Ha (people)
The Ha , also known as Abaha or Waha , are a Bantu- speaking people who live in northwestern Tanzania on the border with Burundi . The group includes around 1,000,000 people (as of 2000).
habitat
Their land, which they call Buha themselves, is made up of grass savannah and open forest areas. The Ha live mainly from agriculture , where millet , corn , cassava , yams and peanuts are grown . Traditional hacking is to be gradually converted to plowing in the future. Livestock is mainly raised on the southwestern grasslands, where there is sufficient water and fewer problems with tsetse flies. For the Ha, as for many other people in East Africa , cattle are an important means of building social relationships. B. as bride price . Goats and other farm animals are also bred.
Corporate structure
The Ha live in scattered settlements , as extended families , which essentially consist of a few male relatives of different generations. At a higher level, Buha consisted of six independent kingdoms: Buyunga, Muhambwe, Heru, Luguru (Kunkanda), Bushingo, and Bujiji (Nkalinzi). A small number of Tutsis (around two percent) have lived among the Ha since around the 18th century . Both groups have mixed up over time and are now linguistically and culturally closely related.
religion
The Ha (like the Tutsi) worship the creator god Imana as their highest being . Ancestral shrines and ancestral cult play a major role . The Ha believe that their fate is influenced by ancestral spirits . Nature spirits are said to inhabit fields and other parts of the country. Several Christian churches have tried to evangelize the Ha , including Catholics , Anglicans , Lutherans , Pentecostal Churches, and Seventh-day Adventists .
history
The Ha claim to have lived in Buha since ancient times . They were first described by Arab travelers in the 19th century. After that they were visited several times by European explorers and missionaries. Until the end of the First World War , their area was under unstable German colonial administration for a few years . This was followed by invasions of Belgian and British troops, which further consolidated the system of indirect rule introduced by the Germans . Regardless of this, the Ha could not be recruited as a labor force by the British during World War II , who then introduced a regulatory system with taxes, fines and wages. Since Tanzania's independence, historical kingdoms and ethnic groups no longer form the basis for the political structure.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Languages of Tanzania ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , ethnoloque.com (No. 23)
- ↑ a b c d e Ha . In: Encyclopædia Britannica .
