The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa by erik kennes Miles Larmer

Author:erik kennes, Miles Larmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

“Katanga” before the Congo Free State

The social and political formations present in the area of central Africa that ultimately formed Katanga had for centuries been significantly shaped by their trade-based interactions with the wider world. Metalworking, in iron but also in copper, was central to the growing economies of the region. The area around Lake Kisale was an important center for metalworking, and its prosperous inhabitants produced a food surplus, including dried fish, which they traded for, among other goods, copper mined to the south in the modern Copperbelt. In the fourteenth century a centralized kingdom, under the Kongolo dynasty, developed among a people known as the Luba. The origins of the Luba political aristocracy can be traced back to three clans: one Songye, one Kanyoka, and one Lunda. The oral tradition clearly refers to a link between the Lunda and the Luba: around 1400, the female ruler of the Lunda, the Lueji/Ruej, married Tshibinda Ilunga/Cibind Irung, a member of the Luba aristocracy. Luba political principles were incorporated into the Lunda political system, thereby creating an element of unity between what was later southern and northern Katanga. 4

Several waves of westerly out-migration from the core Luba area (located, according to oral tradition, in a place called Nsanga a Lubangu) took place during the early stages of Luba consolidation, commonly associated with intra-aristocratic conflict and the need to address population concentration at a time of famine, probably around the fifteenth century. This led to the distinction between the Luba Katanga (or Lubakat, also known as Luba Shankadi, probably meaning “faithful”) and the Luba Lubilanji in Kasai, a distinction which became increasingly rigid in the subsequent period and which has direct relevance for this history. 5

The Lunda kingdom meanwhile developed in the vicinity of the upper Kasai River. A Lunda dynasty developed, the king of which became known as the Mwaant Yav, with his capital at Musuumb/Musumba, near to Kapanga territory. The Lunda political system allowed for integration of non-Lunda communities, while granting them significant autonomy. Local communities retained authority over the land and the people living on it. Integration of autonomous territories was, however, assured through the cilool ( kilolo), or tax collector, and the yikeezy, or inspector, who preserved political and economic ties with the central Lunda polity. The Mwaant Yav was lord of all land ( ngaand) as well as the supreme tax collector. A second integrative element was the assertion of nonbiological kinship between the Lunda and non-Lunda groups, creating a meaningful fiction that the successor to any title of authority, whether related to them or not, was identified with the original titleholder. 6 Affiliation to this system was attractive not only for economic reasons but also for the authority gained via association with the prestigious kingdom: this partly explains the willingness of non-Luba peoples to recognize the authority of and pledge allegiance to Tshombe during the secession.

The Lunda system’s capacity to absorb neighboring polities under its federal umbrella without requiring their political reconstitution was, Vansina argued, central to its success.

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