Barotseland

by D. E. C. Stirke

The Rev. Mr. Jacottet has shown how rich Siluyi was in folk-lore and legends. It is a great pity this particularly interesting, expressive Bantu tongue should be allowed to die out through the vogue given to the artificial amalgam of speech known as Sikololo.

Subia, spoken in Southern Barotseland, on and near the Zambezi at its bend eastward, is also a language of great interest, said likewise to be dying out under the rivalry of mongrel Sikololo. It was first noticed by Livingstone about 1851, and a grammatical sketch of it was given by Jacottet in 1896. But in the present century, F. V. Worthington and C. F. Molyneux, officials of the Chartered Company, supplied me with a full vocabulary and grammatical information which has been reproduced in my Comparative Study, Vols. I and II. Subia is spoken to the south of the Zambezi as far eastward as Pandamatenka; but it belongs to the West Central Zambezia Group, mainly in use on the north side of the great river, and including the Tonga, Ila and Lenje tongues and their dialects. This group is related to the Luba languages of Southern Congoland and to the tongues of the Bangweulu basin and of the Luangwa valley. They are all beautiful-sounding and expressive languages, representing Bantu speech in an attractive form.

The Tonga language is spoken in South-East Barotseland in one or more dialects. The Tonga people are a series of vigorous tribes not very likely to give up their expressive language in favour of the bastard Sikololo or the crabbed Sechuana. They attained some degree of civilization two centuries ago under the teaching of Portuguese Jesuit missionaries. Their attitude towards Livingstone and later travellers, down to the incoming of the British South Africa Company, was hostile. James Chapman, the great explorer of Southern Zambezia and even of Barotseland—in some senses the rival of Livingstone—suffered much from attacks at their hands. So did F. C. Selous. They also warred incessantly against the Zulu invasions under Umsilikazi and Lobengula, and checked the Zuluizing of central Northern Zambezia, which, in default of similar vigorous opposition, took place in the regions east of the Luangwa river.

Similarly related to Tonga and Subia are the Ila (Shukulumbwe) and Lenje tongues, though both lie almost or wholly outside the limits of Barotseland, in the central part of Northern Rhodesia. The Ba-ila tribes, two divisions of which are also known as the Ba-lumbu and Ba-shala, are a splendid-looking folk in physical development, who were long recalcitrant to European influence. In fact their healthy plateau country has only been opened up to knowledge during the last twenty years. When they were first seen in the latter part of the nineteenth century they were found to be—the men especially—living in a state of complete nudity, except in the case of the married women. But to make up for the complete neglect of clothing the men devoted particular attention to their head-hair. This was pulled up, greased, lengthened by the insertion of ancestral hair pullings, and fastened to a supple arched, recurved whip, so that it rose a foot to two feet above the occiput. Nowadays I imagine that their complete nudity is modified. The mining surveys, motor roads, and suggestions of railways, together with good and wise government, in and out of the Barotse kingdom, have succeeded in taming the Ba-ila and in drawing them into paid employment; though it is still feared by watchful administrators that they tend to diminish owing to sexual vice which causes the women to become infertile.

Another language of interest and importance is that of the Nkoya and Mbwela tribes living in East Barotseland. It has affinities jointly to the Luyi Group and to that of the North-West Zambezia languages. Preprefixes are not used, but the seventeen prefixes-with-concords seem to be fully represented in primitive forms, except that the seventh prefix (Ki-) is represented by Shi-, which brings it near to the Si- of Luyi. The tenth prefix is lisped as Thi-, Thin-, &c., a feature reappearing in one or two other tongues of the Group. The eighth prefix is Bi- and the locative prefix is Pa-. The root for ‘two,’ in the numerals is the East and South Africa form, -bidi or -biji (for -bili); not the -bali root that obtains in the other members of the North-West Zambezian Group. Another peculiarity that signalizes Nkoya is the root -mwa- for ‘all,’ only to be met with elsewhere in two of the Manyema languages of East Congoland. In Nkoya there is none of that dislike to the consonant p, which recurs over and over again in Bantu Africa. But in the other members of the North-West Zambezia Group this obtains, and in these—Luena, Mbunda, Lujazi and Chokwe—the 16th prefix is given as Ha- or A- instead of Pa-. Otherwise they are fairly orthodox, betraying little more “West African” affinities than the use of the -bali root for ‘two’ (instead of -bili), which is a characteristic of West Central Africa.

The Luena or Lubale language only enters the north-western part of Barotseland; Mbunda is spoken in separate parts on either side of the Upper Zambezi, also in the north of this state; Lujazi extends from South-East Angola to the western limits of Barotse territory; and Chokwe comes in as a trading language in the extreme north. None of these North-West Zambezia languages use preprefixes.

One other great Bantu Group may be met with in the northern part of Barotseland. Here there are outlying dialects of Luba and Lunda which have penetrated into Barotseland comparatively recently. The Luba tongues of South Congoland are represented by Kahonde, a form of South Luba illustrated in my Comparative Study under the designation of 105a. This is spoken on the North-Eastern verge of Barotseland in the basin of the Upper Kabompo river. Southern Lunda, introduced into the northern part of this territory goes under the name of “Ma-bunda,” the root of which—bunda—is the same as that of “Mbunda,” a quite distinct language of the North-West Zambezia Group allied to Luena, Lujazi, Nkoya, and Chokwe. “Bunda” is evidently a language and tribal name which in the shapes of -bundu, -bundo, and -bunda haunts Angola and Western Zambezia without implying close relationship between the different forms of speech thus termed. The “Ma-bunda” dialect of Lunda may represent an older form of the latter name, which seems to be a contraction of Lu-unda for Lu-bunda. The language (No. 111) which I have styled “Western Lunda” in my Comparative Study was originally called by its discoverer, the Revd. S. Koelle, “Ru-unda,” suggesting that Ru- (= Lu-) was the familiar language prefix and -unda or -bunda the root. The loss of an initial b is a frequent occurrence in the Lunda languages.

The distribution of tongues southward from Angola and the Congo Basin over the regions north of the main Zambezi river indicates no causes of hesitancy, no interruptions in the north-to-south progress of the Bantu peoples. But westward of the course of the Luangwa river, as far as the Barotse country extends, or at any rate as far as the main stream of the Zambezi flows, this great river seems to have been a very decided and arresting barrier in the distribution not only of African tribes and languages but of the larger or more remarkable mammals and birds.

With regard to man of course the barrier has not been so effective. Evidently the Aluyi people of long ago crossed the Upper Zambezi and penetrate to the Lower Kwando or Chobe, and across this stream to the vicinity of Lake Ngami, though not much farther west; and in return, immigrants of Bechuana stock entered Barotseland from Lake Ngami in the last century. But there seems to have been a not easily explained halt in human migrations between Western Zambezia and South-West and South Africa. It would be comparatively easy to account for, if one could presume that the present sterile influence of the Kalahari desert prevailed two thousand or even one thousand years ago, and earlier still. But on the contrary from the many indications we can collect and from the legends of the natives in the regions south of the Zambezi, we are inclined to believe that the present arid nature of the lands on the western side of South Africa is quite a modern feature which has gone on rapidly increasing. So rapidly that even I who made a journey in 1882 to the Kunene river from Mossamedes can remember flowing streams (in the dry season) and forests, where the rivers and rivulets are now dry and the woodland is dead.

There seem, in addition, to have taken place in comparatively recent times, changes in the disposition of water supplies, which have diverted much useful moisture from inner South Africa into the Atlantic Ocean. Not such a very long time ago the Kunene river, which brings an abundant supply of fresh water from the great knot of highlands in Southern Angola, bore this water into Lake Etosha in Ovampoland, and beyond that towards the course of the Okavango or the great vanished lake of which Ngami is the surviving vestige: Ngami, which even in Livingstone’s day—the end of the ’forties, some seventy-two years ago—was twice its present size. Into the same basin flowed the mighty Okavango (known much farther north as the Kubango), the Kwando and the upper Zambezi, then the outlet of another vast lake in the Barotse country. Quite possibly these two shallow lakes of huge size sent their overflow of water through the Guay river into the bed of the Zambezi-Kafue, and so out into the Indian Ocean after all; for these waters of Central Africa were completely hemmed in southwards by the plateaux of Damaraland, Bechuanaland and Matebeleland. But in those days the ultimate source of the Zambezi would have lain in the Benguela highlands near the Atlantic Ocean, and not in the Luvale country near to the upper Kasai.