Written and Researched by Inayet Hadi. Please email the autor at inayethadimpa@gmail.com when you cite this article in your research paper. Thank you. Your comments are appreciated.

Karnu: Gbaya People’s Secondary Resistance Inspirer

The longest and the most sustained rebellion that the French colonizers faced in the western

third of the present day Central African Republic was inspired by Barka Ngainoumbey, later changing

his name to Karnu or the Roller of the Earth. From 1924 onward at his village of Nahing, he

encouraged the people to boycott European goods, and refuse to serve taxes to the colonizers.1 By

1929, the civil disobedience to the French occupation had given way to military resistance inspired by

Karnu’s death. Karnu was murdered by the French at the beginning of the rebellion starting in 1928 and

lasting to 1931.2 The reprisals, and the nightmarish brutality that followed in suppressing the supposed

rebellion inspired by Karnu brought more resistance from the occupied people then would have

followed if the French colonizers carried out no brutality along with reprisals. Further, Thomas O’Toole

the author of the article, “The 1928-1931 Gbaya Insurrection in Ubangui-Shari: Messianic Movement

or Village Self-Defense?” asserts that “…the colonial administrations and a handful of planters through

their own actions rather then any organized or consciously coordinated Gbaya groups working under a

single leader or organization” spread the rebellion.3 The nightmarish reprisals carried out by the French

colonizers against the civil-disobedient Africans was the impetus that led the local groups, in particular

the Gbaya people to resist the harsh treatment that were to be carried out against the Africans for

refusing the suzerainty of the French rule. 4

The rebellion began among the Gbaya people inspired by Karnu, who believed that “…whites

would become slaves of the blacks, food would be abundant, and all blacks would be united.”5 Those

1 Thomas O’Toole, “The 1928-1931 Gbaya Insurrection in Ubangui-Shari: Messianic Movement or Village Self-Defense?” Canadian Journal of African Studies 18, no. 2 (1984): 329-30.

2 Pierre Kalch, Historical Dictionary of The Central African Republic, trans. Thomas O’Toole, (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1992), xxv.

3 O’Toole, 330.4 This re-establishing of French suzerainty from 1928 to 1931 in the Central African Republic (formerly known as

Ubangui-Shari) is known by many names, such as the ‘Kongo Wara’ the ‘War of the Hoe Handles’ and the ‘Gbaya Insurrection.’

5 O’Toole, 334.

words were a welcome to the Gbaya people whose children, men, and including women who were

pregnant and nursing were forced into labor by collecting rubber from trees for the benefit of the

French concessionary companies. The final straw that led the Gbaya people to welcome the prophesies

of Karnu was the Gbaya were forced into building the Congo-Ocean railway were according to the

figures stated by Patrick Manning, out of 130,000 recruited from sparsely populated areas, nearly

10,000 were murdered during their forced labor.6 The opinion of this author believes that recruitment of

the prime adult male and female population from the western third of Ubangui-Shari area led to the

dysfunctional village systems, where the most healthy individuals could no longer work for the benefit

of their entire group. Therefore, the resentment against the French colonizers would be used to the

advantage of Karnu, who promised that one day Blacks would become supreme to their oppressors,

which no doubt is a welcoming statement to those oppressed, and who are yearning to be their own

masters.

Karnu was believed by the French colonizers to be the leader of the Kongo Wara. If looking

back at the event through the literature it would seem that the movement, defined as self-determination

for the Black people led by Karnu was in it not itself the impetus that gave to the most longest and

sustained rebellion that the French colonizers faced in the French Equatorial Africa. According to

literature on that event by contemporary scholars it was the French colonizers response of terror,

brutality, and mass murder that led the Gbaya and other groups to resist the onslaught of the French

against their communities.7 This analysis bares much fruit knowing that Karnu was murdered at the

beginning of the Kongo Wara rebellion. Virginia Thompson succinctly writes of the event that led to

the belief by the French colonizers that there was a general upraising, and Karnu being the leader. The

Gbaya with the support of Karnu refused to pay their rubber tax to the concessionary companies. The

concessionary companies asked the French colonizer administration to help for collecting the rubber

6 Patrick Manning, Francophone Sub-Saharan African 1880-1985, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 78.7 Found in analysis and research conducted by Thompson, 17-18, 338; O’Toole, 330; and Canale, 427-29. All authors are

prolific scholars on subject with numerous published historical analysis texts detailing the inhumane treatment of the Africans by the French colonizers.

from the Gbaya people. The colonizers sent in a small contingent against Karnu “…of twenty

militiamen commanded by a civil official. It was quickly routed by the Baya (sic).”8 The militiamen

retreated to the post at Boda until they were rescued by further reinforcements. The initial retreat by the

French colonizers after confronting Karnu at his village of Nahing; and along with the subsequent

orders by the Governor-General Raphael Antonetti to disperse and return the troops that were organized

against Karnu. The head of the Haute-Sangha division had assured the Governor-General that the civil

official, who was sent to collect the rubber tax at Nahing, had over-reacted to the events.9 These

sequencing of events led to the belief among the Gbaya people that indeed Karnu and themselves had

the power to drive the French colonizers away from their lands, and to be their own masters.

The reason the military resistance among the Gbaya did not end with Karnu’s death was the

reaction to his death by the Gbaya people, “Karnu is dead, so be it, but that does not stop us from

making war.”10 This reaction symbolizes the determination of the people who had for a long time been

subjugated to inhumane treatment by the colonizers. The enabler of this treatment was Governor-

General Raphael Antonetti who administered the French Equatorial Africa on behalf of the French

Republic. There were no concrete figures of the number of dead on the Gbaya and other local

populations or those of the colonists whose main purpose was to show to the metropolis, Paris that

everything was going fine and well.11 But as Jean Suret-Canale, the author of French Colonialism in

Tropical Africa writes that there were many “…punitive operations on the border territory inhabited by

the Baya; numerous summary executions took place.”12 These punitive operations against the Gbaya

people resulted in the conservative estimates in thousands of deaths, but the author of this article would

venture to the hundreds of thousands who were murdered by the French colonists due to the censor of

8 Virginia Thompson, and Richard Adloff, The Emerging States of French Equatorial Africa, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), 388.

9 O’Toole, 335.10 O’Toole, 337.11 Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa 1900-1945, trans. Till Gottheiner. (New York: Pica Press,

1971), 429.12 Suret-Canale, 429.

records by the colonist political-military administrators.13

Regarding the collaborations of Africans towards the French is written by Thompson who

writes that the “[t]ribes antagonistic to the Baya were called upon to help crush the revolt, and allegedly

were told that they could pillage the country as their reward.”14 These activities that were allowed by

the French colonizers have devastated the populations figures as can be deducted by the statements

issued earlier of the sparsely population to begin with. Barthelemy Boganda the “father” of the Central

African Republic to denounce “the French puppet regime of David Dacko in 1980 and 1981” used the

Kongo Wara movement to illustrate David Dacko as puppet to the French government.15 It is necessary

to use the history of ones own people to be able to draw strength and wisdom for the future. This

resistant to the French colonization was the Secondary Resistance, inspired by Africans to free them-

selves.

13 Canale, 429; Canale asserts that letters sent by French officials and settlers to France were censored regarding the ‘Kongo Wara’ rebellion.

14 Thompson, 388.15 O’Toole, 342.

Bibliography

Kalch, Pierre. Historical Dictionary of The Central African Republic. Translated by Thomas O’Toole. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1992.

---. Central African Republic. Oxford: Clio Press, 1993.

Manning, Patrick. Francophone Sub-Saharan African 1880-1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

O’Toole, Thomas. “The 1928-1931 Gbaya Insurrection in Ubangui-Shari: Messianic Movement or Village Self-Defense?” Canadian Journal of African Studies 18, no. 2 (1984): 329-344.

Suret-Canale, Jean. French Colonialism in Tropical Africa 1900-1945. Translated by Till Gottheiner. New York: Pica Press, 1971.

Thompson, Virginia, and Richard Adloff. The Emerging States of French Equatorial Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960.