The origin and meaning of the word ‘Bantu’

An architectural work that is a replica of the world’s most complete early hominid fossil ever discovered and the monument erected at the site. PHOTO | SAMMY LUTTA | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

• As a general concept, among of Kenya’s Abaluhya, abandu remains the word for any human collective.
• Through Arabia’s Omani Semites, Kiswahili has borrowed ben adamah as binadamu (“mankind”). Damu can also take the Bantu prefix mwana (“mwanadamu”).
• All refer to “human beings” in the abstract (the “O” prefix probably influenced by the Nilotic Luo).

By PHILIP OCHIENG
More by this Author

Perhaps 60 per cent of Kenyans are Bantu. In a country bewitched by tribe, that can be a dangerous thing to say because, for the original Bantu, the word Bantu referred to the whole human species.

As far as the Bantu were concerned, all human beings — no matter of what tribe or race — were Bantu.

It was 19th-century Euro-American anthropologists who coined the word Bantu to refer to Africa’s culturo-linguistic communities whose common word for a human being was something like ntu or ndu.

As a general concept, among of Kenya’s Abaluhya, abandu remains the word for any human collective.

The prefix aba or ba (“people of”) is common to all the Older Bantu, who include the Baganda, Bagishu, Bakongo, Banyarwanda, Banyoro, Basoga, Basuto, Batoro and my erstwhile Basuba.
Among the Older Bantu, then, the word bantu is plural.

The singular form would be the equivalent of the Semitic ben adamah.

Ben adamah is the Aramaic term that the gospels report Jesus to have used for himself (“the son of man”).

Through Arabia’s Omani Semites, Kiswahili has borrowed ben adamah as binadamu (“mankind”). Damu can also take the Bantu prefix mwana (“mwanadamu”).

FIRST MAN

The “first” man had been known simply as “the blooded one” (“Adam”), dam being what Arabic brought into Kiswahili as damu, “blood”.

Thus, for all the Older Bantu languages — almost all to be found south of the equator in Africa — Bantu is just the same concept as the Semitic ben adamah, the Kiswahili binadamu and the English New Testament’s “son of man” or — which would have been a much more accurate translation of Jesus’ self-portrayal — “child of mankind”.

In other words — like all ethnic communities the world over — each of equatorial Africa’s Bantu communities would have thought of itself as the only human beings on earth. Like the Old Testament’s Israel-Jewry and like the Nile valley’s ancient Luo groups, each Bantu community thought of itself as “God’s chosen people”.

But for the Younger Bantu — nearly all of whom now live east of Kenya-Tanzania’s branch of the great Rift Valley — the ba has metamorphosed into a wa. Hence Wachagga (not Bachagga), Wadigo (not Badigo), and so on with Wagikuyu, Wagiriama, Wakamba, Walugulu , Wataita and Wazaramu.

HUMAN BEINGS

Thus abandu in the Older Bantu language of the Luhya is the same word as watu in Kiswahili, which might originally have been wandu.

And omundu, omuntu or omutu of such Older Bantu tongues as Lusuba and certain dialects all over inter-lacustrine Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are what have been simplified into mtu, the singular form in Younger Bantu Kiswahili.

All refer to “human beings” in the abstract (the “O” prefix probably influenced by the Nilotic Luo).

That reminds us of “Wajaluo”, an absurdity which Bantu politicians pronounce with a contortion of the face to refer to the troublesome ethnic ragamuffins in the dreaded Raila Odinga’s wake.

The question is: How can wa (Bantu plural) and ja (Luo singular with the same significance) be used together to describe the same singular substantive “Luo”?