DOCSLIB.ORG

Angola on the Move Angola Em Movimento

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Beatrix Heintze Achim von Oppen (eds) Angola on the Move Angola em Movimento Transport Routes, Communications and History Vias de Transporte, Comunicação e História Lembeck Angola on the Move Transport Routes, Communications and History Angola em Movimento Vias de Transporte, Comunicação e História Beatrix Heintze Achim von Oppen (eds) Angola on the Move Transport Routes, Communications and History Angola em Movimento Vias de Transporte, Comunicação e História Verlag Otto Lembeck Frankfurt am Main Agradecemos o apoio do Ministério da Cultura da República de Angola, e em especial do seu Ministro, Dr. Boaventura Cardoso Agradecemos o apoio da ESCOM Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie, detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Umschlagentwurf: Gabriele Hampel und Markus Wächter © 2008 Beatrix Heintze und Verlag Otto Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main Gesamtherstellung: Druckerei und Verlag Otto Lembeck Frankfurt am Main und Butzbach ISBN 978-3-87476-553-4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Beatrix Heintze and Achim von Oppen 7 1. Em Busca dos Sítios do Poder na África Centro Ocidental. Homens e Caminhos, Exércitos e Estradas (1483-1915) Maria Emília Madeira Santos 26 2. The Supply and Deployment of Horses in Angolan Warfare (17th and 18th Centuries) Roquinaldo Ferreira 41 3. Wagon Technology, Transport and Long-distance Communication in Angola 1885-1908 David Birmingham 52 4. Trade, Slavery, and Migration in the Interior of Benguela: The Case of Caconda, 1830-1870 Manuela P. Candido 63 5. The Economics of the Kwango Rubber Trade, c. 1900 Jelmer Vos 85 6. As Vias de Comunicação e Meios de Transporte como Factores de Globalização, de Estabilidade Política e de Transformação Económica e Social: Caso do Caminho-de-ferro de Bengela (Benguela) (1889-1950) Emmanuel Esteves 99 7. Nas Malhas da Rede: Aspectos do impacto económicoe social do transporte rodoviário na região do Huambo c. 1920-c. 1960 Maria da Conceição Neto 117 8. Communications between Angola and East Central Africa Before c. 1700 Jan Vansina 130 9. Long-distance Caravans and Communication beyond the Kwango (c. 1850-1890) Beatrix Heintze 144 10. A Escrita em Angola: Comunicação e Ruído entre as Diferentes Sociedades em Presença Ana Paula Tavares 163 6 Table of Contents 11. Escrever o Poder: Os Autos de Vassalagem e a Vulgarização da Escrita entre as Elites Africanas Ndembu Catarina Madeira Santos 173 12. Do Passado ao Presente: Tráfego Comercial e Redes de Comunicação, Factores Privilegiados de “Modernidade” Aurora da Fonseca Ferreira 182 13. Refugees on Routes. Congo/Zaire and the War in Northern Angola (1961-1974) Inge Brinkman 198 14. Crossing the River: Myth and Movement in Central Africa Wyatt MacGaffey 221 15. From Group Mobility to Individual Movement: The Colonial Effort to Turn Back History Joseph C. Miller 243 Notes on Contributors 263 Maps Northern Angola, c. 1910 88 A rede luso-africana 100 Mapa esquemático da rede de estradas no planalto e zonas vizinhas c. 1930 118 Angola and the East: Main channels of communication before 1700 132 Principal long-distance caravan routes in West Central Africa (1850-c.1890) 146 Photographs Carregador de borracha 115 Assentamento da linha de Bengela 115 Comboio de mercadorias 116 O Caminho-de-ferro de Benguela 116 “Artigos indigenas” 165 INTRODUCTION Beatrix Heintze and Achim von Oppen Angola and its hinterland is a striking case against the opinion, still widespread in public circles and western media, that Africa is only just coming out of a long history of isolation and localism. The West-Central part of this continent vividly illustrates the extent to which transport links and processes of communication have influenced the history of Africa for centuries. From pre-colonial migration and exchange through the period of Atlantic long-distance trade, the European travels of “exploration”, strategies of economic “development” and warfare in the era of colonialism, up to the making of the nation state and of global integration in the twentieth century, transport and communications in and beyond Angola have strongly shaped the whole region. They have shown a remarkable potential for transcending existing barriers as well as constituting new spaces and boundaries. At the same time, this region has an unusual wealth, in terms of both quantity and quality, of written sources dating back to the 15th century AD. They are themselves the result of early travels and com- munications by European traders, administrators and missionaries, but also include written and orally transmitted testimonies by Africans. Both features – the importance of transregional connections and a unique wealth in resources, both people and commodities, and in source materials – seem to privilege Angola and its hinterlands vis-à-vis other parts of the continent for historical studies of mobility and communication. Surprisingly, however, the topic has so far been largely neglected in studies on that part of Africa, a region that has generally not benefited fully from the recent growth in African studies, especially in Germany. Still more generally, there are signifi- cant lacunae in research on transport and communication as such. So far, this topic has been studied mainly with regard to its economical, technical and political aspects. There is still a dearth of research into the social and cultural impact of these connections in the contexts of regional and transregional histories, especially with regard to the making or transformation of social spaces in the widest sense. This is a particularly interesting subject of study for the non-European world. This book brings together a range of studies that use the example of Angola and its hinterland to show how existing gaps in research can be filled and how the potential of the topic just outlined can be brought to fruition. It will convince the reader, it is hoped, that the insights gained here are of relevance for other areas of Africa and of the world as well. They also illustrate yet another aspect that privileges this region for a case study. Research on the “Angolan sphere” in West Central Africa can rely on a geographically dispersed 8 Beatrix Heintze and Achim von Oppen but highly connected network of scholars of very diverse backgrounds, who share a strong commitment to the past as well as to the present of this particular region of Africa, to its languages and to its sources. Scholars from Angola itself are part and parcel of this network. Their voices ensure that African perspec- tives on one of longest experiences of colonial rule as well as todays’ challenges of reconstruction are sufficiently heard, after decades of ravaging war, not least in the field of transport and communication. The authors of the contributions to the present book are distinguished or emerging members of this Angolan studies network. Despite the very different topics, periods and subregions they concentrate on, these chapters are the result of an intense process of communication among the authors themselves. A good occasion to observe this process of exchange and mutual inspiration was offered by a symposium held in Berlin in 2003.1 Incidentally, it was this event that launched the discussion which is elaborated in this book. Earlier versions of many of its chapters were presented and discussed at that conference, along with others that, for various reasons, do not appear in this book. The book itself, however, may be seen as a further step in this conversation, one for which earlier drafts have been thoroughly revised. A number of additional chapters have also been included to achieve a more complete range of perspectives. However, the thematic debates and questions that emerged during that sympo- sium provided a useful matrix for this book. Each of the following sections will be introduced through a particular set of issues, along with the individual chapters they contain. Insights gained from other contributions to the original symposium are also mentioned where appropriate. The Modernization of Transport and its Contradictions The first of these foci addresses the history of actual movements and means of transport that shaped routes and communications in the region. How did these strategies of mobility develop in and beyond Angola? How have different types of movement and means of transport influenced each other in the given historical contexts, be it through complementarity, competition or contestation? Contrary to linear ideas of modernization of transport, what ruptures, as well as continuities, what disjunctures as well as simultaneities can be observed from a historical perspective? How did these contradictions affect the spatial organiza- tion of transport and communication, in both the short and the long run? These 1 This symposium, convened by the two editors of this book, took place from September 24 to 26, 2003, at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany. Thanks to generous funding by the Volkswagen Foundation, a total of twenty scholars from Africa, Europe and North America were able to take part and to contribute, mostly historians but also representatives of other disciplines. Remarkably, one third of the participants were from Angola itself. Introduction 9 questions require highly specific answers for the different transport systems, as demonstrated by Emília Madeira Santos, Roquinaldo Ferreira and David Birmingham (chapters 1-3). Each case study
Recommended publications
  • Around 1900 the Congo Was Hit by a Rubber Crisis, Primarily Caused by A

    Around 1900 the Congo Was Hit by a Rubber Crisis, Primarily Caused by A

    International symposium Angola on the Move: Transport Routes, Communication, and History, Berlin, 24-26 September 2003 The copyright for this paper lies solely with the author. Any further circulation requires his or her personal permission (see addresses under [participants-->contributors-->contact list]) as well as full and accurate attribution to the author, Symposium and web location. The Economics of the Kwango Rubber Trade, c. 1900 Jelmer Vos At a frontier passage in the far north-eastern corner of Angola’s Congo district, near the Kwilo River’s estuary in the Kwango, in 1902 soldiers of the Congo Free State arrested two African men for the crime of “fraud”. As they happened to be resident on Angolan territory and were therefore subjects of the Portuguese crown the two men soon made their way into diplomatic correspondence.1 One of them, Kitumbu, was identified as a native from Zombo, a country reputed for its widespread commercial networks. His companion, Kalumbatungu, came from a riverside village named Kimbinda. Chief Kimbinda, a tributary of the Yaka chief Kianvo Kia N’Zadi, had not too long ago moved his village from the Free State into Angola across the Kwango river which made up the frontier between the two colonial domains. The people of the village, however, still crossed the river for their crops and their trade. Several other Yaka populations strategically nested along the caravan routes that crossed the Kwango between Kassongo-Lunda and Popokabaka had also either partly or completely moved to Portuguese territory. These settlements played a dual role in the long-distance trade that passed through the Kwango region.
  • Portuguese Language in Angola: Luso-Creoles' Missing Link? John M

    Portuguese Language in Angola: Luso-Creoles' Missing Link? John M

    Portuguese language in Angola: luso-creoles' missing link? John M. Lipski {presented at annual meeting of the AATSP, San Diego, August 9, 1995} 0. Introduction Portuguese explorers first reached the Congo Basin in the late 15th century, beginning a linguistic and cultural presence that in some regions was to last for 500 years. In other areas of Africa, Portuguese-based creoles rapidly developed, while for several centuries pidginized Portuguese was a major lingua franca for the Atlantic slave trade, and has been implicated in the formation of many Afro- American creoles. The original Portuguese presence in southwestern Africa was confined to limited missionary activity, and to slave trading in coastal depots, but in the late 19th century, Portugal reentered the Congo-Angola region as a colonial power, committed to establishing permanent European settlements in Africa, and to Europeanizing the native African population. In the intervening centuries, Angola and the Portuguese Congo were the source of thousands of slaves sent to the Americas, whose language and culture profoundly influenced Latin American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish. Despite the key position of the Congo-Angola region for Ibero-American linguistic development, little is known of the continuing use of the Portuguese language by Africans in Congo-Angola during most of the five centuries in question. Only in recent years has some attention been directed to the Portuguese language spoken non-natively but extensively in Angola and Mozambique (Gonçalves 1983). In Angola, the urban second-language varieties of Portuguese, especially as spoken in the squatter communities of Luanda, have been referred to as Musseque Portuguese, a name derived from the KiMbundu term used to designate the shantytowns themselves.
  • The Journal of African History SLAVERY and ITS TRANSFORMATION in the KINGDOM of KONGO: 1491–1800

    The Journal of African History SLAVERY and ITS TRANSFORMATION in the KINGDOM of KONGO: 1491–1800

    The Journal of African History http://journals.cambridge.org/AFH Additional services for The Journal of African History: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here SLAVERY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION IN THE KINGDOM OF KONGO: 1491–1800 LINDA M. HEYWOOD The Journal of African History / Volume 50 / Issue 01 / March 2009, pp 1 - 22 DOI: 10.1017/S0021853709004228, Published online: 14 April 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021853709004228 How to cite this article: LINDA M. HEYWOOD (2009). SLAVERY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION IN THE KINGDOM OF KONGO: 1491–1800. The Journal of African History, 50, pp 1-22 doi:10.1017/ S0021853709004228 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/AFH, IP address: 140.247.0.107 on 06 Oct 2013 Journal of African History, 50 (2009), pp. 1–22. f Cambridge University Press 2009 1 doi:10.1017/S0021853709004228 Printed in the United Kingdom SLAVERY AND ITS TRANSFORMATION IN THE K I N G D O M O F K O N G O: 1491–1800* BY LINDA M. HEYWOOD Boston University ABSTRACT: Studies of slavery in Africa during the period of the Atlantic slave trade have largely ignored questions of how political processes affected enslave- ment during the period and also the extent to which notions of who could be enslaved were modified. Documentation for the kingdom of Kongo during the 1500s to 1800 allows us to explore how the trade was sustained and the social and political dynamics behind it. In a state that consistently exported large numbers of slaves throughout the period of the trade, kings of Kongo at first observed quite a pronounced distinction between foreign-born captives subject to enslavement and sale in the Atlantic trade and freeborn Kongos who were largely proctected from enslavement and sale overseas.
  • Congo Inland Missionaries

    Congo Inland Missionaries

    Published in the interest o f the best in the religious, social, and economic phases o f Mennonite culture AFRICA ISSUE This issue is devoted to Mennonite missions in Africa. It constitutes the first attempt at presenting the total effort of American Mennonite missionary work in the "dark" continent of Africa and the results of this work since the beginning of this century. No one w ill question that such a presentation is tim ely. The Congo Inland Mission, sponsored by a number of Mennonite groups, looks back over fifty years of work in the Congo. These are crucial days in Africa. We need to be better in­ formed about the continent, our work in Africa and the emerging Christian churches which, as the nations within which they are located, have suddenly become independent. MENNO SIMONS ISSUE The January issue of MENNONITE LIFE was devoted to Menno Simons, after whom the Mennonites are named. The many illus­ trated articles dealing with Menno and the basic beliefs of the Mennonites are of special significance since we are commemo­ rating the 400fh anniversary of his death. Copies of the January and April issues are available through Mennonite book dealers and the MENNONITE LIFE office. The following are the rates: SUBSCRIPTION RATES One year, $3.00; Three years, $7.50; Five years, $12.50. Single issues, 75 cents. MENNONITE LIFE North Newton, Kansas COVER: Women participate in work of the church in Africa. Photography: Melvin Loewen. MENNONITE LIFE An Illustrated Quarterly EDITOR Cornelius Krahn ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR John F. Schmidt ASSOCIATE EDITORS Harold S.
  • Africa Notes

    Africa Notes

    Number 137 June 1992 CSISAFRICA NOTES A publication of the Center for Strategic and International Studies , Washington, D.C. Angola in Transition: The Cabinda Factor by Shawn McCormick In accordance with the Portuguese-mediated agreement signed by leaders of the governing Movimento Popular de Libertac;:ao de Angola (MPLA) .and the Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola (UNIT A) in May 1991, the 16-year civil war that erupted in Angola as the country achieved independent statehood in 1975 has ended. Efforts to implement the second priority mandated in the agreement-national elections by late 1992-are being assisted by a range of international actors, including the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and Portugal. More than 12 parties are likely to participate in the elections (scheduled for September 29 and 30, 1992). The process of achieving a third key element of the agreement-demobilization of three-fourths of the two armies and integration of the remaining soldiers into a 50,000-strong national force-seems unlikely to conclude before elections are held. Although media attention focuses on developments and major players in the capital city of Luanda, where UNIT A has officially established a presence, analysts of the Angolan scene are according new attention to tiny Cabinda province (where an increasingly active separatist movement is escalating its pursuit of independence from Luanda) as "possibly Angola's last and most important battlefield." The significance of Cabinda-a 2,807-square-mile enclave along the Atlantic Ocean separated from Angola's other 17 contiguous provinces by a 25-mile strip of Zaire-lies in the fact that current offshore oil production, including that from the Takula and Malanga fields, totals more than 310,000 barrels per day (bpd).
  • Politics, Commerce, and Colonization in Angola at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

    Politics, Commerce, and Colonization in Angola at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

    Politics, Commerce, and Colonization in Angola at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century John Whitney Harvey Dissertação em História Moderna e dos Descobrimentos Orientador: Professor Doutor Pedro Cardim Setembro, 2012 Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em História Moderna e dos Descobrimentos realizada sob a orientação científica do Professor Doutor Pedro Cardim e a coorientação científica do Professor Doutor Diogo Ramada Curto. I dedicate this dissertation to my father, Charles A. Harvey Jr. (1949-2009), whose wisdom, hard work, and dedication I strive to emulate. The last thing he knew about me was that I was going to study at FCSH, and I hope that I have made him proud. Acknowledgements There are so many people that were instrumental to the production of this dissertation that it would be impossible to include everyone in this space. I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that supported me emotionally and academically throughout this year. Know that I know who you are, I appreciate everything done for me, and hope to return the support in the future. I would also like to thank the Center for Overseas History for the resources and opportunities afforded to me, as well as all of my professors and classmates that truly enriched my academic career throughout the last two years. There are some people whom without, this would not have been possible. The kindness, friendship, and support shown by Nuno and Luisa throughout this process I will never forget, and I am incredibly grateful and indebted to you both.
  • Centro De História De Além-Mar, Lisbon October 2009 Commodities

    Centro De História De Além-Mar, Lisbon October 2009 Commodities

    Centro de História de Além-Mar, Lisbon October 2009 Copyright © Jelmer Vos, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher nor be issued to the public or circulated in any form other than that in which it is published. Requests for permission to reproduce any part of this Working Paper should be sent to: The Editor, Commodities of Empire Project, The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA Commodities of Empire Working Paper No.12 ISSN: 1756-0098 Of Stocks and Barter: John Holt and the Kongo Rubber Trade, 1906-1910 Jelmer Vos (Centro de História de Além-Mar, Lisbon) Introduction Not long after the Atlantic slave trade was phased out in the Kongo region south of the river Zaire in the 1860s, rubber came to dominate the regional export economy.1 Vegetable oils, which had defined the economic transition from slave to produce trade in many West African regions earlier in the century, were also exported from Kongo, as was coffee, but none of these commodities characterised the new economic era as much as rubber. During the West Central African rubber boom, which lasted from 1879 to 1913, Kongo formed the core of British commercial interests in this part of Africa, especially since Portuguese protectionist measures kept foreign traders out of the Angolan ports of Luanda and Benguela. Of several British companies operating in Kongo since the mid-nineteenth century, however, only two firms from Liverpool managed to endure the competitive environment of the produce trade.
  • Trade and the Merchant Community of the Loango Coast in The

    Trade and the Merchant Community of the Loango Coast in The

    Trade and the Merchant Community of the Loango Coast in the Eighteenth Century Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Hull by Stacey Jean Muriel Sommerdyk Honors BA (University of Western Ontario) MA (York University) May 2012 ii Synopsis This thesis explores the political, economic and cultural transformation of the Loango Coast during the era of the transatlantic slave trade from the point of contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. While a number of previous studies of the West Central African slave trade have focused principally on the role of the Portuguese on the Angola Coast, this thesis makes a new contribution by evaluating the balance of power between Dutch and Loango Coast merchant communities. In doing so, this thesis concludes that well into the eighteenth century, local African religious and political traditions remained relatively unchanged on the Loango Coast, especially in comparison to their southern neighbours in Angola. Drawing upon detailed records compiled by the Middelburgse Commercie Compangie (MCC), the thesis builds upon an original database which accounts for approximately 10,000 slaves sold by 640 identified African merchants to the Dutch Middelburg Company over the course of 5,000 transactions. Expanding upon the work of Phyllis Martin and other scholars, this thesis highlights a distinction between the Loango and the Angola coasts based on models of engagement with European traders; furthermore, it draws attention to the absence of European credit data in the MCC slave purchasing balance sheets; and, finally, it explores the difficulties involved in procuring slaves via long distance trade.
  • Central African Identities and Religiosity in Colonial Minas Gerais 2012

    Central African Identities and Religiosity in Colonial Minas Gerais 2012

    Kalle Kananoja Central African Identities and Religiosity in Colonial Minas and Religiosity Identities African in Colonial Gerais Central Kalle Kananoja Central African Identities and Religiosity in Colonial Minas Gerais 2012 Åbo Akademi University | ISBN 978-952-93-0489-9 Central African Identities and Religiosity in Colonial Minas Gerais Kalle Kananoja Åbo Akademi University / 2012 © Kalle Kananoja Author’s address: Department of History Åbo Akademi University Fabriksgatan 2 FI-20500 Åbo Finland e-mail: [email protected] ISBN 978-952-93-0489-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-952-93-0490-5 (PDF) Printed by Uniprint, Turku Table of Contents Maps ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� i Acknowledgments ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������iii 1 Introduction ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 1.1 Main Issues and Aims of the Study ....................................................... 1 1.2 Overview of the Literature �������������������������������������������������������������������� 4 1.2.1 The Slave Trade between Angola and Brazil and its Cultural Implications ......................................................... 4 1.2.2 Africans and Their Descendants in Mineiro Society ..................... 8 1.3 African Identities in Colonial Brazil.....................................................11 1.4 Creolization and Syncretism in the Southern Atlantic
  • Bantu Plant Names As Indicators of Linguistic Stratigraphy in the Western Province of Zambia

    Bantu Plant Names As Indicators of Linguistic Stratigraphy in the Western Province of Zambia

    Bantu Plant Names as Indicators of Linguistic Stratigraphy in the Western Province of Zambia Koen Bostoen Royal Museum for Central Africa Tervuren - Université libre de Bruxelles 1. Introduction and background The present paper is a comparative study of Bantu plant names in a number of languages from the WP of Zambia.1 It is based on fieldwork I undertook, with the kind assistance of the Livingstone Museum, in July-August 2005 in the neighbourhood of two minor towns in the southern part of the WP, i.e. Sioma and Shangombo. I worked with native speakers of Mbunda (K15), Kwamashi (K34), Kwamulonga (K351), Shanjo (K36), Fwe (K402), and Mbwera (L61). The field notes, which I present throughout the paper with the label “Bostoen FN 2005”, are compared to data from closely related or neighbouring languages on the one hand, and on the other hand, to what is known on plant names in terms of common Bantu reconstructions. Map 1 below shows the Bantu languages considered in this paper and their linguistic affiliation according to the current state of knowledge. Data from Khwe, a nearby non-Bantu click language from the Khoe-Kwadi family (Güldemann 2004), are also taken into account for reasons explained further on. 2 This comparative study aims at enhancing our understanding of the language history, which underlies the intricate sociolinguistic picture that characterizes the WP today. The Bantu languages listed above represent only a fraction of the numerous languages to which the WP is home. Contrary to Lozi (K21), the region’s widely used lingua franca with an increasing number of first language speakers, most of these languages are minority languages whose use is geographically localized and functionally restricted and whose number of speakers is declining.
  • Konzo Prevention in Six Villages in the DRC and the Dependence of Konzo

    Konzo Prevention in Six Villages in the DRC and the Dependence of Konzo

    Toxicology Reports 2 (2015) 609–616 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Toxicology Reports journa l homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/toxrep Konzo prevention in six villages in the DRC and the dependence of konzo prevalence on cyanide intake and malnutrition a b,∗ c a J.P. Banea , J. Howard Bradbury , C. Mandombi , D. Nahimana , b b a d Ian C. Denton , Matthew P. Foster , N. Kuwa , D. Tshala Katumbay a Programme National de Nutrition (PRONANUT), Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of the Congo b EEG, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia c Hopital General de Reference, Zone de Sante de Popokabaka, The Democratic Republic of the Congo d Centre Neuropsychopathologique, Universite de Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of the Congo a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Six villages in Boko Health Zone, Bandundu Province, DRC, were studied with 4588 people, Received 13 March 2015 144 konzo cases and konzo prevalences of 2.0–5.2%. Konzo incidence is increasing rapidly Received in revised form 30 March 2015 in this area. Food consumption scores were obtained from the households with konzo and Accepted 30 March 2015 the mean % malnutrition calculated for each village. Urine samples were obtained from Available online 7 April 2015 50 school children from each village and % high urinary thiocyanate content (>350 ␮mol/L) determined. The experimental data relating % konzo prevalence (%K) to % children with high Keywords: urinary thiocyanate content (%T) and % malnutrition (%M) for the six villages were fitted to Konzo prevalence an equation %K = 0.06%T + 0.035%M.
  • Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast

    Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast

    POWER, CLOTHAND CURRENCYON THE LOANGOCOAST Phyllis M. Martin Indiana University Cloth was a basic resource for the peoples of the Loango Coast' throughout their precolonial history. It was used in daily life for furnishings and for clothing; it was essential in landmark events such as initiation and burial ceremonies; it was part of key transactions that cemented lineage and state alliances; and it served as a currency. The importation of European cloth from the sixteenth century began a transition from indigenous, domestically produced cloth to a reliance on foreign cloth, but cloth maintained its significance as a key resource at all levels of society. Access to sources of cloth and control of its distribution were closely associated with the wielding of power, whether by royal administrators, lineage elders, religious specialists or merchant-brokers. Raphia Cloth Production The great rainforests of Central Africa reach their western margins in the mountainous Mayombe region in the hinterland of the Loango Coast. This was also the inland limit of the three kingdoms that historically dominated the area - Ngoyo, Kakongo and, the largest, Loango. In these fringes of the equatorial forest, palm trees grew in such profusion that a late sixteenth- century account referred to the region as "the land of palms."2 Of the many varieties, several were important in cloth production. The fibers of the "bamboo" or wine palm, rafia vinifera or ntombe, were commonly used for the most basic cloth and for currency; and from the leaf fibers of the fan palm, hyphaene guineensis or nteva, cloths of particularly high quality were woven.3 The trees were both cultivated and grew wild.