Lemba people

The Sena, Lemba, Remba, or Mwenye are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group which is native to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. According to Tudor Parfitt, when he first worked in the field among the Lemba in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi in the 1980s, they numbered an estimated 50,000. Some of their religious practices and beliefs are similar to Jewish and Islamic practices and beliefs. According to Parfitt, the Lemba claim that they once had a book which described their traditions but it was lost. Since the late twentieth century, there has been increased media and scholarly attention with regard to the Lemba's claim of common descent from the Jewish people. Genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for the majority of the male Lemba population. Tudor Parfitt has suggested that the exonym "Lemba" may originate in kilemba (most likely spread via the Mwera derivative chilemba), a Swahili word meaning turban. Thus, in context, the word "Lemba" as an ethnic identifier therefore translates to 'those who wear turbans'. Another theory is that the word Lemba may originate from lembi, a term which occurs in a number of Northeastern Bantu languages meaning a "non-African" or a "respected foreigner". Alternatively, Magdel le Roux suggests that the name VaRemba may be translated as "the people who refuse" – probably in the context of "not eating with others" (according to one of her interviewees). In Zimbabwe and South Africa, the people prefer the name Mwenye. What is possibly the oldest recorded origin story of the Lemba people was documented by Henri A. Junod (a Swiss-born South African missionary). In 1908, he wrote: Some old Balemba of both the Spelonken and the Modjadji country told my informant the following legend: '[We] have come from a very remote place, on the other side of the sea. We were on a big boat. A terrible storm nearly destroyed us all. The boat was broken into two pieces. One half of us reached the shores of this country; the others were taken away with the second half of the boat, and we do not know where they are now.