Nguni

Member of any of several Bantu-speaking peoples living in southern Africa. The main Nguni peoples are the Zulu, Swazi, Pondo, Xhosa, and Matabele.

The Nguni once lived in what is now the South African province of Natal, but dispersed about the time of the rise to power of the Zulu king Chaka and the Swazi king Sobhuza I in the first decades of the 19th century. Some Nguni groups emigrated from southern Africa to Malawi and Tanzania, conquering other peoples as they went and forming their own empires.