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Angola Ovambo, Nyaneka-Humbe, Herero, and Others
In far southwestern Angola, three categories of
Bantu-speaking
peoples have been distinguished. Two of them, the Ovambo
and the
Herero, were more heavily represented elsewhere: the
Ovambo in
Namibia and the Herero in Namibia and Botswana. The Herero
dispersion, especially that section of it in Botswana, was
the
consequence of the migration of the Herero from German
South West
Africa (present-day Namibia) after their rebellion against
German
rule in 1906. The third group was the Nyaneka-Humbe.
Unlike the
other groups, the Nyaneka-Humbe did not disperse outside
Angola. In
1988 the Nyaneka-Humbe (the first group is also spelled
Haneca; the
latter group is also spelled Nkumbi) constituted 3 percent
of the
population. The Ovambo, of which the largest subgroup were
the
Kwanhama (also spelled Kwanyama), made up an estimated 2
percent of
the Angolan population. In the second half of the
nineteenth
century, the Kwanhama Kingdom of southern Angola was a
powerful
state involved in a lucrative trade relationship with the
Portuguese, who, together with the Germans, occupied
Kwanhama
territory in the early twentieth century. In the 1980s,
the Ovambo
were seminomadic cattle herders and farmers. The Herero
constituted
no more than 0.5 percent of the population in 1988.
Traditionally,
the Herero were nomadic or seminomadic herders living in
the arid
coastal lowlands and in the mountainous escarpment to the
east in
Namibe, Benguela, and Huíla provinces. Many Herero
migrated south
to Namibia when the Portuguese launched a military
expedition
against them in 1940 following their refusal to pay taxes.
In the southeastern corner of the country the
Portuguese
distinguished a set of Bantu-speaking people, described on
a map
prepared by José Redinha in 1973 as the Xindonga. The sole
linguistic group listed in this category was the Cussu.
The
Language Map of Africa, prepared under the
direction of
David Dalby for the International African Institute, noted
two sets
of related languages in southeastern Angola. The first set
included
Liyuwa, Mashi, and North Mbukushu. These languages and
other
members of the set were also found in Zambia and Namibia.
The
members of the second set, Kwangali-Gcikuru and South
Mbukushu,
were also found in Namibia and Botswana. The hyphen
between
Kwangali and Gcikuru implies mutual intelligibility.
Little is
known of these groups; in any case, their members were
very few.
All of these southern Angolan groups relied in part or
in whole
on cattle raising for subsistence. Formerly, the Herero
were
exclusively herders, but they gradually came to engage in
some
cultivation. Although the Ovambo had depended in part on
cultivation for a much longer time, dairy products had
been an
important source of subsistence, and cattle were the chief
measure
of wealth and prestige.
The southwestern groups, despite their remoteness from
the
major centers of white influence during most of the
colonial
period, were to varying degrees affected by the colonial
presence
and, after World War II, by the arrival of numbers of
Portuguese in
such places as Moçâmedes (present-day Namibe) and Sá da
Bandeira
(present-day Lubango). The greatest resistance to the
Portuguese
was offered by the Ovambo, who were not made fully subject
to
colonial rule until 1915 and who earned a considerable
reputation
among the Portuguese and other Africans for their efforts
to
maintain their independence. In the nationalist struggle
of the
1960s and early 1970s and in the postindependence civil
war, the
Ovambo tended to align themselves with the
Ovimbundu-dominated
UNITA. Many also sympathized with the cause of SWAPO, a
mostly
Ovambo organization fighting to liberate Namibia from
South African
rule.
Data as of February 1989
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