Bantu

Term applied to over 60 million African people who speak Bantu languages. Comprising many hundreds of groups in eastern, central, and southern Africa, they have little in common apart from their related languages, being socially, culturally, and politically very heterogeneous. Almost all of the peoples practise ancestor worship, but in conjunction with other cults. They are usually divided into the southern Bantu (Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa, Tswana, Basuto, Venda, Ndebele or Matabele, Pondo, Pedi), the central Bantu (Shono, Bemba, Lozi); the western Bantu of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and Angola; and the northeastern Bantu of East Africa (Kikuyu, Kamba, Chagga, Ganda).

It is possible that they originate from the equatorial rain forests of the Cameroon-Nigeria border; alternatively it has been suggested that they spread from the area that is now the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).