Sub-Saharan Africa: The Batwa and Bantu

"The Batwa are a pygmy people who were the oldest recorded inhabitants of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa."

Our textbook states that the Bantu people dominated the Batwa (Pygmy) people. However, I found an essay by Dr. Kairn Kieman, which argued that the Batwa culture played a greater role in Sub-Saharan Africa history than previously believed. Therefore, the Batwa people helped shape the Sub-Saharan African culture of the Bantu people nearly to the extent that the Bantu affected them.

The textbook “Ways of the World” by Robert W. Strayer described the Batwa people as inferior. Yet Strayer believed they had some influence on the Bantu. The book said that when the Bantu spread and took over the Batwa lands, the Batwa began to speak Bantu languages. In addition, the book mentioned the metallurgy and technology of the Bantu that allowed them to gain control over the Batwa hunter-gather society (Strayer 190). Yet at the same time the Batwa led the Bantus to integrate Batwa culture. The book stated, “…the Bantu famers regarded their Batwa neighbors as first-comers to the region and therefore closest to the ancestral and territorial spirits that determined the fertility of the land and people. Thus…chiefs appropriated the Batwa title of “owners of the land” for themselves, claimed Batwa ancestry…” (191). So, the Bantu, in a way, took over Batwa land and, eventually culture, for themselves and claimed to be the Batwa, “the original land owners” of the region. The Bantu effectively decreased the importance of the Batwa and placed themselves as the “true” owners.

However, an excerpt from a book I found, The Pygmies Were Our Compass: Bantu and Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to C. 1900 C.E., by Dr. Kieman stated that there is little evidence that the Batwa people were so inferior to the Bantu. Dr. Kieman said that the idea that the Batwa people used New Stone Age tools (horticulture with little use of metals which some historians claimed was the reason the Bantu dominated them so easily) lacked evidence. Also, she wrote that there is no evidence that the Batwa became a completely hunter-gather society, but instead they most likely mixed hunting and gathering with agriculture. One part of the essay struck me as very interesting:

The notion that Batwa societies have lived in a state of perpetual servitude to their agriculturalist neighbors is belied by the large body of Bantu oral traditions about the Batwa. Across the rainforest, and even south into the savanna regions of eastern and southern Africa, Bantu traditions relate that Batwa communities were not only the "first- comers’ on the land," but also the first teachers and guides to Bantu societies, instructing them how to use fire, find fertile lands, grow food, and produce iron.

I read about the Batwa in our reading and thought about them as simply another culture dominated by the Bantu. However, now I realized that the Batwa culture influenced the Bantu culture to a great extent. This essay has revealed to me that the Batwa were able for a time to remain “a separate identity” (Strayer 191), at least for a while. Yet the Batwa most likely influenced the Bantu more than the Strayer textbook described. The Bantu definitely integrated the Batwa into their society by declaring themselves, the true “owners of the land”, but, in a way, the Batwa integrated the Bantu in their society as well by teaching them important tasks. They taught the Bantu people aspects of survival and abilities that were important in making a more advanced society. These Batwa traditions taught to the Bantu would carry on Batwa culture for many years to come, however unimportant the Batwa may seem today to some historians.

I also found an additional website that discusses the origin of the Batwa and the aspects of their culture still alive today.

Textbook source:

Strayer, Robert W. Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.

Their language has an idiosyncrasy of its own. It seems to consist mainly of clicking sounds.

The epic journey of an African Bushman, in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, starts when a Coke bottle falls from an airplane in the sky and lands in front of him. He has never seen a glass bottle before, and he takes it back to his tribe where they admire it. As they find more and more uses for the bottle, they begin to view it as a necessity. New emotions like jealousy, hate, and anger surface as conflict between members of the tribe as each tries to use the bottle for his own purpose. One member of the tribe decides that enough is enough, and that the bottle must be returned to the gods who sent it. His fictional journey illustrates the differences between the modern fast paced world and the more relaxed hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The Bushmen who live in the South African Kalahari Desert are members of an ethnic group known as the Khoisan, and are the remnants of two tribes of people. The San were an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers and the Khoi Khoi who were a tribe of pastoralists. Both tribes are known for their unusual languages that involve using a series of clicks for some consonants. This language family is confined primarily to South Africa, although there are some speakers of the language in Tanzania. Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, suggested that the Khoisan may originally have been more widespread across Sub-Saharan Africa. Archeologists believe they have lived in this area for over 20,000 years, and they may be one of the oldest peoples in the world. Discoveries of San rock art in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa depict their food sources (the eland antelope), their beliefs in the supernatural world, and their history painted on sandstone.

The history of these people is a microcosm of the broader picture of world history, where each geographic area has seen a succession of people displacing, conquering, or killing previous inhabitants. The name San literally means “those without cattle.” They were the original inhabitants of southern Africa who mixed with the Khoi Khoi from the north. The Khoi Khoi had been in contact with the Bantu people from whom they acquired cattle. The Khoi Khoi and the San eventually mixed and became the dominant ethnic group in southern Africa. The Bantu migration from western Africa into and across southern Africa between 3,000 BCE and 500 CE brought agriculture and iron technology that would serve to marginalize the Khoisan people. Later, the Europeans, with their sophisticated technology and aggressive colonial governments, dominated the region from the 17th century onwards. The Khoisan peoples have been able to survive through many generations and into the present day because they live in remote areas (such as the Kalahari desert) that are unsuitable for farming. This hunting and gathering society can give us a small idea of what life was like before humans became sedentary.