LEMBA

This page is dedicated to the Lemba people who claim to be of Jewish descent and indeed practice some Jewish traditions.  This information is provided without any prejudice or endorsement to the claims. The Lemba live mainly in Zimbabwe and in the Limpopo Province of South Africa and are thought to number in the tens of thousands.

(This following extract is from the Wikipedia post on the Lemba)

What is possibly the oldest recorded origin story of the Lemba people was documented by Henri-Alexandre Junod (a Swiss-born South African missionary). In 1908, he wrote:

Some old Balemba of both the Spelonken and the Duiwelskloof country told my informant the following legend:

‘[We] have come from a very remote place, on the other side of the sea. We were on a big boat. A terrible storm nearly destroyed us all. The boat was broken into two pieces. One half of us reached the shores of this country; the others were taken away with the second half of the boat, and we do not know where they are now. We climbed the mountains and arrived among the Banyai. There we settled, and after a time we moved southwards to the Transvaal; but we are not the Banyai.

Tudor Parfitt interprets that the legend about the destruction of the boat and the division of the tribe is perhaps a way of explaining the fact that Lemba clans are to be found in several separate locations. However, it could equally be taken as an expression of a fractured sense of identity.

The original Sena was most likely located in Yemen, specifically in the ancient town of Sanā (also known as Sanāw) which is located within the easternmost portion of the Hadhramaut.

For the detailed description of the Lemba with many references – see via this external link on Wikipedia