Azande people
The Azande are an ethnic group in Central Africa speaking the Zande languages. They live in south-eastern Central African Republic, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as south-central and south-western South Sudan. The Congolese Azande live in Bas-Uélé, Haut-Uélé and Tshopo provinces along the Uele River; Isiro, Dungu, Kisangani and Duruma. The Central African Azande live in the districts of Rafaï, Bangasu and Obo. The Azande of South Sudan live in Central, Western Equatoria and Western Bahr al-Ghazal States, Yei, Maridi, Yambio, Tombura, Deim Zubeir, Wau Town and Momoi.
Etymology
The word Azande means "the people who possess much land", and refers to their history as conquering warriors.The onomatopoeic name Niam-Niam suggests cannibalism and was sometimes used for the Azande people. It was possibly circulated intentionally to create fear among ethnic groups in the Azande's period of regional conquest. The name shows up on 19th-century maps of Southern Sudan and is now considered pejorative. First used by other tribes in southern Sudan, it was later adopted by Westerners, who frequently used it to refer to the Azande in the 18th and early 19th century. The British Museum website indicates as spelling variants Niam niam, Niam-niam, Nyam nyam, Nyam-nyam, Neam Nam, Neam Neam, Neam-Nam, and Neam-Neam. The Turkish word for cannibal is "yamyam", deriving from this name.
The plant species Impatiens niamniamensis is named after the Azande people.
History
The Azande were formed by a military conquest during the first half of the 18th century. They were led by two dynasties that differed in origin and political strategy. The Vungara clan created most of the political, linguistic, and cultural parts. A non-Zande dynasty, the Bandia, expanded into northern Zaire and adopted some of the Zande customs. In the early 19th century, the Bandia people ruled over the Vungara and the two groups became the Azande people. They lived in the savannas of what is now the southeastern part of Central African Republic. After the death of a king, the king's sons would fight for succession. The losing son would often establish kingdoms in neighboring regions, making the Azande Kingdom spread eastward and northward. Sudanese raids halted some of northward expansion later in the 19th century. As a consequence of European colonialism in the 19th century, the territory inhabited by the Azande was divided by Belgium, France, and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.During his travels in the late 1870s, the Austrian photographer Richard Buchta took photographs of Azande that were used in European publications about Central Africa and constitute an important source of historical documentation.
The Azande are considered to be one of the last ethnic groups to move into the region and were the only group that did not engage in an agro-pastoral lifestyle. The Azande were considered skilled metalworkers in pre-colonial Sudan. Although the Azande did not originate in South Sudan, many other ethnic groups in the region also migrated into the region though the Azande's late arrival has made them the target of some cross-ethnic animosity.
In 2015, conflict between the Azande and the Dinka ethnic group in the city of Yambio, Western Equatoria state led SPLA chief Paul Malong Awan to instruct soldiers to open fire on anyone insubordinate to his directives. Awan implemented plans to soothe the situation in the region as ethnic tensions flared.
Amnesty International documented evidence of war crimes in 2021 as warring factions from the larger Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups attacked the Azande and Balanda Bviri ethnic groups from the Western Equatoria region. Additional conflict broke out between Azande and Balanda factions as well.
Zande Scheme
In 1938, the Governor of Sudan ordered a survey of areas of modern-day South Sudan by Dr. J.D. Tothill, who previously oversaw agriculture in British Uganda, to evaluate the region's potential for agricultural production. The Azande region was selected for agricultural experimentation because it was designated as food secure. The British got tribal and Indigenous leaders to support the plan and attempted to run a propaganda campaign to urge the local community to abide by the Azande Scheme. The Scheme was organized to reduce reliance on imports and promote self-sufficiency. It emphasized growth and processing of valuable commodities for local use and export. The exports were supposed to pay for necessary imports. Originally hailed as a success by many scholars, the program largely failed, partly because of the Azande's relative isolation to trading ports and lack of sufficient infrastructure to bring in the machinery required to build a finishing and manufacturing sector in such a rural area. Additionally, the roads were not of adequate quality for exports and the British government deemed the prices too steep to justify. The project required extensive human and monetary capital investment which the British government realized was too substantial. Because of this isolation, many Azande have moved to towns closer to major roads.Though the plan emphasized cotton, crops that maintained soil health were promoted and land was allocated specifically for palm oil production to assure substantial yield and quality. The plan included cattle farming which the British identified as deficient prior to the Zande Scheme. Experimental agriculture was introduced to eventually reduce cotton as the region's primary crop. Coupled with the agricultural development, the British built industrial infrastructure further north near Khartoum to process the cotton and export it. Though the plan eventually failed, its ambitions were to turn Sudan into a wealthy state by the 1970s and was initially regarded as being on track to reach or exceed the goal.
The plan's failures were attributed not only to lack of resources but failure to adequately train the population to shift from older agricultural methods. An immediate retrospective of the plan's failure pointed to lack of bureaucratic oversight in enforcing the tenets of the plan, leading to homestead mismanagement. When entrenched methods of farming proved increasingly difficult to dissuade, experimental farming techniques required additional investment to compensate for inefficiencies. These additional costs played a role in leading the British to abandon the project.
Demographics
The Azande population is spread over three Central African countries: South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Azande Kingdom extends from the fringes of the South-central and Southwest Upper basin of South Sudan to the semitropical rain forests in Congo, and into the Central African Republic.Estimates of Azande speakers reported in SIL Ethnologue are 730,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 62,000 in the Central African Republic and 350,000 in South Sudan.
Settlements
The types of houses that the Azande built were made from mud and grass, which they framed around wooden poles and thatched with grass. Each household was built around a courtyard so that they can gather and converse with each other. Adjacent to these courtyards were kitchen gardens that were for plants that did not require large scale farming such as pineapples and mangos.In order to implement the Zande Scheme, the British sought to establish new settlements in the region, centered around cotton ginneries. In order to improve access throughout the region to encourage commutes between settlements in the region, the British contracted Azande laborers to modernize 100 miles of roadway and construct bridges to traverse rivers. The British also constructed agricultural training facilities and experimental farms in Yambio and pushed urbanization schemes in the region.
The British resettled 60,000 Azande people into newly constructed settlements of 50 families named gbarias. These settlements helped the British facilitate oversight concerning their plan's implementation as well as the development of academic and medical institutions. Families were given 25-40 acres of land and answered to a gbaria chief.
Social and political organizations
The Azande were organized into chiefdoms that can also be called kingdoms. The Avongara were the nobility and passed it down through their lineage. Chiefs had many roles within the chiefdoms such as being military, economic, and political leaders. All the unmarried men were laborers and warriors.Within the chiefdoms clan affiliation was not stressed as important at the local level. They had "local groups" that were similar to "political organizations".
Colonial records described the Azande as "individualists" who, prior to villagization under the Zande Scheme, lived together in family groups on homesteads with women carrying out agricultural duties.
Sleeping sickness caused internal migrations and social reorganization among the Zande people, leading them to coalesce around paths of travel, which meant that they exhausted soil nutrients near thoroughfares.
Agriculture
The Azande are mainly small-scale farmers. Crops include maize, rice, groundnuts, sesame, cassava and sweet potatoes. Fruits grown in the area include mangos, oranges, bananas, pineapples, and also sugar cane. Zandeland is also full of palm oil and sesame. From 1998 to 2001, Zande agriculture was boosted since World Vision International bought agricultural produce.The British colonial authority noted in 1948 that the importation of mangoes into the Azande region from the Congo around the turn of the 20th century. In the ensuing years, mangoes grew to prominence being planted throughout the Zande territory with "avenues" of trees surrounding many of the roads in the region around the middle of the 20th century.
Since then, the Azande have hunted and farmed millet, sorghum, and corn. Major cash crops include cassava and peanuts.
The region in which the Azande live has two seasons. During the rainy season the women and men both help get food from the river. Women help with the fishing in dammed streams and shallow pools collecting fish, snakes, and crustaceans. Men make and set up traps in the river to help with the collection of food. Another food that the Azande collect and eat is termites which are their favorites.