Somali Bantu
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (900,000) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Languages | |
| Mushunguli, other Bantu languages | |
| Religion | |
| Traditional faiths, Islam, Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Bantu peoples |
The Bantu (also called Jareer, Gosha, and Mushunguli) are an ethnic minority group in Somalia who primarily reside in the southern part of the country, near the Juba and Shabelle rivers. They are descendants of people from various Bantu ethnic groups, whom were captured from Southeast Africa and sold into slavery in Somalia and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia as part of the 19th-century Arab slave trade. Bantus are ethnically, physically, and culturally distinct from Somalis, and they have remained marginalized ever since their arrival in Somalia.
These Bantu are not to be confused with the members of Swahili society in coastal towns, such as the Bajuni, who speak dialects of the Bantu Swahili language.
All in all, the number of Bantu inhabitants in Somalia before the civil war is thought to have been about 80,000 (1970 estimate), with most concentrated between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in the south. However, recent estimates place the figure as high as 900,000 persons.
The term "Somali Bantu" is an ethnonym that was invented by humanitarian aid-supplying agencies shortly after the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia in 1991. Its purpose was to help the staff of these aid agencies better distinguish between, on the one hand, Bantu minority groups hailing from Somalia and thus in need of immediate humanitarian attention and on the other hand, other Bantu groups from elsewhere in Africa that did not require immediate humanitarian assistance. The neologism further spread through the media, which repeated verbatim what the aid agencies' increasingly began indicating in their reports as the new name for Somalia's ethnically Bantu minorities. Prior to the civil war, the Bantu were simply referred to in the literature as Bantu, Gosha, Mushunguli or Jareer, as they still, in fact, are within Somalia proper.
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Wikipedia