The Ngoni people are an ethnic group living in the present-day

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...

n countries of

Malawi Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

, and

Zambia Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bor ...

. The Ngoni trace their origins to the Nguni and Zulu people of

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu people, Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu language, Zulu) and ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. The displacement of the Nguni people in the great scattering following the Zulu wars had repercussions in social reorganization as far north as Malawi and Zambia.

History

The rise of the Zulu nation to dominance in southern Africa in the early nineteenth century (~1815–~1840) disrupted many traditional alliances. Around 1817, the Mthethwa alliance, which included the Zulu clan, came into conflict with the Ndwandwe alliance, which included the

Nguni people The Nguni people are an ethnolinguistic group of Bantu peoples, Bantu ethnic groups native to Southern Africa where they form the single largest ethnolinguistic community. Predecessors of Nguni people migrated from Central Africa into Southern A ...

from what is now

kwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu people, Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu language, Zulu) and ...

. One of the military commanders of the army of king Thunziani Mabaso The Great, Zwangendaba Gumbi ( 1780–1848), was the head of the Jele or Gumbi clan, which itself formed part of the larger emaNcwangeni alliance in what is now north-east

. In 1819, the Zulu army under Mabaso defeated the Ndwandwe alliance at the Battle of Mhlatuze River, near Nkandla. The battle resulted in the diaspora of many indigenous groups in southern Africa.

The long migration north

In the following decades, Zwangendaba led a small group of his followers north through

and

to the region around the Viphya Plateau. In this region, present-day

( Chipata district),

( Mzimba, Ntcheu and Karonga district) and

( Matema district), he established a state, using Zulu warfare techniques to conquer and integrate local peoples. The date on which Zwangendaba's party crossed the

Zambezi The Zambezi (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers , slightly less than half of t ...

river, sometimes given in early writings as 1825, has been argued to have been on 20 November 1835. Following Zwangendaba's death in 1848, succession disputes split the Ngoni people. Zwangendaba's following and the Maseko Ngoni eventually created seven substantial Ngoni kingdoms in Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi. While the Ngoni were primarily agriculturalists, cattle were their main goal for raiding expeditions and migrations northward. Their reputation as refugees escaping Shaka is easily overstated; it is thought that no more than 1,000 Ngoni crossed the Zambezi river in the 1830s. They raided north, taking women in marriage and men into their fighting regiments. Their prestige became so great that by 1921, in Nyasaland alone, 245,833 people claimed membership as Ngoni although few spoke the Zulu dialect called Ngoni. The Ngoni integrated conquered subjects into their warfare and organization, becoming more a ruling class than an ethnic group, and by 1906 few individuals were of pure Ngoni descent. Only after Ngoni status began to decline did the tribal consciousness of the component groups began to rise, along with their reported numbers. In the early 1930s the Ngonde, Nyasa, Tonga and other groups once again claimed their original tribal status.

Present

While the Ngoni have generally retained a distinct identity in the post-colonial states in which they live, integration and acculturation has led to them adopting local languages; nowadays the

Zulu language Zulu ( ), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu languages, Southern Bantu language of the Nguni languages, Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. Nguni dialects are regional or social varieties of the Nguni language, ...

is used only for a few ritual praise poems and songs.

The Ngoni people of Zambia

Mpezeni (also spelt ''Mpeseni'') was the warrior-king of one of the largest Ngoni groups, based in what is now the Chipata District of

, and was courted by the Portuguese and

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

. The

British South Africa Company The British South Africa Company (BSAC or BSACo) was chartered in 1889 following the amalgamation of Cecil Rhodes' Central Search Association and the London-based Exploring Company Ltd, which had originally competed to capitalize on the expecte ...

Cecil Rhodes Cecil John Rhodes ( ; 5 July 185326 March 1902) was an English-South African mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. He and his British South Africa Company founded th ...

sent agents to obtain a treaty—

Alfred Sharpe Sir Alfred Sharpe (19 May 1853 – 10 December 1935) was Commissioner and Consul-General for the British Central Africa Protectorate and first Governor of Nyasaland. He trained as a solicitor but was in turn a planter and a professional hu ...

in 1889, and Joseph Maloney in 1895, who were both unsuccessful. In 1897, with over 4,000 warriors, Mpezeni rose up against the British, who were taking control of

Nyasaland Nyasaland () was a British protectorate in Africa that was established in 1907 when the former British Central Africa Protectorate changed its name. Between 1953 and 1963, Nyasaland was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. After ...

and North-Eastern Rhodesia, and was defeated. Mpezeni signed the treaty which allowed him to rule as Paramount Chief of the Ngoni in Zambia's Eastern Province and Malawi's Mchinji district. His successors as chief take the title Paramount Chief Mpezeni to this day. The cruelty and ruthlessness of Mpezeni's raids can be understood from this account written by a British hunter who came across a Chewa village a few hours after a raid in 1897:

On my arrival I found the male population all under arms, and the women crying. A raiding party of Mpezeni's people had attacked them suddenly that morning. Ten women were killed in the gardens and twenty-two were taken away as prisoners. An old man and one of the headman's children had been severely wounded. Their entrails hung out of frightfully torn wounds, inflicted most likely by barbed spears. It was a pitiful sight — the groans of the wounded, the women crying over their dead, whose bodies were brought from the gardens, the men standing about helplessly and depressed. As the raiding party could not have been far off, I proposed to the men to follow them up at once, and try to release the prisoners, but they were disheartened by the misfortune that so suddenly had overtaken them. The Ngoni people celebrate a festival of first fruits known as Nc'wala in late February at Mutenguleni about 25km from Chipata.

Fifteen folk tales of the Ngoni, as retold by an old Ngoni man who had heard them from his grandmother, written down by Margaret Read and edited by Geraldine Elliot, were published in London in 1939.''The Long Grass Whispers'' by Geraldine Elliot. George Routledge & Sons Ltd, London 1939 There have been many reprint editions in both America and UK.

References

Bibliography

*Nwaezeigwe, Nwankwo. ''Ngoni'' (The Heritage Library of African Peoples) *Rau, William Eugene. ''Mpezeni's Ngoni of Eastern Zambia, 1870–1920'', Ph.D. dissertation, 1974 *Bauer, Andreus. ''Street of Caravans''. *Iliffe, John. ''Modern History of Tanganyika.'' *''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mankind'' *Reader, John. ''Africa, a biography of the Continent'' *Tew, Mary. ''People of the Lake Nyasa Region''

External links

''The revival of Malawian Chingoni'', by Pascal J. KishindoNgoni People
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ngoni People

Ngoni people The Ngoni people are an ethnic group living in the present-day Southern African countries of Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. The Ngoni trace their origins to the Nguni people, Nguni and Zulu people, Zulu people of KwaZulu-Na ...

Bantu peoples Ethnic groups in Malawi Ethnic groups in Tanzania Ethnic groups in Zambia Indigenous peoples of East Africa eo:Ngunoj fr:Ngoni (peuple) sw:Wangoni nn:Nguni pl:Ngoni sh:Ngoni