• PEOPLE CLUSTER: BANTU, NGUNI

Photo courtesy of Joshua Project.
By Lara Burchett

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QUICK FACTS:

People groups: 25

Population: 33,940,950

Unreached people groups: 8

UPG population: 10,650,900

Unengaged UPGs: 1

UUPG population: 78,500

Number of countries: 10


Affinity Bloc: Sub-Saharan African

Overview: Bantu refers to a large, complex linguistic grouping of peoples in Africa. Nguni refers to a group of Bantu languages spoken in southeastern Africa, primarily in the coastal belt from Zululand to Ciskei in South Africa. The Ngunis migrated south from north of the Limpopo River in the fifteenth century, also with the Sotho peoples. The Ngunis generally stayed east of the Drakensberg mountains, near the coast, while the Sothos remained west of the mountains. Included in the Nguni group are the Zulu, Xhosas, Swazis, and Ndebeles.

  -- James Olson, The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press (1996). P. 435.

Peoples within this cluster: Ndebele; Ngoni (Chichewa); Ngoni (Chingoni); Ngoni (Nsenga); Ngoni, Malawi; Pondo; Southern Ndebele; Swazi; Tembu; Xhosa; Zulu

Countries where they are found: Botswana; Eswatini; Lesotho; Malawi; Mozambique; South Africa; Tanzania; United States; Zambia; Zimbabwe


People groups: 25

Population: 33,940,950

Unreached people groups: 8

UPG population: 10,650,900

Unengaged UPGs: 1

UUPG population: 78,500

Number of countries: 10