The Chokwe people, known by many other names (including Kioko, Bajokwe, Chibokwe, Kibokwe, Ciokwe, Cokwe or Badjok), are a Bantu ethnic group of Central and Southern Africa. They are found primarily in Angola, southwestern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa to Lualaba), and northwestern parts of Zambia.
There are two distinct seasons that occur in the Chokwe region: a rainy season between October and April, and a dry season for the remainder of the year. This weather had a huge impact on village life; the Chokwe farmed, hunted, fished, and built houses according to the changing of the seasons.
The Chokwe people have many different forms of artwork and many extant examples are kept in museums abroad.
Demographics and language
Estimated to be about 1.3 million, their language is usually referred to as Chokwe (or Kichokwe, Tshokwe), a Bantu language in the Benue-Congo branch of Niger-Congo family of languages.
Many also speak the official languages of their countries: English in Zambia, French in Democratic Republic of Congo, and Portuguese (as first or second language) in Angola.
The Chokwe have many neighbors that consist of the Lunda, Pende, Mbangani, and Kete to the North; Minungu, Lwena, Luchazi, Mbwela, and Mbundato the East; Holo, Mbundu, Imbangala, Songo, and Ovimbundu to the West; and the Kwanyama to the South. Many of these ethnic groups have historical links to the Chokwe as well as sharing many traditions and speaking similar languages.
History
The Chokwe were once one of the twelve clans constituting the Lunda Empire in 17th- and 18th-century Angola. Initially employed by Lunda nobles, the tribe Balkanized from the Lunda oligarchy following a series of civil disputes, including refusal to pay tributes to the sitting king. Their trading and resources brought them relative wealth in comparison with other neighboring tribes. By 1900, the Chokwe had overthrown the Lunda kingdom (also called the Mwata Yanvo) altogether. With this, the Chokwe language and sociopolitical influence began to dominate northeastern Angola and the other 11 tribes of the former Lunda kingdom. As the conflicts escalated during the colonial era of the 19th and 20th centuries, both from Europeans to the west and the Swahili-Arabs to the east, the Chokwe mounted a reactionary-military insurrection and expanded further into northern Angola, Congo, and West Zambia.
The Portuguese had virtually no contact with the Chokwe until the 1830s, when the Chokwe began trading wax, rubber and ivory. Eventually, the Portuguese brought an end to the dominance of the Chokwe in the regions of northern Angola, Congo, and Zambia. Reacting to this changing status quo, civil unrest amongst the Chokwe grew into violence; by 1961, a war broke out in Angola, which ultimately ended in 1975 when the Portuguese left the country. Although war between the Portuguese came to an end, civil wars between the many different communities of Angola lingered due to the resulting power vacuum. This ended in a peace agreement that did not end the fighting completely.
Chokwe, Lunda, Lwena/Luvale, Luchazi, Ovimbundu, and Mbunda chiefs all share common ancestry which can be traced back to the Lunda migrations in the sixteenth century.
Slavery
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Chokwe found themselves divided between those who ended up as slaves, and those who bought and kept slaves of their own from within and abroad. The Lunda nobles of Angola employed the Chokwe as soldiers to counterattack the new colonial influence acting against the old political powers. Once the Chokwe people had weaponry, however, they overthrew the Lunda nobles and enslaved foreign tribesmen on their own plantations following the second half of the 19th-century and the early decades of the 20th. The slaves sourced from other ethnic groups of Africa became a prized possession sought by the Chokwe. In the upper Zambezi river and Kasai regions particularly, they were once a victim of well-armed Portuguese or Belgian raids from the West and Arab-Swahili raids from east (such as by Tippu Tip also known as Hamad bin Muhammad el Murjebi); later, the Chokwe people joined the violence and victimized others by capturing and shipping out a substantial number of captured slaves for financial gains, as well as purchasing and keeping slave women in their own homes from the profits of their craft work.