Banyamulenge

Population: Estimated 50,000 to 400,000, with the figure itself politically contested

Location: The Hauts Plateaux of Uvira, Fizi and Mwenga territories in South Kivu, DR Congo, above the Ruzizi plain and Lake Tanganyika

Language: Kinyamulenge, a variety of Kinyarwanda

Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (JD61, Rwanda-Rundi)

Traditional governance: Lineage elders and cattle-owning notables; a long campaign for a recognised customary entity of their own, which neighbouring communities have resisted; Congolese territorial administration.

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Clothing: Contemporary dress; the imishanana wrapped gown at weddings, shared with the Rwanda-Rundi world; herding dress otherwise practical.

Food: Milk in quantity, fresh and soured, butter, beans and maize, sorghum, and the meat eaten at ceremony; the diet is pastoral in a region of cultivators.

Ceremonies: Marriage negotiation in the staged Rwanda-Rundi manner; cattle naming and blessing; funerals; the kubandwa cult historically, now largely displaced by Christianity.

Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in cattle; marriage within the community has been reinforced by the political situation, which cuts both ways in the argument about belonging.

Initiation rites: No circumcision traditionally; adulthood is marked by a herd and a household; the transfer of named cattle marks a young man's establishment.

Every dish the Atlas publishes for Democratic Republic of the Congo, at national rather than community level — 12 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.

“The herd knows the plateau even when the map does not.”

On presence against paperwork.

“A cow given makes a relative; a cow taken makes a war.”

On cattle in the plateau's politics.

“The one asked to prove he is home is already not at home.”

A Banyamulenge remark on the citizenship question.

Creation: Imana as the creator, in the Rwanda-Rundi pattern; the kubandwa cult of Ryangombe historically; the plateau itself as the community's defining place.

Beliefs: Protestant Christianity, particularly Pentecostal, now dominant and closely bound up with community organisation in displacement; Catholic presence; the older kubandwa practice largely ended.

Ancestors: Ancestors are named onto children and remembered at funerals; the community's claim to the plateau is argued through the graves and the herds of preceding generations.

Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular and round houses on the high grassland with cattle enclosures, at 2,000 to 3,000 metres, in a landscape of few trees and hard winters by Congolese standards.

Building techniques: Pole and mud with grass thatch and iron sheet; thorn and pole cattle enclosures; woven milk vessels and churns; drystone walling where stone allows.

Village layout: Houses around a cattle enclosure, with the grazing spread across the surrounding plateau and the church at the settlement's centre.

1. Pre-1900

   Kinyarwanda-speaking herders settle the high plateau above the Ruzizi and Lake Tanganyika.

2. 1960–1981

   Congolese nationality is granted in 1972 and effectively withdrawn in 1981.

3. 1996–1997

   A Banyamulenge-led revolt begins the First Congo War; the AFDL takes Kinshasa.

4. 2004

   Congolese nationality law recognises as citizens those present at independence in 1960.

5. 2017–present

   Sustained conflict on the Hauts Plateaux displaces tens of thousands on all sides; Minembwe becomes a national political controversy.