by Faun Rice
consisted of several independent kingdoms and chiefdoms acknowledging the
nominal superiority of the original state of Bussa, founded by the famous Kisra,
from whom the rulers of the others had derived. Recall also the Bakarakundi,
“The Old Man Who Was There” in Bussa: the descendant of former rulers, who
gave the immigrant warrior Kisra permission to settle, installed him in the king-
ship, and became “the principal chief of the earth” in the kingdom at large. Just
so, in the Vungu tradition, Ntinu Wene came upon a congeries of autonomous
principalities south of the Zaïre centered on Mbanza Kongo of sacred memory,
where one Nsaku ne Vunda was established as “lord of the earth.” Also known
in the chronicles as Mani Vunda and Mani Cabunga, Nsaku ne Vunda was the
descendant of former rulers, with kinship ties to the first inhabitants. There
was a local political chief of Mbanza Kongo, but his title of Mani Pangalla evi-
dently could not match the scale, prestige, or authority attending the Nsaku ne
Vunda’s hegemony over the earth—which would have reflected the past glory
of Mbanza Kongo as the dominant center of the region as well as “the origin
of the ancient kings.” That Ntinu Wene came from a peripheral chiefdom to
take over a declining galactic center is a process common enough in regional
polities of this kind (Ekholm 1980, 1985b; J. Friedman 1992; chapter 6 in this
THE ATEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY
207
volume). That Vungu had already accumulated considerable power under the
reign of Ntinu Wene’s father, Nimi a Nzima, as Thornton and Hilton have ar-
gued, seems likely in that the important Mbata king had accorded the Nimi a
sister to wife. As previously noted, then, Ntinu Wene, who thereby combined
the native and foreign kingly virtues, was destined to be immortalized as the
conquering hero, even as the tradition of his fateful interaction with the indig-
enous priest-chief Nsaku ne Vunda would become the paradigmatic charter of
the Kongo kingship.
Residing in Mbanza Kongo, the Nsaku ne Vunda was effectively the epito-
me of the quondam ruler become the priest-chief of the indigenous owners of
the country. Under the cognate name of “Mani Cabunga,” he is described in the
anonymous, seventeenth-century History of the Kongo kingdom as “the Supreme
Pontiff (speaking in our way)” among the Congo nobility. In Cuvelier’s refer-
ences to his powers, he was the intermediary between the living and the ances-
tors—who were “the real owners of the fields, the forests, the rivers, and the
streams” (1946: 80). The Nsaku ne Vunda was the person to whom one appealed
for help in all circumstances, on whose authority one planted and harvested,
who had the magical powers of the hunt and the remedies for madness and
convulsions; and although he himself did not reign in the country, neither could
anyone who had not been recognized by him (ibid.: 15). We have encountered
this kind of Kongo figure before: the kitomi who as priest-chief of the prov-
ince installs the foreign governor from across the river—although not before
humbling him into acknowledging the kitomi’s own precedence in the land (see
above). “Considered by many as a god on earth, according to Cavazzi, the kitomi
was the plenipotentiary of the heavens, and was offered the first fruits of every
harvest” (Randles 1968: 39). In Hilton’s generalized depiction: “The kitomi were
described as the owners, masters, lords, or chiefs of the land and gods of the
earth, seed, or region, and it was believed that . . . they could grant or withhold
the rain, thereby making the world fecund or barren” (1985: 25).
By all evidence, then, Nsaku ne Vunda was the kitomi of Mbanza Kongo, and
insofar as the earth priests of a region were hierarchically ordered (MacGaffey
1986: 195–97), he would be endowed with such powers on a scale commensu-
rate with the ancient preeminence of Mbanza Kongo.24 Hence his traditional
24. It is consistent that certain Nsaku people ( kanda) claim pygmy ancestry, thus
an association with the original inhabitants—in the maternal or paternal line?
(Cuvelier 1946: 252).
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ON KINGS
and historical role as kingmaker: “It is certain, according to the documents as
well as tradition, that Nsaku ne Vunda had the privilege of being the principal
elector of the kings, of installing them, and of receiving the portion of the tribute
rendered when they acceded” (Cuvelier 1946: 252). Nsaku ne Vunda shared the
kingmaking privilege with others whose chiefly ancestors had also submitted
to Ntinu Wene, notably the Mani Mbata or Nsaku Lau, and they continued in
this office well into the Christian era. What had distinguished Nsaku ne Vunda
as so-called “principal elector” is that he alone could proclaim the king-elect to
the assembled Kongo nobility, hence his assent to the decision was deemed es-
sential. And the reason for this distinction was that in so recognizing the king,
the Nsaku ne Vunda reprised in historical practice the paradigmatic tradition of
the inauguration of the Kongo dynasty at Mbanza Kongo, where his ancestor
transferred the sovereignty to Ntinu Wene—although not before suitably hum-
bling him. Like stranger-heroes elsewhere, Ntinu Wene was legitimated at the
price of his domestication as a conqueror from the dangerous outside.
Ntinu Wene had defeated the overlord of Mbanza Kongo, the Mani Pan-
gala, and was installed on a mountain some four leagues distant, where he
divided his conquests among his followers. (I am following Cuvelier’s [1946:
11ff.] recounting of the tradition, based largely on Cavazzi and the anonymous
History of the kingdom of the Congo.) But because Ntinu Wene had failed to
secure recognition of his authority from Nsaku ne Vunda, he now fell ill with
convulsions. His people thereupon went to Mbanza Kongo and, bowing before
Nsaku ne Vunda, pleaded with him for a cure: “Lord, we know that you are the
elder, the one who first occupied this region, or in the expression of the country,
the one who was first in the nostrils of the universe. Ntinu Wene has fallen
into convulsions, make him calm.” At first incensed, Nsaku ne Vunda protested
against what he deemed an invasion, but he relented and agreed to accompany
them to Ntinu Wene. Here the latter addressed him, saying: “You are the eldest
among us. Strike me with the buffalo tail, that my convulsions may cease.” Cu-
velier explains the symbolism: the cure was the making of Ntinu Wene as king;
striking with the tail of the buffalo stands for the sprinkling of the king-elect
with lustral water in the royal installation ceremonies. Hence by this request,
writes Cuvelier, Ntinu Wene recognized the authority of Nsaku ne Vunda, and
implicitly confessed that the illness he suffered was due to his negligence of the
indispensable formality of acquiring the consent of “the religious chief.” Nsaku
ne Vunda responded to the plea and sprinkled the Ntinu Wene with the water.
“That is how we know, Congo people still say now, that in order for every king
THE ATEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY
209
to rule, Nsaku ne Vundu
must be present and strike with the tail of the buffalo
or sprinkle the water. If Nsaku is not there, his [the would-be-king’s] authority
will not be recognized.”
The reconciliation of the king and Nsaku ne Vunda was sealed by the usual
contract of stranger-kingship: the marriage of the foreign hero with a daughter
of the native authority, here Ntinu Wene with a daughter of Nsaku ne Vunda.
According to a 1665 text, Ntinu Wene also ordered his fol owers to marry daugh-
ters of the native people, “nobles with nobles and commoners with common-
ers”—which again implies the presence of a distinctive, preexisting ruling group.
His instal ation by the native chief of the earth accomplished, Ntinu Wene then
left his mountain redoubt and settled in Mbanza Kongo. “He took the title
of mani Kongo or ne Kongo, Lord of Kongo, from the name of the locality
founded by the Nsaku clan.” Reading from Cuvelier, this union between Ntinu
Wene and Nsaku ne Vunda was instrumental in bringing about the voluntary
incorporation of Mbata province in the Kongo kingdom. If so, the submission
of Mbata would be further testimony of an ancient regime centered at Mbanza
Kongo. In any event, as we know, the Mani Mbata (Nsaku Lau) now became
the primary wife-giver to the king, providing a daughter to the inheritor of the
crown, a practice still faithfully observed through the early seventeenth cen-
tury. Also stil observed were the powers of the Nsaku ne Vunda and the Mani
Mbata in kingmaking and other respects. Both were “grandfathers” of the king
in that their daughters’ sons inherited the rule—Nsaku ne Vunda’s grandchild
original y and Mani Mbata’s regularly; and the Mani Mbata was also the king’s
maternal uncle, as originally the brother of Ntinu Wene’s mother. After the king,
these two were the most important personages in the realm, although over time
Christianity and the Mani Mbata’s political support of the crown apparently
made him the more prominent, albeit the Nsaku ne Vunda remained no less
indispensable. For that matter, neither was the political chief of Mbanza Kongo,
the Mani Pangala, forgotten: every year the title-holder mounted a ritual protest
of Ntinu Wene’s usurpation. Details are unknown to me; it would be interesting
if the rituals again involved the submission of the foreign king to the native ruler
as a condition of the submission of the native ruler to the foreign king.
In the matter of serial stranger-kingship, everything happens in the tradi-
tions and the historical texts as if the Nsaku ne Vunda and Nsaku Lau repre-
sented dispersed branches of the royal clan which previously ruled the cen-
tral and eastern portions of the Ntinu Wene kingdom. As in the ideal-typical
stranger-kingship pattern, these Nsaku notables of the ancient regime became
210
ON KINGS
the electors, councilors, and wife-givers of the historic Kongo dynasty. Cuve-
lier writes of the Nsaku under the new dispensation: “At Mbanza Kongo, the
Nsakus (Nsaku ne Vunda and Nsaku Lau) occupied the highest rank. Among
the Congolese the Nsaku clan is considered the oldest of the clans. Nsaku
Lau, whose family governs Mbaka, is of royal blood. One can presume that the
Nsakus were the principal councilors of the king” (1946: 305).25 Not only are the
royal Nsaku the oldest clan (relative to Essikongo latecomers), but according
to Van Wing, the Nsaku Lau clan “is very widely spread through the Bakongo
country” (1959: 32). That the Nsaku Lau in Mbata ruled a rustic people called
“Monsobos” indicates they were stranger-kings in their own right. In sum, the
Nsaku people, extending over the country they once ruled, exercised a certain
residual sovereignty as a condition of the legitimacy they conveyed to their alien
successors. Serial stranger-kingship.
HISTORIOGRAPHY (THE END)
Something must be said, then, for the distinctive ways that different peoples are
the authors of their own histories. Particularly at issue are the people’s ongoing
re-creations of how their society came to be, in practice as well as discourse, thus
endowing their charter traditions with a certain historicity. In this connection, it
deserves reiteration that stranger-king structures are distinctively and inherently
temporal. The entire cultural order, from its dual modes of production through
its social and political and religious cults, is predicated on a diachronic narrative.
Accordingly, like Maori, people in these societies find themselves in history.
So it should not surprise that Ndembu accounts of their kingdom’s origins are
not one-off stories. And inasmuch as they are rehearsed in connection with the
activities and relationships they underwrite, tradition and structure reciprocally
affirm the truth of the other—or indeed, by way of awakened memories, they
reproduce each other. Ian Cunnison observes of another kingdom of Lunda
origin, the Kazembe realm of the Luapulu Valley: “The whole justification of
the existence of the kingship and its customs is referred back to its origins in
the state of [the Lunda ruler] Mwata Yamvo” (1959: 149). Similarly for Tallensi:
25. The councilor role would belong specifically to Nsaku Lau, supposing the report
that after the installation of the king the Nsaku ne Vunda could not come into
contact with the king was accurate and referred to the pre-Portuguese period.
THE ATEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY
211
All that matters of the past which lies beyond the span of man’s recollection
lives on in the social structure, the ideology, the morality, and the institutions of
today. These are palpable proofs of things that happened . . . “in the days of our
forefathers and ancestors.” (Fortes 1945: 24)
Nor was Kongo an exception. Speaking of Kongo matters such as war, the death
of the king, and the royal installation, Balandier recounts: “At each decisive mo-
ment in the life of the kingdom, reinforcement was sought in a symbolic return
to the origins, in a sort of communion in which the notables and the people
were associated” (1968: 201). Although the deceived wisdom may have it that
because so-called “mythical” charters are merely narrative justifications of the
sociocultural order, they cannot be historically true, in practice it follows rather
that because people put these foundational traditions into their ongoing rela-
tionships, they must be historically true. It’s true because they do it, and they do
it because it’s true: society endures on such tautologies.
The big issue here is the status of “myth,” its historiographic value, arising
from the fact that in the received language of Western scholarship it denotes
something fictional, whereas for the African peoples whose story it is, it is cer-
tainly true and frequently sacred. The effect can be a fateful disconnect: the
people’s sacred truth is the historian’s axiomatic falsehood. Together with some
historically minded anthropologists, historians seem especially prone to thus
oppose “myth” to “historical reality.” As, for example, Collins and Burns when
writing of the rulers of certain Swahili city-states who trace their origins to
Shiraz in Per
sia: “These assertions are more myth than historical reality” (2007:
103). For these Swahili, however, this is the historical reality upon which they
are organized and in terms of which they act; and as it is truly their historical
consciousness, it cannot simply be ignored as false consciousness.
Of course, not all historians are disposed to thus write off the distinctive
ways that other peoples may know and make their history in favor of an archival
determination of what actually happened—or, more often, what probably hap-
pened. As for anthropologists, the classic statement of the fallacy of myth was
penned by their armchair ancestor, Sir James Frazer:
By myths I understand mistaken explanations of phenomena, whether of human
life or of external nature. Such explanations originate in that instinctive curiosity
concerning the causes of things which at a more advanced stage of knowledge
seeks satisfaction in philosophy and science, but being founded on ignorance and
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ON KINGS
misapprehension they are always false, for were they true they would cease to be
myths. ([1921] 1976: xxvii)
Likewise well known, however, was the critique of Frazer and his like by the
Africanist anthropologist William Bascom (1965). In the course of rescuing
myths from Frazer’s calumnies, Bascom offered a useful typology of three kinds
of prose narrative: myth, legend, and folktale—and one mixed category, notably
common in African societies, of “myth-legends.” Concerned with superhuman
persons and the origins of the world, mankind, death, and other such cosmic
themes, myths, wrote Bascom, “are prose narratives which, in the society in
which they are told, are considered to be truthful accounts of what happened
in the remote past . . . . Myths are the embodiment of dogma; they are usually
sacred, and they are often associated with theology and ritual” (ibid.: 4), whereas
legends “are prose narratives which, like myths, are regarded as true by the nar-
rator and his audience, but they are set in a period less remote, when the world
was much like it is today” (ibid.). Concerned with such things as wars, chiefs
and kings, heroic deeds, and dynastic successions, legends are like our “history”
in their content, if not in their science. The third category, folktales, consists