Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0416/04166.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 39KB | 633 lines

$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 rar