The Bantu people of Africa form the largest single ethnic group of people in Africa South of the Sahara. The Bantu language is the root of Africa's largest family of languages spoken throughout eastern, central and southern Africa. They include such languages as Shona, Ndebele spoken in Zimbabwe, Bemba, Lozi and Nyanja spoken in Zambia, Lingala from the Congo and Swahili spoken in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya and thoughout the East African diaspora. I believe that I can competently ascertain that Gang Gang is unmistakably a word of Bantu origin. Its morphology can be derived from the bantu root 'ganga'. In several bantu dialects it exists as 'nganga', 'uganga', 'mganga', 'mkunga'. By Guthrie's definition (he is an authority on Bantu linguistics) 'gang' is an identifiable morpheme of the Bantu linguistic prototype.

Now for its semantics. It is generally taken to mean someone who possesses the knowledge and skill necessary for the practice of medicine. This includes all forms of herbal, spiritual, physical and emotional remedies. It also includes midwifery. In traditional African societies this knowledge lay largely in the hands of the elders. The 'mganga' is mostly the old midwife of the village. The term Gang Gang, both in its form and meaning, exists in the northern villages of the island of Tobago in the West Indies. It is the village midwife.

In the Indo European family of languages the juxtaposed consonants 'ng' and 'mg' at the beginning of words are non existent. They were lost to slaves when they were transported across the sea. Mganga became Gang Gang.