Suku

The Suku, or Basuku, are a matrilineal Bantu people of the broken plateau between the Kwango and Kwilu rivers in southwestern Congo, with groups in northern Angola; Kisuku belongs to the Kikongo cluster. In the 1600s Lunda pressure from the east drove them and the Yaka north from Angola, and the Lunda-led Yaka kingdom dominated the Kwango region.

Around the middle of the 1700s the Suku, under their leader Meni Kongo, refused to submit to the Yaka paramount and moved to Feshi, keeping their own chiefs and identity instead of merging into the Yaka.

Men hunt while women farm, and boys enter the mukhanda initiation camp, where kakungu and m-bawa masks appear. Ancestor veneration and carved figures and helmet masks lie at the heart of their religious life.