Kasayi

Kasayi is the Luba name for the Kasai country, and here refers to the western Baluba, the Luba-speaking villagers of the Kasai river basin west of the Luba heartland. Their ancestors belonged to the Iron Age tradition that took shape in the Upemba depression from the 400s and fed the Kingdom of Luba after about 1500.

As the Luba empire expanded in the 1700s, Luba hunting and farming clans moved west into the lands between the upper Kasai, Lulua and Sankuru rivers, where they lived as small chiefdoms on the frontier between the Luba, Lunda and Songye worlds, often acknowledging no single king.

They speak Tshiluba, also called Luba-Kasai, a Luban Bantu language shared with the neighboring Lulua, Kete and Kanyok, and keep the Luba customs of matrilineal descent and village farming of manioc, millet and bananas.