OP STORY: SOUTH AFRICA: Lembas of South Africa stake claim to Jewish heritage

c. 1996 Religion News Service JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (RNS)-In a wasteland in the northeast corner of South Africa called Venda and in the teeming township of Soweto outside Johannesburg is a scattering of people who claim they are a lost tribe of Israel. They are a hard-working, politically active group who place a high emphasis […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (RNS)-In a wasteland in the northeast corner of South Africa called Venda and in the teeming township of Soweto outside Johannesburg is a scattering of people who claim they are a lost tribe of Israel.

They are a hard-working, politically active group who place a high emphasis on education and family. They are, for the most part, professionals, business leaders, entrepreneurs and politicians. They all are black and they are, they insist, Jewish.


For years anthropologists and others have known about the Lembas and debated their claim to have left Yemen centuries ago and, somehow, made their way to southern Africa.

Conclusions have ranged widely. An Israeli anthropologist dismisses the claim as nonsense, while a British author says the Lembas (or Belembas as they are sometimes called) are not Jewish at all but indigenous peoples of southern Africa who were influenced by early Muslim traders. A South African ethnomusicologist, meanwhile, embraces their claim wholeheartedly.

But now there is fresh evidence that could help prove the Lembas’ claim.

Dr. Trefor Jenkins, a geneticist at the University of the Witwaterstrand in Johannesburg, claims that some male Lembas, at least, can be traced to a Semitic source.

In his study, to be released soon in The American Journal of Human Genetics, Jenkins explains that the Y-chromosomes (found only in males) of some Lembas have genetic patterns very similar to the patterns found in Jewish people in Yemen and in Arab peoples in Lebanon.

Jenkins said that”about 50 percent of the Y-chromosomes in the Lemba have come from a Semitic source (whether Jewish or Arabic, it is not possible to say), about 40 percent from an African source, and it is not possible to define the source of the other 10 percent.” Some here say the evidence is still far from convincing. They note that Jenkins’ earlier genetic studies showed no differences between the Lembas and neighboring groups. And, they add, similar studies of Ethiopian Jews (Lembas claim to be of the same group) failed to turn up the Semitic pattern.

Still, many Lembas here say Jenkins’ findings confirm what they have always maintained: they are not just Jewish in culture but in blood as well.”The world has ignored us for years,”said Professor Tendeni Mativa, a Lemba and lecturer in international studies at Soweto College of Education.”Orthodox Judaism has rejected us along with most everyone else. Even when the (Ethiopian Jews) were being evacuated out of Ethiopia, no one paid any attention to us. Now maybe they will.” The significance of proving the authenticity of the Lembas’ claim hinges on Israel’s Law of Return, which guarantees all Jews the right to emigrate to Israel, claim immediate citizenship and be eligible for government benefits.

A variety of ethnic groups from Afghanistan to Peru have claimed to be Jews-descendants of the 10 lost tribes driven into exile when Assyria defeated the kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. Except in the case of the Jews of Ethiopia, the religious and political authorities of modern Israel have cast a skeptical eye on such claims.


There is no doubt that there is much culturally, at least, that distinguishes the Lembas from the mainly Bantu-speaking peoples of southern Africa. (Bantu is a term that refers to a grouping of more than 400 languages spoken by some 200 million people who live in sub-Saharan Africa.)

They follow food laws that prescribe cattle must be kosher-killed, milk and meat must be eaten separately, and pork must be prohibited. Lembas also strongly encourage marriage within the Lemba community, and male circumcision is practiced.

Although there are different versions, the story goes that the Lembas, along with the Ethiopian Jews, fled famine in Yemen around 600 A.D. and crossed over into Africa. While part of the group moved west into Ethiopia, the theory goes, the Lembas migrated down the east coast of the continent. Primarily herdsmen, they kept moving south looking for grazing land and eventually settled in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa.

One study on the Lembas is by British author Tudor Parfitt. Parfitt, the author of Operation Moses, an account of the Israeli airlift of the Ethiopian Jews, maintains that the Lembas are not Jewish but were influenced by Muslim traders hundreds of years ago.”What the Lemba were practicing in religious terms in the 19th century,”Parfitt writes in his work on the Lembas,”Journey to the Vanished City,””was perhaps a sort of attenuated Islam, but an Islam which had been stripped of all those elements which distinguish it from historical Judaism.”(BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

Although the Lembas may have science, history and culture behind them, when talk turns to religion among the Lembas, the picture gets quite confusing.

Wilbert Maungedzo, the head of the Lemba Youth Association in Soweto, said most Lembas know little of Judaism and in fact, practice Christianity.”We don’t have a synagogue really, and we don’t read the Torah, but I usually get together with my Lemba friends after church on Sunday. I’m a Roman Catholic, and most of my friends are Lutheran.”I don’t see it as a conflict,”said Maungedzo.”I am Lemba, Jewish and Christian.”(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)


Religion aside, many here maintain there is strong evidence linking the Lembas to the Jews of the Middle East.

Dr. Margaret Nabarro, an ethnomusicologist who has been studying the Lembas ever since she stumbled across them in Mozambique in the late 1950s, said the Lembas’ music is different from any other found in southern Africa.

Specifically, she points to the use of an instrument called a”deze.”Nabarro argues that the”deze,”a hollowed calabash with a tiny finger piano or”mbira”inside, is found nowhere else in sub-Saharan Africa. It is, though, found in the Middle East, according to Nabarro.”But it’s not only the music, it’s other things as well,”she said.”They were wearing yarmulkes (skullcaps) in Mozambique when I first came across them. And I can hardly agree with Parfitt that they are a primitive sort of Islam. They make their own wine. Do you know any Muslims who do that?” (STORY CAN END HERE. BEGIN SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM TO END)

Lembas in the Johannesburg area are hoping that Jenkins’ findings will not only boost their claim with others but also renew interest of their heritage among the Lembas.

Maungedzo spends most Saturdays meeting with young people, trying, he said, to keep the culture going.”I go back to Venda a few times a year, mostly to meet with the old people so I can gather more stories about our culture and traditions to give to our youth here. I am afraid Johannesburg is draining their Jewishness away from them.” Maungedzo said Jenkins’ work should help increase knowledge of the Lembas and may even gain some international recognition for their claims. But he doesn’t hold out much hope of being given the same sort of recognition that was given to the Ethiopian Jews.”We would like for the world to know our story, for the Israelis to accept us, but neither do we expect that to happen nor do we resent it in any way. It’s enough for us to know who we are,”he said.

LJB END FLEMING

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