Classicly

The Bantu race comprises one great family extending over all Central and South Africa, South of a line drawn roughly from the Kamerun to the Pokomo River, but excluding the South West corner—Great Namaqualand and Western Cape Colony—which from time immemorial has been occupied by Hottentots.

Although strictly speaking the term “Bantu” is philological, and this classification based on linguistic grounds, and although the different tribes it embraces show largely but in varying degrees that they result from a mixture with oriental or negro blood, yet the similarity of speech, custom and religion, warrant our treating them collectively as one homogenous ethnological group.