The political scientist uses oral testimony to record events which happened sometime not too long ago. He retrieves documents about events, usually from eyewitnesses but sometimes from descendants of eyewitnesses. Whenever a witness testifies to events and his testimony is recorded, the following sequence or chain between the events and the record of them has taken place:

The relation between the events and the events as described in the document has therefore undergone the following “distortions”: events--part of the events are perceived--part of the perception is stored in the memory of a man and colored by his personality--part of what is in the memory of the man is released and the release is colored by the interview. There is quite definitely a loss of information between the event and the record of it. There is also, and this is less obvious, quite an accretion to the record of the event by the reflections and the personality of the witness. The aim of the person who uses the record is to know what are the accretions and the distortions so that he would know what actually happened insofar as it is recorded. Critical analysis is the tool used to discover this. It can be made much easier if certain items of information besides the testimony and about it are available. It is therefore of great value to collect this ancillary documentation together with the oral testimony itself.

African history was really born on a specific date and its parent was Prof. Phillips, then heading the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), in London. It began when the learned Collins and Asquith commissions advocated the upgrading of schools in four different parts of the continent (Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan and Uganda) to University College status whereupon the Colonial Office looked for a university in Great Britain to guarantee programming and quality and passed that job unto the University of London which in turn promptly passed much of the burden unto SOAS. Although no funds were attached to this Phillips accepted and eventually did get funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, to the greater glory of SOAS. Meanwhile however he had visited East Africa and he had been struck there in 1947 by the absence of ‘native histories’ such as one finds so thickly on the ground in his usual playing ground India. He decided to hire an historian of Africa who would both supervise the development of history departments in the new colleges and work to remedy this lack of local history.

Le royaume de Kongo fut fondé par des conquérants qui soumirent les populations autochtones de souche ambundu. D'ou vinrent-ils? Deux théories ont été élaborées à; ce sujet. La plus ancienne et celle qui est accepté par la plupart des historiens veut qu'ils soient venus de l'est, de l'outre-Kwango. Cette version fut d'abord celle de Ravenstein avant d'ê;tre reprise et popularisée par Van Wing. On la retrouve chez Soret, Cornevin, Baumann et Westermann, Oliver et Fage soit dans tous les ouvrages de synthèse actuels.

New linguistic evidence about the classification of the Bantu languages does not support the current view that these languages spread as the result of a massive migration or ‘expansion’ by its speakers. Rather the present geographic distribution of Bantu languages is the outcome of many complex historical dynamics involving successive dispersals of individual languages over a time span of millennia and involving reversals as well as successes. This is as true for eastern and southern Africa, where a close correlation between the archaeological evidence documenting the diffusion of basic food-related technologies, including metallurgy and the spreading of Bantu languages has become an axiom, as it is elsewhere. The linguistic evidence concerning the dispersal of Bantu languages in these regions of Africa is completely incongruent with the archaeological record. The existing Bantu expansion hypothesis must be totally abandoned. The scrapping of the hypothesis will make room for more realistic and quite different interpretations and research hypotheses. For example, it follows that the local or regional contribution of speakers of other languages, autochthons and others, to the development of later cultures and societies was probably considerably greater than has hitherto been acknowledged and that the continuities in historical dynamics of all sorts between the Bantu-speaking parts of Africa and areas further north and west are greater than has been hitherto realized.

Much speculation has been devoted to the possible connexions between the different clusters of kingdoms in Africa. Scholars have been puzzled for over half a century by the similarities in organization and ideology between different African states. They have tried to explain them either as the product of the diffusion of a common pattern, the ‘Sudanic State’ or the ‘Sacral Kingship’, or by maintaining that similar functional needs led to parallel independent inventions in many different areas. In Central Africa the specific positions taken have been that the Katanga states diffused their model of government to the Lower Congo cluster, or, as I myself have claimed, that these were independent. Dittmer links the Lower Congo with Katanga, and derives the latter cluster itself from the interlacustrine and Ethiopian clusters

A Cluster of some eighteen small tribes, numbering in all some 70,000 people, which lives on the rolling heights between the rivers Kasai, Sankuru and Lulua in the Kasai province of the Congo, are called Kuba by their neighbours. They form a kingdom which is in fact a federation of tribes, dominated by a central group, the Bushoong, whose chief is king of the whole congeries. This federation was imposed by the Bushoong upon the other tribes by conquest or threat of arms during the course of the three last centuries. As with all conquest states of which this one, although a federation, is typical, the different tribes controlled do not all have the same culture. One group, comprising the central tribes, is similar in culture and language. It includes the Bushoong, Ngeende, Pyaang, Byeeng, and Bulaang tribes. Other tribes are culturally akin to this group. Still other tribes belong to the Lulua-Luba Kasai cluster. Among these the patrilineal Coofa and the matrilineal Kete may be mentioned. Finally, other tribes like the Ngoombe or Mbeengi participate in the general type of Mongo cultures. The social structure of all the Kuba tribes with the exception of Coofa and Mbeengi is matrilineal. They are grouped in matrilineal clans, which are divided in small autonomous residential lineages, which can be called clan-sections. Clan-sections of different clans make up a village. The village is ruled by a set of dignitaries and a general council composed of the clan-section heads. The tribes of the central group and the ones who are culturally akin to it group several villages in chiefdoms which are ruled by chiefs assisted by councils. In these tribes, with the exception of the Bushoong, different chiefdoms are united loosely on a tribal scale. The Bushoong, who are the most numerous, are constituted in one chiefdom only. The religion of all the tribes of this cluster is very similar. Ancestor worship is practically absent. There are beliefs in a Supreme Being, in nature spirits, and in spirits or forces which control charms. Furthermore, mention must be made for the whole congeries of tribes of a flourishing art, especially decorative art, which is expressed in weaving, matting, woodcarving, ironworking and even architecture.

The structure of indigenous trade in Central Africa makes it necessary to distinguish between three different types of trade. There is first the local trade from village to village within a given population. The goods exchanged are generally specialized products from local industry, and the exchange comes about because some villages possess supplies of raw materials which are not available to others, e.g. pottery clay, or because they are inhabited by specialists such as smiths or woodcarvers who are not available in others. This type of trade is conducted in local markets, and generally speaking, currency of some sort is in use. It is still alive today, and one can assume that it is very old, since such a system shows little dynamism. The necessities remain the same; the organization is simple and efficient.

The peoples who occupy the region between the rivers Sankuru, Kasai and Lulua are called Kuba by their neighbours. They form a congeries of eighteen different tribes subdivided in numerous chiefdoms. These enjoy an internal autonomy but they form a single kingdom ruled by a central tribe, the Bushong, whose chief is king. He exacts tribute from the other chiefdoms and used to control, more or less, their external policy.