CENTRAL BANTU RELIGIONS. The term central Bantu, as used here, refers to speakers of languages belonging to the Bantu branch of Niger-Congo who live in the Congo Basin. They are spread over thousands of square miles stretching from the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic to Lake Malawi and the Shire Basin in the east, lying between 4° and 17° south latitude. They occupy much of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Angola, Zambia, and Malawi, spilling over into the Congo Republic, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Much of the region is forested savanna interspersed with grasslands, except where the great equatorial forest thrusts southward into Kuba and Lele territory in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In 1980 the central Bantu peoples were estimated to number around ten million, divided among many groups varying in size from half a million...