Débat sur NGONGO LETETA

This is an interesting debate over Ngongo Letete, who at one time was a collaborator and lieutenant of Tippu Tip, who was executed by the Force Publique during the bloody wars of colonial conquest, and whose death sparked an anti-colonial revolt.  He himself, was reputed to be quite brutal and is remembered with some ambiguity in the Congo. The full article can be found here.

Par Professeur Antoine Dimandja
E-mail: profdimandja@yahoo.fr

Le Débat:
Chers frères et sœurs,
Notre débat consiste à examiner un problème qui date du XIXième Siècle et qui continue jusqu’aujourd’hui à embrouiller l’histoire des Atetela et des Asonge. Il s’agit de connaître avec exactitude, de part et d’autre, la vérité sur le témoignage selon lequel Ngongo Lutete (sic) Leteta fut Otetela ou Osonge. Nos soigneuses recherches dans le temps et dans l’espace en RDC, en Belgique et aux États-unis auprès des vieux qui étaient encore en vie, et qui n’avaient pas de trous de mémoire, nous ont non seulement permis de confronter différents points de vue avec ce qui a été dit ou écrit maintes fois, mais encore conduit à conclure que ce conflit empreint d’héroïsme n’est pas définitivement tranché par nous, et partant pour notre postérité. L’histoire étant un sujet d’explication, nous devons faire un effort dès maintenant de rechercher la vérité pour la diaspora qui n’a pas de lien étroit avec notre terroir.

Comme tous ses concitoyens et concitoyennes du XIXième Siècle, nul ne sait quand Ngongo Leteta naquit. Feu Patrice Emery Lumumba fut le premier a nous révéler lors d’une entrevue dans la soirée au Guest House de la Sabena, sis Avenue des aviateurs, près de l’ancien aérodrome d’Élisabethville, où il logeait le 8 mai 1960 en tant que membre du collège exécutif général accompagnant le président Henri Cornelis, Gouverneur Général du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi dans sa dernière tournée qu’il a beaucoup lu et discuté de ce sujet avec de nombreux Européens et Congolais. Monsieur Lumumba qui parlait en otetela a déclaré sans ambages que Ngongo Leteta fut notre chef suprême et celui des Asonge. Certains Flamands notamment Père Boelaert en province de l’Equateur l’avait appelé péjorativement et erronément Ngongo Lutete dans ses articles dans Aequatoria .Il donnait comme explication qu’il était Ngongo “le vagabond”.

Pour nous et pour les Asonge, il était notre héros national. Il avait été injustement arrêté, mis sous les verrous et jugé publiquement à la hâte au poste d’Etat à Ngandu par un officier de la Force Publique Jean Scheerlinck. Celui-ci provoqua un conseil de guerre dérisoire dont il fut président. Ses deux assesseurs furent ses frères. Il ne s’était même pas référé à son chef Commandant Dhanis à Kasongo. Il le condamna a mort jeudi le 14 septembre 1893. Ngongo Leteta avait souhaité être comparu en justice à Lusambo ou à Léopoldville au lieu d’être jugé en brousse. Il avait également préféré que son fils Lumpungu dont la mère fut osonge, originaire de Malela (à ne pas confondre avec chef osonge Lumpungu de Kabinda), soit son successeur. Tout cela fut un coup d’épée dans l’eau! En présence d’une foule nombreuse et des deux autres blancs, Scheerlinck donna l’ordre au peloton d’exécution noir auquel un des blancs se serait mêlé de tirer leur gâchette à 7 heures du matin, vendredi 15 septembre 1893, et le Chef Ngongo tomba par terre.
Selon Patrice Lumumba, Scheerlinck fut incompétent pour ce jugement, seul le lieutenant Duchene, chef de poste de Ngandu fut compétent. Dhanis fut promu par le Roi Léopold II comme baron pour sa victoire sur les Arabes avec le concours de Ngongo Leteta et ses vaillants combattants sans lequel tout cela n’aurait pas été possible. Le haut officier belge le regretta jusqu’à la fin de sa vie au début du XXième S. La thèse de doctorat défendue en Flamand à l’université de Gand par Monsieur Philippe Maréchal, actuel chef de département d’histoire au Musée Royal De l’Afrique Centrale, en fait foi.

Répondant à notre question sur un de ses articles relatif à Ngongo Leteta que nous avons lu dans un journal méthodiste (EMECOCE) à Wembo Nyama en 1956, Monsieur Lumumba confirma qu’il avait pris l’habitude à Stanleyville alors qu’il était commis postal de commémorer jusqu’à ce jour l’exécution ou la mort de notre chef suprême ou souverain chaque 15 septembre de chaque année. En effet, ce fut lui et les chefs Asonge Lumpungu, Mpanya Mutombo ainsi que leurs vaillants guerriers qui nous ont délivrés de l’occupation arabe et mirent fin à la traite des esclaves qu’ils pratiquaient non seulement au Maniema, mais aussi au Sankuru. Nos frères et sœurs qui devinrent esclaves transportaient les pointes d’ivoire de Lomami a travers le Lualaba jusqu’a l’ océan Indien où les Sultans arabes les vendaient aux européens, sans aucun espoir de retour. On se rappellera que ces derniers pratiquaient le trafic des esclaves sur les côtes d’Afrique depuis le XVIième Siècle. Au XIXième Siècle, le Congrès de Vienne le condamna en 1815, mais malgré les diverses conventions qui le prohibaient, le trafic ne put disparaître que peu après que Ngongo Leteta eut astucieusement changé des camps notamment l’abandon des Arabes et l’appui des Européens. Pour Monsieur Lumumba qui fut à la fois détribalisé et leader nationaliste, il importait peu si Ngongo Leteta fut Otetela ou Osonge.
Au moment où il entra au service des Blancs le 19 septembre 1892, lui et ses braves combattants devinrent instrument utile de décolonisation contre les Arabes comme lui à l’égard des Belges en 1960; sauf que Ngongo joua le rôle de colonisation....

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Coverage of East Africa in the Omani Media (Oman Observer)

I was given the article from the Oman Observer, a well-known Omani newspaper, by a friend who is interested in my research topic. Its interesting for several reasons: 1) the anonymous author clearly knew a lot about Tippu Tip and his descendants, and somehow has access to some rare pictures of them, and 2) Oman is proudly referred to as an empire. I have been seeing this empire talk with greater frequency in Omani media sources, and I wonder if the stigma once associated with that word has now faded enough so it can be used with pride. The controversy over Oman and empire has to do with the association of the word empire with imperial and imperialism. It returns to the vexed question: was the Omani presence colonial on the East Coast of Africa. The answer is 'no'....and 'yes'. Or, 'it depends when and where you are talking about.' And the question is not just historical: it has to do with how one thinks about contemporary national identity and citizenship in post-colonial African states like Zanzibar. I think the concept of layered imperialism is helpful to understanding Omani expansion, but this is a deep and sensitive topic that deserves a special post.

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Tippu Tip's family tree

Put this together a while back. Feel free to save, use and revise if you find it useful.

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From Wildlife Direct: Europeans, Arabs and Africans in the Congo, 1892-1894

Blood, Ivory and Lomami Slave Wars

All hell broke loose on the Lomami River during the 1890s.It began east of the Lualaba in the 1860s, with the rise of the Arab ivory trade. Tippo Tib from Zanzibar (where he started life as Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi ) carved out a Congolese Sultanate. Slaves hauled his ivory to the markets of Zanzibar often hefting a single tusk at over a 100 pounds.Tippo Tib, ivory merchant and slave trader, built a successful empire in eastern Congo. This picture first published in 1889, The Illustrated London News.His favorite slave, Ngongo Luteta, came to him as a young boy. Luteta was from the Batetela tribe that lives where the Lomami plunges from high savannah plateau, to forest islands and into unbroken forest. Ngongo Luteta rose fast and became a leader of Tippo Tib’s wanguaana (Arabized Congolese) warriors and the strategist who brought the most ivory and slaves back to his master. Tippu Tib was so pleased with the dashing Luteta, that he freed him when he was only 25 and sent him home to the Lomami.
But Tippo Tib sent Ngongo Luteta with a clear mission: caravans of ivory must come east to him from the Lomami and the Tshuapa basins. Luteta was immensely successful. Great graves of elephant bone rotted in the forest duff, the ivory was carried east. The people of the Lomami who carried the ivory, were enslaved and their societies torn asunder by the firearms and cold determination of Ngongo Luteta.
Ashley, 120 years later, when his dugout was not more than two days south of Opala , wrote “Not many people here. This forest is empty” . He repeated it all the way to the savanna. Were the massive slave campaigns initiated by Ngongo Luteta partly to blame?The Lomami River is depopulated here in the north and Ashley found fewer and fewer people as he moved up stream and deeper into the forest.Ngongo Lutete is hero and nemesis.
I have no picture of him (send it if you find one), but here is a description written by a begrudgingly respectful European of the 19th century (The Fall of the Congo Arabs, Sydney Hinde, 1894)
He was a well-built, intelligent- looking man…with a brown skin, large brown eyes, very long lashes, …and a straight narrow nose. His hands were his most remarkable characteristic: curiously supple, with long narrow fingers. One or both hands were in constant movement, opening or shutting restlessly. His features meanwhile remained absolutely immovable.
The description of him in battle was even more suggestive:[Ngongo Luteta] hissed out his orders one after another without a moment’s hesitation. He was capable of sustaining intense fatigue, and would lead his warriors through the country at a run for hours together.
Ivory was big money and the Europeans wanted it. Ngongo Luteta met the Belgians on the rivers of their new colony and realized he could make more profit trading his ivory to them. The Arab’s suzerainty was at stake. Tensions rose, a European ivory merchant who had set up two trading posts on the Lomami River, Arthur Hodister , was massacred with ten other whites and the Belgo-Arab wars began in earnest. Nongo Luteta was fighting on the side of the Belgians and the Congo Free State.
Although carrying an anti-slavery banner, there was no doubt that control of resources (importantly elephants) was central to the Belgian King, Leopold II.Francis Dhanis, main Belgian architect of the war, marched to Ngandu, Nongo Luteta’s post on the Lomami River in 1892. Hinde describes it thus:N’Gandu was a fortified town by the river-bank, with four gates, each approached by a very handsome pavement of human skulls, the bregma being the only part showing above ground. I counted more than 2000 skulls in the pavement of one gate alone. The campaign trail followed by Commander Dhanis with Capt. Hinde. First stop, before engaging in battle, was for reinforcement at Ngongo Lutete’s village of N’Gandu
Francis Dhanis with his Belgian officers and fighting men were strengthened by Ngongo Luteta and 10,000 of his men. Together they marched on to meet the Arabs further east.Fighting at the Arab stronghold, Nyangwe
Numerous times Ngongo Luteta’s courageous tactics pushed a battle to victory for the Belgians. In January 1894 the Belgians prevailed and central African trade routes no longer led to Zanzibar in the east but now the ivory and eventually the rubber, copper and gold all went out to the Atlantic on the west.Commander Dhanis led the campaign to drive the Arabs from the Lomami, Lualaba and all Maniema province, 1892-1894
Francis Dhanis was made a baron by King Leopold II of Belgium for his exemplary perseverance, foresight and skill throughout the campaign. But Baron Dhanis expressed a strong regret over what had occurred just four months before he received his honors in Belgium:
At N’gandu, Ngongo Luteta’s home on the Lomami, on the 15th of September 1893, a Belgian army officer named Jean Scheerlinck independently decided that Ngongo Luteta was a traitor. Without consulting his superior, Francis Dhanis, he court-martialed Luteta, had him condemned to death, and put before a firing squad.
Curious and sad what is excused by war.

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The Frontier in Indian Ocean History

As part of an Envirornmental History class for the esteemed Dr. John McNeill, I am trying to integrate an ecological and envirornmental focus into my study of identity, trade, social change and state building in the Eastern Congo. In other words, I want to know not only how merchants like Tippu Tip built nascent state structures and incorporated Swahili, Manyema, Nyamwezi, and other corporate or ethno-cultural groups into their organization, but also how the movement of these merchant-princes impacted the ecology of the Eastern Congo. What kind of crops did the Swahili Arab settlers plant? What sort of envirornmental changes did they set in motion?

It occured to me that such a project may be difficult to undertake without delving into Congolese and Omani archives. So, as part of a related but alternate set of questions, I would also like to explore how the competing discourses of Belgian, British, German and Arab primary sources sought to portray the envirornmental and social changes the Arabs set in motion. On the one hand, the Arabs called Nyangwe the 'New Bengal' and viewed themselves as bringing civilization and order to the land. They tamed the forest, and brought peace and order.

On the other hand, the many European travel accounts emphasize the devastation of Arab slave-trading, the many famines (which they linked with Arab settlement) and the general negative impact of the Arab presence. Of course this discourse itself, even if it was accurate, came to fulfillment only with European colonization--the worst years of ecological and social devastation were assuredly after the 1890s and the routing of Arab power in the Congo.

This relates back to the concept of the frontier in Indian Ocean history. Is there a way I can talk within an Indian Ocean framework of land-based frontiers? On the surface it doesn't appear to be an obviously helpful narrative framework. However, there are compelling cultural links (the presence of Comorians, Baluchis, and Omani Arabs in the Congo) and economic links (Indian financiers in Zanzibar linked the Congo River basin with the circuits of Indian Ocean capital) that make such a framework interesting. Using the idea of systems theory, which posits that we can find common features of a given 'unit' in terms of shared aspects of organization, I submit we can talk of the penetration of Indian Ocean cultural 'clusters' and the integration of Central Africa into Indian Ocean economic exchange and have legitimate historical evidence to back up our assertion. I am reminded as I consider this question of John Wilkinson's insight about Oman: "Oman as a 'natural' region has no real frontiers: like all such regions it tends to be rather more 'Omani' in places than others."

So it goes with the Indian Ocean: if we identify a set of shared religious practices, common clothing items, culinary features, familial organization, vocabulary, and more, that are found in the Indian Ocean, then certain places will have more ties than others, and this is also related to which 'features' we choose to compare.

Of course the challenge is to determine how much the 'Indian Ocean' actually explains; we want it to do some theoretical work, but we would err to depend on it to do heavy historical work as it relates to Central African history in general--most of the history of the Eastern Congo has logical connections with other lake regions in Tanganyika, Zambia, as well as points north in Uganda. But the fact that so few historians have even attempted to use it to look at the history of Central Africa during the late nineteenth century means that some potentially valuable understandings from this perspective can be integrated in with the existing literature.

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Makazi mpya

Nimehama eneo tofauti. Sasa nipo al-Ghubra. Basi, Niongee Kiarabu lakini wazazi wangu wapya wanaongea Kiswahili. Wanatoka Kenya, mjini Mombasa. Ijapokuwa wao ni 'Omani', wao ni Swahili pia. Wana bendera ya Kenya iko sebule. Ninashangaa kuongea Kiswahili zaidi kuliko kilometa elfu tatu kutoka Afrika Mashariki. Baba na mama wanakaa na mwanao nyumba moja imeyokatwa. Upande ni Wazazi, halafu upande nyingine ni mwanao na familia yake. Mke wake anatoka Kenya. Hawaongei Kiarabu. Wao wako mwema sana. Wamenipokea kabisa. Nimefurahi sana.
Picha hii ipo daraja juu ya barabara karibu na nyumba yao.
Ah, Kuna mambo muhimu sana niliyosahau kuwaambia: The father is the great-grandson of Tippu Tip!! That is, his father's mother was Tippu Tip's daughter! If you were in my Middle East Research Seminar, or know about my Masters paper topic, I know you will understand how crucial that is!

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The African Presence in Oman: Research Questions

My research looks at the influence of Swahili culture on Oman. This research is extremely relevant at the present time. The Arab/African dichotomy has been the subject of extensive media coverage due to the conflict in Darfur. Unsurprisingly, the media focuses only on conflict, reducing a complex historically-negotiated relationship to an ugly racial divide. The history of Oman offers another example of extensive cultural interchange between Arabs and Africans and may help shed light on questions of how intermarriage and migration complicate the simplistic Arab/African dichotomy. It also may shed light on questions of power vis-à-vis family identity.
There are various groups of people who all could be considered African, in one way or another, but who may identify as Arab, Swahili, or simply Omani. Africans in Oman have diverse origins: some come directly from East Africa for employment, while others have someone (usually a mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother) from East Africa. Still others are the descendants of Africans brought by Omani slave traders until the late nineteenth century.

My research starts from the premise that the culture that became Omani—primarily coastal Arabs of the southeast peninsula—had its origins in maritime pursuits and connections with the larger Indian Ocean world. For example, Oman in the nineteenth century encompassed diverse groups of people-- Indian traders who made up the core of Muscat’s overseas financial empire, Baluchi mercenaries, Swahili Arabs like Tippu Tip, and indigenous Zanzibaris.
Those I refer to as Swahili Arabs migrated to the Swahili coast in large numbers beginning in the early 18th century and continued until the end of the nineteenth century. There were two major waves of migration—early 18th century, after the overthrow of the Portuguese, and mid-nineteenth century, with Sultan Seyyid Said’s move to Zanzibar.

This migration gave rise to a distinct Omani influence on the coastal culture of East Africa. Tippu Tip’s family was one example of the Swahilized Arabs who traded and intermarried in Mombasa, Zanzibar, Tanga, Bagamoyo, and other city-states of the mrima.

I am most interested in contrasting the community of Swahili Arabs with their fellow Omanis. This means tracing the history of each community, their mother tongues (Arabic vs. Swahili) and the ways in which they constitute themselves as individuals and social groups. Do all now consider themselves ‘just’ Omani? What religious and cultural differences separated Zanzibari/Swahili Omanis from other Arab Omanis? Is there a social stigma in Oman in being from Zanzibar? What kind of economic differences are there between the two groups What aspects of culture in Oman can be said to have an African origin? Which nisbas are most associated with migration to East Africa?

One way I hope to answer these questions is through an individual who in many ways straddles these divides. Hamed bin Muhammed el-Murjebi, the most famous of the nineteenth century Swahili ivory-traders, was the great grandson of an African woman and an Arab migrant trader from Oman. The first part of my research is directed towards finding relatives of Hamed bin Muhammed el-Murjebi (Tippu Tip) and interviewing them, as well as tracing any documents related to Hamed bin Muhammed’s life and family.
Arab/African Intermarriage

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Not a Dark Star by Far

Home to D.C. Well, not really home. Traveling these days is a sojourn of displacement, with no true permanence of place. And that is as it should be. I leave for my mother and father's house in a few days, then on to Zurich, Switzerland where I connect on a flight to Dubai, and then take a bus to Muscat to get settled and begin Arabic classes.

And what of my time in Africa? A part of me, perhaps the part obsessed with bringing closure to each event in my life, needs to write a 'sum-up', a massing, collecting, and labeling of what I have experienced and what I have learned from it.

At one time, I fancied myself something of a travel writer, with the ambition to travel anywhere and everywhere, preferably under the most difficult circumstances, and as an ordinary person, not a tourist. Apparently this is a sentiment I share with the world-renowned travel writer Paul Theroux, whose interesting and vexing Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown I have just finished. (Hey it was only $3 in Lamu).

I have many criticisms of the book, the least of which are the occasional linguistic errors in Swahili. But first, much respect to Theroux for eschewing the triumphal safari writing of innumerable travel books about Africa. He seems much more interested in the people than the animals, and he has some interesting (though not particularly new) insights. His prose is bitterly hilarious and compelling, an absolute joy to read. The work is shot through with amazing stories of struggle and triumph and Theroux can humanize his characters when he wants to.

But for all its virtues, Theroux's model of Africa as a 'dark star', a separate planet, relies too heavily on nineteenth century European tropes about Africa as an unknown wasteland, in Hegel's words, "the land of children and midnight." Theroux is well aware of this voluminous literature (he even cites some of it), yet he is content with this tired metaphor of the alien continent.

Africa is still an object for Theroux's desire to 'get away' and be unreachable and unconnected. He wants to be Huck Finn striking out for the territory. He courts Africa's danger, its 'primitiveness' for his own ends. Yet here is the curious part: even as Theroux embraces this aspect, he is angry at it. He seems embittered that Africa has not 'progressed' enough and that foreign aid, corruption, and rising urbanization contribute to Africa's difficulties. There are two contradictory visions of Africa described by Theroux--one a idyllic vision of rural survival, of changeless humanity, and secondly, a mass of pathological human beings and utter lawlessness and backwardness whose attempts to progress have only ended in chaos.

In this respect, Theroux is not far from Conrad's own view of Africa in Heart of Darkness, which illuminatingly, Theroux reveals he read thirteen times during his trip. As a lens through which to interpret Africa, Conrad's limitations as an author have been amply discussed. Why is there no discussion by Theroux of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart as a counterpoint to the distorted view of African humanity offered by Conrad?

Having done a bit of the travelling on some of the routes and destinations Theroux undertakes in his book (especially via bus) I can say that the displacement, the disgust, and the raw anger that overtakes Theroux at the inefficency and danger of Africa are part of a peculiar and quite common Western attitude towards Africa, not some feature inhering in the landscape or the personalities of the people. Its not that Theroux is wrong on many counts; the roads are in many places as horrible as he describes and there is small or big time venality. For example, I lost my bus ticket to Nairobi and was forced to pay off the clerk to write 'lost ticket' on a piece of paper and stamp it with the proper mark. This despite the fact that he had written my ticket in triplicate, and he still possessed the two receipts in his notebook!

No my problem is with Theroux's inflated sense of his own self-importance, his rage that he is basically treated as an ATM by begging Africans, and his outrage that he is given the honorific 'mzee.' His feelings underscore how his attempts at objective reporting are still colored by an invisible sense of turf, that he knows how the world 'ought' to work. I can imagine Theroux visiting Tippu Tip's house in Zanzibar and being outraged at the drunk squatter living at the top floor angrily demanding money for the privilege of seeing the house. I can almost hear Theroux saying, "Why isn't the government doing something about this?" The subtext to his outrage: "This would never happen in America!"

This is power at work, and whether or not you would like to call it white skin privilege or simply the arrogance of money and Western education, Dark Star Safari provides a quite interesting look at a very subtle instance of the attitude that treats Africa as a place of pathology and absurdity, not as a potential reservoir for practices of how to be human, how to survive and thrive. As a species, we learned virtually every survival skill (including social habits) in Africa, especially along the route Theroux traveled--home to the oldest civilization (Sudan and Egypt) and the oldest human bone specimens (Ethiopia and Kenya). Theroux even touches on this, but the grouchy-Westerner-observing-the-intractable-problems-of-Africa is the dominant narrative of his book.

As for me, my safari was an adventure, a test, a research expedition, and a time to reflect. It was indeed a head-clearing experience. Somehow, maybe not even consciously, I came closer to being authentically 'myself' above and beyond any external definitions. And I began to confront some difficult and painful personal issues relating to my desire to please others at any expense. Inshallah, I will be back, and soon.

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