MC_A Concise History of Africa

INLAND AFRICA

The Bantu The Bantu are an ethnic and

Words to Understand Diaspora: The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland. Expulsion: The action or process of forcing someone to leave a place. Status-conscious: Aware or excessively interested in one's social status.

linguistic group, numbering about 120 million, which apart from the extreme south-west, inhabits most of the African continent south of the Congo river. Few cultural generalizations can be made as far as the Bantu are concerned, and the classification is primarily linguistic, there being almost 100 Bantu languages, including Luganda, Zulu, and Swahili. The origins of the Bantu are believed to lie in Cameroon. In about 1000 BC, the Bantu began a diaspora that was probably one of the largest in human history, and which possibly continued until the

3rd or 4th centuries AD. One group went east and south into Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and southern Africa and another turned west towards Angola, Namibia, and north-

western Botswana, the first becoming the Shona, Xhosa, Kikuyu, and Zulu, noted for their large herds of cattle, while the western diaspora include the

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