Talk:Bantu peoples of South Africa

The title

Created an account to say this = Bantu peoples in South Africa is not a very good title for this page though Apartheid has long gone this title emphasises on its denaturalization of Black South Africans in their native land. Black South Africans is more true to the page. Nutty am I (talk) 14:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I reached this page from Apartheid and was astonished to see such a racist 'separate development' term still being used on Wikipedia. English people are not called English people because they speak English, the reverse is true: their language is English because of where they live.

I can see that there have been a few attempts above to rename the article. In my view, they have failed because they have fallen into the racial classification trap. Race does not exist and never has: humanity is the same species from northern Canada to Tasmania, Europeans in history were confused by the gap in continuous gradual climate-adapted changes in surface physiognomy caused by the Sahara, and the victors get to write the history. We live in more enlightened times.

So, rather than have yet another RtM that fails because not enough people like the proposed alternative, let's start from the position that the current name is an unacceptable embarrassment to Wikipedia and get to work on finding a name that will gain broad consensus. --Red King (talk) 12:58, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree with @Red King here 100% - there is no such thing as race - so why is this article still using the term "blacks" and "whites"? the Republic of South Africa (RSA) is called a 'rainbow nation' for a reason because referring to the population in terms of "white" or "black" totally negates and erases the importance of the Khoikhoi; and the Saan people; as well as the people of Indian/Chinese/Malay descent and the Camissa people. Also - there are some Bantu-speaking people in RSA who are decedents of people brought over from the Caribbean....how should they also be figured into things? e11e99 (talk) 15:23, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

• I don't think a simple page move will solve this problem, considering that there is Race (human categorization), and also Bantu peoples, and dozens of others to which the same criticism applies. So maybe the article can be cut down to the description of the term, and then sit at Bantu (racial term), just like e.g. Hottentot (racial term)? --Pgallert (talk) 14:27, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I certainly would not propose that Wikipedia be censored to remove the reality of hundreds of years of racism, whether in history or its modern consequences. The complicating factor in this case is that the term 'Bantu people(s)" is one used by the Apartheid regime in its racial 'purity' laws. "Bantu-speaking people" is, to me, a more NPOV term. Interestingly, the link from the Apartheid article that brought me here was a pipe to "black South Africans", who are not all from the Bantu-speaking ethnic group, and certainly not all Bantu-speaking. It is certainly not going to be easy but it can be solved if we look for solutions rather than for objections. --Red King (talk) 18:27, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
  • But yes, ways to split the article might be a way to a solution. --Red King (talk)
• I agree that this is an embarrassment. As others have said the term 'Bantu' could refer to very many groups, most of which are not South African. A further complication is that in some places the term might be offensive, while in other places the term is not offensive. So, a split might be in order. But we still need to settle on a term specific to South Africa. We should get a consensus on what term we should be using for South Africa. In the past I have advocated for 'Black South African' or 'Bantu-language speaking South Africans'.
  • 'Black South African' is the most NPOV. Not all black South Africans speak Bantu, not all Bantu-speaking South African are black. So maybe the other half of the split might be something like "Bantu language in South Africa"? --Red King (talk) 14:26, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
    • The trouble with 'Black South African' is that its definition will utilise some sort of racism again. We seem to have consensus that Bantu is a language group, and that languages do not define peoples. Why not just Peoples of South Africa? --Pgallert (talk) 10:05, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

How is "Bantu peoples" different from "Bantu-speaking peoples"? We speak of "Germanic peoples" meaning "peoples who speak a Germanic language". This is exactly the same. --Khajidha (talk) 16:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

PS - "English people are not called English people because they speak English, the reverse is true: their language is English because of where they live." The country of England received its name because it was the "land of the Angles". A people who were defined by their language and culture. --Khajidha (talk) 16:50, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

The problem is the use of 'Bantu people' as link target for black South Africans. --Red King (talk) 18:49, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

That's not a problem with the article title, that's a problem with the link.--Khajidha (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

this is a convoluted mess

I wanted to learn about the pre-colonial history of South Africa, expected an article and found a scrappy pamphlet. In this form, it should better be removed completely. 87.132.253.88 (talk) 08:33, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

history

As far as I understand the Bantu peoples have been living in South Africa for about 2000 years. Shouldn't this section focus on that, and not just the 46 years of Apartheid? This section reads more like a socal justice undergraduate paper about Apartheid than Bantu History. It should be edited extensively.Johnmars3 (talk) 03:12, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Race

I'm not black I'm African, Get it right Wowu1010 (talk) 23:12, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Where’s the history?

I thought I was going read and hopefully learn something about Bantu history. (Apparently, Bantu is a derogatory term, at least I learnt that). Where’s the history though? I couldn’t tell you anything about B*ntu history over the last 1000 years. All I received from this article was that essentially some Europeans made up the claim that there was no significant B*ntu history in SA and this was their justification for colonialism. Okay, so where’s the history? 2A00:801:7B3:70B7:245C:11C9:1AE8:4298 (talk) 23:52, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Empty Land Myth section

The tone of the article is far from encyclopaedically neutral, being full of emotive "black is good, white is bad" over simplification. In particular this section talks of "the intrusion of Europeans on Bantu lands" leading directly to apartheid. No mention of Bantu-speaking people from east Africa "intruding" into "Khoisan lands", whether that happened just before the Europeans or a few hundred years earlier. There's no doubt that the Khoisan were the original inhabitants of what is now South Africa. 109.144.22.64 (talk) 02:48, 4 June 2024 (UTC)