious popular culture" views.

I am not clear on how Wikipedia philosophy and "neutral viewpoint" would deal with such a divergence. This problem arises concerning many African topics. It worries me a good deal. Much of what is commonly accepted relies on perpetuating images and concepts that were inaccurate when first promulgated and now are both inaccurate and outdated, both in the sense that scholarship has developed further, and in the sense that Africa today continues to be presented as though nothing has changed since the early days of European colonization and as if the images from those times were accurate then. I greatly fear that the common acceptance rule, applied to widely held views of Africa, means the perpetuation of false information and ideas.

What does Wikipedia do when accuracy conflicts with widely held but mistaken views?

(My username is Cclowe -- the sign name link does not seem to be working and the tilde key cap on my keyboard doesn't seem to register inside the browser)

Those are very good points. I largely agree with your characterization of popular and scholarly views. I think we should stick first and foremost to scholarly views, since those are the views for which we can cite academically published reliable sources. After that, we can note that popular use of Bantu as an ethnonym of course. However, I want to note that from about 1950 onwards, 'Bantu' is also in common as an ethnonym in cultural anthropological and sociological literature, cf. titles like The relationship between the Bakola and the Bantu peoples of the coastal regions of Cameroon and their perception of commercial forest exploitation (Mawoung 2001), Bantu ethnic and traditional realities in Congo-Kinshasa (Nkamany A Baleme 1999), Les peuples bantu : migration, expansion et identité culturelle (Obenga 1989), Bantu ontology and its implications for African socio-economic and political institutions (Unah 1998).

If you would like to rewrite the article to reflect the current scholarly views on the Bantu expansion, by all means go ahead! — mark ✎ 07:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Mark, I probably will do as you suggest regarding the spread of Bantu-speaking peoples. However, in my view your dating of the literature is off. In fact the sociological and anthropological uses of the term date from about the 1920s and are closely related to colonialism. In South Africa at that date it was a "liberal" alternative to "Native," and at that time such usage, like other aspects of South African racialism, fit quite comfortably within general British and European (and U.S., mostly via missionaries though increasingly also foundations) imperial usages -- indeed South Africa was often regarded as leading the way by overseas whites. Usage of "Bantoe" by Afrikaans-speaking anthropologists lagged a bit in South Africa in breadth of acceptance compared to "Bantu" for Anglophone ones, but that shifted dramatically after World War II & the term became associated with the elaboration of the ethno-racial concepts underlying Separate Development ("Grand Apartheid") and its legal infrastructure, as you know. Outside of South Africa the term Bantu as an ethnonym went into fairly steep decline especially after 1960 in the scholarly literature in anthropology, sociology and history. Many persistent uses reflect the later work of scholars of essentially colonialist outlook who sometimes promoted untenable views, if not simply reprintings of older works, though uses such as that by Victor Turner that were mentioned would be somewhat more complex. It may also be that these generalizations are truer of Anglophone scholarship than Francophone (would also be interesting to see if there's a Belgian vs. French difference).

Your very recent title citations of articles by African scholars are quite interesting. I would hypothesize that it will be more common to find such usage in areas where communities speaking Bantu languages are proximate or interact extensively with communities speaking other kinds of languages. Pretty clearly that is the case in your Cameroon cite, may have a bearing on the Congo one. In some cases it may be just a convenient shorthand. Some of these titles seem to reflect arguments about underlying cultural unities, although they still seem somewhat geographically restricted. I know the usage appears in some literature on Rwanda, mostly older in origin but still reprinted in some cases, that wants to promote putative racially distinct "Hamitic" or other ancestry for Tutsi people despite the universality of Kinyarwanda (Bantu language) & now well-documented intermarriage and ethnic status mobility prior to colonial reifications in identity documents, access to education etc.

Your citations pretty clearly indicate that NPOV requires recognition of such usage. However, I would argue that it is not NPOV to treat such usage as a consensus convention, which I think the present version mostly does, and which I don't think is true.

Ngwe 09:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Chris, I have to admit that the '1950 onwards' date that I gave was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I am mostly familiar with African linguistic and anthropological linguistic literature, in which the term Bantu is used without any reservation both in the linguistic (phylo-genetic) and in the ethnological sense. You are right that the citations I gave are quite recent; I'd have to check if it is as easy to find similar examples from earlier years; your arguments would seem to indicate that it shouldn't be.

As a linguistic appelation, Bantu has of course been in use at least since Meinhof's (1895) vergleichenden Wörterbuch der Bantusprachen (I'm not sure if Bleek used it); I think this article would need to mention that in this sense, it has never been very controversial. Anyway, it would be great if you could put your knowledge to use for the good of this article, and hopefully many others. I fully agree that this article will need to detail the use and connotations of the term 'Bantu' much like you have done above, rather than simply joining the masses in using the term in some popular, misinformed sense — that's precisely what an encyclopedia is for, in my opinion. — mark ✎ 12:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Mark, thanks for the encouragement. I will try to take this on but am still working out NPOV for the issues being discussed. The attribution to Bleek of first application of the term Bantu to a large group of languages still categorized that way is pretty conventional. An American missionary to Zulu-speakers in Natal, Lewis Grout, I think published an observation of widespread similarities a little earlier, but he called the category Zingian (cf. Zinj, Azania etc.). I believe Bleek also is credited, along with some Methodist missionaries working among the Mfengu, with working out noun classifications and related concords. He and his daughter also are the source of most evidence that we have about the languages and cultures of a number of southern African Bushman/San groups that no longer survive. Ngwe 05:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Original Research or unsourced?

The following text was removed for being original research:

It could be that the southward expansion of the Bantu into tsetse fly country had to wait until their cattle evolved to be resistant to the nagana disease.

This sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe I read it in Guns, Germs, and Steel? If anyone has a copy of the book handy and could verify this, please feel free to readd to the article. I think it's in Chapter 19: How Africa Became Black. However, I might just be imagining that I've heard this before. Thanks. Ufwuct 15:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I see it this way: in the light of Wikipedia:Verifiability, unsourced is the same as original research. If we allow unsourced statements, no matter how familiar they sound (and to me this one sounds vaguely familiar too), we have no principled way to distinguish between solid research, original research, or mere fringe theories. I think Wikipedia has been far too lenient in allowing statements like this to live unsourced, that's why I am taking WP:V seriously by pulling out unsourced statements.

So if you consult Diamond's GG&S and find this statement, feel free to put it back in the article, along with its source. — mark ✎ 19:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, whomever it was that wrote this obviously does not understand evolution very much.

Anyway, it is really so difficult to believe that the people could've simply got suitable cattle and learnt the appropriate agriculture for the semi-arid climate from their Khoikhoin neighbours? That's a lot more plausible than cattle "evolving" over a period of less than a few hundred years.

"How Africa became black", hey? It wouldn't be the first time a book on Africa got it completely wrong. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 19:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Jared Diamond is a provocative thinker but not a historian, and in fact his overarching historical theory is highly reductive. If he made this argument, he was in error, and the removed speculation is erroneous. In fact both historical linguistic and archaeological evidence show the spread of cattle and goats and sheep preceded the spread of Bantu-language speaking humans southward in eastern and southern Africa. See for example Christopher Ehret, "The First Spread of Food Production to Southern Africa," in The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History, ed. C. Ehret and M. Posnansky (U. California Press, 1982). If the animals got somewhere before the people did, then inability of the animals to spread couldn't have held up human spread.

Ehret's more recent book, An African Classical Age: Eastern & Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400 (U. Virginia Press, 1998) is strongly recommended to anyone interested in the "eastern stream" of Bantu-language speakers, with a great deal of interest on interactions of proto-Bantu-speakers with ancestral speakers of Chadic, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic language speakers in the more northerly phases of the spread. He's a historical linguist, but knowledgeable about the archaeology. Looking for articles by Ehret and Jan Vansina & esp. ones where they debate each would be a quick way into the most recent evolutions of efforts to interpret the shape and timing of spread of Bantu-speaking peoples. Chris Lowe 23:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

African Americans

Shouldn't there be something about the relationship between Bantu and the majority of African Americans. Its my understanding that most of not all of the slaves were from Bantu areas. This has led to a lot of confusion where African Americans think they are close blood brothers with like Ethiopians and Egyptians, which I'm pretty sure is not the case. Some people can't see past skin color though, especially in the South. Anyway I'm not an expert, but if someone knows some good sources I would welcome the appendum. Novaterata 00:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Cameroon is roughly the dividing line between Bantu-speaking areas and non-Bantu speaking areas in West Africa. According to estimates by Hugh Thomas in his book The Slave Trade, 8,000,000 Africans were shipped out of ports northwest of there. 5,000,000 were sent from ports in Cameroon and parts south. Now, it's possible, even likely, that Bantu-speaking people taken from Cameroon could have been shipped out of ports to the north, such as Calabar; the opposite is also possible. But it would seem from Thomas's data that the majority of Africans taken to the New World were in fact non-Bantu speakers. This number probably fluctuates from area to area; slaves taken from Angola usually ended up in South America, for example. I am not an expert, however; this is just my reading of Thomas's data. — BrianSmithson 01:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

PGAN002's edit

Did I perhaps revert a correct edit, or is it a bug in the Wiki software? Feel free to correct my "correction" if I was in error... Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 08:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

How much migration?

If you look on original works (see also sources of the de.wiki article, most of them in English) it is convincingly show, that there was no great wave of invasion, but nevertheless the investigators distinguish Bantu from Bantu-assimilized Khoisan. And still today there are differences of the phenotypes of typical Khoisan and typical Bantu. These facts suggest, that there was not only a change of techniques and customs but also a change of people. Of course, that doesn't mean that anybody of the precolonial populations would have practised apartheid. Anywhere in the world, not only in Africa, different behaviours were possible: coexistence in distance, peaceful mixture, killing victors and (I beg the readers' pardon) fucking victors. --Ulamm 22:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Bantu is a linguistic category. It is not a racial group or a biological population. Bantu-speaking peoples have interacted with numbers of other peoples speaking other languages and having biological variation in addition to the biological variations within and among Bantu-speaking peoples. For example, KiSwahili is a Bantu language with considerable admixture of Arabic-derived vocabulary, and the Swahili ethnic group is a Bantu-speaking people who have a particular history of interaction with Arabic-speaking peoples that influences their sense of culture and identity. In southern Africa the numbers of peoples who would fit into a category of "Bantu assimilated Khoisan" are exceedingly small, the Kgalagadi people in Botswana perhaps, possibly a group in Namibia, but the tiny numbers who remain distinctively Khoesan (for lack of a better term) don't speak Bantu languages by and large. Instead there are Bantu-speaking groups that show cultural evidences of having absorbed Khoekhoe groups, e.g. the Xhosa-speaking peoples (not all of whom are Xhosa, any more than all English speakers are English) have a language more strongly marked by Khoekhoe influences than the Zulu or Swazi, who still show some influences. Language shift does not always go with political dominance -- to the extent that some of the ancestors of the "Tutsi" in Rwanda and Burundi were outsiders who may have spoken Nilotic languages, they intermarried with KinyaRwanda speakers and their children or grandchildren grew up with the mother tongue, so that Tutsi are equally Bantu-speakers, and speakers of the same Bantu language, as Hutu -- and the lines between the categories are blurred and degree of conformity to "phenotypic" stereotypes are highly exaggerated.

There is no such thing as a "typical Bantu phenotype." Chris Lowe 09:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Let's not forget the Batwa ("Pygmie") peoples of Central East Africa who speak Bantu languages but have very peculiar cultures (not typically Khoisan).

It truly disappoints me that so many editors are absolutely determined to have articles treat "Bantu" as an ethnic group when this is obviously false. Are Batutsi, Bakgalagadi, Batwa, Mandela's amaThembu, etc all "Bantu"?

The truth is that linguistic groupings often do not coincide with ethnic groupings. You have Germanic people who speak Romance languages, descendants of amaZulu who speak isiXhosa (amaMfengu), Zambians who speak a Sotho-Tswana language, millions of English speakers with West African ancestors, Native Americans who speak a Romance language, Manchurians who speak Chinese languages, and the list goes on... Language does not always agree with ethnicity, and these articles should reflect that. Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 15:24, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Biblical Migration Theories

Does this fairy tale really have any place in this article?:

"Although the idea of a large-scale physical migration is currently outdated in the academic world here are a few of those theories: The bantu Originated between the nothern parts of africa and middle east . They descend from Ham. Most bantu tribes lived around nothern Ethiopia and Ruled the antient Egypt before they were conqured after the time of Shishark and forced to migrate downwards through Kenya and Uganda, this war lead to most parts of north africa becoming deserts. Before that South of the Sahara was Swampy and unInhabitable.This can be attested to by The bantu legends similar to biblical stories e.g the story of moses was long told in bantu folk tales before the advent of christianity."

I could see it being put in a separate and low-on-the-page section about traditional European colonial attitudes concerning Bantu peoples, but where it is now, in a section entitled "Bantu Expansion", it seems slapped in haphazardly. 64.147.67.22 20:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right; thanks for posting about it here. I seems to have slipped in unnoticed a while ago. I've removed it. - Brian (talk) 22:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

"this war lead to most parts of north africa becoming deserts"

That's almost as ridiculous as the "wandering uterus" theory of hysteria (okay, so it's actually MORE ridiculous).

Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 19:34, 4 October 2007 (UTC)