Politics and Tribalism in the Katanga Author(s): Daniel J. Crowley Source: The Western Political Quarterly , Mar., 1963, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1963), pp. 68- 78 Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/445959 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/445959?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms and are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Western Political Quarterly This content downloaded from 72.195.177.31 on Sun, 30 May 2021 03:48:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms POLITICS AND TRIBALISM IN THE KATANGA DANIEL J. CROWLEY University of California, Davis HE FOURTEEN MILLION inhabitants of the former Belgian Congo are divided into an estimated 183 culturally distinct tribes and sub-tribes in- cluding Pygmies, Nilotics, Sudanese, and Bantu.- The 144 Bantu-speak- ing tribes contain most of the population and inhabit at least two-thirds of the land area. Despite this diversity, the languages and cultures of the Congo are relatively homogeneous, and extend north and south of the political boundaries to include the entire Congo Basin.2 The Katanga is second only to Orientale in size among the six Congo prov- inces, and is infinitely the richest, providing 65 per cent of all Congo exports. The huge mining company of Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga alone paid one-third of the nation's budget, which in 1954 was 160 million dollars.3 This helps ex- plain why nearly a third of all the non-Africans in the Congo (28,455 out of 94,531 in 1955) lived in the Katanga. In contrast, the Katanga African popula- tion of one and one-half million is the smallest of any province, and its population density of 7.56 per square mile is less than half the average throughout the coun- try. Thus while the ratio of Europeans to Africans throughout the Congo was only 1 in 140, in the Katanga it was 1 in 50. Economically the Congo can not hope to become a viable nation without the Katanga, whose President, Moise Tshombe, declared it an independent state and has been reluctant to join any con- federation of provinces unless the Katanga controls the revenues and hence the political power. This paper will attempt to analyze political developments in the Katanga immediately before and after Independence (June 30, 1960) in terms of the ethnographic background, and on this basis to predict some likely future developments. The Katanga was first entered by Lacerda in 1798, and traversed by the Portuguese pombeiros in 1806-10 and by David Livingstone in 1853; but it re- mained virtually unknown until the 1890's when the geologists Cornet and Died- erich discovered its tremendous mineral resources. Before this time, the meager game and unproductive soil had attracted only a sparse and scattered population, whose complicated migration patterns are fairly well known through traditional NOTE: This paper is based on field research carried on between January and November, 1960, in the Congo and adjacent areas on a Foreign Area Training Fellowship from the Ford Foundation, and in cooperation with the Centre Interfacultaire d'Anthropologie et de Linguistique Africaine of the Universitd Officielle du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi under the direction of Dr. Jacques J. Maquet. ' J. Maes and 0. Boone, Les Peuplades du Congo Belge, Musee du Congo Belge, Publications du Bureau de Documentation Ethnographique, Series 2, Monographies Ideologiques, I (Brux- elles, 1935); George Peter Murdock, Africa, Its Peoples and Their Culture History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), pp. 284-305. 2 Melville J. Herskovits, "Belgian Congo: Peoples and Culture," in Belgium, ed. Jan-Albert Goris (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1945), p. 353. SGuy Malengreau, "Recent Developments in Belgian Africa," in Africa Today, ed. C. Grove Haines (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), pp. 337-40. 68 This content downloaded from 72.195.177.31 on Sun, 30 May 2021 03:48:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms POLITICS AND TRIBALISM IN THE KATANGA 69 histories.4 The Congo-Zambezi watershed and the Kasai and Luapula Rivers which form the boundaries with Angola and Northern Rhodesia were never effective barriers, and every important Katanga tribe lives on both sides of these frontiers. The Katangaises may be grouped into two tribal complexes, the Lunda and the Luba. The Empire of the Mwata Yamvo of Lunda stretches from the Kwango District of Leopoldville Province through southern Kasai and western Katanga and the contiguous areas of northeastern Angola (Lunda and Moxico Provinces) into the Balovale District of Northern Rhodesia. Far to the east in the Luapula Valley, an autonomous Lunda aristocracy under the Mwata Kazembe dominates the Bemba, Lamba, and other related tribes around the Pedicule. These are separated from their ancestral empire by the territory of the Luba and related tribes which stretches from Northern Rhodesia through central and northern Katanga into the Kasai. Each of these peoples claims complete political control over all territory it held at the time of the Belgian occupation. Although virtually no Katanga tribe can make a case for its people being the original inhabitants of its present area, the idea of unalienable tribal land based on first occupancy is supported by re- ligious sanctions. URBANIZATION AND TRIBAL AFFILIATION In the 60 years of Belgian control, the migrations which have long been a feature of Katanga life greatly increased in response to the better economic and social opportunities in the mining towns, along the railroads, and at the missions and crossroads which became trading centers. Over 20 per cent of the Congo- lese (32 per cent of the taxpayers) now live outside their chefferie of birth.6 The 200,000 residents of Elisabethville are almost entirely non-local, repre- senting 52 African tribes and 30 non-African nations. Roughly half of the Afri- cans are Luba from mineral-poor northern Katanga, or the so-called Luba-Kasai who followed the railroad into the Kasai during the last two generations and are now culturally and politically distinct from their northern Katanga cousins. There are also sizable communities of Chokwes from Angola, Bembas and Lambas from Rhodesia, Lulua and Songye from the Kasai, and other tribes such as the Rwanda even farther from their homelands. The same immigrant populations inhabit Jadotville, Kolwezi, Kisenge, and other Katanga towns. But unlike similar urban centers in South Africa and elsewhere, Katanga urbanization does not seem to produce extensive detribalization.7 Although tribes are mixed together indiscriminately at work and in housing, tribal affiliation remains the most im- portant factor in social life, marriage, and political orientation. People frequently 4 Leon Duysters, "Histoire des Aluunda," Probldmes d'Afrique Centrale, 40, 2me Trimestre (1958). 'I. G. Cunnison, The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia (Manchester: Manchester Univer- sity Press, 1959), p. 54. 6Malengreau, loc. cit., p. 343; Fernand Bezy, Probldmes Structurels de l'Economie Congolaise, Publications de l'Universite Lovanium de Leopoldville (Louvain, 1957), p. 29. 7Cf. J. Comhaire, "Some Aspects of Urbanization in the Belgian Congo," American Journal of Sociology,Centrale (Namur, 42 (July 1958), 1956), pp. 118,11-13; 141-52, Jacques Carte Denis, 23. S.J., Le Phdnom.ne Urban en Afrique This content downloaded from 72.195.177.31 on Sun, 30 May 2021 03:48:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 70 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY return to their villages to display, distribute, and enjoy their wealth, to be re- placed by new arrivals from the bush who are welcomed and given temporary housing by their town relatives. To a certain extent, removal to town intensifies family and tribal loyalties, because rights and duties that are taken for granted in a bush village become crucially important in town. As a result, when the oppor- tunity for political organization came to the Congo in 1958-59, it took place on essentially tribal lines which reflect these cultural realities. All of the approximately 25 tribes in the Katanga feel themselves to be re- lated, "sons of the same mother," and some of their kinship structures and asso- ciations cut across tribal lines. Their languages, although not mutually compre- hensible, are relatively easily learned, but this is rarely necessary because Ki- swahili functions as a lingua franca as, more recently, does French. According to tradition, the Lunda Empire changed from matriliny to patriliny when the Em- press Lueji married Chibunda Ilunga, a patrilineal Luba, in the seventeenth cen- tury, causing her disgusted brothers to migrate and found new tribes." Most of these have remained matrilineal, although in recent years the Belgians have en- couraged chiefs to nominate a son rather than a nephew as successor. Although tribal endogamy is the approved behavior, intertribal mating has evidently always been common. Even in Dilolo Territory far removed from the cities, tribal affiliation has become so complex through intermarriages of Lunda, Ndembu, Chokwe, Minungu, and Luena that the Belgian administration ceased to record it in the census.