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The Tumbuka (also known as Yombe, Tonga, Kamanga, Senga and Henga) is a group of Bantu peoples people found in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Tumbuka people, Encyclopædia Britannica The Tumbuka group is made up of over fifteen sub groups of peoples such as the Tumbuka people, Nyika people, engapeople, Yombe, Phoka people, Tonga and Tumbuka, who are part of the larger Tumbuka family. Their language is called Tumbuka language and has 12 total known dialects such as Tumbuka language, Tumbuka language, and Wenya, among others. Together with these groups united under one ruler, they formed a kingdom known as Nkhamanga Kingdom.
There are also many smaller subsidiary Tumbuka groups by origin found mainly in the north-western corner of their original kingdom between Kalonga and Isoka as well as Tanzania. Many of these belong to the Kalonga wa Nkhonde segment of the Mulonga Mbulalubilo Tumbuka.
The Tumbuka tribe was one of the first tribes who originated from Luba in what is currently known as Democratic Republic of the Congo. That was before any formal government setup and they had been staying there for hundreds of years after breaking away from the Bantu tribes in upper central Africa.
The Tumbuka tribe and other tribes were driven out of Luba by a warrior tribe known as Kongolo. He merged with the tribes that remained in Luba after they tried to subdue the Tumbuka people and failed.
The Tumbuka language, also called Chitumbuka, is a Bantu language, similar to many other Bantu languages in structure and vocabulary. It is classified as a central Bantu language in the Niger-Congo family, and it has 12 known and studied dialects. The Chitumbuka language is mutually intelligible with the Tonga language which is its dialect. In 19th Century, missionaries treated two such dialects as the standard Chitumbuka and Tonga languages, which are one language.
Before a British protectorate was created over Nyasaland, there were many ethnic groups in what is now Malawi's Northern Region including a substantial group culturally-related people, scattered widely and loosely organized under largely autonomous village headmen who spoke dialects of the Chitumbuka language. Missionaries in the late 19th century standardised these languages into a relatively small number of groups, and chose the standardised Tumbuka language as the usual medium for teaching in the north of the country, in preference to the Ngoni language, Tonga or Ngonde dialect languages which were minor dialects.
In 1934, Chitumbuka was made an official language of Malawi along with Chewa and English. The three languages were used in government, national radio, school curriculum and public. The languages enjoyed official status for over 21 years before Banda removed Chichewa and Chitumbuka as official languages in 1968, leaving English alone on the official status.
Even though Chitumbuka and Chichewa were removed as official languages in 1968, Chitumbuka was completely removed as a medium of instruction and in examinations, leaving Chichewa to continue in education. The secondary school entrance system was manipulated to assist candidates from the Central Region and disadvantage those from the Northern Region. Some of those that objected to the ban on the use of Chitumbuka were arrested or harassed in public but both the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian and the Catholic Church continued to preach and use religious texts in Chitumbuka in the Northern and Central Region.
After the advent of multi-party democracy, Tumbuka language programmes began to be broadcast on national radio in 1994 but a 1996 proposal for the reintroduced of Tumbuka as a medium for teaching in the first four years of compulsory education was denied.
The large elephant herds of the region attracted groups of coastal Swahili ivory hunters and traders followed in the colonial era by European ivory traders. In the 1840s, Swahili Arabs entered northern Malawi region, with Jumbe Salim bin Abdallah establishing a trading centre at Nkhotakota near Lake Malawi. Jumbe Abdallah's trade in slaves to satisfy the demand for slaves on Zanzibar plantations of cloves and for the Middle East triggered raids and violence against the Tumbuka people. Malawi Slave Routes and Dr. David Livingstone Trail, UNESCO (2011), Quote: "Slave trade was introduced in Malawi by the Swahili-Arab traders in the 19th century following a great demand for ivory and slave in the East African markets namely Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa and Quelimane. The Swahilis and Omani Arabs moved further into the interior of Africa including Malawi to obtain slaves and ivory. One of Slave Trade Route was Nkhotakota where one of the Swahili-Arab slave traders, Salim-bin Abdullah (Jumbe) set up his headquarters on the shore of Lake Malawi in the 1840s. From Nkhota kotawhere he organized his expeditions to obtain slaves and ship them across the lake to East African markets, Kilwa. About 20,000 slaves were annually shipped by Jumbe to Kilwa from Nkhotakota." A male slave was known as muzga or kapolo, while a chituntulu meant a young female slave.C. J. W. Fleming (1972), The Peculiar Institution Among The Early Tumbuka, The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January, 1972), page 5
The rising demand for ivory in the European market led to conflicts to control the export trade, resulting in greater social distinctions and politically centralized chiefdoms among the Tumbuka. These ruling groups collapsed around 1855, when the highly militarized warriors of the Ngoni ethnic group from South Africa arrived seeking agricultural slaves and recruits, in addition to those acquired by the Swahili traders., Quote: "(...) raids on Tumbuka villages devastated the region as the demand for slaves by Zanzibar Arab traders increased in the early 1800s."
The Tonga dialect and Tonga group is different from the Tonga language and people of Zambia and Zimbabwe who belong to different branches of the Bantu family. During colonial time, the Tonga sub group learnt Chitumbuka in school as it was one of the official languages of Malawi.
The Swahili traders had built most of their stockades in the area in which the Henga had been settled and, after the African Lakes Company set up a trading base at Karonga, and as the threat of Ngoni raids had declined, the usefulness of Henga and Swahili to the Ngonde state lessened. Both groups were aliens among the Ngonde majority, and were suspicious of cooperation between the company and Ngonde, so they allied with each other. The alliance of the Swahili and the Henga faced a rival alliance between the Ngonde and the African Lakes Company which eventually led to the so-called Karonga War between them, a series of skirmishes and sieges of stockades between 1887 and 1889O. J. M. Kalinga (1980), The Karonga War: Commercial Rivalry and Politics of Survival, Journal of African History, Vol. 21, pages 215-8.
The Ngoni invasion led initially to a devastation of the Tumbuka people, through the death, destruction, loss of family members, abandonment of the settled valleys, and disruption of their traditional agricultural methods as the Tumbuka people hid in mountains, small islands, and marshes to escape from the violence associated with large-scale human raids and elephant hunting. It also led to intermingling and intermarriage between the people of Tumbuka and the Ngoni cultures.
The British explorer David Livingstone wrote about the Lake Malawi region in 1858, mentioning slavery of the Tumbuka people both to the export of slaves to satisfy the Arab demand as well as domestic slavery in the form of "debt settlement".C. J. W. Fleming (1972), The Peculiar Institution Among The Early Tumbuka, The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January, 1972), pages 5–10; Quote: "Arab traders began penetrating deeper and deeper into Central Africa, slaves became a common article of commerce and slavery took on the many cruel and degrading aspects which Livingstone encountered in these regions during the course of his explorations. Minor wars were carried on for the sole purpose of capturing slaves and they were freely traded, not only with the Arabs but among the inhabitants themselves." Christian missionaries arrived in this region in the 1870s.
In 1895 British-led forces defeated the slave trader Mlozi at Karonga, ending the slave trade there. Although a British protectorate over what is now Malawi was proclaimed in 1891, the Northern Ngoni only finally accepted British rule in 1904, when the Tumbuka people ceased to be their vassals or returned from where they had taken refuge to their original homes. A Chikulamayembe paramount chief was restored to office in 1907, and Tumbuka culture reasserted itself. The education provided by Scottish-run missions at several sites in the Northern Region of Nyasaland was more eagerly embraced by the Tumbuka and Tonga peoples, whose earlier social organisation and religion had suffered from the attacks of slave raiders and Ngoni, than by the Ngoni and Ngonde peoples, who retained these institutions intact, and more mission schools were opened among the Tumbuka than any other group in Nyasaland. The education that these schools provided not only reached a greater numbers of pupils but was also superior to that found in other parts of the protectorate, although other Scottish missionaries at Blantyre Mission also provided educational advancement for some southerners. Those that these missions trained became an educated African elite, who found employment as teachers, in the colonial civil service or in commerce, and whose political aim was African advancement to higher positions in the administration. In contrast, the Yao people in the south, who included many Muslims excluded from Christian education, and Chewa people in the centre, where fewer missions had been founded, were less affected by these political aspirations.
In the pre-colonial period, the Tumbuka people, like most of the people of what became Nyasaland relied on subsistence farming to support their families. During the first three decades of colonial rule, commercial agriculture developed both on European-owned states and the smallholdings of African peasants in the southern and central parts of the protectorate. However, attempts to introduce commercial agriculture into the Northern Region were frustrated by a lack of suitable crops and high transport costs arising from its distance from the available markets. As early as the 1880s, Tumbuka and Tonga men began to leave the region to work as porters and estate workers in the Southern Region of Nyasaland and, once those Tumbuka that had received a mission education reached adulthood, they travelled to Southern Rhodesia and South Africa where their literacy and numeracy commanded much high wages than they could earn in within Nyasaland. Although the colonial government was concerned about the scale of labour migration, it was a virtual necessity for many in the north of the country where there were few alternatives besides subsistence agriculture.
The colonial government were concerned that the Tumbuka-speaking areas had become the "Dead North" of the country but only invested small amounts in developing infrastructure or promoting commercial crops
One supporter of the underdevelopment hypothesis blames the impoverishment and stagnation of Tumbuka-speaking areas on a step-by-step process that started in the middle of the 19th century when the Indian Ocean Ivory trade and slave trade created a demand for imported goods and prompted social differentiation within their traditional societies.Vail (1981), pp. 233-4, 238 This was worsened by the mid-19th century incursion of Ngoni people, which caused a further loss of status of among the Tumbuka people, who become Ngoni serfs or refugees with limited access to land. Ngoni agricultural practices of shifting or slash-and-burn cultivation and overstocking cattle were said to impoverish the soil and promoted the spread of the tsetse fly. According to Vail, the effect of the Ngoni invasions was exacerbated during the period of colonial rule up to 1939 as, at best, local African men in the "Dead North" of Nyasaland had little choice but to become labour migrants and, at worst, their recruitment for the mines, farms and other employers of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa was forced.
Much of Vail's account of environmental degradation in Northern Nyasaland is based on the views of 19th century missionaries who regarded Ngoni farming practices as environmentally destructive, wasteful and therefore morally wrong, although modern agronomists believe shifting cultivation may be efficient and sympathetic to the environment. His suggestions that both the recruitment of labour and the consumption of foreign goods was forced on the Tumbuka, seem overstated, and the first labour migrancy from this area was entirely voluntary and, in later years, was more often disapproved of by the Nyasaland government than promoted by them.
Since independence, the economic conditions of the Tumbuka people have remained largely unchanged, their political power limited given the numerous ethnic groups in this region of Africa.
Levi Mumba, Charles Chinula and many of the leading figures in organisations that later became part of Nyasaland African Congress, or of Congress itself, were Tumbuka-speaking northerners or graduates of Blantyre Mission. This movement ultimately gained independence for Malawi in 1964.
After in 1963, in preparation for independence, Tumbuka speakers took a majority of the ministerial posts in the government of Hastings Banda. Shortly after independence, in the 1964 Cabinet Crisis, the demands of these ministers for more rapid Africanisation, a key demand of the mission-educated elite, led to their resignation or sacking and in many cases their exile. In the aftermath of this, Banda purged their supporters and other Tumbuka speakers from positions of influence and replaced them with Chewa nominees from the Central Region, at the same time promoting the Chewa culture as the only authentic Malawian culture.
The Tumbuka people have had a sophisticated traditional religion. It included the concept of a supreme creator called Chiuta symbolizing the sun, who Tumbuka faith holds was "self created and all knowing". This religious belief has yield a rich mythology filled with morals. In a manner similar to neighboring regions of Africa, the Tumbuka have also revered ancestor worship, spirit possession, witchcraft and similar practices. Their spirit possession and witchcraft is related to folk therapies for illnesses. This practice is locally called Vimbuza, includes a therapeutic dance performed by those possessed, and this is a part of modern syncretistic Christianity observed by the Tumbuka people.
The Tumbuka people have been rural, living in villages or dispersed agnatically related clusters of rectangular thatched houses. A circular thatched granaries and kitchen would traditionally be a part of each household. The male members would spend their time mostly in a part of the house called Mpara and females in Ntanganini. In the crop season, family members dispersed, sometimes residing in isolated thatched houses near the cultivated land.
In the contemporary era, the primary staple crops of the Tumbuka people are maize, cassava, millet, and beans, along with a variety of pumpkins, vegetables, and fruits such as bananas and oranges as supplements often grown by Tumbuka women. Men have tended to be migrant workers. In the past, the farming was done manually using hoes. During the colonial rule, ox-drawn plows were introduced. Citemene, or slash and burn agriculture by small farmers is a modern era practice and continues among the Tumbuka people.
Vimbuza, in the traditional Tumbuka people's belief, are category of spirits that cause illnesses, a concept that according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey is similar to "bodily humours" in early European texts. The Vimbuza causes imbalance in the hot and cold forces within the human body, whose healing process, to Tumbuka people, is a ritual dance with singing and music. The UNESCO inscribed the ritualistic Vimbuza dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. Vimbuza healing dance, UNESCO, Malawi, Inscribed in 2008 (3.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005) The musical instruments that accompany the Vimbuza includes a Ng’oma or “drums of affliction”. A healer diagnoses spirit possession, and with the patient undertakes dance healing ritual treatment over several weeks or months.The dance tries to bring the patient into a trance, while the songs call the spirits to help. Men participate by creating drum rhythms that are spirit-specific and sometimes as the healer. Vimbuza, states UNESCO, creates a "space for patients to dance their disease”.
The Vimbuza tradition is effectively a set of practices and beliefs of which the Vimbuza dance is part; is a traditional healing procedure, to cure psychological illnesses as well as exorcise demons. In some places it is specifically called mkhalachitatu Vimbuza. Mkhalachitatu Vimbuza is one of the names given to Vimbuza dances performed as an exorcism rite when one is possessed by demons or evil spirits.
It is predominantly performed in Rumphi, but has spread to Mzimba, Karonga, Kasungu and other districts. The dance is also performed in Nkhata Bay where it is called masyabi and here it incorporates indigenous variations.
Society, religion and culture
Even before colonial rule was established, Christian missionaries arrived amongst Tumbuka people. Thomas Cullen Young was one of the first missionaries to publish on the culture in Notes on the history of the Tumbuka-Kamanga peoples in the Northern Province of Nyasaland. To help the conversion process, hymnbook and mythologies of Christianity were written into Tumbuka language, into a Tumbuka hymnbook. In contemporary times, the Tumbuka people are officially Christian, but they retain their traditional beliefs and folklores.
Silas S. Ncozana (2026). 9789990816143, Christian Literature Association in Malawi (CLAIM). . ISBN 9789990816143
Traditional dances and ceremonies
Kulonga Traditional ceremony
The Kulonga Traditional Ceremony is an annual harvest festival of the Tumbuka people in the Lundazi District of Eastern Province, Zambia. It is held under the leadership of Chief Mphamba and is named after the central ritual of kulonga
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Vinkhakanimba Traditional Ceremony
The Vinkhakanimba Traditional Ceremony is an annual event celebrated by the Tumbuka people under Senior Chief Muyombe in Mafinga District, Muchinga Province, Zambia. Held between 15 and 28 September, the ceremony commemorates the Tumbuka people's migration from Ujiji in Tanzania and honors their cultural heritage. The festival features traditional dances, including the popular mganda, a military-inspired dance that evolved from Tumbuka men who served in the British Army during colonial times. These soldiers brought back marching styles, which were incorporated into the dance, blending military precision with traditional rhythms. The ceremony also serves as a platform for community leaders to address local issues and celebrate Tumbuka identity.
Vimbuza Traditional Dance
Vimbuza (pl. of Chimbuza) is a term used among the Tumbuka-speaking peoples of northern Malawi and eastern Zambia to describe several classes of possessive spirits, the embodied states of illness they produce in a person, and the therapeutic drumming, music, dance, and ritual that is performed to remedy the symptoms. As a cultural practice, Vimbuza is a local version of a more widespread therapeutic complex known as Ngoma drums, which is found throughout much of central and southern Africa and has been the focus of important scholarship by John M. Janzen and others, and even earlier by Victor Turner in his writings about Ndembu drums of affliction.
Zengani Traditional Ceremony
Zengani Traditional Ceremony is a traditional annual event held for Tumbuka speakers of Lundazi, Chasefu and Lumezi District in Eastern Province of Zambia, typically in October. Zengani means bringing together two tribes of the Ngoni and Tumbuka speaking people. During the ceremony people are expected to be entertained to various traditional dances like ingoma, vimbuza, muganda, and chiwoda. Traditional leaders such as chiefs attend the events.
Kwenje Traditional Ceremony
The Kwenje Traditional Ceremony is an annual cultural event celebrated by the Tumbuka people in Chama District, Eastern Province, Zambia. Held every October under the leadership of Senior Chief Kambombo, the ceremony marks the end of the harvest season and serves as a time for the community to give thanks for the year's crops. The festival features traditional dances, including the popular mganda, a military-inspired dance that evolved from Tumbuka men who served in the British Army during colonial times. The ceremony also serves as a platform for community leaders to address local issues and celebrate Tumbuka identity.
Mtungo (Magali) dance
Mtungo, also known as Magali, is a traditional dance that originated by the Tumbuka in the Nkhamanga and Hewe areas of Rumphi District in Northern Malawi. It is performed at beer gatherings by both men and women. The songs that accompany the dance are often educative. The main instrument is a gourd with a small opening at the top, partly filled with small stones. During the performance, the gourd is shaken while the hand alternately covers and uncovers the opening, creating sound variations that accompany the singing and hand clapping.
Ulumba
Ulumba is a traditional dance of the Tumbuka people in Hewe and Nkhamanga, Rumphi. It is performed by men to celebrate the bravery of a hunter who has successfully killed large game or marauding wild animals. The dance involves villagers mimicking a charging animal with songs and clapping, while the hunter enacts the act of slaying the animal.
Mapenenga (Mganda/Malipenga)
Mapenenga, also referred to as Malipenga, is a modern dance for men that originated among the Tumbuka before the group split into subgroups. The dance was developed by ex-servicemen who adapted military parade styles of the King’s African Rifles. Malipenga first emerged in Nkhata Bay District among the Tonga subgroup of the Tumbuka and later spread across the Northern Region of Malawi. In the Central Region, a variant known as Mganda developed, inspired by the northern style.
Visekese
Visekese is a traditional women’s dance closely related to Chiwoda. It is practiced among the Tumbuka in various parts of Northern Malawi and was popularized by women of the Usisya area in Nkhata Bay District. The dance takes its name from the main instrument used in the performance: a thin wooden box, about the size of a large book, filled with pebbles or dry grains that rattle when shaken to provide rhythm.
Festivals
Gonapamuhanya festival
Gonapamhanya festival is an annual cultural festival of the Tumbuka people held in the Nkhamanga area of Rumphi District in Northern Malawi. The event commemorates Gonapamuhanya, the first Chikulamayembe chief to settle in the area where the chieftaincy is based today at Bolero. Some of notable attendees include all presidents of Malawi who had served the country and the invent is government financially sponsored. The festival features recounting of Tumbuka history, the lineage of the Chikulamayembe, economic activities, and performances of traditional dances.
Mulindafwa festival
Mulindafwa is a cultural festival observed by the Tumbuka people of Hewe in Rumphi. It commemorates the migration of their ancestor, the first Katumbi, who crossed Lake Malawi to settle in Hewe. Katumbi was recognized as a chief in his own right, independent of the Chikulamayembe. The ceremony includes recounting the history of the Katumbi lineage and the display of a symbolic stone believed to have been collected from Kapiri Nthemba. Oral tradition holds that Katumbi rested on this stone after climbing a hill, which he later named Themba Hill (originally called Romani Hill). The stone is regarded as a symbol of authority among the Tumbuka of Hewe.
See also
Notable Tumbuka people
Notes
External links
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