$Unique_ID{COW04166} $Pretitle{267} $Title{Zaire Chapter 3B. Ethnic Units: A Survey} $Subtitle{} $Author{Irving Kaplan} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{groups peoples lunda area communities political zaire cluster century kongo} $Date{1978} $Log{} Country: Zaire Book: Zaire, A Country Study Author: Irving Kaplan Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1978 Chapter 3B. Ethnic Units: A Survey Given the difficulty of categorizing ethnic groups in such a way as to satisfy objective criteria on the one hand and the subjective standard of common identity on the other, and given the sheer number of named groups, only a brief survey of the major entities based on common (or closely similar) language and culture will be attempted. There are obstacles even to this procedure: it is not always clear that communities given the same name by the colonial authorities or other outsiders (for example, the Arab-African slave traders who played an important role in eastern Zaire in the nineteenth century) share common language and culture, much less a common identity. A mapping of clusters of related or culturally similar entities shows a limited correspondence to the major geographic regions of Zaire, and these will provide a preliminary framework for the survey. The basic source is Jan Vansina's Introduction a l'ethnographie du Congo (1966). Subsequent publications have amplified and corrected that data, but many groups have not been systematically or adequately studied, and the information on them is rudimentary at best. In most cases the boundaries of indigenous societies, defined as politically autonomous units, were narrower than ethnic boundaries established on the basis of linguistic and cultural similarity. A community was often equivalent to a cluster of villages or hamlets, and even that cluster might consist of descent groups (clans or lineages-see Glossary), each of which was in some ways autonomous or potentially so (that is, it might move out and establish itself elsewhere). This autonomy was by no means absolute. Lineages, and sometimes villages, were exogamous and therefore relied on others for spouses. That in turn led to connections of political relevance between lineages. Sometimes marital and other relations cut across ethnic boundaries, particularly at the territorial periphery of the group. In some cases intermarriage and lineage alliances took place between peoples speaking languages of different families (as in the area where speakers of Bantu languages lived interspersed with those of Central Sudanic tongues). In many areas voluntary associations and the initiations leading to membership in such associations cut across village and lineage lines (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). The range of ecological niches inhabited by Zairian communities and their varied origins made for substantial differences of detail in their patterns of subsistence and modes of sociopolitical organization. Nevertheless the characteristic way in which most groups came to the places where they finally settled was conducive to a good deal of interpenetration of communities with different traditions and the transfer of aspects of culture from one community to another. Typically a people entered a region not as a wave inundating or driving out its earlier inhabitants but as small bands filtering in, sometimes conquering, sometimes pushing out, and sometimes peacefully absorbing the communities already there. In a number of cases these processes continued through the second decade of the twentieth century. With rare exceptions, chiefly in the Eastern Highlands, Zaire was very sparsely populated in the precolonial era, and a varying combination of shifting cultivation, hunting, fishing, and collecting characterized the subsistence patterns of most communities. Livestock was limited to chickens and sometimes a few goats or sheep. In most communities-particularly those in and on the fringes of the forest-the men valued hunting far above agriculture and devoted not only time but much ritual activity to it. This pattern was consistent with the division of labor: at best men played a small part in cultivation, usually that of cutting and burning forest or bush before planting. The high valuation persisted even where the declining availability of game made hunting economically less important. Two kinds of food-producing specialization occurred in precolonial Zaire and persist, chiefly in the equatorial forest but occasionally elsewhere. Along the Zaire River and its many tributaries the men of some groups devoted themselves wholly to fishing and the women to potterymaking, exchanging these items for food and other goods produced by their neighbors. These fishermen were also active traders along these often navigable waters. Only the people usually called Pygmies (even if not all were physically Pygmies) devoted themselves entirely to hunting and collecting. Occasionally Pygmy groups lived in villages with settled agricultural communities. More often they lived in physically separated hamlets but in symbiosis with specific cultivating communities, exchanging the products of the hunt for bananas and other crops. Unlike the fisher folk, who intermarried with their agricultural neighbors, Pygmies were usually not acceptable marriage partners, although some mating must have taken place in the early encounters between them and incoming groups. Given the limited fertility of soils in the equatorial forest and many other parts of Zaire and the comparatively simple agricultural technology of most groups, communities sharing language and culture were often thinly scattered in a given area. The widespread practice of shifting cultivation meant that each village required a good deal of land, much of which was not under cultivation at any time. If the population of a village or related hamlets grew substantially, some segment of it, usually defined as a lineage, would leave to establish itself elsewhere. Villages split or, more accurately, their component lineages left for other reasons. The nature of relations between lineages that constituted a larger descent group or between unrelated lineages in the same village was often such that disputes between them could lead to feuds, accusations of sorcery, and the like. There were mechanisms to mitigate conflict and avert strife, but one way of settling long-term hostility or recurrent disputes was for one of the parties (lineages) to move (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). The establishment of colonial rule eventually put an end to overt conflict, and the Belgians also insisted that villages, often very small, be combined and stabilized, in part to make administrative control easier, in part so that cash cropping could be encouraged. Enforced stabilization and combination and the growth of population, especially after World War II, put heavy burdens on the system. Growth and conflict could no longer be dealt with by fission and movement. Although chieftainship in some form was widespread in indigenous communities, large-scale polities with hierarchies of specialized government officials were rare. Chieftainship was linked in principle and often in fact to the system of unilineal (patrilineal or matrilineal) descent groups that provided the basic sociopolitical framework of most Zairian groups. The politically significant descent groups were often those localized in a single village or a cluster of related villages, and the chief's jurisdiction extended no further (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). Such a chief's territorial jurisdiction and the limits on his secular authority made him unsatisfactory from the point of view of colonial officials (or for that matter postcolonial authorities). Another widespread feature of Zairian communities was the existence of some form of slavery. The precise social and economic position of slaves varied from society to society, but rarely, if ever, was it exactly like the chattel slavery characteristic of much of the New World. Nevertheless slaves, and often their descendants, were in a marginal position. The abolition of slavery notwithstanding, persons of slave origin in modern Zaire lack the standing of those of free origin, particularly in the less changed rural areas (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). The Northern Uplands and the Forest Fringe: Non-Bantu Peoples The roughly 20 percent of the population that speaks non-Bantu languages stretches across the Northern Uplands from the Ubangi River to the far northeast, most of them in the savanna but a substantial minority in the equatorial forest. That part of the area comprehended in the subregions of Ubangi and Mongala in Equateur is inhabited by diverse peoples most of whom speak languages of the Eastern section of the Adamawa-Eastern family. To the extent that their traditions are a useful guide, these groups arrived in the area late-the seventeenth or eighteenth century-and their movements continued into the second decade of the twentieth. Three large sets of communities and several smaller ones have been identified. The larger sets-ethnic groups in that their component communities have much in common-are the Ngbandi, the Ngbaka, and the Banda-speaking groups (the most important of which in Zaire are the Mbanja). The movement and conflict characteristic of all three peoples have led to a degree of dispersion: in particular, the Mbanja communities do not occupy a contiguous territory. To the east-in the subregion of Bas-Uele and the northern portions of Haut-Uele, both in Haut-Zaire-live a heterogeneous people called the Zande, also speaking a language of the Eastern section of Adamawa-Eastern. A number of small groups adjacent to the main body of Zande on the south have been heavily influenced by them. The Zande are sometimes divided into two sections: to the east are the Vungara (the larger of the two), to the west the Bandiya. Each section takes its name from the clan providing the ruling houses in the states included in it. It seems, however, that the Bandiya states (which include a people sometimes distinguished as the Nzokara) were different in many respects from those of the Vungara. The Zande (at least those in the Vungara section) as a people emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when groups of hunters, apparently divided into two elements-the Vungara aristocracy and the Mbomu commoners-entered the area and conquered the peoples already in place, some speaking Adamawa-Eastern, others Bantu languages. The pattern of succession to kingship among the Vungara was such that a man took his father's throne only when he had vanguished those of his brothers who chose to compete for it. One (or more) of the latter, a prince without land or people, then undertook to find and rule a hitherto unconquered people. That process continued through the nineteenth century until a large area and a wide assortment of peoples had been dominated by the Zande Vungara. The result was a rich mixture of the cultures of conqueror and (heterogeneous) conquered. When the Belgians entered the area, there was some initial Zande resistance, but the ruling clans seem to have adapted to the colonial regime fairly well. Among other things the modifications in chieftainship established in the colonial period did not substantially affect the mode of recruitment for these positions: by far the great majority of chiefs at all levels were members of the ruling houses. Most of the peoples speaking Central Sudanic languages penetrated the equatorial forest north and northeast of the cuvette. The most important of these groups are the Mangbetu and the Mamvu. At least one source links groups called the Mangutu, the Balese, and the Mvuba very closely to the Mamvu, comprehending all four into a larger Mamvu cluster. The Mamvu and the Mangutu are more closely related than either is to the other two, both of which live farther south interspersed with Bantu-speaking groups. Unlike the groups of the Mamvu cluster, the Mangbetu, like the Zande, established states incorporating other peoples and establishing distinctions between aristocrats and commoners. Also like the Zande, the Mangbetu influenced people they did not conquer. The other Central Sudanic peoples were characterized by small-scale political units and, at least in the case of the Balese and the Mvuba, are said to have lacked chiefs. In the far northeast, in the highlands area beginning just south of Lake Mobutu Sese Seko and bordered by Uganda and Sudan, live a congeries of groups speaking languages belonging to each of the four families found in Zaire. Here a combination of better soils, crop rotation, and animal husbandry permits a denser population than that generally found in the upland savanna or equatorial forest. Except for the Alur (the only significant group in Zaire speaking an Eastern Sudanic language) these communities were characterized by small-scale polities based on a system of patrilineal descent groups. The Alur had states of fairly large scale, but their administrative structure was fairly simple. The chiefs were, in the first instance, religious figures controlling rain and interceding with the ancestors. Their main political task was limiting strife between lineages. This role seems to reflect the way in which the Alur proper came to dominate the commoner groups: the indigenous people came to think of Alur chiefs as capable of putting a stop to interlineage feud and invited nearby chiefs to send them a ruler. It was largely in this way rather than by conquest (as in the Zande and Mangbetu cases) that Alur chieftainship expanded. By and large most of these peoples stretching from the far northwest to the far northeast have participated little in the often ethnically phrased struggles that marked the immediate preindependence and postindependence periods. Reached only peripherally by missions and modern education and remote from the chief urban centers, they have only gradually and lately come to be involved in the Zairian polity and economy. President Mobutu is of Ngbandi origin, but in Kinshasa and elsewhere he is seen as a man of the north, of Equateur, rather than as an ethnic Ngbandi. In fact he was born and brought up among the Ngombe (a Bantu-speaking group on the northern edge of the cuvette) where Ngala was the lingua franca. His reliance on Ngala as his African language was reinforced by its use in the army. The Bantu of the Cuvette and its Environs Living immediately north and south of the Zaire River from Kisangani in the east to the point at which the Ubangi River joins the Zaire in the west are a large number of quite diverse Bantu-speaking groups. (A very few groups speaking languages of the Adamawa-Eastern family are interspersed among them.) The oral history of these groups suggests a variety of points of departure for them and a good deal of movement within the region itself, making for sometimes substantial differences in the cultures of adjacent peoples. But that movement, and the riverine trade characteristic of this area, also made for much sharing of cultural elements. Political units were small, but there was a degree of political specialization in some groups. A few had an official with special judicial powers in addition to a chief with largely ritual functions; still others had a war leader. In some instances, principally among the groups devoted to fishing and trading, the unilineal descent-group systems characteristic of the cultivating and hunting peoples in the area were absent or unimportant, and the sociopolitical structure focused on the polygynous family and the village. If the head of that family achieved a certain level of wealth he could take the title of chief, and the wealthiest of the lot headed the village. These fishing villages unlike most of those in this region and many elsewhere in Zaire were not based on actual or putative kinship. Status and power depended on wealth rather than on personal seniority or on the seniority of the lineage to which one belonged. Given the nature and scale of the political units in this area, the potential (in the precolonial period) for strife between units of the same language and culture was at least as great as that between communities differing in these respects. Awareness of similarity did not extend to villages far from one's own and in any case did not define the boundaries of war and peace. A sense of ethnic identity did begin to develop when members of some of these groups migrated to the ethnically heterogeneous towns, but it was largely limited to those who had urban experience. Moreover the kind of identity assumed (or assigned by others) depended on the town in which a particular people found themselves. Thus the people called Ngombe who lived in Mbandaka, not far from their home territory, saw themselves and were seen as Ngombe. Those who went as far as Kinshasa, however, came to be defined, with others, as Ngala (see Ethnic Identification and Politics, this ch.). Most of the cuvette and part of the Southern Uplands to the Kasai and Sankuru rivers are inhabited by a large number of groups, most of them categorized under the name Mongo, that of the man whom many of these groups are said to be descended. Four subsets of the Mongo have been geographically defined: northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast. Almost all of these groups speak closely related languages, distinguishable from the other Bantu tongues of surrounding peoples, but the languages of the southeastern subset seem to differ most from those of other Mongo. Among most Mongo groups the autonomous unit was a village, the core of which was a dominant lineage whose chief was also the chief of client lineages. There were variations on this theme (for example, in some communities lineages were patrilineal, in others matrilineal), but only in the southwestern subset were there groups (the Lia, the Ntomba, the Sengele, the Mpama, and perhaps others) with hierarchical systems headed by a sacred chief and divided into provinces. Despite the tradition of a single ancestor, the histories of specific groups suggest some diversity of origin. In any case there was no sense of common identity until it was encouraged by Roman Catholic missionaries and the political developments of the 1950s and 1960s. Even so, that sense was not shared by all groups or by all sections of those groups that accepted the designation (see Ethnic Identification and Politics, this ch.). Bantu Speakers of the Eastern Forest and Plain Mixed with and somewhat to the south of the Central Sudanic speakers live a number of Bantu-speaking groups. Most are forest dwellers, but some inhabit the more open plain leading to the Eastern Highlands, and a few people live in the Ruwenzori Mountains. Despite the differences in their ecological niches they are grouped together because they (and their Central Sudanic neighbors) share some important cultural and organizational features and are clearly distinguishable from the highland Bantu. Among the features shared by some Bantu groups with adjacent Central Sudanic communities are clan names, and in a few cases the lineage alliances that occurred in some parts of the area crossed linguistic lines. Here again the village in which a localized lineage dwells is the significant political entity, but religious associations and initiation rites usually involved several villages and provided links between them. Still farther south on either side of a section of the Lualaba River and stretching east along its tributary, the Ulindi, is to be found another congeries of varied Bantu-speaking groups, much mixed, some of them forest peoples and others of the plains and highlands. All save the Lengola and Metoko, who live west of the Lualaba, share closely related languages. It is not uncommon here as elsewhere for a community known to have been part of one set of related communities to acquire the language and much of the culture of a neighboring, unrelated group. For example, Daniel Biebuyck notes that groups of Lega origin have adopted the culture of other entities and vice versa. Among most of these communities special graded associations of varying degrees of political and religious significance were integral parts of systems in which patrilineal lineages provided the bases. Although the Lega lacked a centralized state and the social and cultural boundaries between them and their neighbors were permeable, they had a strong notion of their own historical and cultural unity. That sense was reinforced during the rebellions in eastern Zaire in the mid-1960s when rebel groups led by intrusive ethnic groups killed a number of Lega and turned most of the others, fearful of rebel intentions toward them, into supporters of the national army seeking to combat the rebellion. The Bantu of the Eastern Highlands Stretching from the northern end of Lake Tanganyika to Lake Idi Amin Dada are a number of peoples sharing similar traditions and political forms not only with each other but also with the interlacustrine Bantu peoples of Rwanda, Burundi, southwestern Uganda, and northwestern Tanzania. Most of the Zairian peoples in this cluster live at an altitude of 1,400 meters or more. A few live at lower levels and share aspects of culture with some of the peoples of the eastern equatorial forest. All of these groups are cultivators, but those in the highlands also raise cattle, chiefly for milk and its derivatives. Even if, as in many groups, cattle were few, pastoralism as a way of life remained ideologically significant. The lowland peoples, unable to raise livestock, turned like their forest neighbors to hunting and fishing. The highland Bantu are distinguished from many other Zairian groups by the presence of centralized states ruled by members of specific descent groups thought to have come from the interlacustrine states to the northeast. There state formation had taken place as early as the fourteenth century, stimulated in part by the arrival of peoples of non-Bantu origin from still farther north. Whatever their origin, however, all came to speak the Bantu languages of the original inhabitants of the area. Of the several peoples, each sharing a specific historical tradition and ruling group, only one-the Furiiru-was organized into a single (relatively small) state. Much more often there were several states (for example, among the Shi) that despite their small size carried the heavy apparatus of royal family, court officials, and hierarchy of chiefs. At various times in the late 1950s and early 1960s a degree of ethnic consciousness overriding membership in specific states became salient among some of these groups in certain contexts. For example, when independence was clearly on the horizon, the Shi in Bukavu-the major highland city located in their midst-realized that the white-collar positions with a potential for access to political and economic resources were held by members of a group from the west, the Kusu. Still later, in 1964, Shi irregulars joined the national army in opposing a rebel group passing through their territory because the rebels were perceived as outsiders led by Kusu. The Peoples of the Savanna: Southeastern Zaire In eastern Shaba, stretching from the border with Tanzania and Zambia roughly to the Lualaba River, Vansina has distinguished three sets of communities: the Bemba cluster, the Hemba cluster, and the peoples of Haut-Katanga (the last corresponding with some exceptions to the inhabitants of the area comprehended in the subregion of Haut-Shaba). As in other parts of Zaire there is a good deal of geographical fragmentation of particular peoples so that representatives of one cluster live cheek by jowl with representatives of another or enclaved in another group's territory. The area has been the scene of conquest and conflict for centuries. Most of the peoples of Haut-Katanga were under the rule of the Kazembe of Luapula, an offshoot of the Lunda Empire whose center was farther west. The Kaonde, the southwesternmost people in the Haut-Katanga cluster, living in present-day Lualaba Subregion, were ruled by still another Lunda king. After the middle of the nineteenth century a group of long-distance traders, Nyamwezi of central Tanzania, established the Yeke kingdom, which lasted for thirty years. The introduction of new cultural elements by the Yeke and their trading activities both east and west had longer range effects than the establishment of their political rule as such. All of these kingdoms came to an end before the beginning of the twentieth century, leaving these people with polities of much smaller scale. The political pattern that preceded the institution of kingship and outlasted it was based on chiefs of the earth (essentially ritual offices), but in some cases there were also political chiefs (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). The Peoples of the Savanna: The Lunda Region Most of the people in western Shaba between the Lubilash and Kasai rivers and extending east to Kolwezi are speakers of Lunda or closely related languages, as are substantial numbers in adjacent areas of Angola and Zambia and others in southwestern Kasai-Occidental and southeastern Bandundu. These last are linked to the area in Shaba by the Lunda of Angola. This extraordinary distribution appears to have begun with the foundation of the Lunda Empire in the early seventeenth century (see The Luba and Lunda Empires, ch. 1). Two processes were involved. Either dissatisfied elements in the original kingdom left to establish themselves elsewhere or agents of the king expanded in several directions, establishing other kingdoms. For all practical purposes autonomous, they maintained an association with the core of the empire: thus the Kazembe of Luapula. The core area itself was quite heterogeneous, although all the peoples in it and immediately contiguous areas paid tribute to the center (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). Vansina and others distinguish the northern Lunda from the southern Lunda and related peoples, in part on linguistic grounds, in part on the basis of differences in modes of inheritance and descent-group formation: the southern Lunda proper, the Chokwe, the Ndembo, and others are matrilineal; the northern Lunda (also called the Ruund) are marked by bilateral descent, and the significant local groups are formed on that basis. Given the diversity of the peoples incorporated but not fully integrated into the Lunda Empire, the decline of Lunda kingship (begun by the mid-nineteenth century), accelerated by the coming of the Europeans, led to rebellions and the disintegration of the empire. Specifically one former component of the empire, the Chokwe, were politically opposed to the Lunda in the period from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, a situation that had its roots in developments in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Chokwe had been a little-known group of mobile hunting and trading peoples living in present-day Angola and only peripherally incorporated into the empire. After 1850 they expanded rapidly, trading and raiding, into the Zairian areas drained by the upper Kwilu and Kasai rivers. A small population to begin with, they grew by incorporating others, particularly women and children, a pattern allowed by raiding peoples elsewhere in Africa. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century they intervened in a dispute over succession to the Lunda kingship (one of many in this period) and then took over the Lunda capital. Although they were eventually ousted and their expansion elsewhere halted, they had become an important element in western Shaba and elsewhere and had established themselves as competitors with the Lunda for influence in the region. This pattern persisted into the 1960s, and it is not clear that Lunda-supported political action would necessarily gain the support of the Chokwe (see Is There Ethnic Significance to the Shaba Invasions?, this ch.). The Peoples of the Southern Uplands: Kasai-Shaba Stretching across much of the southern savanna east of the middle reaches of the Kasai River are the Luba-speaking peoples. Vansina distinguishes three clusters: the Luba-Katanga (or Luba-Shaba)-comprising the Luba-Katanga proper, the Kaniok, the Kalundwe, and the Lomotwa; the Luba-Kasai-comprising the Luba-Kasai proper, the Lulua, the Luntu, the Binji, the Mputu, and the North Kete; and the Songye-comprising the Songye proper and the Bangu-Bangu. Closely related to the Luba-Katanga are a Luba-speaking people called the Hemba to the east, separately dealt with chiefly because unlike the others they are matrilineal. Although all of these peoples share closely related languages and patterns of local and descent-group organization, there is a good deal of variation with respect to indigenous political structure. Their traditions of origin vary as do their subsequent histories, especially in relation to the slave trade, interactions with Arabs and Europeans, and experience under the colonial regime. All of these peoples seem to have had a tradition of chieftainship, but it was among the Luba-Katanga that more complex, centralized states emerged as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Elsewhere the people and territory over which a chief ruled was much more restricted, and even among the Luba-Katanga local chiefs had a substantial degree of autonomy (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). The activities of Arab-African traders and Angolan (Portuguese) ivory and slave traders, and not long afterward the decisions of the Belgians, strongly affected the political structures of the Luba-speaking peoples in the second half of the nineteenth century. More important, perhaps, the historical impact of all these forces led to the development of new ethnic identities among them (see Ethnic Identification and Politics, this ch.). The Peoples of the Lower Kasai and its Tributaries The peoples stretching north and south of the lower Kasai River (and its westernmost portion, called the Kwa) and its tributaries and along the lower Zaire River to Kinshasa are culturally quite heterogeneous but distinguishable from the peoples surrounding them. All speak Bantu languages more closely related to each other than to those of adjacent peoples-and they all have a tradition of origin in the Tio kingdom (one of the components of the region) or in the Kwa River area very near Tio country. Many of these groups, particularly those at the periphery, have been influenced by adjacent peoples-the Mongo in the north and the peoples of the Kwango River in the southwest. Vansina distinguishes several clusters, each comprehending the group giving its name to the cluster and others. The Tio cluster includes the core peoples of the kingdom and several others, some of them never incorporated in the kingdom. The Boma-Sakata cluster includes the Nku and several smaller groups. The Yans-Mbun cluster includes a number of smaller entities. The Kuba cluster includes the Lele, the Njembe, and a number of groups governed by a ruling group called the Bushong, together called Kuba. The Tio kingdom was established along both sides of the Zaire River north and south of Stanley Pool at least as early as the fifteenth century and influenced the development of smaller kingdoms and chiefdoms along the lower Kasai thereafter. At the eastern end of the region the kingdom of the Kuba, already in existence but not well developed, was reorganized in the mid-seventeenth century and exercised considerable influence in the region west of the Luba-speaking peoples. Between the Tio in the west and the Kuba, most of the peoples in the region were organized into small kingdoms or chieftainships that extended beyond the level of the village or local community. The only important exception was the Lele. There were Lele chiefdoms, but the chiefs had no real significance, and the villages were essentially autonomous and often in conflict. Local communities were governed by chiefs of the earth in almost all cases. There were superior chiefs nearly everywhere and, in three cases at least, kings, but their powers were often limited. In the cases of kingdoms one task of the superior chief was to collect tribute. The Tio kingdom was large but decentralized. One of the segments in what is now Zaire was essentially autonomous, paying tribute to the king irregularly. The other was more closely controlled, and in certain legal cases appeals to the king from the judgments of the local chief were possible. The Kuba kingdom was much more tightly organized. In Vansina's view this was perhaps the most complexly organized state in Zaire with the exception of the Lunda Empire (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). The Peoples Between the Kwango and the Kasai Living between the Kwango and the middle Kasai is a congeries of much mixed peoples. Four clusters have been distinguished, their names those of the most important group in each: the Yaka cluster includes, among others, the Suku. The Mbala cluster also includes several groups and is perhaps the most fragmented of the lot. The Pende cluster includes the Kwese; the Lunda cluster includes the Soonde and the Chokwe. The Lunda, closely related to the peoples of western Shaba, are included here by Vansina because they are separated from the core area (although not from Lunda and Chokwe in Angola) and have had a longtime relationship with the other peoples in the area. Mixture and mutual influence strongly mark these peoples, but relations among them were often less than peaceful. In general Lunda expansion led to the formation of Lunda-ruled states, a process that continued through the first half of the nineteenth century. The Chokwe who became such a powerful presence in the core Lunda area in western Shaba in the second half of the nineteenth century also drove north here in the same period, fragmenting local groups but also incorporating many of them. They were stopped only in 1885 by a coalition of Mbun, Njembe, and Pende, the first two, peoples of the lower Kasai. Except for the members of the Lunda cluster, most of the peoples in the area speak a dialect of Kongo or a language related to it. Over a period beginning in the seventeenth century, a good deal of movement was set in train by the expansion of the Lunda Empire. The result was the establishment of Lunda-influenced political patterns of Kongo peoples (see Local Social Systems, this ch.). Interethnic relations in the late 1950s and early 1960s among the peoples of the Lower Kasai and the Kwango-Middle Kasai areas, particularly those south of the Kasai and east of the Loango River, were extremely complex, defined in part by differential access to economic opportunities and by perceived threats from the politically active Kongo to the west. Further complications were added by the tendency of the politically active elite members of some groups to shift alliances in direct response to what they perceived to be advantageous to themselves. Some modern ethnic alliances reflected older alliances or antagonisms to an extent, but just as often they were responses to modern conditions. The Kongo Peoples The people called Kongo occupy all of Bas-Zaire. Most but not all of these people, substantial numbers in Angola, and smaller numbers in Congo were included in the kingdom of the Kongo (its capital in Angola) encountered by the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century (see The Kongo Kingdom and the Portuguese, ch. 1). For all practical purposes that kingdom had disintegrated into a number of small chiefdoms by the early seventeenth century. The end of the kingdom's political power did not preclude the continuing spread of Kongo influence, however, and some groups may have become Kongo in culture later. Given the size of the population and territorial range of the Kongo, there is a good deal of dialectical variation in the language, to the point that some dialects are barely mutually intelligible; and there are variations in other aspects of culture. Some of the distinctions drawn by colonial authorities and others do not correspond to these differences, and the people do not always recognize them. Moreover the provinces of the old kingdom seem to have no modern relevance. Nevertheless, despite the heavy emphasis on Kongo solidarity that marked the political competition of the late 1950s and 1960s, small and large segments of the Kongo population distinguish themselves from other Kongo by name in most situations of internal relevance. From the seventeenth century until the arrival of the Belgians there were shifting combinations of smaller chiefdoms into larger entities under the domination of one or another chief, the power of a dominant chief often reflecting his easier access to or more effective exploitation of the slave and ivory trade of the period. The hierarchies thus established were usually ephemeral. In the end the effective units were the clans, their larger constituent units called by Wyatt MacGaffey houses (the units controlling land) and lineages, rather shallow units. All of these were based on matrilineal descent. Although each of these units had a head, authority was shared with persons both inside and outside the unit in a complex fashion. The colonial capital, Leopoldville, was on the fringe of Kongo country, but many Kongo worked or visited there and came into contact not only with Europeans but with other Africans as well, often in a competitive context. Moreover the Kongo were among the groups early and heavily influenced by missionaries, Roman Catholic and Protestant, and by the schools established by them. In particular, the Roman Catholics placed considerable emphasis on the traditions of the Kongo as they understood them and in turn communicated these reconstructed (and in some respects restructured) traditions to their students. The complex interaction of myth, competition, and the ambition of some leaders of Kongo origin as the prospect of independence loomed made the Kongo the largest single group to define themselves in ethnic terms for political purposes in the late 1950s and one of the few to develop an articulate ideology (see Ethnic Identification and Politics, this ch.).