SUMMARY

Baluba or Luba people (the “Ba”-prefix indicating “the people of”; BaLuba = the people of the Luba) are a group of Bantu-speaking people living mainly in the center-south and south-eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire) and who fought a non-state conflict with the Batwa. Baluba are one of the three largest ethnicities among the multitude of ethnicities living in the DRC, numbering at least 10 million in the country. Residing predominantly in the Kasai provinces and the Katanga province, where Baluba constitute the ethnic majority, they also live in parts of the Kivu region. Baluba are comprised of many sub-tribes with their respective clans, all with relatively similar, yet distinct, rituals, languages and cultures: the Luba-Lulua (Luba-Kasai/Tshiluba) in Kasai-Oriental (estimated 7 000 000 speakers in 1991), and the Kiluba (Luba-Katanga/Luba-Shaba) (estimated 1 510 000 speakers in 1991) are the largest groups. Country-wide policies and the chronic omission of policies that could alleviate ethnicity related tensions in the DRC, fueled long-standing local inter-ethnic competition, for example over land-rights and legal recognition of ethnicity. After the Belgian colonizers usurped and disbanded the Baluba empire at the empire’s peak in the late 19th century, the Belgians favoured Baluba for administrative and mining positions in the Katanga province. This, in turn, led to economically and politically favoured positions of members of Baluba vis-á-vis members of other ethnic groups. While repressed and discriminated against during the Mobutu regime of 1965 – 1997, the Baluba were a favoured ethnic national minority after Mobutu’s fall. Likewise, Baluba used their dominant position in the Kasaï and Katanga provinces to marginalize other smaller groups economically, politically and culturally. Baluba are mostly cattle herders and agriculturalists and have a record of enslaving minority groups, in particular the Batwa (Batwa people, Twa people), to work on their fields and as their herders. Armed non-state conflict between loosely organized groups of Baluba and Batwa broke out in Tanganyika province in 2016; a development which was also associated with the growth of Kata Katanga and the formation of ethnicity-affiliated militias - the Elementsfor the Baluba.
Four of the most prominent members of the Baluba people were: Laurent-Désiré Kabila, Joseph Kabila (Laurent-Désiré Kabila's son) who served as presidents of the DR Congo, Étienne Tshisekedi (died in 2017) who was a prominent opposition leader under Mobutu and both Kabila regimes and his son, Felix Tshisekedi, who is the sitting President.