With oral tradition rather than writing, sub-Saharan Africa has only a recent history with Bantu-speaking peoples moving south and west from the Sudan in the 2nd millennium BC.
Having only rudimentary iron-working and crop cultivation they had an advantage over the endemic peoples they displaced. Such technology no doubt came from the ancient Egyptians, who penetrated at times as far as the Congo Basin.
SUDAN TO THE KALAHARI
With Egyptian power waning in the 1st millennium BC, the Nubians of Sudan rose with the Kushite state centred on Napata, taking Egypt in 920BC. Assyrians forced their withdrawal, the Nubians building a new capital in the 530sBC at Meroe (Khartoum).
The Nubians were eventually destroyed by people from the city of Axum in Ethiopia, a centre of trade in ivory, gum and spices. With a fleet that dominated the Red Sea, Christian and Islamic conversions led to their collapse by 1000AD, Islam moving down the east coast and to the west of Africa, Arabs becoming the first slavers.
A less advanced migration began into the African heartland, Bantu languages including Swahili, Xhosa and Zulu, reaching southern Africa, whilst, just south of the Sahara, states including Ghana, Mali and Benin began to form, influenced by the Muslim Berbers. Further south, geography did not permit highly advanced civilisations as such, and led to the decimation of endemic inhabitants, with the only real survivors being the Pygmies of west central Africa and the aboriginal Bushmen and Hottentots, forced into the Kalahari Desert.
GREAT ZIMBABWE
One magnificent state did arise, centred on Great Zimbabwe. Stone built, it had an enclosing wall and a 30 foot conical tower similar to other, smaller constructions in Africa.
A centre for trading in gold, supporting a thousand gold mines, later white settlers couldn’t believe black Africans had built it, inventing a mythical early white explorer, Prester John, who civilised them.
Great Zimbabwe went into decline with Bantu migrations forming Matabeleland. By 1889 the British South Africa Company under Cecil Rhodes arrived, creating Rhodesia, becoming independent in 1980 as Zimbabwe.
THE ZULUS
The Zulus reached South Africa well before the white man, settling around Natal. In the 1820s Shaka became king and re-organised the Zulu army into a potent force based on regiments, soon turning his army against the other tribes of the area, displacing them as they fled to populate Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and parts of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland.
Shaka was killed in 1828, having created an integrated Zululand around the capital, Ulundi. In 1873 Cetewayo became king. Six years later the British ordered the disbandment of the Zulu army, instigating the Zulu War.
After an ill led British column was wiped out at Isandhlwana, a tiny mission station at Rorke’s Drift held the Zulus until relieved. Within 8 months the Zulu nation was crushed.
AFRICAN RELIGION
Black Africa has a widely varied interpretation of tribal belief, but when specific cultures are stripped away, there are fundamentals in most of them involving a Creation caused by interaction of a cosmic egg and a snake deity.
Once created, the world is in two parts; an upper part for the living and a lower underworld for the dead. Spirit animated the upper part, placing divinity in life and geography.
Above all is a sky god with a great ‘eye’ to see inside and outside of man. He can bring elemental gods if displeased to bring disaster.
The gods are placated by ecstatic ritual involving sacrifice under a shaman, or ‘witchdoctor’, with semi-divine powers who does magic and communicates with spirits.
© Anthony North, October 2007
For more posts in this series, see History of Man on Blogroll.
Have you clicked Diary of a Writer on Blogroll? Meet me, up close and personal.
Click Tony On, on Blogroll, for my current affairs blog.
If you like fiction, click Fiction Page on Blogroll for my short stories.
