Kongo people

The Bakongo (plural of Congo, singular Mukongo ) are an ethnic group in the estuary of the River Congo, especially in the DR Congo (Congo - Kinshasa), Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo - Brazzaville) and the neighboring areas of Angola (Province of Zaire and provincial Uige ) including Cabinda and Gabon.

Their total number is more than 5 million people. The majority speaks the language Kikongo, in various dialects. A growing part is a second language, often as their first language, the Lingala, which since the middle of the XX. Century has spread from Kinshasa as a lingua franca.

Their religion is almost entirely Christianity in various forms. It weighs about membership in the Catholic Church; next to the Baptists are particularly strong presence in the Angolan part. In Congo - Kinshasa the syncretic church of the so-called Kimbanguists has already formed in colonial times, which is now also in the Congo Brazzaville and Angola has followers. In the last decades of the 20th century there has been particularly among the Bakongo establishing a variety of revival churches.

Originally operated the Bakongo especially agriculture as forest growers and farmers. Meanwhile, more than half has become city dwellers and goes by a variety of professions, especially the trade.

The Kongo ethnic group was the main people of the former African Bantu kingdom of Congo, which existed from the early Middle Ages to the 17th century in the northwest of present-day Angola. During the Revolutionary War in Angola supported the Bakongo there most of the anti- colonial movement and the FNLA of this with organized uprising of 1961. When he was defeated by Portugal, they fled in their hundreds of thousands to Congo - Kinshasa. After independence, they are not the majority flocked to Angola, but in many cases in their areas of origin, but to Luanda and other Angolan cities, where they often had integration problems. In the civil war in Angola they initially supported the FNLA and later partially their competitors movement UNITA against the ruling MPLA movement. Following the introduction of multiparty system in Angola, the FNLA tried in vain to become the political representatives of the Bakongo; in the two previous elections, they received only a small, almost insignificant share of the vote last. At the same time among the Bakongo dozens emerged particularistic parties, of which, however, did not win any significant meaning.