Azande

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Azande

PRONUNCIATION: uh-ZAHN-day
LOCATION: From upper Nile basin in the southern Sudan to the borders of semitropical rain forests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
POPULATION: 3.8 million in all countries
LANGUAGE: Azande (Niger-Congo group)
RELIGION: Beliefs revolving around ideas associated with mangu (witchcraft); Christianity
RELATED ARTICLES: Vol. 1: Sudanese; Central Africans; Congolese; Zairians

INTRODUCTION

The ethnic term Azande refers to a culturally diverse group of peoples who, over the past 200 years, have been brought together under the governance of a number of distinct kingdoms. They call themselves Azande but others call them simply Zande. Other alternate names are Azande, Zandi, Pazande, Sande, and Badjande. Little is known of their history prior to this period and reliable first-hand accounts of the Azande only began to appear toward the middle of the 19th century. By the 1950s, however, the Azande had become well-known to anthropologists through the ethnographic monographs written about them by British anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard. Indeed, one of the lasting classics of modern anthropology, his Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, is still cited in contemporary textbooks. It is widely accepted that the ancestors of Azande society migrated from the west, from what is now the Central African Republic, into the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the southern region of the Sudan, beginning perhaps 300 years ago. Because of their relative physical isolation from colonial centers of governance, the Azande practiced many traditional beliefs and customs well into the 20th century. Azande now live across the borders of three modern nation-states, and in recent decades they have been more exposed to the effects of market economies, missionary education, and related phenomena, so generalizations about the Azande as a whole are difficult to make.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

Reliable estimates of population figures for the Azande are not available. As of 2008 it was estimated that some 3.8 million people considered themselves ethnically Azande. Azande territory covers a vast expanse of land—some 500 miles from east to west—from the fringes of the upper Nile basin in the southern Sudan to the borders of semitropical rain forests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Azande are found in the Maridi, Yambio, and Tambura districts in the tropical rain forest belt of Western Equatoria (a state in southwestern Sudan) and in Bahr el Ghazal (a region in southwestern Sudan). The Azande are also found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic; areas, which originally constituted part of the great Azande Kingdom destroyed by the Belgian, French, Mahdists of Sudan, and finally the British in the context of the European scramble for Africa.

The open savannah forest laced with streams that comprise the Nile/Congo divide marks most of Azande country. Changes in micro-environmental zones have a direct impact on modes of production, principle subsistence crops and modes of settlement of the Azande. Throughout this region of Africa, there is a season of intermittent rain (roughly from April to October), followed by a dry season (from November to March) when rain seldom falls. In pre-colonial times, Azande homesteads were typically dispersed. A common pattern was for men who shared patrilineal ancestry to live in the same general area. A circular hut was the primary living space, and this was surrounded by gardens of one to two acres where a man and one or more of his wives cultivated staple crops, from sorghum to cassava. Footpaths through the savannah forest interconnected homesteads of closely related relatives. An expanse of uninhabited terrain separated one such cluster of homesteads from the next. Homestead clusters were typically located near one of the many streams transecting the countryside, as streams provided fishing and other resources. During the colonial period, many Azande were forced to move from this type of settlement in an alleged effort to eradicate sleeping sickness. The result was that many Azande found themselves living in European-style villages of parallel straight streets, often living next to people who were strangers rather than kinsmen. This change had a significant impact on Azande culture in general, and particularly on Azande notions of witchcraft (see Religion and Interpersonal Relations ).

LANGUAGE

The Azande were an expanding secondary series of kingdoms at the time of European domination in Africa. The Azande speak Zande language. The linguist Greenberg (1963) classified the Azande language as one of the Niger-Congo group. The Azande are a Bantu group and their language is similar to the other Bantu languages. Approximately five dialects of Azande are spoken throughout the area they occupy. Dialects include Sango in Central African Republic and Dio and Makaraka (Odio) in Sudan. The speech of the Azande in Sudan is fairly uniform, with a few exceptions (Mbomu, Sueh-Meridi, Bile, Bandiya, Bamboy, Bomokandi, and Anunga. In the contemporary world, most Azande also speak rural dialects of Arabic, French, or English. The Azande language is a tonal tongue, so that significant semiotic usages result from different pitches used in pronouncing identical lexical units.

FOLKLORE

Traditional Azande culture was rich and highly developed as is common in non-literate societies. The anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard collected hundreds of Azande folktales and legends and published as many as he could in the Azande language with English translations. Probably the most important and comprehensive collections of this genre are found in Evans-Pritchard's book, The Zande Trickster.

The most famous Zande tales all center on the imagined activities of the trickster Ture. The character of a trickster is common to folklore throughout the world. Typically, the trickster is an animal or human protagonist who inverts the standards of expected behavior, who flaunts and ridicules the accepted order of things by doing the inverse. In Evans-Pritchard's understanding, Ture could be regarded as a collective manifestation of Azande personality. The animals act and talk like persons because people are animals behind the masks social convention makes them wear. What Ture does is the opposite of all that is moral and all us can see ourselves in Ture. The Azande character of Ture is also closely related to an important element of traditional Azande folklore known as sanza, or “double-speak.” Evans-Pritchard wrote that sanza “includes any remark or action which is intended to be oblique, opaque, ambiguous, any words or gestures which are intended to suggest a meaning other than they have in themselves, which have, that is, a double meaning, a manifest meaning and a hidden one.” Azande use sanza in conversations between princes and commoners, husbands and wives, at beer parties, and in the language of love.

There is no one single myth that describes the origin of the Azande people. The general Azande belief is that people return to life after death, reincarnated as an animal (often a lion). The most important royal chiefs may be reincarnated as leopards, pythons, snakes, warthogs, or rats. Some believe that lightning is the reincarnated spirit of a royal clan chief. When an animal dies, it signifies the end of that specific life force. Th us, Azande man will only kill an animal in self-defense.

RELIGION

Historically, the Azande practiced animism. Modern Azande are more likely to practice Christianity. Their traditional beliefs revolve around magic, oracles, and witchcraft. The Azande term mboli might be translated as “divinity” or “god.” In explaining misfortune, death, and the complications of life, Azande more typically assigned the responsibility to mangu or “witchcraft” rather than to mboli. Witchcraft is believed to be an inherited substance in the belly that lives a fairly autonomous life, performing bad magic on the person's enemies. Indeed, Evans-Pritchard, the best-known ethnographer of Azande custom and belief, suggested that a Western notion of divinity was largely a consequence of foreign ideas in Azande discourse, the result of Islamic and Christian influences. During the period of British colonial rule in this part of Africa, policy dictated that formal education was to be provided by practitioners of various Christian faiths. Th us, becoming Christian was often a consequence of becoming literate. At the present time some Azande profess faith in Islamic principles and others profess Christianity, but beliefs about causation, death, and misfortune still revolve around mangu.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Azande clans, which consist of several families with a common ancestor or ancestors, gather for important occasions, including weddings and funerals.

RITES OF PASSAGE

When an Azande woman becomes pregnant, tradition and superstition dictates that she avoid certain foods, including water buck meat and mene, a type of sweet potato. These foods are believed to cause miscarriage.

When the child is born, there is no special ceremony. When the infant is four days old, a fire of green leaves is made at the threshold of the house. The green leaves create a smoky fire and the mother, with the infant in her arms, sits in the smoke for a short period. The smoke is believed to give the newborn infant strength. After the fire dies out, the ashes and any remaining leaves are strewn on a path leading to the village. This action is believed to protect the infant from illness and disease.

Before colonization, boys were often initiated into manhood by serving the Azande nobility. Later, a ritual circumcision, held in the forest, became common, although this practice has also been discontinued. Modern Azande perform circumcision on their boys when they reach the age of nineteen. This circumcision ritual is unrelated to Islamic practices.

The Azande do not circumcise girls. Rather, girls are initiated into their gender role by observing and assisting their mothers. Traditionally, in order to marry, an Azande male had to present the bride's family with a ritualized payment (called “bride-wealth”), often consisting of a number of iron spears. As of the 21st century, the bride-wealth is more commonly paid in cash or in the form of material goods, such as cloth, cassava, or goats.

The Azande have no special ceremonies connected with marriage.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

Social identity was largely established by membership in a specific kinship group, by the division of labor, by an over-arching patriarchal social order, and by the hierarchical order of Azande political life. Thus, one was either born a commoner or a member of the royalty, or was incorporated into one or the other through warfare or slavery.

One of the central facets of life among the Azande is their belief in witchcraft, which is used to explain and cope with all kinds of adversity, both great and small. Rather than singling out particular individuals as witches, the Azande believe that anyone is capable of causing the misfortunes of another person by ill will toward that person—even if he is unaware of doing so. (Women are excluded from the tradition surrounding witchcraft.) When something bad happens to an Azande, he must first find out who caused it. For minor problems, an Azande consults an oracle that he reaches by rubbing two pieces of wood together as he tries out the names of different suspects. The perpetrator is identified when the pieces stick together instead of rubbing smoothly against each other. For major misfortunes, the “chicken oracle” is consulted. In one version of this procedure, poison is placed on the beak of a chicken. If the chicken dies when a certain individual is named, then that is the guilty party. Once the perpetrator of misfortune has been pinpointed, the aggrieved party confronts him and asks him to stop his witchcraft. On hearing of his misdeeds, the “witch” has no trouble believing that he is indeed the cause of his tribesman's misfortunes and makes amends by expressing his goodwill toward the victim and spitting on the wing of the dead chicken.

Azande witchcraft encompasses every conceivable adverse occurrence, from tripping over a tree root to adultery and murder (for which the oracles were traditionally submitted to a type of court). Witchcraft practices are also associated with social standing within the tribe because they give an added measure of status and control to wealthy householders, who often use their chickens to consult the oracle for a less fortunate kinsman or neighbor who doesn't have enough chickens of his own.

LIVING CONDITIONS

In pre-colonial times, Azande lived in dispersed settlements where patrilineal relatives tended to live in close proximity. In colonial times, efforts were made to relocate Azande into European-designed towns. Traditionally huts were made of wood and mud, and each individual homestead was surrounded by gardens tended largely by women. In polygynous marriages (marriages in which one man had more than one wife), each wife had her own hut where she lived with her minor children. In the past, hamlets such as these were interconnected by footpaths through forest and open savannah. The introduction of bicycles and automobiles during the colonial period had a dramatic impact on inter-hamlet relations, especially in terms of the introduction of cash crops and a market economy.

In the past, when Azande lived in dispersed settlements, communal diseases were rare. Personal health was largely affected by bacterial diseases typical to subtropical environments. Malaria, sleeping sickness, and schistosomiasis (a waterborne disease) were common causes of death in pre-colonial Azande country. Many Azande have gained Western knowledge of medicine in recent decades.

FAMILY LIFE

Azande society is divided into the royal clans and commoners. The royal clans, known as the Avungara are descended from Gbudwe, a strong leader, and his two sons, Yambio and Tambura. Most commoners were incorporated into the Azande through wars, conquest, and other means of assimilation. Azande settlements consist of single households made up of a man and his wife (or wives).

Azande follow certain social norms. Children are reared but by their birth mother and all the patrilineal kin living in nearby homesteads. Children are taught how to cultivate domesticated plants at an early age. Young boys are taught about hunting and fishing.

CLOTHING

Azande women wear cloth skirts. Infants and children wear necklaces made from chains of metal rings. Some Azande also have their heads wrapped in cord, which is thought to protect their brains from malevolent spirits. In the past, Azande musicians wore costumes consisting of a cloth skirt, an elaborate headdress, and beads and bangles on the arms and around the ankles.

FOOD

The traditional dietary staple of the Azande is a type of millet called eleusine. In the western portion of the group's territory, this has been replaced by cassava. Other crops include rice, maize, sorghum, squash, legumes, okra, peanuts, greens, and bananas. To supplement their diet, the men hunt game and the women catch fish. Chicken and eggs are considered delicacies, as are termites during the dry season. Beverages include palm wine and spirits made from cassava.

EDUCATION

Some Azande live in towns with modern educational facilities. Access to Western-style education has had both social and political effects. In some areas, power traditionally held by the royal elite has passed to educated commoners.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Both vocal and instrumental music, as well as dance, play a significant role in Azande culture. The most common traditional musical instrument of the Azande is a small, bow-shaped, harplike instrument, often decorated with a small carved human head at one end. The Azande also make a variety of other instruments, many with designs that incorporate human or animal forms. One is a mandolin-like stringed instrument modeled on the human figure, with a peg approximating a head perched atop an arched neck and legs and feet at the base. Another is the sanza, made of wood or hollowed gourds, which is similar to a xylophone but in the shape of a dancing woman, with arms and legs jutting out from the body of the instrument. Other typical instruments include a bell in the shape of a stylized human figure with the arms used as handles and various drums shaped like cattle.

In addition to a variety of functional items, Azande artwork includes carved wooden sculptures thought to have been given as gifts by tribal chiefs.

WORK

The Azande have developed an agrarian lifestyle in response to their physical environment. They engage in subsistence farming because their homesteads are typically established a long distance from the markets. Food crops produced include maize, cassava, telebun (millet), yams, fruits: mangoes, citrus, pineapples, palm trees (from which they extract ombiro—palm oil), and coffee. They also have exotic and economically important hardwood trees such as mahogany and teak. The Azande hunt, using traps, nets, and heavy spears, and fish in the streams that flow through the countryside.

In 1948 the Equatoria Project Board (EPB) was established to develop the economic potential of the Zandeland. The Azande were encouraged to grow cotton as a cash crop. Enterprises were established to gin cotton and weave cloth and to produce edible oils, soap, and other products from cotton. This project helped link the Azande economy to other markets in south Sudan.

SPORTS

Typical sports among the Azande include sparring (one-onone fighting), which serves as a way for males to practice their combat skills.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

Singing and dancing are major forms of entertainment among the Azande, especially at feasts and other celebrations. Storytelling is another popular form of recreation.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Functional artwork includes wood, bark, and pottery storage boxes. The distinctive Azande throwing knife, the multi-bladed shongo, is used in combat. It is made of copper or steel and adorned with elaborate patterns. Some of these knives are also used as bride-wealth (payment a man makes to acquire his wife). Other folk art includes pots, wooden utensils, and woven mats and baskets.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Although relative calm was restored to Sudan by the 2005 pact between the SPLA and the Khartoum government to end the civil war, at the time of this writing in 2008, the Azande, along with hundreds of thousands of the people living in the southern Sudan, had fled the Sudan to live in neighboring countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and the Central African Republic. As a result, much of traditional Azande culture and custom is endangered or has ceased to exist.

Still, security is an issue among the Azande. There have long been tensions between the Azande and the Dinka. From across the Congo border there were accounts of abuses of Azande refugees by armed groups and returning refugees returning to Sudan have been accompanied by Congolese refugees.

Infectious and parasitic diseases like malaria, diarrhea, HIV-AIDS, and sleeping sickness pose a grave danger to the Azande population.

GENDER ISSUES

Traditional Azande society was highly patriarchal. Women's roles were limited to the domestic sphere. Women were responsible for raising the children, farming, preparing food, and completing the household chores. Men held all positions of public authority, with women being subservient (in a lesser, obedient position) to their husbands. A marriage was arranged by contract between two families and involved the exchange of goods, known as bride-wealth. Commoner men typically had just one wife, but nobles, and in particular kings, had many wives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Tim. “Witchcraft, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS among the Azande of Sudan.” Journal of Eastern African Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (November 2007): 359–396

Baxter, P. T. W., and A. Butt. The Azande and Related Peoples of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the Belgian Congo. London: International African Institute, 1953.

Buckner, M., D.M. Anderson, and D.H. Johnson. (eds.) “Modern Zande Prophetesses.” In Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in Eastern African History. London: James Currey, 1995.

De Cock, K. M., D. Mbori-Ngacha, and E. Marum. “Shadow on the Continent: Public Health and HIV/AIDS in Africa in the 21st Century.” In The Lancet, vol. 360, no. 9326 (July 2002): 67–72.

De Schlippe, P. Shifting Cultivation in Africa: the Zande System of Agriculture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956.

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Engel, David M. “Law. Culture and Ritual: Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context.” Law and Society Review. December 1, 2007, 924.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. The Azande: History and Political Institutions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

———. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937.

———. The Zande Trickster. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (ed.) Man and Woman among the Azande. London: Faber and Faber, 1974.

Gero, E. Death among the Azande of the Sudan (Beliefs, Rites, Cults). Bologna: Nigrizia Press 1968.

Gillies, Eva. “Zande.” In Encyclopedia of World Cultures, edited by J. Middleton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Horton, R. “African Traditional Thought and Western Science. 1 and 2.” In Africa, vol. 37 (1967) 50–71 and 155–87.

Mair, L. Witchcraft. London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1969.

Pagey, G. “Resurgence of Sleeping Sickness in Southern Sudan.” In Journal of Rural and Remote Environmental Health, 2003.