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The Banda people are an ethnic group of the
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic (CAR; ; , RCA; , or , ) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the DR Congo to the south, the Republic of th ...
. They are likewise found in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
,
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
, and
South Sudan
South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the C ...
.
[Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Banda (people)](_blank)
/ref> They were severely affected by slave raids of the 19th century and slave trading out of Africa. Under French colonial rule, most converted to Christianity but retained elements of their traditional religious systems and values.
Demographics
Estimated to be around 1.3 million people at the turn of the 21st century, they constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the Central African Republic, traditionally found in the northeastern part of the country.[
The Banda people speak languages belonging to the Niger-Congo family,] known as Banda or Ubangian language
The Ubangian languages form a diverse linkage of some seventy languages centered on the Central African Republic. They are the predominant languages of the CAR, spoken by 2–3 million people, and include the national language, Sango. They are ...
s. The Banda languages have variations; nine distinct geographically distributed vernaculars are known.
Slavery
The Banda people were severely affected by slave raids from the north, particularly from Wadai and Darfur, in the early 19th century, and later by Khartoum
Khartoum or Khartum ( ; ar, الخرطوم, Al-Khurṭūm, din, Kaartuɔ̈m) is the capital of Sudan. With a population of 5,274,321, its metropolitan area is the largest in Sudan. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile, flowing n ...
ers led by al-Zubayr. These captured and sold the Banda people into slavery. Many migrated south and west along the Ubangi River
The Ubangi River (), also spelled Oubangui, is the largest right-bank tributary of the Congo River in the region of Central Africa. It begins at the confluence of the Mbomou (mean annual discharge 1,350 m3/s) and Uele Rivers (mean annual discharge ...
.
According to Ann Brower Stahl, a professor of Anthropology specializing in Africa studies, the medieval towns of Banda people such as Begho were probably a source of slaves between 1400 and 1600 CE, with slaves going to Islamic North Africa, the primary trade being in women and children before 1500 CE. By the 16th century, slaves from the Banda regions were in use as production labor in Sudanese Islamic states, and this trade in slaves remained fairly steady in the centuries that followed. Dennis Cordell, a professor of History specializing on Africa, places the slave raiding and trade practices earlier to the 11th- and 12th-century raids in southern Libya, then to Lake Chad area, which he states thereafter expanded south into the Banda people's region.
The killing, enslavement and carrying away of the Banda people by slave raiders from regions that are now part of Chad
Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...
, South Sudan
South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the C ...
and southeastern Central African Republic
The Central African Republic (CAR; ; , RCA; , or , ) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the DR Congo to the south, the Republic of th ...
led to their depopulation, a situation further worsened when European colonialists gave weapons to the slave-raiding states.[, Quote: "During the 19th century, slave raiders from what are now Chad, South Sudan and southeastern CAR began to penetrate Banda territory and killed or carried away many of its inhabitants. The arrival of European colonialists at the turn of the 20th century initially provided slave-raiding states with more weapons and this contributed to the depopulation of much of eastern CAR, but the French suppressed slave raiding once they established the colony of Ubangi-Shari. By this time, however, many Banda communities in eastern CAR had disappeared altogether."] In the late 19th century, they were raided by "slave hunters" from the south by armies of the Zande states now part of Congo and South Sudan, led by Arab traders who had set up Zariba (slave trading centers). The slave raiding of the Banda people was suppressed when the French Ubangi-Shari
Ubangi-Shari (french: Oubangui-Chari) was a French colony in central Africa, a part of French Equatorial Africa.
It was named after the Ubangi and Chari rivers along which it was colonised. It was established on 29 December 1903, from the U ...
colony was established in this region.
According to American history professor Richard Bradshaw, the Banda people along with their neighbors, the Gbaya people
The Gbaya, also Gbeya or Baya, are a people of western region of Central African Republic, east-central Cameroon, the north of the Republic of Congo, and the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the first half of the 20th century, the ...
, lived a generally peaceful life before the 19th century, after which Kevin Shillington
Kevin Shillington is a teacher and a freelance historian based in Dorset, England, United Kingdom.
Education
He graduated from Trinity College, located in Dublin, Ireland, with a major in modern history in 1968. Shillington did his postgradu ...
states "African slave traders and then European colonialists introduced unprecedented violence and economic exploitation into their lives". Greek social anthropology professor G. P. Makris states that the Banda people, along with the Nuba and Gumuz ethnic groups, were also a major victim of slave trading by Turco-Egyptians, and ''Banda'' is a synonym for slave or bondman in the Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and ...
.
Society
Structure
The Banda are a patrilineal
Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...
ethnic group, who traditionally have lived in the Savanna
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...
s north of the Congo, in dispersed home groups guided by a headman. They sustain themselves by hunting, fishing, gathering wild foods and growing crops. During times of crisis, to resist slave raids and to respond to wars, the Banda selected war chiefs. After the crisis was over, they relieved their warriors of their powers.
Culture
The ethnic group is locally famous for craftsmanship, specifically carved wooden objects used for rituals and general utility, as well as their large animal-shaped slit drum
A slit drum or slit gong is a hollow percussion instrument. In spite of the name, it is not a true drum but an idiophone, usually carved or constructed from bamboo or wood into a box with one or more slits in the top. Most slit drums have one slit ...
s. These drums, now attributed by various names such as Banda-Yangere, were used by the Banda people for musical celebrations and as tools for transmitting messages. The Banda-Linda group is known for their music using wooden pipes, also called Banda-Linda Horns.
In contemporary times, the Banda people are settled farmers in the Savannas. Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor perce ...
and cassava
''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively ...
farming was promoted among the Banda people by the French colonial officials, while Christian missionaries won many converts during the French rule. Most Banda people are now Protestants (52%) or Catholic (38%). However, they have retained many of their traditional beliefs alongside those of Christianity, such as making sacrificial offerings to ancestral spirits for seasonal success for crops.
The Banda people have their rites of passage, such as ''Semali'' which recognizes the crossing into adulthood. At weddings, dowries in the form of bridewealth
Bride price, bride-dowry ( Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride do ...
have traditionally included iron implements for the family. Polygyny
Polygyny (; from Neoclassical Greek πολυγυνία (); ) is the most common and accepted form of polygamy around the world, entailing the marriage of a man with several women.
Incidence
Polygyny is more widespread in Africa than in any o ...
was practiced historically among the Banda people, but this practice has declined in modern times.
See also
* Slavery in Africa
* Arab slave trade
History of slavery in the Muslim world refers to various periods in which a slave trade has been carried out under the auspices of Arab peoples or Arab countries. Examples include:
* Trans-Saharan slave trade
* Indian Ocean slave trade
* Barbary sl ...
* Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
* Dar al Kuti
Dar al Kuti ('Dar al-Kuri' in some sources) was an Islamic state in the center and northwest of the present Central African Republic which existed from around 1830 until 17 December 1912. From around 1800 the name Dar al-Kuti was given to a stre ...
* List of ethnic groups of Africa
The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands, with each population generally having its own language (or dialect of a language) and culture. The ethnolinguistic groups include various Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Saharan ...
* Ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
This article is about the demographic features of the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
As many as 250 ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Banda People
Ethnic groups in Cameroon
Ethnic groups in the Central African Republic
Ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Ethnic groups in South Sudan