Gbaya

Gbaya, a people of southwestern Central African Republic, east-central Cameroon, northern Congo (Brazzaville), and northwestern Congo (Kinshasa). Numbering about 970,000 at the end of the 20th century, they speak a language of the Adamawa-Ubangi subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family that is related to those of their Banda and Ngbandi neighbours.

The Gbaya migrated southeastward from what is now the Hausa area of northern Nigeria early in the 19th century, fleeing the jihad (holy war) of Usman dan Fodio. Led by Gazargamu, their war chief, the Gbaya vanquished, assimilated, or drove ahead of them the peoples that they encountered. Contemporary Gbaya subgroups, which include the Bokoto, Kara, Buli, Kaka, and Bwaka, reflect this integration of defeated peoples. The Gbaya, in turn, were attacked annually by Fulani slavers from what is now northern Cameroon.

The Gbaya resisted French forces throughout the colonial period, notably in the early 1920s, because of the brutal impressment of Gbaya men and women as porters and labourers. In 1928 they began what became a three-year revolt in response to conscription of slave labour for the Congo-Ocean Railway. A French “nightmare campaign” decimated the Gbaya to an extent that was evident for several decades.

The Gbaya observed patrilineal descent and traditionally had a stateless society. In the past, war chiefs were selected only in times of crisis and were divested of their powers thereafter. Village chiefs were arbiters and symbolic leaders, but they were later made into administrative magistrates by the French colonizers. Clans were the primary identity group within which marriage, religious ceremonies, and trade with outsiders (e.g., Arab caravanners) were regulated. Age groups called labi cut across clan identities and further assured intergroup solidarity in times of war; initiates received training in agricultural, social, and religious knowledge and skills.

Rural Gbaya grow corn (maize), cassava, yams, peanuts (groundnuts), and tobacco. They also hunt and fish. Coffee and rice, introduced by the French, are cash crops. The diamond rush of the late 1930s greatly disrupted traditional life of Gbaya in some regions; diamond prospecting continues to be economically important.