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Académie Française
Bantu refers to a large cultural and linguistic grouping of several hundreds of ethnic groups in Central and Southern Africa, which includes hundreds of millions of people (and about 30% of Africa’s population). The missionary Reverend Tempels, who helped advance Belgium’s colonization of the territory that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and enslavement of that territory’s diverse Bantu populations, argued that there was a single, overarching Bantu philosophy that believed in the hierarchical coexistence of different life forces. Tempels’s work has been widely discredited because of its essentialist characterization of Africans’ beliefs and blindness to the diversity among Bantu populations. However, Césaire notes that its real purpose was never to faithfully describe what people believed, but rather to invent a theory of Bantu beliefs that allowed the Belgians to believe that their colonization was justified (namely because their life force would naturally stand at the top of the Bantu hierarchy).
Bantu Quotes in Discourse on Colonialism
The Discourse on Colonialism quotes below are all either spoken by Bantu or refer to Bantu. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Section 4
Quotes
In short, you tip your hat to the Bantu life force, you give a wink to the immortal Bantu soul. And that's all it costs you! You have to admit you're getting off cheap!
As for the government, why should it complain? Since, the Rev. Tempels notes with obvious satisfaction, “from their first contact with the white men, the Bantu considered us from the only point of view that was possible to them, the point of view of their Bantu philosophy” and “integrated us into their hierarchy of life forces at a very high level.”
In other words, arrange it so that the white man, and particularly the Belgian, and even more particularly Albert or Leopold, takes his place at the head of the hierarchy of Bantu life forces, and you have done the trick. You will have brought this miracle to pass: the Bantu god will take responsibility for the Belgian colonialist order, and any Bantu who dares to raise his hand against it will be guilty of sacrilege.
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And the striking thing they all have in common is the persistent bourgeois attempt to reduce the most human problems to comfortable, hollow notions: the idea of the dependency complex in Mannoni, the ontological idea in the Rev. Tempels, the idea of “tropicality” in Gourou. What has become of the Banque d'Indochine in all that? And the Banque de Madagascar? And the bullwhip? And the taxes? And the handful of rice to the Madagascan or the nhaqué? And the martyrs? And the innocent people murdered? And the bloodstained money piling up in your coffers, gentlemen? They have evaporated! Disappeared, intermingled, become unrecognizable in the realm of pale ratiocinations.
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Bantu Term Timeline in Discourse on Colonialism
The timeline below shows where the term Bantu appears in Discourse on Colonialism. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Section 4
...never been a great tropical civilization,” and the missionary Reverend Tempels, who conveniently “discovered” a Bantu philosophy in the Congo that happened to sanction Belgium’s private property. Beyond ignoring the possibility...
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...resources,” “stamp out all freedom,” and “crush all pride”. He just hoped to save “the Bantu philosophy” because it had no human face, and because he interpreted this philosophy as meaning...
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...on the ground by reinterpreting colonialism through ideas, “comfortable, hollow notions” like “the dependency complex,” Bantu philosophy, and “‘tropicality.’” Nevertheless, the politicians and capitalists who orchestrated colonization progressively opt for “less...
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