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Zaire Bantu-Speakers of the Congo River Basin and Its Environs
Living just north and south of the Congo River, from
Kisangani
(formerly Stanleyville) in the east to the juncture of the
Ubangi
River with the Congo in the west, are a large number of
diverse
Bantu-speaking groups; a handful of groups speaking
languages of
the Adamawa-Eastern family are interspersed among them.
The
movement of groups within this region and the riverine
trade
characteristic of the area have made for considerable
sharing of
cultural elements.
This area typifies the house-village-district social
structure
that anthropologist Jan Vansina argues was the original
tradition
among Bantu-speakers. Particularly among fishing and
trading
peoples such as the Bobangi, the basic social and
political unit
traditionally was the polygynous household. A cluster of
such
households formed the village. If the head of a household
amassed
sufficient wealth, through trade, the purchase of slaves,
or
acquisition of other clients, he could assume the title of
chief.
The wealthiest of the house chiefs headed the village. In
some
cases, a powerful chief unified several villages under his
authority and thus created a district. Such trade and
fishing
villages were not based on actual or alleged kinship.
Status and
power depended on wealth rather than on personal seniority
or on
the seniority of the lineage to which one belonged.
Not all groups fit the above pattern. Most political
units were
small, but some specialized roles could be identified.
Some groups
had an official with special judicial powers in addition
to a chief
with largely ritual functions; still others had a war
leader.
In the precolonial era, the potential for conflict
between
communities sharing the same language and culture was at
least as
great as that between those lacking such commonalities.
Awareness
of shared ethnic identity did not extend to villages far
from one's
own and certainly did not define the boundaries of war and
peace.
Only in the colonial era did such identity take shape when
members
of some of these groups migrated to the ethnically
heterogeneous
towns. And such identity was situational. For example,
Ngombe
living in Mbandaka (formerly Coquilhatville) saw
themselves as
Ngombe and were so seen by others. Ngombe who lived in
Kinshasa,
however, came to be defined as Ngala, or Lingala-speakers,
together
with other upriver peoples.
Most of the Congo River basin and part of the lands
stretching
south to the Kasai and Sankuru rivers are inhabited by a
large
number of groups categorized under the name of a man from
whom they
claim descent, Mongo. Among most Mongo groups, the
autonomous unit
is the village, the core of which is a dominant lineage
whose chief
is also the chief of client lineages. Only among the
Ntomba and
some groups (the Lia, the Sengele, the Mpama, and perhaps
others)
in the southwestern subset of Mongo are hierarchical
systems headed
by a sacred chief and divided into provinces. A claim to
common
descent did not lead to a sense of common identity, at
least not
until Roman Catholic missionaries encouraged such a
development.
Data as of December 1993
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