Monday, February 13, 2017

Cunene

Cunene (or Kunene) means, in the local language, “right side” and refers to the right side of the river.

Its last king, Kwanyama, the famous Mandume, confronted the military power of the Portuguese, defending his territory, on the first decade of the 20th century.



The province of Cunene was founded on the 10th July 1970 and, unfortunately, its ancient history is not very well-known.

Historians refer that the Bantu people who now live in the territory would have probably come from Eastern Africa and created districts, more or less centralized where, from the 19th century onward, the trade of ivory and slaves flourished, leading to, among other things, the entry of fire weapons.

It was also from then on that the territory became craved by the Portuguese, English and Germans and, later on, also by South-Africans.

It was already under the South-African administration of the colony of the African Southwest (former name of today’s Namíbia) that in 1926, the border of Angola was established in the South, along a straight line between the Kubango and Cunene Rivers.

Meanwhile the Portuguese had conquered the last Bandu kingdom that became part of the Angolan territory – the Kwanyama – after the famous battle of Môngua. Probably, in the minds of the Angolans, that’s why Cunene is still connected to Kwanyama. However, Kwanyama only represents a sub-group of the ethnolinguistic group of the Ovambo, who also live in the north of Namíbia, which explains why it was divided by the borderline.

These ethnic and cultural factors, the morphological continuity of the territory, the climate similarities, the sharing of the waters of the Cunene river and the recent history explains why the economic and social life of the populations of the province of Cunene is, nowadays, very influenced by Namíbia and, particularly, by the populations of the north of that country. The learning of new techniques and skills such as masonary, metalworkering, electricity, driving, among others, are a result of such an influence.

Besides the Ovambo, represented in Angola mainly by the Kwanyama and Ombadja, there are other people from different ethno-linguistic groups living in the area.

Besides them and, in order of importance, are the Vahumbi (or Nyaneka-Humbi, as some authors call them), who traditionally inhabited the province of Huíla but are represented in the Cunene by some subgroups like the Vandonguena, Vahinga and Vahanda. They are also dedicated to agriculture and pastoral activities and related to the Ovambo, distinguishing themselves by their language, cultural features (festivities, rituals, dances), the way they dress, and the use of different techniques (construction, agriculture).

In the southwest area of the province (Kuroca and Kahama) there are also subgroups of the Vahelelo group (Va-ximba, Va-ndimba and Vakuvale), who are mainly shephards.

Also in the 19th century, the Chokwe populations arrived in the territory, that later became the Ngangela and, in the last decades, mostly after the beginning of the civil war, so did the Ovimbundu,.

All these populations are essentially dedicated to farming and the latter, as you will see further on, also to commerce. Some millions of people of non-bantu groups also inhabit the Cunene and are mainly dedicated to hunter-gathering activities.

Like in all of Angola, the original population was constituted by Khoisan (in current language often called “Bushmen”) whose territory was progressively occupied by bantu people, during a migration that invaded the region between the 16th and 17th centuries. Due to its geographical and ecologic conditions, this region never really became densely populated. However, in the 18th century, the Kwanyama had managed the right people to constitute a very stable political group (a “kingdom” in the colonial terminology).

In the 19th century, under the rush of the “European race into Africa”, the southern and northern areas of the Cunene River caused the interest not only of Portugal, but also of England and Germany. Germany was granted, by the Conference in Berlin, the territory of today’s Namíbia that bounds on Cunene river on the north. At the time, Portugal, that hadn’t taken much interest in that area, rushed to conquer the northern area of the river, only managing to succeed in the mid-1920s, after a strong resistance on the part of the Kwanyama. The fact that the Cuane River thus became a bound between two colonies of two different colonial powers didn’t prevent the population of Ovambo, divided by this line, from maintaining close boundaries with their congeners, on the other side of the borders.

This bond has lasted, with more or less intensity, until today. The inhabitants of the province didn’t get very involved in the fight for the Independence of Angola and in the final phase of the occupation the Kwanyama made a greater effort than Portugal, in the development of their area, for example, by opening more schools. Ever since their Independence the population of the province has been under a process of social and political insertion which varies a lot from group to group.

The climate in Cunene is semi-desert, tropical, dry and mega-thermal with an irregular rainfall which does not exceed the 600mm p/year. The annual average temperature is 23ºC, which varies along during the day. The highest concentration of rainfall, which is very irregular, takes place between the months of December and April..

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