On the Origins of Bukalanga and the Question of ‘Semitic Blood’

Please Note: This particular material is Chapter eleven of my book, The Rebirth of Bukalanga. Many of the references made herein are from that book.

As we saw in Chapter Two, a number of writers since the 1500s state that Bukalanga peoples have Semitic, Asiatic and/or Jewish blood in their veins. This is one of the most contentious questions whenever Bukalanga identity is under discussion, and many will dismiss whoever makes that claim today as a crazy lunatic. But, were the previously cited writers wrong in declaring that the Kalanga have Semitic and/or Asiatic blood in their veins? Before answering that question, let us just take a look at the statements that have been made about Bukalanga on this very question by some of the travellers who encountered them since the early 1500s. Some of the statements are as follows:

1. Of all the Bantu they had the largest proportion of Asiatic blood in their veins…Their skulls more nearly approached those of Europeans in shape, many of them had the high nose, thin lips, and the general features of the people of South-Western Asia. Even their hands and feet were in numerous instances small and well-shaped, unlike those of ordinary blacks, which are large and coarse. Their appearance thus indicated a strong infusion of foreign blood, though not sufficient to denationalize them as Bantu. That blood may not have been Arab alone; it is likely that some was Persian, and possibly some Indian … Their language was regarded by the Christians as being pleasanter than Arabic to the ear (Theal 1907, 297).

2. [Among the Kalanga can be seen] unmistakable traces of these [Semitics] still remaining to this day, and these are to be seen in the arched noses, thin lips, and refined type of Semitic countenance commonly met with, especially among the Makalangas and Zambesi tribes, the Jewish rites, particularly with regard to food, the superior intelligence and calculating capacities and business instincts, the metallurgical cleverness still in vogue, and knowledge of astronomy, and the polytheistic faiths learned from the ancients, and still preserving several distinctly Semitic practices (Hall & Neal 1904, 114).

3. Some of [the Kalanga] are decidedly handsome …; many of them have a distinctly Arab cast of countenance, and with their peculiar rows of tufts on top of their heads looked en profil like the figures one sees on Egyptian tombs. There is certainly a Semite drop of blood in their veins, whence it comes will probably never be known, but it is marked both on their countenances and in their customs (Bent 1892, 31-32).

4. I have observed the Makalanga during the six months I spent amongst them with great interest, and I have studied their manners and customs … As regards their blood, they belong essentially to the Bantu tribes of East Africa, but they have a stronger influx of Asiatic blood than any other nation which I know. Their type is not so much Arab, for they are decidedly Jewish … Many of the men are tall and strong - real Bantu figures. Then, again, one sees small forms with very refined, clever expressions; … The girls are prettier than those of most Bantu tribes, and at Misongwe they remind you of European ladies (Peters 1902, 121-124).

5. The Makalaka had perhaps more infusion of foreign blood than any other Bantu tribe. From the earliest time, the Asiatics who traded in East Africa, and later the Portuguese, freely mixed their blood with them - producing a mongrel race, neither Asiatic, European, nor African (Molema 1920, 68).

Such were the impressions of the early European travelers since the early 1500s concerning Bukalanga, though it is not meant to imply that all Kalanga have Semitic blood in their veins. It is very easy to dismiss these claims as nothing more than European racist verbiage that was meant to ‘prove’ that indeed there has been a Semitic race that established the Zimbabgwe Civilization; or that it is nothing more than a divide and rule strategy that sought to find non-existent differences amongst African races. The claim of Semitic blood might even be dismissed by some as nothing but racist rhetoric meant to prop up Bukalanga identity, or as some charge, Kalanga supremacy, as if there is anything supreme about the Semitic races. But the reality is that it is nothing of that sort, but a sincere and innocent expose on Bukalanga heritage and identity after many years of suppression.

It has been stated by Professor David Beach that “a great deal of speculative writing has been published by unscientific writers who claim to see in [the Lemba] the descendants of early Muslim Arabs, pre-Muslim Arabs or even Jews … These claims, however, are swiftly reduced to the ‘not proven category’” (Beach 1994, 183). We note with interest that when Professor Beach wrote the preceding statement, that was before any scientific evidence was produced to the effect that the Lemba, a Kalanga group, indeed have Semitic blood in their veins. We therefore can no longer reduce the above claims to a ‘not proven category’.

Gladly, after 1994 when Professor Beach published his work, two scientific tests were conducted that proved the “unscientific writers” correct. These tests focused on the Lemba, not on the Kalanga in general. Perhaps as a result of this work, some scientist somewhere will conduct more extensive tests covering various Bukalanga groups. The Lemba seem to have more Semitic blood in their veins than any other Kalanga group, and the study focused on them.

We have also established in Chapter Three that the Lemba are classified as one of the Bukalanga tribes, and in fact for most of the time in the precolonial era spoke TjiKalanga as their home language. The changes of recent times, especially in Zimbabgwe in which many of them now speak Karanga, only took place in recent years in the colonial period when Zimbabgwe was divided into Mashonaland and Matabeleland. Otherwise prior to that time they had always spoken TjiKalanga and Tshivenda.

Evidence for a Semitic Ancestry of BaLemba

In a 1996 DNA study, Professor Tudor Parfitt and his colleagues at the University of London established a DNA match between the Lemba tribe and people in the Hadramaut region of the Yemen. Particularly surprising about the findings of that research was the discovery that members of the most senior Lemba clan displayed what is called the Cohen Modal Haplotype, which is a distinctive feature of Jewish priesthood. Furthermore, this genetic pattern is carried by the Y-chromosome, so it is passed through the male line. The DNA suggested that more than fifty percent of the Lemba Y chromosomes are Semitic in origin.

The results of the 1996 study were confirmed in a subsequent study in 2000 which reported more specifically that a substantial number of Lemba men carry the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) Y chromosome. The study also found that they carry what is termed the Y-DNA Haplogroup J which is found amongst some Jews and in other populations across the Middle East. Studies have also suggested that there is no Semitic female contribution to the Lemba gene pool.

One particular sub-clan within the Lemba, the Buba clan, is considered by the Lemba to be the priestly clan, while among Jews, the Kohanim are the priestly clan. The Buba clan carried most of the CMH found in the Lemba. Among Jews the marker is also most prevalent among Jewish Kohanim, or priests. As recounted in Lemba oral tradition, the Buba clan “had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel” and into Southern Africa.

Let us now go into excerpts from the report presented by The American Society for Human Genetics from the 2000 Lemba genetic study. The report was titled Y Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba - the “Black Jews of Southern Africa.” The excerpts read:

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The Lemba, once referred to as “Kruger’s Jews” (because President Paul Kruger, President of Transvaal during 1883-1900, was thought to have discovered them), are commonly referred to as the “black Jews” of South Africa. Their claim of Jewish origin is based on slim evidence: a persistent oral tradition of uncertain antiquity and a number of suggestive customs, from circumcision to food taboos, which appear to be “Judaic” but could be Muslim or, indeed, in the case of circumcision, African (Mandivenga 1983). Lemba tradition holds that the tribe came from “Sena in the north by boat.” The original group is said to have been entirely male, with half of their number having been lost at sea; the remainder made their way to the coasts of Africa.

Once there, they rebuilt their city of Sena, later leaving it to build a second city of the same name. “Sena” is variously identified by the Lemba as Sanaa in Yemen, Judea, Egypt, or Ethiopia (Ruwitah 1997; Parfitt 1997). The first clear and unambiguous reference to the Lemba as a separate tribe and perhaps polity is from a Dutch report from 1721 (Liesenbang 1977). Today the religious life of the Lemba is highly syncretistic. Many of them belong to various Christian churches (e.g., the Zion Christian Church and Pentecostal groups), whereas some in Zimbabwe are Muslims. Others, however, claim to be Lemba by religious practice as well as by ethnic identification. The religious practices of these Lemba do not have much in common with Judaism as it is practiced elsewhere.

There are thought to be ~50,000 Lemba spread over South Africa and Zimbabwe, with some closely connected groups in Malawi (Parfitt 1997). At some time in the past they became scattered among the more powerful neighboring tribes, where they served particularly as “medicine men,” iron and copper workers, traders, and officials with ritual responsibilities. They traded throughout southern Africa. The Lemba have >12 clans, some of which appear to correlate with place names in the Hadramaut (Parfitt 1997). The Buba clan is recognized as being the senior clan, both the oldest and, for some ritual purposes, the most important. Parfitt (1997) has claimed to have discovered the original Sena of the Lemba in the eastern Hadramaut in the Yemen.

[After detailing the scientific data, the report goes on thus in the conclusion]

The genetic evidence revealed in this study is consistent with both a Lemba history involving an origin in a Jewish population outside Africa and male-mediated gene flow from other Semitic immigrants (both of these populations could have formed founding groups for at least some of the Lemba clans) and with admixture with Bantu neighbors; all three groups are likely to have been contributors to the Lemba gene pool, and there is no need to present an Arab versus a Judaic contribution to that gene pool, since contributions from both are likely to have occurred. The CMH present in the Lemba could, however, have an exclusively Judaic origin. The female contribution to the Lemba gene pool may be very different from the paternal, although still consistent with Lemba oral tradition. Soodyall (1993), analyzing mtDNA, found no evidence of Semitic admixture. Significantly, more than one-quarter of the Lemba sampled by Soodyall et al. (1996) had the African intergenic COII/tRNALys 9-bp deletion. Our study provides no evidence of a specific contribution from the ancestors of the present-day [Arabic] residents of Sena (Thomas, Wilson, Parfitt, Weiss, Skorecki, le Roux, and Goldstein 2000, Online).

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Such is the brief from the research findings of The American Society for Human Genetics concerning the Lemba, one of the groups of Bukalanga, if not perhaps the core-Kalanga group. We surely can no longer at this stage say that claims of Semitic blood amongst Bukalanga are far-fetched, but close to reality. Where this admixture occurred, we certainly may never know. All we know is that these people were already settled Africa south of the Zambezi by 100 AD, and it would seem that they were already referred to by the names BaLemba, Bakalanga or Bukalanga way before they crossed the Zambezi. According to Dr Theal and Professor Mathole Motshekga, Executive Director of the Kara Heritage Institute in Pretoria, there is an island in the Lake Victoria called Kalangaland, meaning land of the Kalanga people, with the surrounding areas known as Bukalanga, and the inhabitants known as Bakalanga (Motshekga 2008, Online). It has also been pointed out to me in personal communication by retired journalist Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu that there are Bukalanga communities in Central and East African countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. More detailed information on this, he told me, will be presented in his upcoming publication on the prehistoric migrations of Bukalanga. In that work he says he traces Bukalanga origins to north-east Africa. That same origin was also pointed to by Kumile Masola in the early 1920s in his Kalanga oral traditions, Nau dza Bakalanga, collected among Bakalanga of the District of Bulilima-mangwe. Again, Professor Motshekga, in a paper presented before the Gauteng Legislature in September 2007 titled The Story of African Origins, pointed to north-east Africa as the origin of Bukalanga, citing Naphta or what is now Kordofan in the Sudan, which was the heartland of ancient Ethiopia (2007, Online). This same north-east African origin is consistent with that pointed to by BaLemba elders.

Now, if this north-east African Bukalanga origin of Masola, Gwakuba-Ndlovu, Mathole and the Lemba elders is true - and there is no reason to doubt it bearing in mind all the other traits of Bukalanga linking them with the Semitic races - it is possible that the Kalanga made a halfway settlement on their way down south on the Lake Victoria region , perhaps having migrated down south following the water courses of the Nile River. This would have been in very remote times since they were already south of the Zambezi by about 100 AD.

But then a question arises. How are Bukalanga a Bantu-Semitic or Afro-Asiatic race and yet black, so much that their Semitic strain of blood could not denationalize them as Bantu, as Dr Theal has put it? This question arises especially because in modern times, Semitic has become associated very closely with white Jews, so much that many have come to believe that the Semites are all a purely white race. But is there such a thing as an Afro-Asiatic race or black Semitic race? The answer is a resounding yes. That we find in the Ethiopian Jews, or Falashas, also known as Beta-Israel. Let us take a look at their story first.

The Beta-Israel or Ethiopian Jews

There are several traditions and theories about the origin of Ethiopian Jews today, but the most commonly accepted is one that links them to the Israeli tribe of Dan. It is interesting to note that when the twelve tribes of Israel are listed in the Revelation, the tribe of Dan is not mentioned. Their story, as extracted from the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia and the original sources, is as follows:

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The tribe of Dan tradition relates that the Beta Israel are descendants of Eldad ha-Dani, a Danite Jewish man of dark skin who suddenly turned up in Egypt in the 9th century and created a great stir in the Egyptian Jewish community (and elsewhere in the Mediterranean Jewish communities among whom he traveled) with claims that he had come from a Jewish kingdom of pastoralists far to the south. The only language he spoke was a hitherto unknown dialect of Hebrew. He carried Hebrew books with him that supported his explanation of halakhah, and he was able to cite ancient authorities in the sagely traditions of his own people .

He said that the Jews of his own kingdom derived from the tribe of Dan, which had fled the civil war in the Kingdom of Israel between Solomon’s son Rehoboam and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, by resettling in Egypt. From there they moved southwards up the Nile into Ethiopia, and the Beta Israel say this confirms that they are descended from these Danites (Adler 1987, 9).

Some Beta Israel, however, assert even nowadays that their Danite origins go back to the time of Moses, when some Danites parted from other Jews right after the Exodus and moved south to Ethiopia. Eldad the Danite does indeed speak of three waves of Jewish immigration into his region, creating other Jewish tribes and kingdoms, including the earliest wave that settled in a remote kingdom of the “tribe of Moses”: this was the strongest and most secure Jewish kingdom of all, with farming villages, cities and great wealth (ibid., pp. 12-14). The Mosaic claims of the Beta Israel are clearly very ancient . Eldad’s testimony is not the only mediaeval testimony to Jewish communities living far to the south of Egypt, which strengthens the credibility of Eldad’s account as well. Rabbi Ovadiah Yare of Bertinoro wrote in a letter from Jerusalem in 1488:

"I myself saw two of them in Egypt. They are dark-skinned … and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites, or of the Rabbis, for some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching … but in other things they appear to follow the instruction of the Rabbis, and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan."

Some Jewish legal authorities have also asserted that the Beta Israel are the descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the Ten Lost Tribes, that is, those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria. In their view, these people established a Jewish kingdom that lasted for hundreds of years. With the rise of Christianity and later Islam, schisms arose resulting in three kingdoms. Eventually, the Christian and Muslim kingdoms reduced the Jewish kingdom to a small impoverished section. The earliest authority to rule this way was Rabbai David ben Zimra (1479-1573). Ben Zimra explains in a responsum concerning the state of a Beta Israel slave:

"But those Jews who come from the land of Cush are without doubt from the tribe of Dan, and since they did not have in their midst sages who were masters of the tradition, they clung to the simple meaning of the Scriptures. If they had been taught, however, they would not be irreverent towards the words of our sages, so their status is comparable to a Jewish infant taken captive by non-Jews."

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Now, this gives us a clue that indeed, there are black Jewish, or at least Semitic peoples, who migrated down south from the Ancient Near East, whether from the time of Moses during the Exodus or during the dissolution of the Kingdom of Israel, we may not know. But what we know is that there certainly was such a migration of a Semitic race of dark skin to the south of Egypt, and Bukalanga may just have been part of such a race as we shall see below, especially when we look at the great number of traits that show a link between Bukalanga and the Semitic races in the north.

But we still find ourselves faced with another problem: we are simply told in the Beta-Israel traditions that Eldad ha-Dani was “a Danite Jewish man of dark skin who suddenly turned up in Egypt in the 9th century and created a great stir in the Egyptian Jewish community (and elsewhere in the Mediterranean Jewish communities among whom he traveled) with claims that he had come from a Jewish kingdom of pastoralists far to the south.” Where would this “Danite Jewish man of dark skin” have come from, that is, apart from the geographical location of his fellow country man?

To find an answer to the question we would need to go back into the Ancient Near East and seek to find out if there ever was a Semitic race there of people of dark skin. To do so, let us begin with the following interesting piece from Dr Cain Hope Felder which appeared in the African American Jubilee Bible, published by the American Bible Society in 1999. Dr Felder is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington D.C. The article, titled Blacks in Biblical Antiquity, reads (with a few additions of information from me):

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The view of Africa that has evolved in recent centuries has little or no historical integrity inasmuch as it reflects Eurocentric interpretations of the Bible. However, new light is shining on biblical antiquity, and layers of unfavorable biases are being peeled away. In their place is a more congenial basis for inclusiveness and reconciliation in conjunction with an emergence of critical studies on the Black presence in the Bible and the recovery of ancient African heritage in the Scriptures. Consequently, persons of African descent now have the opportunity to rediscover consistent and favorable mentioning of their forebears within the pages of the Bible. The presence of Blacks in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is rather substantial; fortunately ours is an age that increasingly allows such an important fact to be acknowledged more widely than perhaps ever before. Since this specific topic has long been studied by Dr. Gene Rice, Professor of Old Testament, he has supplied a representative listing of key Old Testament passages that mention, indeed often celebrate, the Black biblical presence. He has graciously offered the following:

1. Nimrod, son of Cush, grandson of Ham, and great-grandson of Noah, “the first on earth to become a mighty warrior.” Nimrod is also credited with founding and ruling the principal cities of Mesopotamia (Genesis 10:8-12). Cush, the father of Nimrod, is traditionally considered the eponymous ancestor of the people of Cush, a dark-skinned people inhabiting the country surrounded by the River Gihon, identified in antiquity with Arabia Felix (i.e. Yemen) and Aethiopia (i.e. all Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly the Upper Nile). Also see Webb (2008, Online).

2. Hagar, the Egyptian maid of Abraham’s wife Sarah (Genesis 16; 21:8-21). If Abraham had had his way, Hagar would have become the forebear of the covenant people (Genesis 17:18).

3. Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On (Heliopolis), wife of Joseph and mother of Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 41:45, 51, 52; 46:20), whom Jacob claimed and adopted. (Genesis 48).

4. Moses’ Cushite wife (Numbers 12:1). She was probably Zipporah of the Kenite clan of the Midianites (Exodus 2:21-23). If Moses’ Cushite wife is indeed Zipporah, then her father, Jethro, (also called Reuel), would also have been an African. Since Jethro was the priest of Midian (Exodus 2:16; 3:1; 18:1) and the mountain of God where Moses was called was located in Midian (Exodus 3:1; 18:5), and Jethro presided at a meal where Aaron and the elders of Israel were guests (Exodus 18:12), the Kenites may have been the original worshipers of God by the name of the LORD, that is Yahweh (YHWH). Jethro also instructed Moses in the governance of the newly liberated Israelites (Exodus 8:13-27).

5. Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron and a high priest (Exodus 6:25). The name, Phinehas, is Egyptian and means literally, “The Nubian,” or “The Dark- skinned One.” The mixed multitude that accompanied the Israelites when they left Egypt undoubtedly included various African and Asian peoples (Exodus 12:38).

6. The unnamed Cushite soldier in David’s army. He bore the news of Absalom’s death to David, and, in contrast to Ahimaaz, had the courage to tell David the truth about Absalom (2 Samuel 18:21, 31,32).

7. Solomon’s Egyptian wife. She was an Egyptian princess and by his marriage to her, Solomon sealed an alliance with Egypt. (1 Kings 3:1; 11:1).

8. The Queen of Sheba. She ruled a kingdom that included territory in both Arabia and Africa. When she visited Solomon, she was accorded the dignity and status of a head of state (1 Kings 10:1-13).

9. Zerah, the Ethiopian. He commanded a military garrison at Gerar in South West Palestine and fought against King Asa of Judah and almost defeated him (2 Chronicles 14:9-15). After Egyptian influence ceased in Palestine, the Cushite soldiers stationed at Gerar settled down and became farmers. Some two centuries after the time of Zerah, the Simeonites took over Gerar “where they found rich, good pasture, and the land was very broad, quiet, and peaceful; for the former inhabitants there belonged to Ham” (2 Chronicles 4:40).

10. Cush, a Benjaminite (heading to Psalm 7). He is identified as Saul in the Talmud, a central text of mainstream Judaism, considered second to the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish Bible or Old Testament to us Christians.

11. The Ethiopian ambassadors who came to Jerusalem to establish diplomatic relations with Judah (Isaiah 18:1,2). They represented the Ethiopian Pharaoh, Shabaka (716-702) of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt.

12. The Ethiopian, Taharqa, spelled Tirhakah in the Bible. When Hezekiah revolted against Assyria in 705 B.C., he did so with the support of Shaboka and Shebitku (702-690), rulers of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. Tirhakah led an army in support of Judah during Hezekiah’s revolt against Assyria (2 Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9). Tirhakah later ruled Egypt from 690-664.

13. The Old Testament Prophet Zephaniah. Zephaniah’s father was Cushi, his grandfather Gedaliah, his great-grandfather Amariah. King Hezekiah was his great-great-grandfather (Zephaniah 1:1). Zephaniah was active about 630 B.C. and sparked a religious revival in Judah.

14. Jehudi ben Nathaniah ben Shlemiah ben Cushi. The context in Jeremiah 36 indicates that Jehudi was a trusted member of the cabinet of King Jehoiakim of Judah (Jeremiah 36:14, 21, 23).

15. Ebed-melech (“Royal Servant”), the Ethiopian. He was an officer of King Zedekiah who, at great risk to himself, saved Jeremiah’s life (Jeremiah 38:7-13)., and was blessed by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 39:15-18) (Felder 1999, Online).

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Now, the above just proves to us that there were in the Semitic world peoples of dark skin, and they did intermarry with the actual Semites, the sons of Shem from whom are descended the Hebrews (now generally referred to as Jews), producing the dark-skinned Afro-asiatics. It does not necessarily say these people were of Bukalanga or Beta-Israel stock, but it does show us that there is such a thing as an Afro-Asiatic or people of dark skin with Semitic blood in their viens, and this is consistent with the claims being made for Bukalanga and the Beta-Israel that they are an Afro-Asiatic and/or Bantu-Semitic race. May then this not be the source of part of Bukalanga, for indeed, Bukalanga claim origins in North-east Africa and Yemen, and this is the very place identified in antiquity with Arabia Felix (i.e. Yemen) and Aethiopia (i.e. all Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly the Upper Nile)?

Could it then not be that this same Afro-Asiatic or Bantu-Semitic race - from which Bukalanga would be partially descended - is the same race that the colonialists called the ‘Semitic Ancients’ who established the Zimbabgwe Civilization? Perhaps this becomes near certain when we look at some traits linking Bukalanga with the northern Afro-Asiatic peoples or with the Semitic races in general. We may take a look at just a few of these:

The Mwali Religion - we have already studied this religion in the previous chapter, and its apparent links with Yahwe’ism and other religions of the Ancient Near East have already been mentioned. It is interesting to read this in light of what was mentioned by Drs Felder and Rice in connection with Jethro that “since Jethro was the priest of Midian (Exodus 2:16; 3:1; 18:1) and the mountain of God where Moses was called was located in Midian (Exodus 3:1; 18:5), and Jethro presided at a meal where Aaron and the elders of Israel were guests (Exodus 18:12), the Kenites may have been the original worshipers of God by the name of the LORD, that is Yahweh (Exodus 8:13-27).” May then this not also be the origin of the Mwali Religion as was propositioned by Gayre, and admitted by Daneel and Summers that however one looks at it, the Mwali Religion has links to, or at least similarities with Yahwe'ism?

The Ngoma Lungundu - we pointed in the previous chapter the striking similarities between the Ngoma Lungundu tradition and the story of the Ark of the Covenant as told in the Bible. Is it mere coincidence that thousands of miles from North-east Africa, we find a people who not only have a religion resembling Yahwe’ism, but even a detailed tradition exactly like one possessed by the people of Yahweh? And is it a coincidence that we find the same people claiming origins from the self-same region where we find traced Yahwe’ism itself, in Midian, or at least where it was first revealed to Moses? And is it a coincidence that we have in the Beta-Israel a tradition of a break from Israel by a people who moved and settled in the south of Egypt at the time of the Exodus? All this certainly does not look like mere coincidence.

The Zimbabgwe Ruins - if there is one of the most striking feature of Bukalanga identity it is the Zimbabgwe Ruins. Whence was this culture which has no parallel anywhere else in Africa other than back in the very same region that Bukalanga claim origins, in North-east Africa? That parallel is to be found in the pyramids of Sudan and Egypt, and nowhere else in the continent. May it then not be that the Zimbabgwe Civilization has its origins in the Egyptian Civilization? How about the Tower of Babel stories amongst the BaLozwi? What can we make of them than surmise that there is some link with the Afro-Asiatic Semites? Even if we were to look at the date given by other Beta-Israel of their origins during the desolution of Israel into Israel and Judah, things still remain interesting. We read in the biblical text (1 Kings 11) that at the time of the dissolution of the Kingdom Jeroboam, who led the apostacy against Yahweh and created a religious system much similar to Mwali’sm, had formely been in charge of the building and maintenance of the walls of Jerusalem. Could this, alternatively, be the origins of the walls of Southern Africa - the Zimbabgwe Ruins? Or perhaps not origins but shared mutual influences? Such mutual influences with the north cannot be discounted, for as Welch noted in 1948:

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Both in the Congo and on the rivers of the east coast, they [the Bantu] had a tradition of intercourse with Berbers, Arabs and probably Egyptians. The Makalangas had a large infusion of Persian, Arab and Indian blood as well. Their tradition of a Congo contact is confirmed by the visit that Martin Afonso paid them in 1498 at Inhambane, when he was interpreter of the first expedition of Vasco da Gama. Afonso had lived many years in Manicongo; and not only did the Makalangas understand him well, but Damian de Goes has preserved the contemporary opinion that three tall Negroes of the Limpopo area had been in contact with those of the Guinea coast. We are therefore not surprised to find that in 1554 Perestrelo, after passing through Pondoland and Natal, found in the Delagoa Bay region the first tribes that would accept money as payment for the meat and millet that the weary travellers needed. Their business instinct had evidently been developed by the tribal contacts with the traders of the other coast, as barter was yet the only method of the east coast (Welch 1948, 279-280).

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How does one explain the Zimbabgwe Ruins without a link with peoples from the north? I know it sounds very like a return to the colonialist’s view that the Zimbabgwean Civilization was not a work of Africans. But I firmly believe that the Afro-Asiatic Bukalanga are the very people that the colonialists called the “Semitic Ancients”. There are just too many traits confirming their claimed North-east African origins to discount that as untrue.

Gold mining and international trade - we established in Chapter One and subsequent chapters that Bukalanga were the exploiters of gold in what is presently Zimbabgwe since before 500 AD. Interestingly, the gold workings are located in the same areas that the Zimbabgwe Ruins are (see R. Gayre’s map, Areas of Ancient Gold Workings, on page 182 of his The Origin of the Zimbabwan Civilisation). For over 1000 years, no other people in Southern Africa apart from Bukalanga were known to be involved in gold mining and smithing. Gold is known to have been one of the most treasured commodities in the Ancient Near East, and Gayre suggests that much of the gold that was traded in that region may have had its origins in Zimbabgwe, including the gold that adorned the Solomonic temple and palace. This Gayre suggests in light of the fact that the Ancient Near East itself does not have any significant gold deposits of the quantities that were being traded in the region, and also the fact that Solomon’s ships manned by the Phoenicians were taking three years to return from their voyages (Gayre 1972: 24-29).

What the preceding information suggests to us is that indeed, there certainly is a link between Bukalanga and the northern peoples. It is not being suggested that Bantu peoples could not have invented and practiced these industries by themselves, it is simply being recognized that the similarities are just too numerous as to be something beyond coincidence. Bukalanga were involved in these industries at an era when not a single other sub-Saharan African peoples were involved in the same.

Also worth noting in conection with the metal smithing industry and mining, and the relationship of Bukalanga to the Semitic races, namely the Beta-Israel, is that Bukalanga are historically famous as metal smiths and workers. That is something for which the Beta-Israel were also famous for. They served as craftsmen, masons and carpenters for Ethiopian emperors from the 16th century onwards, when they had lost their autonomy to the Emperor Susenyos who confiscated their lands, sold some of them into slavery, and forcibly baptized some into Christianity (Kaplan 2003, 554). Manoel de Ameida, a 17th Century Portuguese diplomat and traveler wrote of the Beta Israel that “they live by weaving cloth and by making zargunchos [spears], ploughs and other iron articles, for they are great smiths” (Beckingham and Huntingford 1954, 54-55) (as quoted in Wikipedia). We saw in previous chapters that these are industries that Bukalanga were famous for among Bantu peoples. Again, this may not be mere coincidence.

Dynastic Kingdoms - the organization of the three kingdoms of Bukalanga - the Monomotapa, Togwa and Lozwi Kingdoms - are strickingly similar to the way the Pharaohnic kingdoms of Egypt were organized. Dynastic kingdoms and names such as Monomotapa, Tjibundule and Mambo, were a rare phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa at a time when they were in vogue in Bukalanga. This has been suggested as showing links with North East Africa.

Indeed, with the evidence and arguments presented in this chapter and the book in general, the claimed origins of Bukalanga in the Semitic world, namely North-east Africa (or Arabia Felix [the Yemen] and Aethiopia) cannot be totally dismissed as without basis. Not only do Bukalanga oral traditions point to North-east African origins, but many other traits point to that same region as the source of many of the cultures, industries and political systems of Bukalanga.

It is just worth noting at this stage that there is a very high possibility many of those ancients who would have left North-east Africa may have been mainly males, and would have married women of typically Negroid stock, in the process forming the Bantu-Semitic Bukalanga. The likelihood of this having taken place has been pointed out by McNaughton in a blog posting in the NOVA Website, a website which deals with matters of religion, history and culture that:

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there is a likelihood that the Lemba absorbed a lot of Bantu genes during the centuries immediately after their Middle Eastern ancestors arrived in southeast Africa. That would certainly explain the comparatively dark skin of modern-day Lemba, as well as their original Bantu-type language a dialect of Makalanga. During those early centuries, Semitic immigrants into southeast Africa probably comprised many more males than females, in which case the men would have taken Bantu women as concubines (rather than as wives, constrained as they probably were by Semitic laws and customs). And it is a well-known fact that children learn their mother’s language more readily than their father’s so it was not surprising that the original Semitic language was eventually replaced by a Bantu one (leaving only a few Hebrew or Arabic-sounding names)(McNaughton 2000, Online).

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Whilst McNaughton thinks that this admixture may have taken place Africa south of the Zambezi, in light of the evidence presented herein, I believe it may have taken place right there in North-east Africa (that is, Aethiopia and Arabia Felix) as we have seen above that indeed, Cushitic blacks and Jews intermarried for centuries. This process would have been carried on southwards into the rich jungles of Central Africa as the people moved south and, encountering peoples of purely Negroid stock, who are known to have reached Central Africa about 2500 to 3000 years ago. The southward push, which was the general direction of migration, would have continued and landed Bukalanga south of the Zambezi at an earlier period than any other group as we saw in Chapter One, and without much movement from the north for centuries, would have given them enough time to start establishing the Zimbabwe Civilization, perhaps a relic from their ancient homeland in North-east Africa.

In all the above perhaps we find the origins of Bukalanga - that Bantu-Semitic or Afro-Asiatic race, which we would now call the Kalangaitic Race, which was the first non-Khoisan community to settle Africa south of the Zambezi, and would go on to establish the greatest civilization Africa south of the Sahara, and indeed, of which it could be said:

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Of all the Bantu they had the largest proportion of Asiatic blood in their veins…Their skulls more nearly approached those of Europeans in shape, many of them had the high nose, thin lips, and the general features of the people of South-Western Asia. Even their hands and feet were, in numerous instances, small and well-shaped, unlike those of ordinary blacks, which are large and coarse. Their appearance thus indicated a strong infusion of foreign blood, though not sufficient to denationalize them as Bantu (Theal 1907, 297).

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It will perhaps be forever very hard to tell where this Kalangaitic race came from other that point to North-east Africa, and how they, amongst all African peoples, came to develop unique systems of government such as the Monomotapa, Togwa and Lozwi Kingdoms; came to develop an idea of a Supreme Being and religious system unheard of anywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa as the Mwali Religion with apparent links to Yahwe’ism; came to develop unique industries that were not practiced anywhere in the subcontinent such as the nzi mabgwe stone walling, terrace agriculture, gold-mining, iron and copper smelting at an era before any other African peoples were involved in such. Whence the Semitic blood, we can only have to look to the North-east African origins as possible sources. Perhaps we shall never know much more than this. As Mr. Bent put it - it shall forever be unknown where the Semitic strain of blood in Bukalanga comes from. Only further research can solve the puzzle only if it can bring out any new information. What can be guaranteed for now is that this will remain one of the most contentious topics whenever the identity of Bukalanga is under discussion, and I have no doubt that this book will become a groundbreaking work in inspiring a renewed interest in Bukalanga as much as Dr Theodore Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (or “The Jewish State”) published in 1896 inspired the re-establishment of the State of Israel in their ancient homeland.