Kete

The Kete, or Bakete, are a Bantu people of the Grand Kasai plateau in the south-central Congo, on the rim between the Luba and Kuba worlds. They speak Tshikete and are counted among the Luba-Kasai cluster, though they never formed a centralized state and lived in scattered villages of farmers and hunters.

In the 1600s their chiefdoms were absorbed into the growing Kuba federation, whose royal traditions name the Kete alongside the Bushoong and the Kasai Twa as one of the kingdom's founding peoples. Kete society is organized around family and village headmen, with rites for the birth of twins, when dancers wearing the Mukwandayi helmet mask appear, and a weekly day of rest devoted to the ancestors.