Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-06T09:05:41.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chipimpi, Vulgar Clans, and Lala-Lamba Ethnohistory1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Brian Siegel
Brian Siegel*
Affiliation:
Furman University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Common to the matrilineal peoples of eastern central Africa is their clan system, and the reciprocal joking or “funeral friendship,” relations that exist between clans with figuratively complementary names (Cunnison 1959:62-71; Richards 1937; Stefaniszyn 1950). This paper, however, focuses on the southeastern Shaba Pedicle, and the anomalous, one-sided joking between the Vulva and (allegedly pubic) Hair clans of the Lala and Lamba chiefs. I suggest that this joking, like the claim that these clans share a common mythical ancestor, is best explained in terms of nineteenth-century Lala and Lamba history, and of their competing claims to the Pedicle's easternmost end. This region of Bukanda lies between the Aushi to the north (in Bwaushi), the Lala and Swaka to the east and south (in Ilala and Maswaka), and the Lamba (of Ilamba) to the west. The main distinction among these closely-related and adjacent peoples, with their similar customs and languages, is in the histories and traditions of their chiefs.

The bizarre relationship between the chiefly Vulva and Hair clans is not widely known. I only heard of it during my fieldwork in Ilamba. The Lala, like the Lamba, straddle both the Congolese and Zambian sides of the Shaba Pedicle, and the literature on this region, in both French and English, is fragmentary and marked by an ahistorical and uncritical acceptance of oral traditions. The Lala are probably best known in relation to Mwana Lesa's Watchtower movement of the 1920s (Verbeek 1977,1983). Norman Long's Social Change and the Individual (Manchester, 1968) is the only modern ethnography on the Lala, yet this study of the enterprising Jehovah's Witnesses has little to say about dieir history or clans. Fortunately, Léon Verbeek's Filiation et usurpation (1987) has sorted through the oral and colonial histories, and has paved the way for comparative ethnohistories of the peoples on both sides of the Shaba Pedicle.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 35 , January 2008 , pp. 439 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This paper is a corrected version of the paper in Culture and Contradiction: Dialectics of Wealth, Power, and Symbol, ed,. Hermine G. De Soto (San Francisco: EM Texts, 1992), 273-93.

References

Boone, O. 1961. Carte ethnique du Congo: Quart sud-est. Tervuren.Google Scholar
Boswell, D. M. 1969. “Personal Crises and the Mobilization of the Social Network.” In Social Networks in Urban Situations, ed. Mitchell, J. C.. Manchester, 245–96.Google Scholar
Brelsford, W. V. 1965. The Tribes of Zambia, 2d ed. Lusaka.Google Scholar
Burton, R. F. 1873. The Lands ofCazembe: Lacerda's Journey to Cazembe in 1798. Translated and annotated by Burton, R. F.. London.Google Scholar
Cunnison, I. 1959. The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester.Google Scholar
Doke, C. M. 1922. “A Specimen of the Folk-lore of the Lamba People of Northern Rhodesia.” Bantu Studies 1:30–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doke, C. M. 1927. Lamba Folk-Lore. New York.Google Scholar
Doke, C. M. 1931. The Lambas of Northern Rhodesia. London.Google Scholar
Doke, C. M. 1963. English-Lamba Vocabulary, 2d rev. ed. Johannesburg.Google Scholar
Edme, P. [Bourgeois, E.] 1944. Nkoya Kalambwa: Scènes de la vie noire. Elisabethville.Google Scholar
Epstein, A. L. 1981. Urbanization and Kinship. New York.Google Scholar
Grévisse, F. 1956–1958. “Notes ethnographiques relatives à quelques populations autochtones du Haut-Katanga industriel”. Bulletin du Centre d'Etudes des Problèmes Sociaux Indigènes, 32–41.Google Scholar
Lambo, L. 1943. “Organisation judiciaire et procedure du tribunal coûtumier de Kumbwa.” Bulletin de juridictions indigènes et du droit coûtumiers congolais 11/2:26–30.Google Scholar
Lambo, L. 1946. “Etude sur les Balala” Bulletin des juridictions indigènes et du droit coûtumiers congolais 14/8:231-56; 14/9:273-300; 14/10:313–46.Google Scholar
Long, N. 1968. Social Change and the Individual. Manchester.Google Scholar
Marchal, R. 1933–1934. “Moeurs et croyances des Balamba.” Bulletin des juridictions indigènes et du droit coûtumiers congolais 1/4:62-66; 1/5:82-86; 1/6:103-06; 1/7:124-27; 1/8:153–55.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. C. 1956. The Kalela Dance. Manchester.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. C. and Barnes, J. A.. 1950. The Lamba Village: Report of a Social Survey. Cape Town.Google Scholar
Munday, J. T. 1940. “Some Traditions of the Nyendwa Clan of Northern Rhodesia.” Bantu Studies 14: 435–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munday, J. T. 1950. Inyendwa (W. Lala-Maswaka Traditions), 3d ed. Cilala.Google Scholar
Munday, J. T. 1961. Kankomba. Lusaka.Google Scholar
Richards, A. I. 1937. “Reciprocal Clan Relationships among the Bemba.” Man 37:188–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, A. I. 1939. Land, Labour, and Diet in Northern Rhodesia. London.Google Scholar
Richards, A. I. 1940. Bemba Marriage and Present Economic Conditions. Manchester.Google Scholar
Richards, A. I. 1950. “Some Types of Family Structure amongst the Central Bantu.” In African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, ed. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D.. London, 207–51.Google Scholar
Siegel, B. 1985. “The Binary Mind and the Immortal Head: a Structural Analysis of the Myth of Chief Chipimpi.” Furman Studies 31 (December):36–55.Google Scholar
Slaski, J. 1950. Peoples of the Lower Luapula Valley. London.Google Scholar
Smith, E. W. and Dale, A. M.. 1920. The Ila-Speaking People of Northern Rhodesia. 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Stefaniszyn, B. 1950. “Funeral Friendship in Central Africa.” Africa 20:290–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stefaniszyn, B. 1964a. The Material Culture of the Ambo of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester.Google Scholar
Stefaniszyn, B. 1964b. Social and Ritual Life of the Ambo of Northern Rhodesia. London.Google Scholar
Stephenson, J. E. 1937. Chirupula's Tale. London.Google Scholar
Verbeek, L. 1977. “Kitawala et détecteurs de sorciers dans la Botte de Sakania (1925-1975).” Enquêtes et documents d'histoire africaine 2:86–107.Google Scholar
Verbeek, L. 1982. Mythe et culte de Kipimpi (Rep. du Zaire). Bandundu.Google Scholar
Verbeek, L. 1983. “Mouvements religieux dans la région de Sakania (1925-1931).” Enquêtes et documents d'histoire africaine 5:entire numberGoogle Scholar
Verbeek, L. 1987. Filiation et usurpation: Histoire socio-politique de la région entre Luapula et Copperbelt. Tervuren.Google Scholar
Watson, W. 1954. “The Kaonde Village.” Rhodes-Livingstone Journal 15:1–30.Google Scholar
Fathers, White. 1954. The White Fathers' Bemba-English Dictionary. Rev. ed. Cape Town.Google Scholar
Whiteley, W. 1954. Bemba and Related Peoples of Northern Rhodesia. London.Google Scholar
Willis, Roy. 1981. A State in the Making: Myth, History, and Social transformation in Pre-Colonial Ufipa. BloomingtonGoogle Scholar