The Kongo people are a Bantu ethnic group or tribe mainly defined as the speakers of Kikongo. They have resided along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in an area that by the 15th century was a well-organized and centralized Empire of Kongo, but is now a part of three states. Their highest concentrations are south of Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo, SW of Pool Malebo and West of River Kwango in the DRC, north of Luanda (Angola) and South West Gabon. They are the largest tribe in the Democratic Republic of Congo and one of the major tribes in the other two states. In the late 20th century (1975), according to reports, the Kongo population was over 4 million.
The Kongo ethnic group was among the earliest Sub-Saharan Africans to welcome Portuguese merchants in 1483 and converted to Catholicism in the late 15th century. They were among the 1st to protest against the practice of slavery in letters to the King of Portugal in the 1520s and 1510s, then succumbed to the demands for slaves from the foreigners (Portuguese) through the 16th century. The Kongo tribe was a part of the major slave raiding, capture, and export trade of enslaved Africans to the European colonial interests in the 18th century and the 17th century. The colonial wars, slave raids, and the 19th-century Scramble for the African region split the Kongo ethnic group into Belgian, French, and Portuguese parts. In the 20th century, they became one of the most active tribes or ethnic groups to decolonize the African continent, aiding free the three states to self-governance. They currently occupy influential positions in the politics, business operations, and administration in the three states they are mostly in.
The Origin of the Name
The origin of the name Kongo is not exact, and scholars have proposed several theories. According to the colonial period scholar Samuel Nelson, the name Kongo is possibly from a native or local verb for assembly or gathering. According to Alisa LaGamma, the origin may be from the regional word Nkongo which means a hunter in the context of someone heroic and adventurous. Douglas Harper state that the name means Mountains in a Bantu language, which River Congo flows down from. People deployed the name Congo to identify Kikongo-speaking people enslaved in the New World or Americas. Since the early 20th century, people have increasingly used the term Bakongo, particularly in regions North of the River Congo, to refer to the Kikongo speaking society or, more broadly, to speakers of the related Kongo languages.
Brief History of the Kongo People (Kongo Empire to Smaller Kingdoms)
According to Kongo oral traditions, the Kongo people founded the Kingdom of Kongo before the 13th century and the 14th century. The people did not model the Kingdom on hereditary succession as was common in Europe but based on the court royals’ election from the Kongo people. This needed the ruler or the King to win his legitimacy by process of consensus building, recognizing his peers, and religious and regalia ritualism. The Kingdom had several trading centers near rivers and inland, distributed across 100s of kilometers and Mbanza Kongo, it’s capital.
The Portuguese reached the Central African Coast North of River Congo many times between 1472 and 1483, searching for India’s seaway or route. However, they failed to locate any trading or port opportunities. In the late 15th century, south of River Congo, they found the Kongo ethnic group and the Empire of Kongo, which had a powerful centralized government, a currency known as nzimbu, and markets ready for trading relationships. The foreigners found well-developed transport infrastructure inland from the Kongo people’s Atlantic port community. They also found trading easy, and the Kongo ethnic group or people open to ideas. At the time, the Kongo ruler called Nzinga a Nkuwu accepted Christianity, and at his baptism, he changed his name to Joao the 1st, a foreign (Portuguese) name. Around the 1450s, Ne Buela Muanda, a prophet, predicted the Portuguese’ arrival and the physical and spiritual enslavement of the Kongo or Bakongo people.
The trade between the Portuguese and the Kongo people after that increased through 1500. The Empire of Kongo appeared to become receptive to the new merchants or traders. It permitted them to settle on an uninhabited island known as Sao Tome.
Other than the ruler himself, much of the Kongo people’s royalty encouraged the cultural exchange. The Christina missionaries converted them to the Catholic religion or faith. The Kongo people assumed Portuguese court manners, and by the early 16th-century, Kongo became a Portugal-connected Christian Empire.
Later on, the relationship between Kongo and the Portuguese went from good to bad. The 1665 Kongo-Portuguese war and the Portuguese soldiers’ killing of the hereditary King led to a political vacuum. The Kingdom of Kongo broke into smaller Kingdoms, perhaps due to succession conflicts, each of which the nobles whom the Portuguese regarded or considered friendly controlled. One of these small Kingdoms was the Empire of Loango. The Loango was in the Northern region, above River Congo, an area that was already a community of the Kongo people long before the war. Other new Kingdoms came into existence in this era, from the broken parts in the SE and the NE of the old Kongo Empire.
The new Kingdoms of Kongo people disputed each other’s boundaries and rights, resulting in wars and mutual raids. The chaos between the small Empires created a supply of captives that fulfilled the Portuguese’s demand for slaves and the small Empires’ need for government income to finance the wars. In the 1700s, a baptized teenage Kongo woman called Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita claimed that St. Anthony Padua possessed her and that she has been visiting heaven to speak with the Almighty. She began preaching that Jesus and Mary were not from Nazareth but in the African region among the Kongo people. She established a movement among the Kongo ethnic group, which historians call Kongo Antonianism.
Kimpa Vita questioned the wars devastating the Kongo ethnic group and asked all the Kongo people to end the wars that fed the trading in humans and unite under one ruler. She attracted a following of several Kongo people into the ruins of their old capital.
The Portuguese appointed Kongo King Pedro the 4th with Italian Capuchin monks and Portuguese Catholic missionaries declared her a false saint. The Portuguese soldiers arrested the 22-year-old Dona Beatriz and burnt her alive at the stake on charges of being a heretic and a witch.
The Religion of the Kongo People
The religious history of the Kongo is complicated, especially after the ruling class of the Kongo Empire allowed Christianity in the 16th century. The Kongo people had diverse views with customary religious ideas developed in the small Northern Kikongo-speaking region. There are plenty of descriptions of the Kongo people’s religious beliefs in Christian missionaries and colonial period records.
The Kongo people’s beliefs included Kilundu as Nzambi or Jinzambi, all of which had limited might or powers. They believed in a creator, which the 16th-century Christian missionaries to Kongo emphasized is similar to the Christian God. The early missionaries used Kongo language words to integrate Christian ideas, such as using the terms or words nkisi to mean sacred.
The Kongo people maintained shrines and churches, which they called Kiteki. They dedicated their smaller shrines to their smaller deities, even after they had converted to the Christianity faith. These gods or deities were protectors of water bodies, crop fields, and high places to the Kongo people and were prevalent in capital towns of the Christian ruling classes and the villages. The later Capuchin monks and Portuguese missionaries threatened to destroy or burn the shrines down. However, the Kongo ethnic group credited the shrines for abundance and defended them.
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The Culture and Society of the Kongo People
The large Bakongo community features a diversity or variety of occupations. Some are farmers who grow cash crops and staple foods. Among the staples are bananas, maize, cassava, taro, and sweet potatoes. Other crops include beans and peanuts, especially groundnuts. The colonial rulers are the ones responsible for the introduction of the cash crops. Some of the cash crops include cacao and coffee for the chocolate industry. Palm oil is an export good or commodity, while the traditional Urena is a famine food. Some Kongo people involve themselves in fishing and hunting. However, most work in the trade in towns and factories.
The Kongo tribe has customarily acknowledged their mother’s descent, and this lineage connects them into kinship groups. The Kongo people are culturally-organized as ones who cherish their independence, so much so that close Kongo people’s villages avoid being dependent on one another.
There’s a strong undercurrent of messianic tradition among the Kongo or Bakongo people, which has resulted in many politico-religious associations in the 20th century. This may be in connection to the premises of dualistic cosmology in Kongo tradition, where two worlds exist, one invisible and full of mighty spirits and the other one as visible and lived. The idea or belief that there’s an interaction and exchange between these to the Bakongo people means that the world of spirits can possess the world of flesh.
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