Ikitabo Kitakatifu Seba — Seba Scripture Portions (DR Congo)
Overview
Ikitabo Kitakatifu Seba ("the Holy Scripture of Seba") is the Gospel of Luke in the Seba language of Haut-Katanga Province, DRC, published by Beyond Translation under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license and available via YouVersion/Bible.com (ID 4315; abbreviation: KDG). This appears to be the first scripture translation into Seba. The CC-BY-SA license — unusual for Bible translations — reflects Beyond Translation's Church-Centric Bible Translation (CCBT) model, which positions local church communities as owners of the translated text. Beyond Translation has trained church leaders from 15 DRC languages, completing Luke translations for 14 of them to provide scripture to 160,000+ speakers; Seba is one of these projects.
Language and People
Seba (ISO 639-3: kdg; autonym: Kunda; also called Sewa, Shishi, Konts, Kots) is a Bantu language: Niger-Congo → Atlantic-Congo → Benue-Congo → Bantoid → Narrow Bantu → Zone M, M.55 (Bisa-Lamba/Lala-Bisa group, sometimes listed as Sabi subgroup). It is closely related to the Bisa and Nsenga peoples of Zambia.
The Seba people live in Kasenga Territory, Haut-Katanga Province (formerly part of Katanga Province, divided in 2015), southeastern DRC — near the Zambia–DRC border, in the broader Copperbelt region of south-central Africa.
Estimated speakers: approximately 167,000–250,000 (Ethnologue 2002: ~167,000; PeopleGroups.org: ~249,000).
Historical and Cultural Context
The Seba/Kunda people have experienced the historical disruptions typical of the south-central DRC Copperbelt region: the area was shaped by the 20th-century mining industry, the Katanga secession crisis (1960–1963), and the successive DRC civil wars. Historian and explorer David Livingstone documented the related Akunda/Kunda people in 1868 during his travels in the region. An annual traditional ceremony, the Malaila Traditional Ceremony (held in August), marks the cultural calendar. The Seba are historically connected to migration waves following the collapse of the Luba and Lunda kingdoms.
Publishing and Organizations
Published by Beyond Translation (beyondtranslation.org, Arlington, Texas) under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, as part of their DRC 15-language community translation initiative.