Why did the Zulus leave the lusher regions of Central Africa to invade the South?

 

South Africa has no racial majority. Zulus are the largest group, but only 20%.

The country has 11 official languages. Important because Zulu, Tswana, Venda are different as English and Greek.

For well over 40,000 years and maybe up to 100,000, the San or Bushmen dominated. They had no cattle or poultry, grew no crops (maize was brought by the Portuguese 400 years ago) and lived as hunter-gatherers.

The Bantu migration down Africa took centuries, pushed along by wars and population growth. They had no written language and no evidence has been found of a wheel.

They crossed the Zambezi around 1000AD but the area of Zululand probably wasn’t settled until 1400.

Again, wars split the people, hiving off into Xhosa and in the early 1800s, Matabele and Tsonga.

But the Venda, Tswana, Sotho, Pedi were a separate migration from the north, hence their very different languages.

The first Portuguese arrived in 1500, Dutch 1652, French 1685. The English came last.

Arab slavers raided the east coast of Africa from around 1200 which is why the seaboard is largely Muslim.

Tragically, in southern Africa, the Bantu tribes exterminated the San who saw their cattle as just another game animal to be killed and eaten as they did with antelope. The San were down to small numbers by the time Europeans arrived and are now almost extinct in South Africa with better but still tiny numbers in Botswana and Namibia.

Just as we don’t view the Russians, Scots, Italians as one people because they share a skin color, so it is important not to see black people as a race but rather a mix of nations.

Unlike Australia, Canada, US and most of Latin America, Europeans in Africa did not exterminate the local population.

The result is a richness and diversity that is a wonder to behold.