When did the Bantu expansion stop?

I've read some history books that state the Bantus reached southern Africa by 300-400 C.E. but by the time the Trekboers were pushing north, Nguni people were spreading south at the same time even though their crops historically didn't thrive any further south. What caused this new expansion?

leopard9 said:

I've read some history books that state the Bantus reached southern Africa by 300-400 C.E. but by the time the Trekboers were pushing north, Nguni people were spreading south at the same time even though their crops historically didn't thrive any further south. What caused this new expansion?

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Technically, they were still going on when the Europeans started taking over Africa. Some historians would say the Zulus were the last in a long, continuous history of Bantu migrations through both peace and war.

We know very little about the direct cause, some have posited the drying of North Africa and overall climate chance, but that is as much a stab in the dark as we have with the Indo-European language family. All we know for certain is that they left very little record of their movements, there are no writings and almost no archaeological evidence for much of what they did.

leopard9 said:

Nguni people were spreading south at the same time even though their crops historically didn't thrive any further south. What caused this new expansion?

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Weren't they herders? In that case, given that the Khoi were also herders there is no reason per se why the Nguni expand south taking advantage of their iron weapons over the stone ones of their opponents.

On the reasson for expanion, probably population growth.

The Nguni of course herded cattle but were also farmers which leads back to the question of why farming people would start moving south in the 1700 and 1800s into land where there wasn't enough rain for their crops to grow or why they would start then when they had been in Southern Africa since 400 CE.

leopard9 said:

The Nguni of course herded cattle but were also farmers which leads back to the question of why farming people would start moving south in the 1700 and 1800s into land where there wasn't enough rain for their crops to grow or why they would start then when they had been in Southern Africa since 400 CE.

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Drought may have made them desperate, and forced them to try to expand. Another possibility is that the introduction of new crops like maize allowed them to expand the range they could farm in.

Of course, there's also political considerations, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about the rise of the Zulu to really comment.