Country: Angola
Group: Kongo
Date Finalized: 09/22/2022
Team: Izzy Boker (lead), James Driscoll, Natasha Chandra, Lacey Hurst, Jocelyn Chen, and Hannah Lux
Content Warning: slavery, violence, forced displacement, sexual violence, war
Approximate Time Period: 1400s-Present
The Kongo or Bakongo people live in a northwestern region of Angola called Cabinda and speak the language of Kikongo. They make up 13% of Angola’s population. Prior to the Portuguese occupation, the Kongo kingdom was the most dominant in the region. They mainly practiced traditional African religion (Minority Rights Group International, 2015). When the Portuguese traded Kongo enslaved people in 1482, they established a tradition of enslaving people forcibly displaced by conquest (South African History Online, 2016). During the 1930s, the Portuguese colonial government forced Kongo villagers to resettle from their ancestral land to expand their rule (Temudo & Talhinhas, 2019). In the 1960s through the late 1970s, the war for independence between Portugal and Angolese independence groups led to many Kongo people fleeing from Angola. Most displaced people sought refuge in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Temudo et al., 2019).
After the ceasefire of April 2002, millions of internally displaced people in Angola remained in exile, in transit, or in temporary resettlement sites within Angola (Human Rights Watch, 2003). Many internally displaced Angolans wish to return but cannot do so because of local authorities (Refworld, 2003). A displaced Kongo woman has been living as an internally displaced person for years and stated that local authorities “told [her] to wait,” but she has been “waiting ever since there was finally peace” (Refworld, 2003).
Data Quality: The data quality is a 2 due to multiple sources of varying quality. However, there is limited information on the origins and history of the Kongo people.
Sources
1.Angola: Resettlement Process Highly Flawed. (2003, August 14). Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/08/14/angola-resettlement-process-highly-flawed
2. Bakongo and Cabindans. (2015, June 19). Minority Rights Group. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/bakongo-and-cabindans/
3. Refugees, U. N. H. C. for. (n.d.). Refworld | Angola: Struggling Through Peace: Return and Resettlement in Angola. Refworld. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.refworld.org/docid/3f4f592c2.html
4. Temudo, M. P., Cabral, A. I. R., & Talhinhas, P. (2019). Petro-Landscapes: Urban Expansion and Energy Consumption in Mbanza Kongo City, Northern Angola. Human Ecology, 47(4), 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-019-00088-6
5. Temudo, M. P., & Talhinhas, P. (2019). Dynamics of change in a ‘female farming system’, Mbanza Kongo/Northern Angola. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46(2), 258–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2017.1381842