A cluster of Bantu-speaking peoples of S Africa. Originally occupying present-day Natal and Transkei, they expanded rapidly in the early 19th-c in a series of migrations. The main groups today include the Zulu, Swazi, and Xhosa of South Africa and Swaziland; the Ndebele of Zimbabwe; and the Ngoni of Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania. All groups are organized under the control of powerful chiefs aided by councils. In South Africa they lost much of their land and power to Europeans from the 18th-c onwards.
Nguni (an older variant is Ngoni) commonly refers both to a group of clans and nations living in south-east Africa, and to a group of Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa including Zulu, Xhosa, Swati, and Ndebele.
Social organization
Within the Nguni nations, the clan - based on male ancestry - formed the highest social unit. From about 1800, the rise of the Zulu clan of the Nguni and the consequent mfecane that accompanied the expansion of the Zulus under Shaka, helped to drive a process of alliance between and consolidation among many of the smaller clans. Today the kingdom encompasses many different clans who speak an Nguni language called Swati and are loyal to the king of Swaziland, who is also the head of the Dlamini clan.
Compare the following sentences:
I love your new home - Ngiyalithanda ikhaya lakho elisha (Zulu) Ndiyalithanda ikhaya lakho elitsha (Xhosa) I only understand a little English - Ngisiqonda kancane nje isiNgisi (Zulu) Ndiqonda isiNgesi kancinci, nje (Xhosa)Religion
Nguni people can be Christians (whether Catholics or Protestants in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe), or practitioners of African traditional religions, or practising forms of Christianity modified with traditional African values (such as the Shembe Church of Nazarites).
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