The Bunda people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are an ethnic group that mostly live in Idiofa Territory of Kwilu Province. They speak the Mpuono language, spoken by an estimated 806,000 people as of 2024 (Peoplegroups.org, 2024).
The Babunda (Ambundu, Ambunu, Ambuun, Babounda, Babundu, Bambunda, Bunda, Mbunu) are a Bantu nation which, according to one source is an offshoot of the Kimbundu of Angola. Murdock lists the Banbunda as a subtribe of the Bandinga.
The Belgian colonial administration originally gave Idiofa Territory the name of "Babunda Territory" after the Bunda people, who formed the majority of the population. They are still the most important group in the center of Idiofa territory. The Bunda are the majority of the population of the administrative center of Idiofa.There are also Bunda populations in Bulungu Territory and Gungu Territory.
The Bundu territory has a tropical climate with alternating dry and rainy seasons. The region has abundant water resources, the most important rivers being the Lubwe, Loange, Kamtsha and the Piopio. Precipitation in the rainy season is so intense that it is a major obstacle to farming and a time when food may be scarce. Hunting and fishing are individual activities during this period. Food is abundant in the dry season, the main season for communal hunting and fishing.
Primarily agricultural. Millet is the staple crop, but a little manioc, maize, and hemp also are grown. Domestic animals include goats, pigs, dogs, cats, and chickens. Milk is not used. Fishing is mentioned by one source and there is a very little hunting (with dogs). Trade is very important, and markets are large.
Men cut and clear land, but women do all other agricultural work. Both sexes fish -- women in small streams, using baskets; men in rivers at night, using flares and bows and arrows.
Livestock are used as currency. Land is owned by the clan-community, individuals having usufruct in cultivated plots.
Inheritance is matrilineal. One source says the heir is the eldest surviving brother, then the eldest sister, and then the eldest sister's eldest son, but another source denies that siblings inherit and states that the heirs are sistersf sons.
One source reports three social classes: freemen <mbwil), free descendants of slaves (ingwil), and slaves CosoT:" Slaves are obtained through capture" in war, purchase, or settlement of debt. A man may not marry his own slave. The child of a slave woman belongs to her sib if the father is also a slave, but to the father's sib if he is free.
The normal residential unit is an independent polygynous family.
The local group is a neighborhood of dispersed homesteads, each apparently occupied by a polygynous ¡family. Each community also has a special house for travelers and unmarried men. Dwellings are square and have palm-leaf walls and pyramidal thatched roofs.
The neighborhood is an avunculocal clan-community, with marked solidarity. Settlements reveal a strong tendency to subdivide; a wealthy man — with his wives, slaves, and a few relatives and their families — often breaks off and founds a new settlement.
Each settlement has a headman. Succession is matrilineal, by younger brother or eldest sister's eldest son.
One source reports that each community tends to be politically autonomous but that a rich chief sometimes forms a peace group by giving a cannibalistic feast to the headmen of neighboring settlements, thereby binding them to refrain from future slave raids against each other Another source, however, reports that the . Babunda have three sacred paramount chiefs, who are primarily religious figures, and that under each there are districts or subtribes with their own families.
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