Chokwe
The Chokwe (also Côkwe, Tshokwe or Tschokwe, the colonial name in Angola was Quioco) are a Bantu ethnic group in southern Africa. They live mainly in Angola , as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Zambia .
Society and culture
The language of the Chokwe is Uchokwe (Wuchokwe), although many Chokwe today also speak other languages as the lingua franca - Portuguese in Angola (albeit a little outside the cities), English in Zambia and French in the Congo. ISO 639-3 : cjk.
In their traditional religion, Kalunga is the creator and the highest power, in addition there are - according to ethnographic descriptions from the first half of the 20th century - various ancestral spirits (spirits of the dead) and nature spirits, which are collectively called mahamba and which occur in obsessional cults . Obsession-triggering spirits are primarily the fertility snake , the fertility bird Kajila and the dog, which is considered sacred (also lion, kawa, muta or tambwe ). Obsession manifests itself in a disease, often a nervous disorder. After such a diagnosis, the healer / fortune teller puts the patient in a state of trance and performs ceremonies, which in some cases are accompanied by singing and drum music. A special ancestral spirit is the fortune telling spirit Ngombo , by whom the mostly male fortune teller is possessed to carry out his activity. The ghost Chikusa is a mask spirit that ensures fertility and luck in hunting. Kalamba is a spirit that feels forgotten and therefore causes illness in people in order to draw attention to itself. Sacrifice has to be made to him, his picture has to be put up or a festival organized in his honor. In addition to these traditional spirits, there are other spirits from the colonial era, such as the European known as Chindele . Anyone who is obsessed with him begins to dance in a trance with knife and fork and sacrifices European food (bread, wine or schnapps).
Their religion has led the Chokwe to highly regarded artistic works, especially masks and wooden sculptures. Today there are many Chokwe Christians, but relatively few in Angola.
The Chokwe Society is organized under local leaders ( mwana nganga ). They consult with the elders and ritual specialists before making decisions. The villages are divided into areas, each of which is led by the heads of families. Society is divided into those who are matrilineally descended from the rulers and the descendants of formerly enslaved sections of the population. Beyond the local level, there is also a network of regional leaders that spans their settlement areas in the three countries in question, but does not appear very much.
economy
The Chokwe practice arable farming ( slash and burn ) and grow cassava, yams and peanuts. Tobacco and hemp are grown for sniffing , corn for making corn beer. Sheep, goats, pigs and chickens are also kept, and further protein is provided by hunting. There is a community of hunters of larger game, the yanga , while smaller game is hunted by everyone. The cultivation and processing of food is practically exclusively done by women.
history
The Chokwe may have been made to ambundu and Mbuti - Pygmies from. From around 1600 to 1850 they were under the influence of the Lunda states in what is now Angola. In the second half of the 19th century, the development of the trade routes from the Chokwe region to the Angolan coast led to an increase in the ivory and rubber trade and thus helped the Chokwe to prosper. This enabled an expansion of the Chokwe kingdom, which eventually even took Lunda. The climb was short-lived, however; the power of the Chokwe soon waned as a result of excessive expansion towards southern Angola, introduced diseases and colonial conquest and domination, which they offered little resistance.
The main settlement area of the Chokwe is still the northeast of Angola, i.e. the present-day provinces Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul . They live there closely with the Lunda , parts of which they have absorbed through assimilation. Until the middle of the 20th century, however, they migrated in groups in a southerly direction, settling in the spaces between other ethnic groups.
The Chokwe hardly took part in the anti-colonial struggle, 1961–1974, nor in the civil war in Angola , 1975–2002. After the introduction of the multiparty system in Angola, they were the only ethnic group to succeed in sending some members of parliament to represent their interests in both parliamentary elections (1992 and 2008) through a newly founded party, Partido da Renovação Social (PRS).
For the cohesion of the Chokwe it is important that they still have a cross-border network of traditional authorities . In Angola they are not very open to European cultural goods that are conveyed through schools and Christian missions; however, with the growing minority of those who have gone to the cities, this has changed very quickly. Even there, however, one's own language is upheld; This explains that the Côkwe , as it has been written since then, was given the status of a national language (língua nacional) by the Angolan government alongside the Umbundu , Kimbundu , Kikongo and Ukwanyama .
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Cokwe on www.ethnologue.com . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
- ↑ Beatrix Heintze : Obsession phenomena in the middle Bantu area. ( Studies on cultural studies , Volume 25, edited by Eike Haberland) Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 1970, pp. 20–30
- ↑ This ignores the fact that FNLA and UNITA are to a certain extent to be regarded as representatives of the interests of Bakongo and Ovimbundu , respectively .
literature
- Hermann Baumann : The manhood celebrations among the Tsokwe (NE Angola; West Africa) and their neighbors . Reimer, Berlin 1932
- Marie Louise Bastin: La sculpture tshokwe . Chaffin, Meudon 1982
- Jean David, Gerhard Merzeder (Ed.): Chokwe and their Bantu neighbors . Galerie Walu, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-9522495-1-3
- Manuel Jordán: Chokwe . New York, 1998, ISBN 0-8239-1990-0
- João Vicente Martins: Os Tutchokwe do Nordeste de Angola . Doctoral thesis in anthropology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon 1997
- Joseph C. Miller: Chokwe Expansion 1850-1900 . Wisconsin University, Madison 1969
- Constantine Petridis: Chokwe Masks and Franciscan Missionaries in Sandoa, Belgian Congo, approx. 1948. In: Anthropos, Vol. 96, Issue 1, 2001, pp. 3-28
- José Redinha: Etnias e Culturas de Angola . Instituto de Investigação Científica de Angola, Luanda 1975
- Boris Westiau: Chokwe . Cinque Continenti, Milan 2006
Web links
- Art and Life in Africa: Peoples: Chokwe. The University of Iowa
- Chokwe Mask History. Rebirth African Art Gallery
- Lunda-Chokwe. In: Thomas Collelo (Ed.): Angola: A Country Study. GPO for the Library of Congress, Washington 1991