Amba people

Amba / Bahamba

Amba / Bahamba / Kwamba / Baamba / Bamba

The Bahamba (Amba, Awamba, Baamba, Bamba, Bambwa, Buamba, Wawamba) are a Bantu tribe located in border area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda south of Lake Albert in the northern foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains.

On the Uganda side, they are found in Bundibugyo District. On the Congolese side, they are located in the Watalinga and Bawisa subcounties of Beni, South Kivu.

Globally, this group totals 67,100 in 2 countries. The Amba of Uganda are numbering 7,100 (Peoplegroups.org, 2024)

Amba people

The Bahamba comprise two groups, who live interspersed:

 

Basic Economy

Primarily agricultural, with brand tillage and hoe cultivation. The staple crop is bananas, followed by manioc, sweet potatoes, maize, and millet. Other crops include peanuts, befcns, pumpkins, taro, and yams. Important cash crops are coffee, cotton, and dry rice (recently introduced). Hunting is very important, fishing slightly less. Cattle are lacking, but goats, sheep, dogs, and chickens are numerous.

Agriculturalists, the Amba traditionally cultivate plantains, millet, maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts, rice, coffee, cotton, and cassava, while raising goats and sheep.

 

Sex Division of Labor

Men hunt, fish, herd, and clear land. They also grow cash crops, especially coffee but women do most of the cul­tivation. Women trade; then obtain iron and salt from the Toro via the Konjo, and they trade agricultural products to the Hima or Tuku in exchange for meat and fish.

 

Language

The Amba language spoken by the Amba is called, variously, Kwamba by the Amba themselves and is known as Kihumu in the DR Congo. There are many others. It has a 70% lexical similarity with Bera. Dialects include Kyanzi (Kihyanzi) and Suwa (Kusuwa).

 

Property

There is no money. Goats are the chief movable property. Land is owned in principle by the village, but individuals acquire heritable usufruct by clearing a plot (right not lost by reversion to forest).

Inheritance is patrilineal — by sons, then brothers.

 

Social Stratification

Slavery is absent. Bands of Pygmies attached to Bahamba groups are looked down upon; they enjoy a symbiotic relation­ship with the Bahamba, however, trading meat for iron im­plements and agricultural produce.

 

Family

Polygynous family househould are the norm. Small patrilocal extended families, consisting of the families of a father and married sons, are corporate groups and sometimes, but not always, residential;units; a hamlet is often a patrifamily.

 

Settlement Pattern

The local group today is commonly a cluster of hamlets, each consisting of 1 to 10 huts and apparently normally occupied by a small extended family. The population of a local group ranges from 50 to more than 300, The original settlement pattern was a compact village consisting of two rows of houses along each side of a broad street or plaza with a men's house at either end or near the center. Such villages were protected by a dense hedge along the sides and by palisades and a wooden gate at either end. The dwellings are round with cylindrical plank walls and conical roofs thatched with grass (Ln the east) or leaves (in the west). One source, however, reports beehive huts with thatched root's extending to the ground and a recent shift to rectangular houses with thatched roofs and walls of wattle and daub.

 

Community Organization

A settlement is a patrilocal clan-community, that is, a localized major patrilineage, with exceptions due to varia­tions in residence. The villages of a sib normally are not contiguous. The plots of land held by an individual are scattered in various parts of the settlement.
The Bahamba like the Konjo but unlike the Toro, practice circumcision. Circumcision takes place at intervals of about 15 years.

 

Local Government

Early sources report a clan chief or headman, who dis­tributes the land, and a council of elders. One source denies the existence of any chiefs or headmen and reports that authority is vested in a local council of old men.

 

State

There is no political integration above the local level. Today, however, the Bahamba of Uganda are part of the kingdom
of Toro, and are administered by a chief appointed by the Toro government.

 

History

The Amba were part of the armed Rwenzururu movement against the Toro Kingdom and central government that reached heights in the mid-1960s and early 1980s. In 2008, the government recognized the Kingdom of Rwenzururu, formed by the Amba and Konjo peoples, as Uganda's first kingdom shared by two tribes.

The Amba were part of the armed Rwenzururu movement against the Toro Kingdom and central government that reached heights in the mid-1960s and early 1980s.

In 2008, the government recognized the Kingdom of Rwenzururu, formed by the Amba and Konjo (Konzo) peoples, as Uganda's first kingdom shared by two tribes.

 

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