Tumbuka people

Common card · No. 485227

The Tumbuka (also known as Yombe, Tonga, Kamanga, Senga and Henga) are a group of Bantu people found in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. More than fifteen related groups are counted among the wider Tumbuka family, including the Senga, Nyika, Henga, Yombe, Phoka and Tonga, all of whom speak dialects of the same language and trace their history to a common kingdom. Their language, Chitumbuka, has around a dozen recorded dialects, among them Yombe, Senga and Wenya. These groups were at one time brought together under a single ruler, in what became known as the Nkhamanga Kingdom. According to oral traditions recorded by the historians Yizenge Chondoka and Frackson Bota, several smaller Tumbuka groups also survive in the north-western corner of the old kingdom, between Kalonga and Isoka, and across the border in Tanzania; many of these belong to what is called the Kalonga wa Nkhonde segment of the wider Mulonga Mbulalubilo lineage. Like a number of neighbouring peoples, the Tumbuka trace...

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