Bantu

BANTU. - Under this name are included many tribes of the southern part of Africa that are not culturally and racially homogeneous. It is in fact an exclusively linguistic grouping (ba-ntu is the plural of mu-ntu, man).

The languages of the peoples in question have a common structure. They divide nouns into classes characterized by prefixes placed before the roots, prefixes which in full or contracted form serve to express the various grammatical relations. Each class makes use of its own pronouns. Prepositions are lacking or nearly so, while relations of time and space are characterized by placing the nouns in the appropriate classes. Gender is likewise absent. Adjectives are scarce and their respective concepts are emphasized through verbs. The causative, applicative, iterative, etc. forms of the various actions are expressed by means of verbal suffixes. The entire lexical patrimony of the Bantu languages, despite striking phonetic differentiations whose laws of transition are today for the most part known, allows one to glimpse notable commonalities of roots, pointing us very probably to a common origin. The languages of the group are spoken, with the exception of the zones of the extreme south inhabited by the Bushmen and the Hottentots, as well as of the south-western stretch of Africa, up to the equatorial line, with a crossing of it in the center and even more so in the western portion. Important centers of Bantoid idioms are found in Nigeria and on the coasts of Guinea. To the linguistic unity of the Bantu there does not correspond, as we were saying, a cultural unity. We shall briefly summarize the most interesting related ethnological traits.

All those peoples practice the system of hoe agriculture, either with alternating crops or by using the burning of wild vegetation as fertilizer. Some southern and eastern tribes also raise livestock, which constitutes the best form of capitalization, so much so that it is precisely livestock that they use for the important payment of the bride price to the future parents-in-law, while others preferably pay hoes.

From the social point of view the Bantu tolerate polygynous marriage, although most are in fact monogamous. The legalization of the marriage, and therefore of the offspring, generally depends on the total payment of the aforementioned price, and indeed children born before said payment are illegitimate. Among many tribes, moreover, the family represents a true and proper economic unit also in the sense that it produces what it consumes. The family likewise never fails to provide for the first education of the children until, and this happens among several peoples, the tribe itself intervenes through youthful initiations. The family, finally, represents for almost all the center of the ceremonies connected with birth, marriage and death, as well as of the whole set of sacrifices that are customarily offered, in the fields or in the huts, to the dear departed on the occasion of sowing and harvest.

Politically there are tribes that do not present a central nucleus of government, but split into groups within which the elders from time to time take the necessary decisions. Others, conversely, have come to federate under certain chiefs, succeeding in making even peoples near to them tributary (Zulu and Basuto in the south, Hehe toward the east). In the Congo and in South Africa (Monomotapa), in the very region of the Great Lakes, true and proper kingdoms have not failed to arise. The office of chief of a federation or of monarch is almost always hereditary within the same family, and to it belongs an important part in the economic organization (distribution of lands, superior direction of agricultural and pastoral activity, etc.), and furthermore the government of the tribes and the exercise of justice. In some tribes such authorities also had religious functions, especially in relation to general prosperity, to the fertility of the fields, to the increase of livestock, etc., while among other peoples there appear in this regard special ministers of the cult, officials or "uffeiosi", ministers on whom depend the magicians, the sorcerers, the diviners, etc., to whom especially in West Africa the development of secret societies is due.

In the majority of tribes the cult of the dead appears preeminent. Some consider the dead in the manner of the Latin manes, that is, limited to close blood relatives; others, instead, seem to include in general all the ancestors, attributing to them vigilant solicitude for the moral and material fate of the descendants. The Bantu, moreover, believe in the existence of a Supreme Being (Mulungu, Unkulunbulu, or Niambi, Leza, etc.), who by most is not placed animistically in relation with the departed. The Supreme Being is not the object of a regular cult. Certain tribes strive to render him ceremonially benign in periods of grave collective calamity. He is conceived as creator of the world, or also as lord of the sky who, however, having ceded to the departed the government and direct contact with men, has reserved for himself only the supreme decision over life and death, over happiness and sorrow (for example, over the fecundity or sterility of the woman). Nor does the same Supreme Being fail to protect moral principles, reacting to certain transgressions with collective punishments (drought, epidemics, etc.), while against his precise will the manes and the ancestors can do nothing.

Meinhof, op. cit. - On the possible origin of the B., W. Wanger, op. cit. - In general cf. also the collections of the following journals: Africa (London), Anthropos (Mödling-Vienna), Bantu Studies (Cape Town), Congo (Brussels), Journal of the African Society (London), The Journal of the R. Anthropological Institute (London), Zeitschrift für Eingebornen-Sprachen (Hamburg).