The Pygmies are the most famous of the indigenous peoples of Africa;
they are also the most threatened.
This people, recognized by its small size, is present in Central and West Africa: they are found in Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Gabon and Angola. Hunters at heart, they maintain this ancestral culture until now. Sometimes withdrawn from the outside world, they lead a different way of life from sedentary populations. Currently, there are about 120,000 pygmies on the continent.[1]
Terminology:
The term „Pygmy“ encompasses different ethnic groups scattered along the equator in many states of present-day Central Africa, including the Baka, the Aka, the Mbuti (or Bambuti), the Babongo, the Babinga or the Efe. The Pygmies share a traditional way of life based on hunting and gathering forest products, and a common culture that places great importance on music and dance.[2]
These groups of hunter-gatherer-fishermen are today confronted with growing precariousness and their culture is threatened.
Some actors, whether or not they belong to this group, consider the word “Pygmy” to be pejorative or even insulting and prefer to use designations such as “indigenous populations” or “forest peoples”, or directly use the names of the ethnic groups concerned.
Rather, the term Negritos is used to refer to the small, black-skinned populations living in Southeast Asia. “Pygmy” is also used as an adjective to define certain animal species characterized by their reduced size.[3]
Origins:
The Pygmies and the Bantu would have a common origin of 70,000 years old according to the study of mitochondrial DNA or 60,000 years according to another study based on nuclear DNA. The different groups of African pygmies would have themselves differentiated around 20,000 years ago, perhaps as a result of the fragmentation of their forest habitat during the last glacial maximum which led to a drying out of the African climate.[4]
The small size of the Pygmies could be due to adaptation to the forest environment, or simply to genetic drift resulting from the isolation of these populations.
The Pygmies are divided into two large groups: a group of Pygmies from the west and a group of Pygmies from the east. These two sets diverged about 20,000 years ago. Both would have followed a convergent evolution towards a form of insular dwarfism, they are however distinguished by the shape of their respective growth curves. Both groups share common cultural characteristics:
Eastern Pygmies, present in Rwanda, eastern DRC and Uganda: this group includes the Aka, Sua, Efe (or Mbuti) and Batwa;
Western Pygmies, present in Cameroon, Central Africa, Gabon, Congo Brazzaville and DRC: include the Bakas, Kola, Bongo, Koya, Aka and Twa.
Culture
Pygmies traditionally practice a form of nomadism. They move between temporary camps set up for a hunting period, each camp hosting an extended family. These camps are made up of a set of mongulus, huts built of marantaceae leaves assembled on a trellis anchored in the ground and arched by force in the shape of an arbor. The leaves are posed like tiles stapled by their incised petioles. It is the women who are responsible for building these huts.[5]
In all ethnic groups the basic social unit is the camp, it is generally made up of 30 to 70 individuals who live in about ten huts. Individuals are usually closely related or related by marriages. The composition of the groups changes regularly and they maintain strong relations between neighboring groups.
The Pygmies practice hunting with a bow or crossbow, spear and net. They are famous for hunting elephants. They fish using temporary restraints that allow them to capture fish or using basket weaving traps. In addition to fruits and tubers, they collect honey and caterpillars for food. The product of the hunt is systematically shared between the hunters for their families, the fruits of the harvest are only distributed in the event of a surplus.
A traditional herbal pharmacopoeia is useful for them to treat wounds and illnesses specific to life in the forest.
The Pygmies sing to punctuate their daily activities, before the hunt, to rock the children… each situation has its own song. These songs are polyphonic. The songs are never sung several times in the same way, but undergo variations.
The Pygmies have their own range of instruments, including an instrument resembling a vibrating comb that is found under various names in various parts of Africa.[6]
The ritualized practice of music, inherited from ancient traditions, is today one of the last means of preserving Pygmy identity and culture.
The songs are transmitted from father to son and from mother to daughter.
Language:
The Pygmy adjective is used to qualify their languages.
The languages spoken by the Baka and Aka groups are closer to the languages of the populations around them than they are to each other. From a lexical and morphological point of view, Baka behaves like an Ubangian language and Aka like a Bantu language. Similarly, among the Mbuti of the DRC, the Efe speak a Sudanic language close to that of the Lese, while the Sua speak a Bantu language, Bila, like their direct neighbors.[7]
Endangered:
Pygmy culture has undergone profound changes over the last century, as a result of the introduction of export crops to their neighbors from 1950: a transition to sedentary life then begins.[8]
The cases of the different villages studied are different and it is difficult to generalize this model to all Pygmies. However common points emerge, the pygmies then practice to varying degrees the cultivation on the edge of the track, the relations with the outside increase. Trade with the Bantu intensified: game and work for iron objects and food in the dry season. Relations with the Bantu are strained, stagnation leads to upheavals in society and the economy. Marriages become based on dowry (and therefore possession), unions increasingly become polygamous. Ownership of cultural products, European objects and housing is monopolized by men and subsequently by authority. A hierarchy emerges.
The same findings were made by the World Bank in 2010, after a field study in the DRC.
The World Bank,[9] if it considers that the usual poverty criteria cannot be applied to nomadic pygmies, writes in a work report that in cases where they have settled down, the standard of living of this community is systematically lower than that of the national population taken as a whole, in terms of well-being, ability to meet basic needs, access to care, education, mortality and morbidity. And the report goes on to describe the exploitation of pygmy workers by some Bantu, an endangered culture and the abuses and violations of human rights that pygmies suffer.
Like the majority of nomadic societies or societies with high spatial mobility, the Pygmies have been confronted, since the colonial era, with the logic of state powers of reinforced control over populations.
A representative of the United Nations Population Fund stated in August 2011 that there were only 43,500 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a 2007 census.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pygmy
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pygmy
[3] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-pygmies-plight-93401092/
[4] https://www.science.org/content/article/short-history-african-pygmies#:~:text=The%20founding%20group%20of%20pygmy,result%2C%20each%20group%20evolved%20separately.
[5] https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pygmy
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXKHWOOdpJA
[7] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00548207/document
[8] https://www.france24.com/en/20081016-pygmies-endangered-people-
[9] https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/995271468177530126/pdf/443000WP0BOX321onservation01PUBLIC1.pdf
