Ntara was the first person to admit that it is very hard to identify the specific place of origin of the Chewa and to trace accurately their migration route into Malawi. He said that the old people whom he interviewed gave conflicting answers. They placed their home of origin as far north as Egypt with some saying it was Uganda and others mentioning Mombasa in Kenya. In 1970, Linden interviewed a man whom he said was Ntara's principal source for the first few chapters of his book. The man mentioned Libya as the place of origin of the Chewa. A majority of the oral traditions of the Chewa, however, claim that they came from a place called Uluwa or Luba in the Shaba or Katanga area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This claim makes sense when one views the Chewa in the context of the general history of African people called the Bantu. The term Bantu does not refer to race, ethnic group or culture; rather, it is a linguistic term. In many Bantu languages, the word-stem ‘ntu’ means ‘person’. The prefix ‘ba’ indicates plural. Ba-ntu therefore means ‘persons’ or ‘people’. Linguists concluded that Bantu languages are part of one language family called the Niger-Congo language group. The Bantu linguistic homeland is in the general area of eastern Nigeria and western Cameroon which is where the greatest diversity exists among modern Bantu dialects.

Expansion of the Bantu

The expansion of the early Bantu, also referred to as the proto-Bantu, led to the occupation of central, eastern and southern Africa by Bantu-speaking people. Today, there are nearly 900 Bantu language varieties that show a remarkable level of relatedness. They are spoken by more than 200 million people spread out over an area of more than 9 million square kilometres, from southern Somalia in the northeast to southern Africa. Reasons for the Bantu dispersal and the directions or routes they took as they spread out to cover a disproportionately large part of Africa have been the subject of intensive research. The results have generated some disputes among linguists, archaeologists, historians and other scholars. Since the research is ongoing, what is presented below is not the final word. It simply represents the current state of knowledge.