Gbaya (people)

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The Gbaya (also Gbaja , Baja , Baya ) are a people in Central Africa .

The ethnic groups of the Gbaya live mainly in the Central African Republic , as well as in eastern central Cameroon , the north of the Republic of the Congo and the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo .

In total there were around 970,000 Gbaya around 2000. They are the largest ethnic group in the Central African Republic and now make up 34% of the population there. About 20% are Muslims , the rest are followers of traditional religions or Christians (Catholics, few Evangelicals).

The important Gbaya subgroups are Mbodomo, Kara, Lai, Dooka, Buli, Bofi, Biyanda, Gbeya, Suma, Ali, Gbanu (also Banu; approx. 150,000 people), Mbusuku, Yangere, Bokare, Yayuwe and Bokoto. The cultures of the subgroups are different, but similar enough that one can infer a common origin.

The sword of the Gbaya, a straight variant of the Central African sickle weapon

language

The Gbaya speak various closely related Gbaya languages ​​that correspond to the above subgroup. The languages ​​form a dialect continuum that belongs to a superordinate Adamawa-Ubangi language group or a narrower group of the Ubangi languages , which belongs to the Niger-Congo languages . The Gbaya are closely related to the Banda and the Ngbandi in linguistic and ethnic terms . Not all groups can understand each other.

Society and history

The Gbaya society is organized in patrilineal clans . Exogamy is the rule. Traditionally, the Gbaya live in adobe houses with conical roofs in fenced villages and practice slash and burn farming by growing maize (which they introduced into the region) and cassava for their own use and for sale. They also raise honey bees. The Gbaya have also taken over cattle breeding from the Fulbe . There is no higher political organization above the village level.

Little is known about the history of the Gbaya, the written tradition begins around 1800. Originally, the Gbaya lived in small kingdoms between Lake Chad and Benue in northeastern Nigeria . They migrated south in the 19th century to avoid the Fulbe , who waged war against their neighbors, including the Gbaya, in the course of the Fulbe jihad . Some Gbaya groups have cooperated with the Fulbe, others have been able to resist them. The Gbaya were little affected by the Atlantic slave trade . Through their contacts with the Fulbe, however, they took part in the trans-Saharan slave trade , mostly as slave catchers, occasionally as enslaved. During their migration, the Gbaya displaced the Proto-Fang to the south.

The French anthropologist François Joseph Clozel and later French governor of French Sudan discovered on a research trip in 1894/95 on behalf of a trading company, where he tried to establish contact with the chiefs, that anthropophagy occurred among the Gbaya .

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Gbaya came under the German ( German Cameroon ) and French ( French Equatorial Africa ) colonial government through military occupation . Around 1920 Gbaya reached Christian missionaries . Until the end of the colonial era, they repeatedly offered resistance. In the early 1920s they rose up against the French government because they were obliged to do forced labor . In 1929 they rose again because they were again obliged to work on the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway . The second uprising lasted three years and resulted in the deaths of most of the rebels. The French later integrated some of the clan chiefs into their administrative structure.

In the Cameroon district of Mbéré (Adamaoua) there were ethnic conflicts between Gbaya and Fulbe in 1991/92.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ↑ a b c James Stuart Olson: The Peoples of Africa , p. 193.
  3. ^ Philip C. Burnham: Gbaya , p. 9.
  4. ^ Philip C. Burnham: Gbaya , p. 11.
  5. ^ Yakan: Almanac of African Peoples & Nations , p. 228.
  6. ^ FJ Clozel: Les Bayas: Notes ethnographiques & linguistiques: Haute-Sangha, bassin du Tchad. J. André & Cie, 1896, p. 9.
  7. ^ Philip C. Burnham: Gbaya , p. 12.
  8. ↑ Markus Roser: Witchcraft and rites of life. For the inculturation of the Christian faith among the Gbaya of the Central African Republic. Erlanger Verlag for Mission and Ecumenism, Erlangen, 2000, ISBN 3-87214-343-3 .
  9. ^ Yakan: Almanac of African Peoples & Nations , p. 229.