GANDANDA GIBANDA

Gandanda Gibanda (circa 1865-October 1931), a prominent Pende chief, was unjustly tortured and executed by colonial authorities following the famous Pende revolt of May and June 1931.

Gandanda Gibanda ruled the chiefdom of Musanga, located southeast of Kikwit. Musanga is one of the several chiefdoms in the Kwilu River area of Zaire with a mixed Lunda-Pende population. Probably founded in the early 1700s by Lunda-related people fleeing slave traders in the upper Kwango River region in Angola, Musanga received its Pende people in the early 20th century.

Although the Pende had entered the Kwilu in the 1600s, after being displaced from their former Angolan homeland by the Imbangala people, they settled in the particular Lunda polity at Musanga only around 1903. At that time, the Musanga chief granted asylum to some Pende groups who hoped to avoid the demands of the commercial agents from the Compagnie du Kasai (“Kasai Company”), who were obliging the people to harvest rubber.

These Pende were given farming land by the Musanga chief who accepted them as his clients. Since the Pende group was large and very prolific, however, it soon imposed its culture on the ruling Lunda families. As the two groups began to intermarry, Lunda and Pende cultures were merged in the Musanga area.

Gandanda Gibanda, a member of the Kimbai clan, ascended the throne of the Musanga chiefdom during the first decade of the 20th century. Sometime after he took office, Chief Gandanda Gibanda entered into contact with the Belgian colonial authorities, who officially recognised the Musanga chiefdom in December 1920. Gandanda Gibanda, who was invested and decorated with a medallion by the colonial government, always acted with great sincerity towards state officials.

Although Gandanda Gibanda was a decorated chief, he is best known because of the violent death he suffered following the 1931 Pende revolt. This popular revolt was provoked by economic difficulties and social dislocations which the Pende people experienced. As a result of the worldwide depression, palm oil prices fell and the demand for palm nuts declined sharply. Because many Pende men earned their wages gathering palm nuts, they were especially hard hit by fluctuations in the world market.

At the same time that wages were going down, taxes remained constant or even rose slightly. Also, during the 1920s, entire Pende villages had been relocated as colonial authorities built new roads or sought to eradicate sleeping sickness. Thus, by 1931, the generally co-operative Pende people, were pushed into a revolt against the government. This revolt began on June 8, 1931 when some Pende dissidents gathered at Kilamba, 55 km (35 mi) southeast of Kikwit, to protest the taxes being levied. There, they killed the Kandale territorial agent, Maximilien Ballot, who was responsible for collecting taxes. Ballot’s body was dismembered and then divided among some high-ranking Pende chiefs and dignitaries.

Contrary to reports in the colonial press, this was not done for reasons of anthropophagy (cannibalism). Rather, this act was carried out in accordance with an ancient Pende custom requiring that the body of a powerful enemy must be decapitated and the head brought to the chief as a trophy. According to custom, certain parts of the body were kept to increase the power of traditional magic charms. Therefore, the Kilamba rebels dismembered and divided Ballot’s corpse. There may also have been, in this deed, a historical concern: the various Pende chiefs and dignitaries wanted to keep the pieces of the ‘conquered’ white so they might show future generations proof of the Pende people’s victory over the European rulers.

Government authorities, quickly and brutally, put down the revolt. The district commissioner in charge of suppressing the uprising had orders not to grant mercy or accept any act of submission before Ballot’s head and body were returned. In compliance with these directives, several Pende chiefs and dignitaries were arrested and taken to the Kakobola prison. Subjected to severe atrocities, many died from mistreatment. During October 1931, a court-martial was held at Kandale, 130 km (80 mi) southeast of Kikwit, where the arrested rebel leaders and traditional chiefs were arraigned. These individuals were judged and condemned as “authors or co-authors in the murder of Ballot.”

All the rebel leaders were executed. Some were first subjected to horrible tortures. Musos Shagindungu, the Pende man who decapitated Ballot, was shot with arrows and buried alive. Mwatha Muhega, who had killed Ballot with an arrow to the chest, was broiled alive over a low fire. Of all these deaths, perhaps that of the Musanga chief Gandanda Gibanda was the most outrageous. Accused of having hidden Guhulula, one of his subjects who kept a piece of Ballot’s body, Gandanda Gibanda was condemned to death. He was turned over to the soldiers of the Force Publique (the colonial army) who subjected him to the lash, cut off his genitals, and placed him naked in the sun. There he died an agonising death from loss of blood, shock, and exposure.

Gandanda’s death was especially tragic since he was completely innocent. A year later, in November 1932, the colonial authorities admitted that in reality Gahulula had fled south to Cokwe (Chokwe) country at the beginning of the revolt and that Gandanda had been executed unjustly. The deaths of Gandanda Gibanda and other Pende chiefs and dignitaries, many of whom were innocent of any misdeeds, are examples of the rash and arbitrary acts perpetrated against numerous people throughout the colonial period.

SIKITELE GIZE a SUMBULA