AzandeMasks, figures & African art

Overview

The geographical location of the Azande (historically often referred to in colonial literature with the exonymous and now obsolete and massively pejorative term "Niam-Niam") extends over an extensive, transnational territory in the heart of the African continent. The preferred settlement area primarily comprises the north-eastern provinces of today's Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, specifically the provinces of Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele), significant parts of south-western South Sudan (especially the Western Equatoria region) and the south-eastern fringes of the Central African Republic (Evans-Pritchard 1971: 12). Current demographic research puts the population at approximately 3.8 million individuals, although recent geopolitical instabilities, endemic conflicts and widespread refugee movements in the Central African region make it extremely difficult to collect precise census data (Gilles 1999: 45).

Linguistically, Pa-Zande is assigned to the Adamawa-Ubangi branch (Ubangian cluster) within the Niger-Congo language family. The language displays remarkable homogeneity over long distances, which is directly attributable to the historical assimilation of various autochthonous groups and the function of Pa-Zande as the administrative lingua franca of the pre-colonial kingdom (Heusing 2002: 18). The proper name "Azande" is etymologically translated in most ethnographic readings as "the people who own a lot of land", which directly refers to their expansive historical migration and conquest dynamics and manifests their self-image as a warlike hegemonic power (Neyt 1981: 210). The foreign term "Niam-Niam", which circulated in early travelogues by Arab traders and European explorers such as Georg Schweinfurth, originated from the languages of neighbouring Nilotic groups (such as the Dinka) and conveyed the strongly prejudiced narrative of anthropophagism, which was deconstructed as an exonymic defamation strategy by modern anthropological analyses (Keim 1990: 5).

The socio-political structure of the Azande represents a highly complex object of ethnographic analysis and is fundamentally controversial in terms of classification. The subsistence strategy is primarily based on semi-permanent shifting cultivation in the transition zone between tropical rainforest and humid savannah, which is dominated by the cultivation of millet (sorghum and eleusine), maize and manioc and is supplemented by hunting and fishing (Czekanowski 1924: 112). The traditional division of labour assigned the core agricultural production to women, while unmarried men acted as warriors and hunters (Evans-Pritchard 1971: 45).

The classification of the social macrostructure is the subject of intense controversy in research. While author A (Edward E. Evans-Pritchard 1971) emphasises the centralised monarchical structure and the absolutist, dominant role of the ruling Vungara (or Avongara) and Bandia aristocratic clans as the primary state-forming element, more recent analyses by author B (Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers 2016: 89) point to a fundamentally acephalous-segmental basis. The source situation here is ambiguous: it is increasingly argued that the conquered autochthonous lineage societies largely retained their decentralised kinship systems and were merely overlaid by a thin aristocratic layer of the Avongara, who primarily demanded tribute and military loyalty, but hardly interfered in the local socio-religious microcosm. Colonial administrative records often characterise the Azande farmers as decidedly 'individualists', whose dispersed scattered settlements (homesteads) reflected a highly decentralised reality of life away from the royal courts (Boffey 2018: 22).

The relationship with neighbouring peoples - especially the Mangbetu in the south, the Boa and the Barambo - was historically characterised by a profound dichotomy of warlike expansion and intensive transcultural exchange. The institutional adoption of material cultures, agricultural techniques and ritual practices led to a regional homogenisation of certain aesthetic forms of expression in the Uele basin (Schildkrout & Keim 1990: 84). The Musée du quai Branly in Paris documents numerous artefacts in its extensive Central African holdings that materialise these fluid contact zones. Shields, ceramics and weapons often exhibit hybrid morphological characteristics that fundamentally question the strict, often artificial ethnic taxonomy of early 19th century anthropology. The Azande absorbed not only the territory, but also the ritual and craft knowledge of the subjugated groups, making their material culture a syncretic archive of Central African migration history.

Cultural context

The Azande's cosmological system of order and belief eludes the classical categories of a dogmatically institutionalised, text-based religion. At the centre of the transcendent order is the creator god Mbori, who is conceived as an omnipotent but largely distant entity. According to the theology documented in detail by Evans-Pritchard (1936: 15), Mbori does not reside in architectural representations, but at the sources of flowing waters and in inaccessible rock caverns. It is remarkable that Mbori does not usually intervene directly in the profane concerns of the people. Consequently, Mbori has neither formalised priesthoods, nor elaborate architectural temples, nor a cyclical cult calendar. Communication with the supreme deity takes place indirectly through the spirits of the ancestors (atoro).

Instead, ritual practice is centred on domestic ancestor worship. Each family association or household (homestead) maintains rudimentary, unpretentious shrines in the form of wooden stakes, at which the family elders make regular libations and prayers to the spirits of the deceased (Evans-Pritchard 1937: 112). What fundamentally distinguishes this system structurally from the religions of neighbouring Nilotic groups (such as the Dinka or Nuer) is the absolute dominance of the logic of witchcraft as the primary epistemological explanatory model for contingency.

Among the Azande, witchcraft (mangu) is not to be understood as a metaphorical or purely psychological phenomenon, but as a highly materialised and everyday concept. Mangu is conceptualised as a physical substance that resides in the abdomen (especially at the lower end of the sternum) and leaves the body as a psychic emanation to harm the health and property of fellow human beings, often without the conscious intention of the wearer (Evans-Pritchard 1937; Annus 2020: 4-6).

A fundamental controversy in ethnographic research concerns the interpretation of this witchcraft discourse, which significantly characterises the understanding of Azande culture. In his classic Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (1937), Evans-Pritchard (author A) established a strictly rationalist-structuralist interpretation: witchcraft and the corresponding divination rituals function as a logically self-contained, order-creating system of explanation and law. It regulates social tensions and resolves cognitive dissonance in the event of inexplicable misfortune. Evans-Pritchard's famous example of the collapsing granary illustrates this: The Azande do not deny the empirical causality that termites ate away the wooden pillars. However, the witchcraft explains the "why" of the coincidence - why the granary collapsed at the exact moment when a certain person was sitting underneath it (Evans-Pritchard 1937).

Postcolonial reinterpretations, largely advanced by Peter Geschiere (author B) in The Modernity of Witchcraft (1997), vehemently contradict this purely harmonising, system-stabilising view. Geschiere postulates that mangu by no means only creates traditional order and cohesion, but is a highly dynamic instrument for negotiating uncertainty, economic inequality and political disorder (Geschiere 1997: 42). In Geschiere's interpretation, the Azande's belief in witchcraft adapts flexibly to modern socio-economic upheavals and serves as a discourse to sanction or explain the accumulation of wealth in the capitalist system. The source situation here is ambiguous in that historical reports emphasise the system-preserving function, while field research in the 21st century emphasises the destabilising and paranoid nature of mangu in urban contexts.

The diagnostic and therapeutic authority to combat mangu lies with specialised divinators (witch-doctors) who have the esoteric knowledge to detect and neutralise witchcraft. Initiation into this profession requires an elaborate rite of passage that includes the incorporation of magical substances and the learning of specific trance techniques. Another element of the socio-religious order that is essential for the production of art is the role of secret or closed associations, above all the Mani (or Yanda) secret society.

While the official political sphere and jurisdiction in the pre-colonial empire were strictly dominated by men of the Avongara clan, the Mani League functioned as a subversive socio-political counterweight (Grootaers 2016: 106). The Mani League was explicitly open to both men and women and offered a parallel system of authority and protection. It guaranteed its members protection from witchcraft, illness, infertility and, not least, from the arbitrariness of the aristocratic elite (Burssens 1962: 440). The Rietberg Museum Zurich frequently illustrates these dual power structures in its curatorial narratives on Central African art. Here, ritual objects of the Mani confederation are presented as a materialisation of female participation and egalitarian empowerment, which stood in sharp contrast to the patriarchal, often autocratic royal rule of the Vungara. Women played a central role in the Mani cult, often as high-ranking initiates or ritual experts, which is a remarkable exception in regional comparison to the strongly patriarchally structured secret societies of the Congo Basin.

Aesthetic features

The sculptural canon of the Azande is characterised by a highly reduced, abstract vocabulary of forms that radically deviates from the naturalistic, often over-refined detailing of neighbouring Mangbetu art. The canonical object typology is primarily defined by the cult figures of the Mani covenant, which are referred to as Yanda (also Naze type). These anthropomorphic sculptures, mostly made of specific woods, more rarely of baked clay or soft stone, generally have a modest size range of 10 to a maximum of 30 centimetres (Burssens 1962: 433).

The canon of proportions of the Yanda figures is highly standardised. The abstract formal language focusses on a greatly enlarged, dominant head, which is often helmet- or mushroom-shaped and merges seamlessly into a block-like, rudimentary torso. The absolute reduction of physiognomic details, the lack of gender specificity in the carving and the dense encrusted patina of libele plant sap are characteristic. The applied metal rings, brass nails and glass beads surrounding the torso and neck function as votive offerings after a successful ritual intervention. Although they are conceptualised and invoked as female guardian spirits in the ritual nomenclature of the Mani covenant, the physical sculpture generally lacks an explicit anatomical gender assignment (Neyt 1981: 212). This morphological ambiguity emphasises the metaphysical character of the spirits, who operate not as human images but as material anchor points of transcendental forces.

One of the most profound iconographic controversies in the study of the Uele region concerns the anthropomorphic jug figures and figurative clay vessels. The source situation here is highly ambiguous and characterised by ethnographic attribution conflicts. Author A (Enid Schildkrout, in her standard work from 1990) locates highly decorative, figurative ceramics almost exclusively in the courtly, elite context of the Mangbetu and categorises finds collected in Azande villages as imports, spoils of war or later colonial imitations. She argues that the depiction of the artificial skull deformation (lipombo) is an exclusive identity feature of the Mangbetu.

Author B (Herman Burssens, 1962) and later ethnobotanical and material analyses (Prinz 2001) differentiate much more sharply here and contradict Schildkrout. They prove that Azande men did indeed cultivate an independent figurative ceramic tradition. While among the Mangbetu women produced pottery for the court, among the Azande the production of figurative ritual ceramics was reserved for men (Schildkrout & Keim 1990: 84). These vessels, known as kpoyo, have ornamental scar-cut patterns which, although they bear witness to Mangbetu influences, were genuinely used for ritual purposes in the Azande context (often for storing medicine or as a residence for ancestral spirits). Etymologically, it is also highly controversial whether the term kpoyo originally refers to the shape of the pottery or primarily to the branches of the Bauhinia reticulata (or Grevia mollis) tree, which are used in the termite oracle and after which the vessels were named due to their esoteric function (Prinz 2001: 304).

Other canonical artefacts of the Azande are the openwork carved, sometimes monumental wooden drum stands and the tikia. The latter are circular javelins of exquisite metallurgical quality that functioned as insignia of martial identity and are prominently documented in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York as masterpieces of Central African blacksmithing.

The choice of wood material for Yanda figurines was not primarily based on sculptural criteria (such as hardness or grain), but on the inherent pharmacological and magical properties of the tree (Mack 1990: 88). The development of the patina marks the fundamental ontological difference between a mere profane carving and an activated cult object. Through the successive application of plant resins, ritual pastes (libele) and organic sacrificial substances over a period of years, the figure accumulates a deep, opaque and highly textured encrusted patina. This encrustation often completely obscures the original carving and transforms the sculpture into an amorphous collection of matter.

Forgery criteria are highly relevant for the international collectors' market. Authentic, pre-colonial (pre-1930) pieces from the historical holdings of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren exhibit an organically grown patina that has migrated deep into the microcellular pores of the wood. Commercial forgeries produced in workshops in Kinshasa for the export market, on the other hand, often have artificially applied, homogeneous and thermally fixed layers (usually a mixture of bitumen and glue). In addition, natural heartwood cracks and authentic, inactive termite damage are forensic indicators of old age and long ritual use. Artificial ageing processes often fail due to the inconsistent oxidation traces of metallic applications (coins, rings) that were threaded on. Named documented master hands are extremely rare among the Azande, as the identity of the sculptor receded in favour of the authority of the ritual expert (nganga); nevertheless, inventory catalogues in Tervuren and Brussels identify specific regional workshops in the Uele area on the basis of micro-stylistic features of the Nazeze forms (Baeke & Bouttiaux 2004: 68).

Ritual practice

The performance and ritual practice of the Azande unfolds less in monumental, public or theocratic large-scale ceremonies (as is common in West African kingdoms) than in highly individualised, performative micro-spaces. The use of the altar is inextricably linked to the activities of the closed Mani covenant. The Yanda figures do not function here as inert, passive representations of a distant deity, but as active, metaphysical actors in the management of everyday life.

Their lifecycle begins as a static, profane carving. The woodcarver creates the rough form, but at this stage the object has no inherent power. The ritual activation is carried out exclusively by a high-ranking ritual expert (nganga), who transfers the figure to the sanctuary of the Mani covenant. These shrines are usually hidden in the dense forest, isolated from the profane village sphere, in special shelters (De Dampierre 1992: 88).

The central act of empowerment and transformation consists of the application of libele, an esoterically composed mixture of specific plant juices, resins and ritually charged organic substances. In some documented regional variants of the DRC, the carver preemptively inserts an abdominal cavity into the figure. The nganga applies magical ingredients (such as crushed bones, specific roots or minerals) into this opening in order to charge the figure as a "soul vessel", analogous to the nkisi practices of the lower Congo basin (Burssens 1962: 440).

During the ritual performance, the supplicant steps in front of the figure, which is normally kept hidden in containers, to verbalise social tensions, legal disputes, fertility problems or the acute suspicion of witchcraft. Synchronised with the invocation, the sculpture is successively anointed with libele. As soon as the postulated problem has been solved by the intervention of the Yanda spirit, the cosmological law of reciprocity requires a material votive offering. These offerings consist of imported blue glass beads, colonial copper coins or locally forged metal rings that are applied to the figure's extremities or neck (Grootaers 2016: 110). The accumulation of these gifts functions as a visible archive of the figure's ritual efficacy.

The deactivation or disposal of such a figure is ethnographically highly complex. If a yanda loses its agency - for example through repeated failure to avert illness in the community - the ritual supply of libele is rigorously withdrawn. However, it is not disposed of as profane waste. Instead, the figure is deliberately left to the natural decomposition processes of the forest. Through the consumption of the wood by termites, the inherent spiritual residual energy is neutralised and reintegrated into the ecological cycle.

Another essential pillar of ritual practice is the performance of divination in the uncultivated periphery (bush). The highest oracle, the benge oracle, is performed exclusively by older men who must observe strict taboo rules in advance (including rigorous sexual abstinence and the avoidance of certain foods such as elephant meat). The ritual takes place outside the village. While reciting highly standardised liturgical formulas, an extremely toxic alkaloid (extracted from a forest creeper) is administered to a young chicken. The questions to the oracle must be binary in structure. The survival or death of the animal after administration is considered direct legal evidence, which in the pre-colonial legal system could lead to the execution of convicted sorcerers (Evans-Pritchard 1937, chs. 9-11; Lombard et al. 2024). Due to the high cost of the poison, benge was only consulted in serious crises (murder, adultery).

The less final but more everyday dakpa oracle requires the evening insertion of two ritually prepared branches of the tree species dakpa and kpoyo into an active termite burrow. The results are read out the next morning: The termites' decision as to which wood core they consumed overnight generates the divinatory response to questions about agricultural endeavours or travel plans (Prinz 2001: 304). The iwa rubbing board oracle, in which a wooden cylinder is rubbed over a board, is used for quick, everyday decisions; if the cylinder falters, the answer is affirmative. The Fowler Museum at UCLA precisely documents the material culture of this oracle system in its special divinatory collections (e.g. as part of the Art and Oracle exhibitions) and illustrates the seamless, highly rationalised integration of flora, fauna and metaphysical cognition in the Azande world view.

Historical context

The history of the Azande is primarily a story of territorial expansion, military conquest and massive cultural assimilation. The history of migration can be dated to the beginning of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when warlike units from the drier region of present-day Sudan advanced southwards into the fertile Mbomou and Uele basins (Neyt 1981: 210). The ruling lineages of the Avongara (in the east) and the Bandia (in the west) successively conquered fragmented autochthonous groups.

Through strategic interethnic marriages (in which Bandia leaders married local women), the military recruitment of defeated men and the stringent imposition of Pa-Zande as a lingua franca, the hybrid ethnic conglomerate that is labelled "Azande" in the academic literature was formed over generations (Evans-Pritchard 1971: 45). Dating controversies exist with regard to the chronological precision of these waves of expansion. The oral tradition of the Avongara genealogies is often mythical and serves to legitimise rule. Early Western historiographers often interpreted these genealogies uncritically and circularly as absolute calendar dates, which is increasingly being revised in modern historiography.

The colonial encounter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries fundamentally altered the socio-cultural matrix of the Azande. This encounter took place in phases: First, Arab-Sudanese ivory and slave traders (the Khartoumers) invaded the area, which led to a massive militarisation of the Avongara empires. This was followed by the brutal advances of the Belgian Force Publique (Congo Free State) and the British colonial troops (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan).

The introduction of colonial jurisdiction by European administrators structurally undermined the authority of the Avongara kings. Conflicts, especially accusations of witchcraft, were no longer ritually authorised by the colonial administration via benge poison oracles, but were instead tried before profane administrative courts (Boffey 2018: 34). The British and Belgian administrations criminalised oracle practices as 'barbarism', which did not, however, eradicate these rites, but forced them into the clandestine underground of the forest.

In addition, drastic epidemiological crises, in particular the devastating epidemic of sleeping sickness in the 1920s, forced massive social restructuring. The colonial governments responded with forced resettlement programmes (known in the Sudan region as the infamous Zande Scheme). These programmes forced the dissolution of the traditional, ecologically balanced scattered settlements and led to the concentration of the population along newly constructed colonial roads, primarily to facilitate the cultivation of cotton for export (Czekanowski 1924: 115). The result was not only a fatal depletion of local land resources, but also a rapid change in the social fabric, which drastically escalated the fear of witchcraft (mangu) in the now densely packed settlements.

The impact of this colonial disruption on art production was profound and bidirectional. On the one hand, it led to the decline of specific courtly representational arts (such as the production of elaborate ivory carvings for the kings). On the other hand, the presence of European administrators and early explorers stimulated a completely new economic dynamic. The expedition reports of the botanist Georg Schweinfurth (In the Heart of Africa, 1874) already focussed interest on the material culture of the region. The expedition of Duke Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg (1907-1908), in which the Polish anthropologist Jan Czekanowski took part, was decisive for the museum documentation (Heusing 2002: 12). Czekanowski's excessive, systematic collections of everyday and cult objects (today in Leipzig and Berlin, among other places) formed the basis for the understanding of Central African art history in Europe.

However, the commercial breakthrough of Azande art on the Western art market only occurred in the context of the major African exhibitions of the post-war era, when the radical, formal abstraction of the Yanda figures met the aesthetic sensibility of Western modernism (in the context of the discourse of primitivism) with pinpoint accuracy. Collectors appreciated the raw, unpolished reduction of the forms, which stood in stark contrast to the courtly smoothness of West African bronzes.

This price development and the exponential demand from Western collectors initiated a flourishing commercial workshop production in centres such as Kinshasa and Bangui from the late 1960s onwards. The problem of forgery is therefore extremely acute in the Azande art segment, which is why provenance and scientific authentication are indispensable for private collectors.

Established authenticity criteria of the major auction houses and museum laboratories are now based on complex forensic procedures. Renowned institutions such as the British Museum in London and the RMCA in Tervuren are increasingly basing their provenance research on material science parameters such as X-ray spectroscopy and wood species dating in order to ensure the historical integrity of their ule collections against the constant influx of high-class forgeries. Analysing authentic termite galleries and the chemical forensics of ritual encrustation are now the gold standard for differentiating between an esoterically charged mani object and a profane export item.