The Kasaï

Before colonial rule the Kasaï held some of Central Africa's most sophisticated states. The Kuba kingdom, ruled from Mushenge between the Kasai and Sankuru rivers, developed a court culture of carved royal portraits and patterned raffia cloth, while Luba and Lunda influence reached the plateaux of the south-east. Slave and ivory caravans from Angola and the east cut through the region in the 19th century.

The German explorer Hermann von Wissmann set up the station that became Luluabourg, today's Kananga, in 1884, on an expedition for King Leopold II. The Free State and its concession companies extracted rubber here through forced labour, and in 1895 Tetela soldiers of the Free State's army mutinied at Luluabourg in a revolt that lasted years. In the colonial period Luluabourg became a railway and administrative town, and diamonds found in the Kasai basin in the early 20th century made the region one of the world's leading sources of industrial stones.

At independence the Kasaï was torn apart. Patrice Lumumba, born in Sankuru, became the first prime minister, while Albert Kalonji declared the secession of South Kasai in 1960, with its capital at Bakwanga, renamed Mbuji-Mayi; clashes between Luba and Lulua and an army offensive killed thousands before the state was reabsorbed in 1962. Under Mobutu, the Luba politician Étienne Tshisekedi became the country's best-known opposition leader, and in 2019 his son Félix Tshisekedi became president. In 2016 the killing of a customary chief, Kamuina Nsapu, set off an uprising in Kasaï Central, and two UN investigators were murdered in 2017.

Tshiluba is the lingua franca, and the Luba-Kasai and Lulua peoples dominate the cities, while the Kuba, the Pende of the west, the Songye of Lomami and the Tetela of Sankuru keep their own languages and traditions. Kasaïans have a reputation across the country for education, commerce and political engagement, and the Luba diaspora is prominent in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.

The Kuba are famous for their arts: embroidered raffia textiles with geometric designs, carved wooden cups and boxes, helmet masks worn in court masquerades, and the ndop figures that portrayed individual kings. The Kuba king still holds court at Mushenge, and his title of nyim carries real prestige. Songye carved figures and masks from Lomami are also widely collected.

Music centres on mutuashi, a Luba dance rhythm made popular nationally by the singer Tshala Muana. The region is mostly Christian, with strong Catholic and Protestant missions and many revival churches, and customary chiefs remain influential in land and family matters — which is why disputes over their succession can turn violent.

Mbuji-Mayi and Kananga are the two big cities, each with well over a million people by most estimates, though no recent census exists. Tshikapa, Mwene-Ditu, Kabinda and Lusambo are smaller regional centres. Much of the population is young, and large parts of the countryside lack paved roads, electricity and clinics.

Diamonds shape the economy. The state company MIBA once ran large mines at Mbuji-Mayi but has declined, and most stones are now dug by hand by thousands of artisanal miners along rivers around Tshikapa and Mbuji-Mayi, then sold to licensed buying houses in town. Farming of cassava, maize and groundnuts supports most rural families, and many young people leave for Kinshasa or Katanga.

Days begin early in the markets, where traders sell food, fuel and phone credit, and motorbike taxis are the main way to get around town. Power cuts are routine, school fees weigh heavily on families, and the aftermath of the Kamuina Nsapu violence — displaced families, damaged villages and orphans — is still felt.

The Kasaï staple is bidia, a stiff dough of maize and cassava flour, eaten with the right hand alongside a sauce or stew. Cassava leaves are cooked into pondu, and sauces are built on groundnuts, palm oil, aubergine, okra and plenty of pili-pili chilli.

Protein comes from goat, chicken, smoked or dried fish and, in the forests of Sankuru, bushmeat and caterpillars gathered in season. Beans and sweet potatoes are common at home, and grilled meat on skewers sells at street stalls in Kananga and Mbuji-Mayi in the evening.

Drinks include palm wine, home-brewed maize and sorghum beer, and bottled lager brought in from Kinshasa and Lubumbashi. Mangoes, bananas and avocados are cheap in season, and sugary tea or instant coffee starts the day in towns.

Kananga, the former Luluabourg, spreads across low hills above the Lulua river, with colonial avenues and the lively central market; east of the city, the savanna Lake Munkamba has long served as a weekend retreat. Mbuji-Mayi is the centre of the diamond country, a vast, busy city whose landscape is scarred by diggings, and whose markets show how the diamond trade feeds the whole of Kasaï Oriental.

To the west, Tshikapa stands where the Tshikapa river meets the Kasai, crossed by a new road bridge, with artisanal diamond workings scattered along the riverbanks towards the Angolan frontier. Further north, near Mweka, Mushenge is the royal town of the Kuba kingdom, where the palace compound and Kuba weavers keep the court traditions alive; Ilebo, at the head of navigation on the Kasai, is the river port where rail meets barge.

Northwards the savanna gives way to the Sankuru forests along the Sankuru river, the provincial capital Lusambo and Lumumba's birthplace at Onalua, and the Sankuru Nature Reserve, created to protect bonobos and their rainforest habitat.