the zambian kingdoms series: the namwanga people
nakonde means the land of bananas in the namwanga language. in a country whose place names so often carry the weight of colonial administration, it is a name that remembers something else — the landscape as the people who lived in it understood it, before the border was drawn.
the winamwanga people are believed to have come from northeast africa at approximately 900 BC, arriving alongside the tonga and ila peoples of southern province. their transformation from nomadic wanderers to settled farmers traces to musiani — a bisa visitor who introduced firewood and farming to the namwanga at mwenzo. his intelligence so impressed the community — the simwanzas, sichalwes, sichizyas and sinkalas — that they gave him a namwanga wife, offered him a chiefdom, and gave him a new name: chikanamulilo. but musiani deliberately refused to move from mwenzo to his new village.
and so the place became mwenzo. because in namwanga, when you deliberately refuse something, it is called umwenzonyi.
a place named for a deliberate refusal. a landscape named for bananas. these are the kinds of etymologies that carry an entire cultural worldview in a single word.
the namwanga political structure is unique in the kingdoms series. the paramount chief of the namwanga resides not in zambia but in tanzania. after the colonial partitioning, the headquarters of the namwanga people remained in tanganyika under king mukoma. to this day, the paramount chief is based in tanzania and appoints a subordinate chief to rule over the namwanga in zambia. the zambian chief carries the title nawaitwika — a female title. the nawaitwika is a queen, not a king.
the lineage of nawaitwika chiefs: the first was chief namulinda. her successor namaipo died in 1940. the third nawaitwika was chief malia — who ruled from 1941 to 1999. fifty-eight years. one of the longest-serving chiefs in the history of zambia. from the early years of northern rhodesia through independence through the UNIP years through the third republic.
the namwanga naming system: all male surnames begin with si — siwale, simukonda, sikombe, sinkala. all female surnames begin with na — nawale, namukonda, nakaponda, nambela. the same root, differently marked by gender. the family name is shared. the gender marker is non-negotiable.
donald robert mengo siwale — a namwanga — founded the mwenzo welfare association in 1912, the first welfare association in northern rhodesia. educated at the overtoun institute in malawi. founding the association together with rev. david kaunda of lubwa mission — whose son kenneth kaunda would become zambia's first president.
the first seeds of zambian nationalism were planted by a namwanga man, at mwenzo mission station, in 1912.
the zambian kingdoms series continues. 🇿🇲
