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MOJOLA 63
specific. It only places Mungu in the class of persons. Kiswahili is basically a
Bantu language which is widely spoken in East and Central Africa by over fifty
million speakers. The indigenous Waswahili people live along the East African
coast and are predominantly Islamic. It is of interest that in the course of the
Islamisation of the Waswahili people, during which time Kiswahili borrowed many
terms from Arabic, the Kiswahili term for God, Mungu, remained untouched even
in normal Muslim Kiswahili discourse. Farouk M. Topan, an East African Swahili
scholar, has observed that “(a)lmost all major terms for an Islamic discourse in
Swahili are derived from Arabic”. 11 He suggests that this process of borrowing
Islamic or Arabic terms or concepts took one or more of three paths, which he
presents as: “(i) the original Arabic term was Swahilised, e.g. Ruh (Ar.) � roho
(Sh.), (ii) the original Arabic term was Swahilised and, additionally, given Bantu
synonym, e.g. rasul (Ar.)� rasuli/mtume (Sw.), (iii) the original Arabic term was
generally not adopted but the concept was given a Swahili term”. 12
Topan cites God’s name in Swahili as illustrating the third process. He agrees
that “Allah has not taken root as such in ordinary Swahili religious parlance, except
in theological formulae (Qur’anic and other) which are specifically quoted as such
in Arabic” 13 . In answer to the question: “Why was Mungu not replaced by Allah?,”
Topan speculates that this is “probably related to the existence of a notion, or
concept, of godhood among the Swahili and their neighbours prior to the
introduction of Islam at the coast”. 14 Topan adds that “perhaps feelings of closeness
and intimacy evoked by this indigenous term explain its retention even after the
appearance of the Arabic Allah”. 15
Mungu, then, is a common Bantu term for God. Some other Bantu languages
use a variant form, i.e. Mulungu. This term or its variant is common, for example,
among the Chewa of Malawi, Digo of Kenya, Bena of Tanzania, Pokomo of
Kenya, the Kamba of Kenya and the Gogo of Tanzania, among others. Mungu or
Mulungu is believed to be the creator and sustainer of the world and of all life in it.
This conception is more in terms of personhood rather than of gender. Bantu names
and pronouns do not specify gender—masculine, feminine or neutral. They only
specify whether the reference belongs to any of the eight or so nominal or semantic
classes. For example, the first nominal class, i.e. the M-WA class, consists mainly
of persons or people, while the second nominal class, i.e. the KI-VI class, consists
mainly of things. It is of interest that in Kihehe, a major Bantu language spoken
aroung Iringa, Tanzania, the name for God, Inguluvi, falls into the KI-VI class, i.e.
the class of things. But the Wahehe also speak of Inguluvi in terms of personhood,
11 F. M. Topan, “Swahili as a religious language”, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol.
XXI/4 (1992), 335.
12 Ibid., 335.
13 Ibid., 335–336.
14 Ibid., 336.
15 Ibid., 336.