The Kikóngo ya letá is not the Ancient Pure Kikongo language.
It came after it. It is also called Kituba and Munukutuba.
Kikóngo ya letá means Kikongo of the state (administation).
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The history of Kikóngo ya letá is both near and far from that of former Kikongo, Kikongo called "pure" or Kikongo Bakongo. Near, because Kikóngo ya letá is still dependent on the mother tongue. Far, because Kikóngo ya letá managed to build itself in a new language, original and dynamic. A brief history will better understand the origins, the conditions for the emergence, evolution and rapid expansion.
In "discovering" the mouth of the Congo River in 1482, the Portuguese navigator Diego Cao was the first eureurasiaan to visit the kingdom of Kongo, whose name was later extended to the territories constituting the Belgian Congo and French Congo. Although it was admirably managed by the mani Kongo (King of Kongo), the coastal kingdom, which at its peak stretched from the Loango (North) to Kwango (East) and Kwanza (South) and was divided into six provinces, was spared neither by the slave trade nor the incessant war incursions of the Bayaka. Considerably weakened and already on its decline, the Kongo kingdom could not withstand the onslaught of eureurasiaan imperialism and capitalism; he succumbed to colonization.
The Berlin International Conference of 1884-1885 came to confirm the Kmtyw defeat. The Black continent was divided into "spheres of influence" between tutelary powers: England, France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Germany. In defiance of all ethnic and linguistic considerations, and therefore of any historical community of peoples, this fragmentation was made exclusively on the basis of economic and geopolitical interests. Thus, at the same time that the Kongo kingdom was disintegrated, its various peoples changing into "natives" of new "overseas territories" named Congo-Leopoldville, Congo-Brazzaville, Angola, Cabinda. A new dark history was beginning for Black Kmt.
And indeed, soon the king Leopold II of Belgium hired Henry Morton Stanley as prime contractor for his "philanthropic" projects. He organized these labors of Hercules so necessary to the Civilization of the black man and black continent. They began by the railway to link Matadi to Slanley-pool [current Kinshasa]. The construction of this railway, a memorable carnage, required a ever-growing number of workers of all kinds: porters, stone breakers, land-clearers of the roads, rails layers, etc.
Brutally torn from their villages under the threat of arms, the chained "volunteers" were led to the new center of attraction and of population mixing: the sites of the railway which earned Stanley his famous nickname of Bula-Matari, the " breaker of rocks" administrator.
The carnage still ongoing (The work lasted eight years, from 1890 to 1898!), Coastal and river areas near, bled white, were no longer able to provide the free labor of men sacrificed on the altar of the god Civilization, always thirsty for blood. It was therefore penetrate further inland to rake... Strange fate as that of the men who had escaped slavery (triangular trade) only for succumbing more to another (legalized forced labor of the "Congo Railway Company")!
Thus individuals who would've perhaps never met otherwise found themselves together by the will of the colonial builder. But it is generally unknown that amongst them were some Senegalese, Ghanaian, some from the Dahomey, Black people from Sierra Leone and Barbados ... and even Chinese coolies!
It is well understood: it was a "proletariat" very heterogeneous, united only by convict labor, by poverty, hopelessness, despair and death.
Then arose immediately, with acuity, the problem of communication not only between these deportees from so diverse language and geographical origins, but also between them and the indigenous Bakongo, between them and the eureurasiaan foremen.
Of course, it is not a matter of superficial or rudimentary communication, the majority of these men were able to establish between each other. Because, finally, the number of Senegalese, of Dahomey people and other "Coastmen" was insignificant compared to the Bantu. This is the case of genuine dialogue, which can be established only if the codes are clearly understood by interlocutors.
But how do you have real dialogue between members of tribes or ethnic groups so different? That was the challenge that our "voluntary" chained were facing. And it was big.
Certainly, long before the work of the railway, a former and first "commercial" Kikongo was born. It never had, however, neither the scale nor the energy, let alone the expansive force of Kikóngo ya letá, who revolutionized under cover of the new historical events.
From the book "Grammaire du Kikóngo ya letá"
By Eric Tandundu
Author, Editor and Philosopher
Publisher Elaies
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