Chokwe, also spelled Ciokwe, or Cokwe, also called Bajokwe, or Badjok, Bantu-speaking people who inhabit the southern part of Congo (Kinshasa) from the Kwango River to the Lualaba; northeastern Angola; and, since 1920, the northwestern corner of Zambia. They live in woodland savanna intersected with strips of rainforest along the rivers, swamps, and marshlands. They are a mixture of many aboriginal peoples and conquering groups of Lunda origin. The Chokwe language belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo languages. At the end of the 20th century the Chokwe numbered about 1,300,000.
Among the northern Chokwe, hunting is very important, and there are privileged corporations of hunters. Hoe cultivation overrides hunting among the southern Chokwe, the staple crops being cassava, peanuts (groundnuts), yams, millet, beans, and corn (maize); the southern Chokwe of Angola keep some cattle.
The political structure of the Chokwe seems to range from tributary chiefdoms to autonomous village groups. Villages are compact and arranged into compounds; square huts or circular grasshouses are grouped in circles around a central meetinghouse.
Descent is reckoned through the female line, although young married couples go to live with the husband’s family. Polygyny is restricted to the chiefly and wealthy classes. Circumcision of boys, the use of initiation masks, and elaborate girls’ initiation rites occur throughout the area. The Chokwe are exceptional craftsmen; plaiting, pottery, basketry, ironwork, and the carving of masks, statues, and stools are highly developed.
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Southern Africa: The ChokweAs the Portuguese were penetrating inland from Luanda at the beginning of the 17th century, they also moved southward. In 1617 they established a colony at Benguela, which, as in the case of the Kongo kingdom, was annexed as part of Angola in the…
Southern Africa: Legitimate trade and the persistence of slavery…outlet, and the Ovimbundu and Chokwe, renowned hunters, were the major suppliers. They penetrated deep into south-central Africa, decimating the elephant populations with their firearms. By 1850 they were in Luvale and Lozi country and were penetrating the southern Congo forests.…
Angola: Colonial transition, 1820s–1910The Chokwe were expert hunters of elephants and collectors of wax and rubber, and they used their accumulated firearms to overthrow the Lunda empire in the 1880s. The Kasanje kingdom collapsed when illicit slave trading undermined the king’s central slave market and newly enriched commoners demanded…
Central Africa: Exploitation of ivory…agents in the south were Chokwe hunters from Angola (see Southern Africa: The slave and ivory trade). They had been successful collectors of beeswax, and their trade had enabled them to build up armories of guns, which they eventually turned on their neighbours. They penetrated the heartland of the Lunda…
YaundeYaunde, a Bantu-speaking people of the hilly area of south-central Cameroon who live in and around the capital city of Yaoundé. The Yaunde and a closely related people, the Eton, comprise the two main subgroups of the Beti, which in turn constitute one of the three major subdivisions of the cluster…
More About Chokwe7 references found in Britannica articles
- artistic tradition
- Central Africa
- ivory trade
- Southern Africa