Yeke / Garanganze

Zeke / Garanganze / Bayeke

The Garanganze, Yeke or Bayeke are a people of Katanga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Bayeke (Yeke) are derived from immigrant Sumbwa Nyamwezi conquerors. Their subjects presumably are largely Balamba, Baluba, Baushi, and Shila.

They established the Yeke Kingdom under the warrior-king Msiri, who dominated the southern part of Central Africa from 1850 to 1891 and controlled the trade route between Angola and Zanzibar from his capital, at Bunkeya.

Msiri and his people were originally Nyamwezi traders from around Tabora who migrated to Katanga to reach the source of copper, ivory and slaves to trade. They took over and merged with a Wasanga chieftainship and established a powerful base by conquering neighbouring tribes.

In 1891, Msiri was killed by the Stairs Expedition sent by King Leopold II of Belgium to take possession of Katanga for his Congo Free State. Many of the Yeke dispersed, with some settling in the Luapula Valley and the western shores of Lake Mweru around the Garanganze Missions of the Plymouth Brethren, led by Dan Crawford. Others who had been regarded as the Yeke were reabsorbed into the Wasanga ethnic group. Consequently, the Yeke or Garanganze now number only about 20,000 and speak Kisanga and Swahili, Yeke (Kiyeke) now being a language that is used only for ceremonial occasions.

 

General Info

Old Info from: Geographic Support Project. Republic of the Congo Tribal Summaries. CIA 1964

Basic Economy. Primarily agricultural. The crops raised include sorghum (Kaffir corn), maize, rice, yams, manioc, sweet potatoes, and peanuts. Sheep, goats, and apparently a few cattle are kept. There is considerable hunting and a little fishing.
Sex Division of Labor. Agricultural work is done mainly by women, but men help in preparing soil and in harvesting.
Property. Trade, especially for ivory, is important.
Social Stratification. Society is stratified into a ruling aristocracy, commoners, and slaves (obtained in war). Slave status is inherited, but a source reports that the descendants of slaves become free in three or four generations.
Settlement Pattern. There are villages, presumably compact. Houses have mud walls.
State.
The Bayeke are organized in a centralized state with a king, district chiefs, tributary states under their own chiefs, and a court with titled officials.

 

Mwami Mwenda chieftainship

The Garanganze still maintain the Mwami Mwenda chieftainship at Bunkeya, after it was exiled by the Belgian colonial authorities for some years to the Lufoi River. The chieftainship is named in honour of Msiri whose full name was Mwenda Msiri Ngelengwa Shitambi. The current chief who was enthroned in 1997 is Mwami Mwenda VIII, named Mwenda-Bantu Godefroid Munonga.

The official history of the Garanganze claims that the chieftainship survived despite neglect and opposition from the Belgian colonial authorities. However other sources say that the Belgians, whose first treaty in Katanga was with Mwami Mwenda II Mukanda-Bantu whom they had installed after killing Msiri, used the chieftainship to bolster colonial rule, conferring on the chiefs an importance which the Yeke, a relatively small tribe, did not warrant from their numbers.

Mwami Mwenda VI Godefroid Munonga was involved in the Katanga secession crisis and was appointed Minister of the Interior of the breakaway state. After Katanga was reunited with the Congo, he was imprisoned by Mobutu for a few years and after his release he was enthroned as chief in 1976.

 

The Yeke Beliefs

Throughout their history, the Yeke people have remained monotheistic. It is worth noting that their belief in an omnipotent God does not begin with the arrival of Europeans or missionaries; however, it dates to their origin in Tanzania, where they were and are still known as Basumbwa ni Linze, which means “creatures of god.”

To the Basumbwa, the name ‘God’ had different meanings. To better illustrate this point, here are some other names that the Basumbwa had for god:

  • Aliho: the one who is, He exists
  • Likazyoba: the sun or bright sunshine
  • Litayomba Muntu Kabi: the one who never speaks ill of anyone
  • Likube: the one to whom everything is subject
  • Kube Nyangasa: the sovereign lord and creator
  • Libwelelo: the universe, the one that is
  • Seba: the master, the great leader
  • Katabi: the shaper, the builder
  • Mwenekili: the one who owns the world, the master, the owner

It must be stressed that the monotheistic belief of the Bayeke (Basumbwa) is combined with the cult of ancestors, whom the Bayeke call ‘Misambwa'. Although aware of the almighty god, the Basumbwa invoke their ancestors for a multitude of reasons, because they serve as a link between the living and God.

The first Yeke king to be baptized in the Christian faith was the Mwami Mwenda Kitanika Mabumba Mushalila Numa Albert. He was the first to usher in the syncretism between the Christian and Yeke faiths. Apart from Mwami Mwenda Munongo Musamfya Ntanga, the subsequent yeke kings have been Christian Catholics.

 

The Yeke Kingdom

The Yeke Kingdom (also called the Garanganze or Garenganze kingdom) of the Garanganze people in Katanga, DR Congo, was short-lived, existing from about 1856 to 1891 under one king, Msiri, but it became for a while the most powerful state in south-central Africa, controlling a territory of about half a million square kilometres. The Yeke Kingdom also controlled the only trade route across the continent from east to west, since the Kalahari Desert and Lozi Kingdom in the south and the Congo rainforest in the north blocked alternative routes. It achieved this control through natural resources and force of arms—Msiri traded Katanga's copper principally, but also slaves and ivory, for gunpowder and firearms—and by alliances through marriage. The most important alliances were with Portuguese–Angolans in the Benguela area, with Tippu Tip in the north and with Nyamwezi and Swahili traders in the east, and indirectly with the Sultan of Zanzibar who controlled the east coast traders.

Yeke People

Msiri was in fact a Nyamwezi (also known as 'Yeke' or 'Bayeke') from Tabora in Tanzania who got himself appointed as successor to a Wasanga chief west of the Luapula River by defeating the chief's Lunda enemies. Once installed he conquered the neighbouring tribes and expanded the chieftainship into a kingdom.

From its capital at Bunkeya, the Yeke Kingdom took over the western territory of Mwata Kazembe, stopped the southwards expansion of the Luba Empire and subjugated tribes in the southwest, on the trading route to Angola.

When King Leopold II of Belgium was told that the Yeke Kingdom controlled east-west trade and was rich in copper and possibly gold, he sent expeditions to try to obtain a treaty for the kingdom to join his Congo Free State (CFS). Cecil Rhodes also sent expeditions to sign up the kingdom to his British South Africa Company's chartered territories. The 'scramble for Katanga' was won by Leopold's Stairs Expedition, which ended the kingdom by killing Msiri, and took over the territory for the CFS, but with its own administration until it was more closely incorporated into the Belgian Congo.

Captain Stairs, the expedition's leader, installed one of Msiri's adopted sons, Mukanda-Bantu, as his successor but of a vastly reduced area with a radius of only 20 km from Bunkeya, and with the status of a chief. The chieftainship continues to this day under the title Mwata Msiri.

 

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