Kongo people

Last updated
Bakongo
A voice from the Congo - comprising stories, anecdotes, and descriptive notes (1910) (14597123707).jpg
A Kongo woman's cast from 1910 by Herbert Ward
Total population
18,904,000 [1] [2]
Regions with significant populations
Flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.svg  Democratic Republic of the Congo
Flag of the Republic of the Congo.svg  Republic of the Congo
Flag of Angola.svg  Angola
Flag of Gabon.svg  Gabon
Flag of Cuba.svg  Cuba
Languages
Native languages:
Kikongo, Kituba
Lingala (minority)
Second languages:
French (DR Congo, Congo, Gabon)
Portuguese (Angola)
Religion
Predominantly Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Basuku, Yaka, Téké and other Bantu peoples
Kongo
PersonMusi Kongo, Muisi Kongo, Mwisi Kongo, Mukongo, Nkongo
PeopleBisi Kongo, Esikongo, Besi Kongo, Bakongo, Akongo
Language Kikongo
CountryKongo dia Ntotila (or Ntotela), Loango, Ngoyo and Kakongo

The Kongo people (Kongo : Bisi Kongo, EsiKongo, singular: Musi Kongo; also Bakongo, singular: Mukongo or M'kongo) [3] [4] are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. [5] Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others. [6]

Contents

They have lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in a region that by the 15th century was a centralized and well-organized Kingdom of Kongo, but is now a part of three countries. [7] Their highest concentrations are found south of Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo, southwest of Pool Malebo and west of the Kwango River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north of Luanda, Angola and southwest Gabon. [5] They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of the Congo, and one of the major ethnic groups in the other two countries they are found in. [7] In 1975, the Kongo population was reported as 4,040,000. [8]

The Kongo people were among the earliest indigenous Africans to welcome Portuguese traders in 1483 CE, and began converting to Catholicism in the late 15th century. [7] They were among the first to protest slave capture in letters to the King of Portugal in the 1510s and 1520s, [9] [10] then succumbed to the demands for slaves from the Portuguese through the 16th century. The Kongo people were a part of the major slave raiding, capture and export trade of African slaves to the European colonial interests in 17th and 18th centuries. [7] The slave raids, colonial wars and the 19th-century Scramble for Africa split the Kongo people into Portuguese, Belgian and French parts. In the early 20th century, they became one of the most active ethnic groups in the efforts to decolonize Africa, helping liberate the three nations to self-governance. [7]

Name

The origin of the name Kongo is unclear, and several theories have been proposed. [11] According to the colonial era scholar Samuel Nelson, the term Kongo is possibly derived from a local verb for gathering or assembly. [12] According to Alisa LaGamma, the root may be from the regional word Nkongo which means "hunter" in the context of someone adventurous and heroic. [13]

It may be derived from the proto-bantu word for hunter, similar to the IsiZulu term khonto, which means spear as in "umkhonto we sizwe", Spear of the Nation, the name for the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC) during its struggle against apartheid.

Douglas Harper states that the term means "mountains" in a Bantu language, which the Congo river flows down from. [14]

The Kongo people have been referred to by various names in the colonial French, Belgian and Portuguese literature, names such as Esikongo (singular Mwisikongo), Mucicongo, Mesikongo, Madcongo and Moxicongo. [11] Christian missionaries, particularly in the Caribbean, originally applied the term Bafiote (singular M(a)fiote) to the slaves from the Vili or Fiote coastal Kongo people, but later this term was used to refer to any "black man" in Cuba, St Lucia and other colonial era Islands ruled by one of the European colonial interests. [15] The group is identified largely by speaking a cluster of mutually intelligible dialects rather than by large continuities in their history or even in culture. The term "Congo" was more widely deployed to identify Kikongo-speaking people enslaved in the Americas. [16]

Since the early 20th century, Bakongo (singular Mkongo or Mukongo) has been increasingly used, especially in areas north of the Congo River, to refer to the Kikongo-speaking community, or more broadly to speakers of the closely related Kongo languages. [3] This convention is based on the Bantu languages, to which Kongo language belongs. The prefix "mu-" and "ba-" refer to "people", singular and plural respectively. [17]

Ne in Kikongo designates a title, it is incorrect to call Kongo people by Ne Kongo or a Kongo person by Ne Kongo. [18]

History

Distribution of the Kongo people in Africa (approx) Kongo people in Africa.png
Distribution of the Kongo people in Africa (approx)

The ancient history of the Kongo people has been difficult to ascertain. The region is close to East Africa, considered to be a key to the prehistoric human migrations. This geographical proximity, states Jan Vansina, suggests that the Congo River region, home of the Kongo people, was populated thousands of years ago. [19] Ancient archeological evidence linked to Kongo people has not been found, and glottochronology – or the estimation of ethnic group chronologies based on language evolution – has been applied to the Kongo. Based on this, it is likely the Kongo language and Gabon-Congo language split about 950 BCE. [19]

The earliest archeological evidence is from Tchissanga (now part of modern Republic of the Congo), a site dated to about 600 BCE. However, the site does not prove which ethnic group was resident at that time. [19] The Kongo people had settled into the area well before the fifth century CE, begun a society that utilized the diverse and rich resources of region and developed farming methods. [20] According to James Denbow, social complexity had probably been achieved by the second century CE. [21]

According to Vansina small kingdoms and Kongo principalities appeared in the current region by the 1200 CE, but documented history of this period of Kongo people if it existed has not survived into the modern era. Detailed and copious description about the Kongo people who lived next to the Atlantic ports of the region, as a sophisticated culture, language and infrastructure, appear in the 15th century, written by the Portuguese explorers. [22] Later anthropological work on the Kongo of the region come from the colonial era writers, particularly the French and Belgians (Loango, Vungu, and the Niari Valley), but this too is limited and does not exhaustively cover all of the Kongo people. The evidence suggests, states Vansina, that the Kongo people were advanced in their culture and socio-political systems with multiple kingdoms well before the arrival of first Portuguese ships in the late 15th century. [22]

The Kingdom of Kongo

A map of Angola showing majority ethnic groups (Bakongo area is north, dark green). Angola tribes 1970.jpg
A map of Angola showing majority ethnic groups (Bakongo area is north, dark green).

Kongo oral tradition suggests that the Kingdom of Kongo was founded before the 14th century and the 13th century. [23] [24] The kingdom was modeled not on hereditary succession as was common in Europe, but based on an election by the court nobles from the Kongo people. This required the king to win his legitimacy by a process of recognizing his peers, consensus building as well as regalia and religious ritualism. [25] The kingdom had many trading centers both near rivers and inland, distributed across hundreds of kilometers and Mbanza Kongo – its capital that was about 200 kilometers inland from the Atlantic coast. [25]

The Portuguese arrived on the Central African coast north of the Congo River, several times between 1472 and 1483 searching for a sea route to India, [25] but they failed to find any ports or trading opportunities. In 1483, south of the Congo river they found the Kongo people and the Kingdom of Kongo, which had a centralized government, a currency called nzimbu, and markets, ready for trading relations. [26] The Portuguese found well developed transport infrastructure inlands from the Kongo people's Atlantic port settlement. They also found exchange of goods easy and the Kongo people open to ideas. The Kongo king at that time, named Nzinga a Nkuwu allegedly willingly accepted Christianity, and at his baptism in 1491 changed his name to João I, a Portuguese name. [25] Around the 1450s, a prophet, Ne Buela Muanda, predicted the arrival of the Portuguese and the spiritual and physical enslavement of many Bakongo. [27] [28]

The trade between Kongo people and Portuguese people thereafter accelerated through 1500. The kingdom of Kongo appeared to become receptive of the new traders, allowed them to settle an uninhabited nearby island called São Tomé, and sent Bakongo nobles to visit the royal court in Portugal. [26] Other than the king himself, much of the Kongo people's nobility welcomed the cultural exchange, the Christian missionaries converted them to the Catholic faith, they assumed Portuguese court manners, and by early 16th-century Kongo became a Portugal-affiliated Christian kingdom. [7]

Start of slavery

Initially, the Kongo people exchanged ivory and copper objects they made with luxury goods of Portuguese. [26] But, after 1500, the Portuguese had little demand for ivory and copper, they instead demanded slaves in exchange. The settled Portuguese in São Tomé needed slave labor for their sugarcane plantations, and they first purchased labor. Soon thereafter they began kidnapping people from the Kongo society and after 1514, they provoked military campaigns in nearby African regions to get slave labor. [26] Along with this change in Portuguese-Kongo people relationship, the succession system within Kongo kingdom changed under Portuguese influence, [29] and in 1509, instead of the usual election among the nobles, a hereditary European-style succession led to the African king Afonso I succeeding his father, now named João I. [26] The slave capture and the export of slaves caused major social disorder among the Kongo people, and the Kongo king Afonso I wrote letters to the king of Portugal protesting this practice. Finally, he succumbed to the demand and accepted an export of those who willingly accepted slavery, and for a fee per slave. The Portuguese procured 2,000 to 3,000 slaves per year for a few years, from 1520, a practice that started the slave export history of the Kongo people. However, this supply was far short of the demand for slaves and the money slave owners were willing to pay. [26]

The Portuguese operators approached the traders at the borders of the Kongo kingdom, such as the Malebo Pool and offered luxury goods in exchange for captured slaves. This created, states Jan Vansina, an incentive for border conflicts and slave caravan routes, from other ethnic groups and different parts of Africa, in which the Kongo people and traders participated. [26] The slave raids and volume of trade in enslaved human beings increased thereafter, and by the 1560s, over 7,000 slaves per year were being captured and exported by Portuguese traders to the Americas. [26] The Kongo people and the neighboring ethnic groups retaliated, with violence and attacks, such as the Jaga invasion of 1568 which swept across the Kongo lands, burnt the Portuguese churches, and attacked its capital, nearly ending the Kingdom of Kongo. [26] [30] The Kongo people also created songs to warn themselves of the arrival of the Portuguese, one of the famous songs is " Malele " (Translation: "Tragedy", song present among the 17 Kongo songs sung by the Massembo family of Guadeloupe during the Grap a Kongo [31] ). The Portuguese brought in military and arms to support the Kingdom of Kongo, and after years of fighting, they jointly defeated the attack. This war unexpectedly led to a flood of captives who had challenged the Kongo nobility and traders, and the coastal ports were flooded with "war captives turned slaves". [26] The other effect of this violence over many years was making the Kongo king heavily dependent on the Portuguese protection, [29] along with the dehumanization of the African people, including the rebelling Kongo people, as cannibalistic pagan barbarians from "Jaga kingdom". This caricature of the African people and their dehumanization was vociferous and well published by the slave traders, the missionaries and the colonial era Portuguese historians, which helped morally justify mass trading of slaves. [26] [30]

A 1595 map of Congo, printed in 1630. The map emphasizes the rivers and Portuguese churches. It marks the capital of Kongo people as Citta de Sao Salvador. Mercator Congo map.jpg
A 1595 map of Congo, printed in 1630. The map emphasizes the rivers and Portuguese churches. It marks the capital of Kongo people as Citta de São Salvador .

Modern scholars such as Estevam Thompson have shown that there is much confusion between the "original" Jagas, who left the land of Yaka on the eastern bank of the Kwango River and invaded Mbata and mbanza Kongo, and other later references to "Jaga warriors" roaming the interior of West Central Africa who were, indeed, different Mbangala groups. [30] [32] There are other scholars, such as Joseph Miller, that believed this 16th and 17th centuries' one-sided dehumanization of the African people was a fabrication and myth created by the missionaries and slave trading Portuguese to hide their abusive activities and intentions. [32] [33] [34]

From the 1570s, the European traders arrived in large numbers and the slave trading through the Kongo people territory dramatically increased. The weakened Kingdom of Kongo continued to face internal revolts and violence that resulted from the raids and capture of slaves, and the Portuguese in 1575 established the port city of Luanda (now in Angola) in cooperation with a Kongo noble family to facilitate their military presence, African operations and the slave trade thereof. [35] [36] The Kingdom of Kongo and its people ended their cooperation in the 1660s. In 1665, the Portuguese army invaded the Kingdom, killed the Kongo king, disbanded his army, and installed a friendly replacement in his place. [37]

Smaller kingdoms

The 1665 Kongo-Portuguese war and the killing of the hereditary king by the Portuguese soldiers led to a political vacuum. The Kongo kingdom disintegrated into smaller kingdoms, each controlled by nobles considered friendly by the Portuguese. [7] One of these kingdoms was the kingdom of Loango. Loango was in the northern part, above the Congo River, a region which long before the war was already an established community of the Kongo people. [26] New kingdoms came into existence in this period, from the disintegrated parts in the southeast and the northeast of the old Kongo kingdom. The old capital of the Kongo people called São Salvador was burnt down, and was in ruins and abandoned in 1678. [38] The fragmented new kingdoms of the Kongo people disputed each other's boundaries and rights, as well as those of other non-Kongo ethnic groups bordering them, leading to steady wars and mutual raids. [7] [39]

The wars between the small kingdoms created a steady supply of captives that fed the Portuguese demand for slaves and the small kingdoms' need for government income to finance the wars. [40] [41] In the 1700s, a baptized teenage Kongo woman named Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita claimed to be possessed by Saint Anthony of Padua and that she had been visiting heaven to speak with God. [41] She started preaching that Mary and Jesus were not born in Nazareth but in Africa among the Kongo people. She created a movement among the Kongo people which historians call as Kongo Antonianism. [42]

Dona Beatriz questioned the wars devastating the Kongo people, asked all Kongo people to end the wars that fed the trading in humans, and unite under one king. [7] [43] She attracted a following of thousands of Kongo people into the ruins of their old capital. She was declared a false saint by the Portuguese-appointed Kongo king Pedro IV, with the support of Portuguese Catholic missionaries and Italian Capuchin monks then resident in Kongo lands. The 22 year old Dona Beatriz was arrested, then burnt alive at the stake on charges of being a witch and a heretic. [7] [44]

Colonial era

After the death of Dona Beatriz in 1706 and another three years of wars with the help of the Portuguese, Pedro IV was able to get back much of the old Kongo kingdom. [7] The conflicts continued through the 18th century, however, and the demand for and the caravan of Kongo and non-Kongo people as captured slaves kept rising, headed to the Atlantic ports. [38] Although, in Portuguese documents, all of Kongo people were technically under one ruler, they were no longer governed that way by the mid-18th century. The Kongo people were now divided into regions, each headed by a noble family. Christianity was growing again with new chapels built, services regularly held, missions of different Christian sects expanding, and church rituals a part of the royal succession. There were succession crises, ensuing conflicts when a local royal Kongo ruler died and occasional coups such as that of Andre II by Henrique III, typically settled with Portuguese intervention, and these continued through the mid 19th-century. [38] After Henrique III died in 1857, competitive claims to the throne were raised by his relatives. One of them, Pedro Elelo, gained the trust of Portuguese military against Alvero XIII, by agreeing to be vassal of the colonial Portugal. This effectively ended whatever sovereignty had previously been recognized and the Kongo people became a part of colonial Portugal. [45]

Slave shipment between 1501 and 1867, by region [46] [note 1]
RegionTotal embarkedTotal disembarked
West central Africa5.69 million
Bight of Biafra1.6 million
Bight of Benin2.00 million
Gold Coast1.21 million
Windward Coast0.34 million
Sierra Leone0.39 million
Senegambia0.76 million
Mozambique0.54 million
Brazil (South America)4.7 million
Rest of South America0.9 million
Caribbean4.1 million
North America0.4 million
Europe0.01 million

In concert with the growing import of Christian missionaries and luxury goods, the slave capture and exports through the Kongo lands grew. With over 5.6 million human beings kidnapped in Central Africa, then sold and shipped as slaves through the lands of the Kongo people, they witnessed the largest exports of slaves from Africa into the Americas by 1867. [46] According to Jan Vansina, the "whole of Angola's economy and its institutions of governance were based on the slave trade" in 18th and 19th century, until the slave trade was forcibly brought to an end in the 1840s. This ban on lucrative trade of slaves through the lands of Kongo people was bitterly opposed by both the Portuguese and Luso-Africans (part Portuguese, part African), states Vansina. [48] The slave trade was replaced with ivory trade in the 1850s, where the old caravan owners and routes replaced hunting human beings with hunting elephants for their tusks with the help of non-Kongo ethnic groups such as the Chokwe people, which were then exported with the labor of Kongo people. [48]

Swedish missionaries entered the area in the 1880s and 1890, converting the northeast section of Kongo to Protestantism in the early twentieth century. The Swedish missionaries, notably Karl Laman, encouraged the local people to write their history and customs in notebooks, which then became the source for Laman's famous and widely cited ethnography and their dialect became well established thanks to Laman's dictionary of Kikongo. [49]

The fragmented Kongo people in the 19th century were annexed by three European colonial empires, during the Scramble for Africa and Berlin Conference, the northernmost parts went to France (now the Republic of Congo and Gabon), the middle part along river Congo along with the large inland region of Africa went to Belgium (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and the southern parts (now Angola) remained with Portugal. [50] The Kongo people in all three colonies (Angola, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo) became one of the most active ethnic groups in the efforts to decolonize Africa, and worked with other ethnic groups in Central Africa to help liberate the three nations to self governance. [7] The French and Belgium regions became independent in 1960. Angolan independence came in 1975. [51] [52]

Language and demographics

Map of the area where Kongo and Kituba as the lingua franca are spoken. NB: Kisikongo (also called Kisansala by some authors) is the Kikongo spoken in Mbanza Kongo. Kisikongo is not the protolanguage of the Kongo language cluster. LanguageMap-Kikongo-Kituba.png
Map of the area where Kongo and Kituba as the lingua franca are spoken. NB: Kisikongo (also called Kisansala by some authors) is the Kikongo spoken in Mbanza Kongo. Kisikongo is not the protolanguage of the Kongo language cluster.

The language of the Kongo people is called Kikongo (Guthrie: Bantu Zone H.10). It is a macrolanguage and consists of Beembe, Doondo, Koongo, Laari, Kongo-San-Salvador, Kunyi, Vili and Yombe sub-languages. [56]

The Kongo language is divided into many dialects which are sufficiently diverse that people from distant dialects, such as speakers of Kivili dialect (on the northern coast) and speakers of Kisansolo (the central dialect) would have trouble understanding each other.

In Angola, there are a few who did not learn to speak Kikongo because Portuguese rules of assimilation during the colonial period was directed against learning native languages, though most Bakongo held on to the language. Most Angolan Kongo also speak Portuguese and those near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo also speak French. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo most also speak French and others speak either Lingala, a common lingua franca in Western Congo, or Kikongo ya Leta (generally known as Kituba particularly in the Republic of the Congo), a creole form of Kikongo spoken widely in the Republic of the Congo and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[ citation needed ]

Creation and cosmology

The Yowa, or Dikenga Cross, is a symbol in Bakongo spirituality that depicts the physical world, the spiritual (ancestral) world, the Kalunga line that runs between the two worlds, and the four moments of the sun. Kongo Cosmogram 3.png
The Yowa, or Dikenga Cross, is a symbol in Bakongo spirituality that depicts the physical world, the spiritual (ancestral) world, the Kalûnga line that runs between the two worlds, and the four moments of the sun.

The Bakongo believe that in the beginning, the world was circular void, called mbûngi, with no life. Then Nzambi Mpungu, the creator god, summoned a great force of fire, called Kalûnga, which filled this empty circle. Then Kalûnga heated up the contents of mbûngi, and when it cooled, it formed the earth. The Earth, the starting point of the fire, then became a green planet after it went through four stages. [57] The first stage is the emergence of the fire. The second stage is the red stage where the planet is still burning and has not formed. The third stage is the grey stage where the planet is cooling, but has not produced life. These planets are naked, dry, and covered with dust. The final stage is green stage is when the planet is fully mature because it breathes and carries life. As the Bakongo believe is part of the universal order, all planets must go through this process. [57]

According to Molefi Kete Asante, "Another important characteristic of Bakongo cosmology is the sun and its movements. The rising, peaking, setting, and absence of the sun provide the essential pattern for Bakongo religious culture. These “four moments of the sun” equate with the four stages of life: conception, birth, maturity, and death. For the Bakongo, everything transitions through these stages: planets, plants, animals, people, societies, and even ideas. This vital cycle is depicted by a circle with a cross inside. In this cosmogram or dikenga, the meeting point of the two lines of the cross is the most powerful point and where the person stands." [57] [58]

The creation of a Bakongo person, or muntu, is also believed to follow the four moments of the sun, which play a significant role in their development. [57] Musoni is the time when a muntu is conceived both in the spiritual realm and in the womb of a Bakongo woman. Kala is the time when a muntu is born into the physical world. This time is also seen as the rise of the sun. Tukula is the time of maturity, where a muntu learns to master all aspects of life from spirituality to purpose to personality. The last period of time is luvemba, when a muntu physically dies and enters the spiritual world, or Nu Mpémba, with of the ancestors, or bakulu. [57] [59] Because Bakongo people have a "dual soul-mind," or mwèla-ngindu, they are able to exist and live in both realms during the different moments of their lives. Even while in Nu Mpémba, a muntu still lives a full life as they prepare for Kala time once again. [57] The right side of the body is also believed to be male, while the left side is believed to be female, creating an additional layer to the dual identity of a muntu. [58] For the Bakongo, a person is a kala-zimikala, which means a "living-dying-living being." [57]

A simbi (pl. bisimbi) is a water spirit that is believed to inhabit bodies of water and rocks, having the ability to guide the bakulu, or the ancestors, along the Kalûnga River to the spiritual world after they pass away. They are also present during the baptisms of African American Christians, according to Hoodoo tradition. [60] [61]

Religion

The religious history of the Kongo is complex, particularly after the ruling class of the Kingdom of Kongo accepted Christianity at the start of the 16th century. According to historian John K. Thornton, "Central Africans have probably never agreed among themselves as to what their cosmology is in detail, a product of what I called the process of continuous revelation and precarious priesthood." [62] The Kongo people had diverse views, with traditional religious ideas best developed in the small northern Kikongo-speaking area, and this region neither converted to Christianity nor participated in slave trade until the 19th century. [62] There is abundant description about Kongo religious concepts in the Catholic missionary and colonial era records, but states Thornton, these are written with a hostile bias and their reliability is problematic. [62]

The Kongo people believed in the Creator God Nzambi Mpungu , his female counterpart Nzambici , and a host of nature spirits that were referred to as simbi , nkisi , nkita and kilundu spirits. [63] In an attempt to convince Kongo people to convert to Catholicism, Portuguese missionaries often stressed that Nzambi was the Christian God. Similarly, the early missionaries used Kongo language words to integrate Christian ideas, such as using the words "nkisi" to mean "holy". Thus, church to Kongo people was nzo a nkisi, which means "another shrine," and the Bible was mukanda nkisi, which means "a consecrated charm." [62] Kongo people maintained both churches and shrines, which they called Kiteki. Their smaller shrines were dedicated to the smaller deities, even after they had converted to Christianity. [62] These deities were guardians of water bodies, crop lands and high places to the Kongo people, and they were very prevalent both in capital towns of the Christian ruling classes, as well as in the villages. [62]

Kongo bowl in the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC Bowl by the Kongo peoples.jpg
Kongo bowl in the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC
Nkisi nkondi of the Kongo people; Nkisi means holy. Statuette protectrice nkisi, 71.1892.52.2, Musee du quai Branly.jpg
Nkisi nkondi of the Kongo people; Nkisi means holy.

The later Portuguese missionaries and Capuchin monks upon their arrival in Kongo were baffled by these practices in the late 17th century (nearly 150 years after the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion in the Kingdom of Kongo). Some threatened to burn or destroy the shrines. However, the Kongo people credited these shrines for abundance and defended them. [62] The Kongo people's conversion was based on different assumptions and premises about what Christianity was, and syncretic ideas continued for centuries. [65]

The Kongo people, state the colonial era accounts, included a reverence for their ancestors and spirits. [66] Some BaKongo people shaved their heads to keep it smooth “for spirits that might want to land there.” [67]

However, some anthropologists report regional differences. According to Dunja Hersak, for example, the Vili and Yombe do not believe in the power of ancestors in the same degree as to those living farther south. Furthermore, she and John Janzen state that religious ideas and emphasis have changed over time. [68] [69]

The slaves brought over by the European ships into the Americas carried with them their traditional ideas. Vanhee suggests that the Afro-Brazilian Quimbanda religion is a new world manifestation of Bantu religion and spirituality, and Kongo Christianity played a role in the formation of Voudou in Haiti. [70]

Society and culture

A Kongo artwork Raccolte Extraeuropee - Passare 00139 - Statua Bakongo - Rep.Dem.Congo.jpg
A Kongo artwork

The large Bakongo society features a diversity of occupations. Some are farmers who grow staples and cash crops. Among the staples are cassava, bananas, maize, taro and sweet potatoes. Other crops include peanuts (groundnuts) and beans. [5] The cash crops were introduced by the colonial rulers, and these include coffee and cacao for the chocolate industry. Palm oil is another export commodity, while the traditional urena is a famine food. Some Kongo people fish and hunt, but most work in factories and trade in towns. [5]

The Kongo people have traditionally recognized their descent from their mother (matrilineality), and this lineage links them into kinship groups. [5] [71] They are culturally organized as ones who cherish their independence, so much so that neighboring Kongo people's villages avoid being dependent on each other. There is a strong undercurrent of messianic tradition among the Bakongo, which has led to several politico-religious movements in the 20th century. [5] This may be linked to the premises of dualistic cosmology in Bakongo tradition, where two worlds exist, one visible and lived, another invisible and full of powerful spirits. The belief that there is an interaction and reciprocal exchange between these, to Bakongo, means the world of spirits can possess the world of flesh. [71]

Article about Kongo clans  [ fr ]

Article about Vili clans  [ fr ]

Mother and Child (Phemba) WLA brooklynmuseum Kongo Figure of Mother and Child.jpg
Mother and Child (Phemba)

The Kongo week was a four-day week: Konzo, Nkenge, Nsona and Nkandu. [72] These days are named after the four towns near which traditionally a farmer's market was held in rotation. [72] This idea spread across the Kongo people, and every major district or population center had four rotating markets locations, each center named after these days of the week. Larger market gatherings were rotated once every eight days, on Nsona Kungu. [73]

Genetics

The Haplogroup L2a is a mtdna clade that was found to be common in the Democratic Republic of Congo amongst Bantu groups, including the Bakongo. [74] Haplogroup E1b1a8 was the most commonly observed y-chromosome clade. [75]

A seated man WLA metmuseum Commemorative Figure Seated Male Kongo.jpg
A seated man

Nationalism

The idea of a Bakongo unity, actually developed in the early twentieth century, primarily through the publication of newspapers in various dialects of the language. In 1910 Kavuna Kafwandani (Kavuna Simon) published an article in the Swedish mission society's Kikongo language newspaper Misanü Miayenge (Words of Peace) calling for all speakers of the Kikongo language to recognize their identity. [76]

The Bakongo people have championed ethnic rivalry and nationalism through sports such as football. The game is organized around ethnic teams, and fans cheer their teams along ethnic lines, such as during matches between the Poto-Poto people and the Kongo people. Further, during international competitions, they join across ethnic lines, states Phyllis Martin, to "assert their independence against church and state". [77]

Personalities

Politics, army and resistance

Arts and entertainment

Notes

  1. ↑ This slave trade volume excludes the slave trade by Swahili-Arabs in East Africa and North African ethnic groups to the Middle East and elsewhere. The exports and imports do not match, because of the large number of deaths en route [47] and violent retaliation by captured people on the ships involved in the slave trade. [46]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zaire Province</span> Province of Angola

Zaire is one of the 18 provinces of Angola. It occupies 40,130 square kilometres (15,490 sq mi) in the north west of the country and had a population of 594,428 inhabitants in 2014. It is bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the east by the Uíge Province, and on the south by the Bengo Province.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Angola</span>

The culture of Angola is influenced by the Portuguese. Portugal occupied the coastal enclave Luanda, and later also Benguela, since the 16th/17th centuries, and expanded into the territory of what is now Angola in the 19th/20th centuries, ruling it until 1975. Both countries share prevailing cultural aspects: the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism. However, present-day Angolan culture is mostly native Bantu, which was mixed with Portuguese culture. The diverse ethnic communities with their own cultural traits, traditions and native languages or dialects include the Ovimbundu, Ambundu, Bakongo, Chokwe, Avambo and other peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kongo language</span> Bantu language of west-central Africa

Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Angola. It is a tonal language. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo in the above-named countries. An estimated five million more speakers use it as a second language.

Congolese or Kongolese may refer to:

The pre-colonial history of the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo encompasses the history of the Congo Basin region up to the establishment of European colonial rule in the era of New Imperialism and particularly the creation of the Congo Free State and its expansion into the interior after 1885. As the modern territorial boundaries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo did not exist in this period, it is inseparable from the wider pre-colonial histories of Central Africa, the Great Lakes and Rift Valley as well as the Atlantic World and Swahili coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nkisi</span> Religious statue in the Congo Basin, Africa

Nkisi or Nkishi are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kingdom of Kongo</span> 1390–1914 state in Central Africa; Portuguese vassal from 1857

The Kingdom of Kongo was a kingdom in Central Africa. It was located in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Southern of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. At its greatest extent it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The kingdom consisted of several core provinces ruled by the Manikongo, the Portuguese version of the Kongo title Mwene Kongo, meaning "lord or ruler of the Kongo kingdom", but its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kakongo</span> 15th to 19th century coastal kingdom in west Central Africa

Kakongo was a small kingdom located on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in the modern-day Republic of the Congo and Cabinda Province, Angola. Along with its neighboring kingdoms of Ngoyo and Loango, Kakongo became an important political commercial center during the 17th through 19th centuries. The people speak a dialect of the Kikongo language and thus may be considered a part of the Bakongo ethnicity. Kakongo was a vassal of the Kingdom of Kongo for a part of its history.

Kituba is a widely used lingua franca in Central Africa. It is a creole language based on Kikongo, a Bantu language. It is a national language in Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambundu</span> Ethnic group in north-west Angola

The Ambundu or Mbundu (Mbundu: Ambundu or Akwambundu, singular: Mumbundu are a Bantu people who live on a high plateau in present-day Angola just north of the Kwanza River. The Ambundu speak Kimbundu, and most also speak the official language of the country, Portuguese. They are the second biggest ethnic group in the country and make up 25% of the total population of Angola.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalûnga Line</span> Bakongo religious watery boundary between the living and dead

The Kalûnga Line in Kongo religion is a watery boundary between the land of the living and the spiritual realm of the ancestors. Kalûnga is the Kikongo word "threshold between worlds." It is the point between the physical world and the spiritual world. It represents liminality, or a place literally "neither here nor there." Originally, Kalûnga was seen as a fiery life-force that begot the universe and a symbol for the spiritual nature the sun and change. The line is regarded as an integral element within the Kôngo cosmogram.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nganga</span> Kongo spiritual healer

A nganga is a spiritual healer, diviner, and ritual specialist in traditional Kongo religion. These experts also exist across the African diaspora in countries where Kongo and Mbundu people were transported during the Atlantic slave trade, such as Brazil, the southern United States, Haiti and Cuba.

Angolan Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of Angolan descent or Angolan immigrants. According to estimates, by the year 2000 there were 1,642 people descended from Angolan immigrants in the United States. However, the number of Angolan Americans is difficult to determine. Many African-Americans are descendants of Angolan enslaved people. In 1644, most of the 6,900 slaves bought on the African coast to clear the forests, lay roads, build houses and public buildings, and grow food came from the established stations in Angola.

The Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza were a confederation of states in west Central Africa that were absorbed into the Kingdom of Kongo in the 16th century, being mentioned in the titles of King Alvaro II in 1583. This polity or region was first mentioned in texts of the Kingdom of Kongo in the late 16th century, although it probably existed much earlier. It was only then being incorporated into Kongo, through the kingdom's eastern province of Mbata Kingdom. It is unclear what the Seven Kingdoms were, though perhaps they included Kundi and Okanga. Presumably these kingdoms represented an alliance of several smaller polities, though the sources of the time tell us nothing about it.

Nzambi a Mpungu is the Supreme God, eternal Sky Father and God of the Sun (fire) in traditional Kongo spirituality. His female counterpart is Nzambici, the Sky Mother and Goddess of the Moon. Among other Central African Bantu peoples, such as the Chokwe, and in the Kingdom of Ndongo, Nzambi Mpungu was also called Kalunga, the god of fire and change. This may have a connection to an element of Bakongo cosmology called Kalûnga. It was seen as the spark of fire that begot all life in the universe. After Portuguese colonization, Nzambi Mpungu became synonymous with the Christian God and existed chiefly as the Creator God.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nkondi</span> Religious statue in the Congo, Africa

Nkondi are mystical statuettes made by the Kongo people of the Congo region. Nkondi are a subclass of minkisi that are considered aggressive. The name nkondi derives from the verb -konda, meaning "to hunt" and thus nkondi means "hunter" because they can hunt down and attack wrong-doers, witches, or enemies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kongo cosmogram</span> Sacred symbol in Bakongo spirituality

The Kongo cosmogram is a core symbol in Bakongo religion that depicts the physical world, the spiritual world, the Kalûnga line that runs between the two worlds, the sacred river that forms a circle through the two worlds, the four moments of the sun, and the four elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kongo religion</span>

Kongo religion encompasses the traditional beliefs of the Bakongo people. Due to the highly centralized position of the Kingdom of Kongo, its leaders were able to influence much of the traditional religious practices across the Congo Basin. As a result, many other ethnic groups and kingdoms in West-Central Africa, like the Chokwe and Mbundu, adopted elements of Bakongo spirituality.

References

  1. ↑ "People Cluster - Bantu, Kongo | Joshua Project".
  2. ↑ 40,5% of Rep of the Congo's population, 13% of Angola's population, 12% of DRC's population and 20 000 inhabitants of Gabon (Worldometers and CIA.gov).
  3. 1 2 Thornton, J. K. (2000). "Mbanza Kongo / São Salvador". In Anderson (ed.). Africa's Urban Past. James Currey Publishers. p. 79, note 2. ISBN   9780852557617. ...since about 1910 it is not uncommon for the term Bakongo (singular Mukongo) to be used, especially in areas north of the Zaire river, and by intellectuals and anthropologists adopting a standard nomenclature for Bantu-speaking peoples.
  4. ↑ Wyatt MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular, Indiana University Press, 2000, p.62
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Bakongo". Encyclopædia Britannica .
  6. ↑ "Republic of the Congo - People | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-02-13.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Appiah, Anthony; Henry Louis Gates (2010). Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford University Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN   978-0-19-533770-9.
  8. ↑ See Redinha, José (1975). Etnias e culturas de Angola. Luanda: Instituto de Investigação Científica de Angola.
  9. ↑ Page, Melvin (2003). Colonialism: An International Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 773. ISBN   978-1-57607-335-3.
  10. ↑ Shillington, Kevin (2013). Encyclopedia of African History (3-Volume Set). Routledge. p. 1379. ISBN   978-1-135-45670-2.
  11. 1 2 Filippo Pigafetta; Duarte Lopes (2002). Le Royaume de Congo & les contrées environnantes. Chandeigne. pp. 273 note Page82.1. ISBN   978-2-906462-82-3.
  12. ↑ "It is probable that the word 'Kongo' itself implies a public gathering and that it is based on the root konga, 'to gather' (trans[itive])." Nelson, Samuel Henry. Colonialism In The Congo Basin, 1880–1940. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994.
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