the zambian kingdoms series: the lenje people
the lenje — ba lenje bantanshi, bene chishi — the indigenous people of the southern part of central province. believed to be among the first bantu peoples to arrive in what is now zambia, from the cameroon region. related to the neighbouring tonga to the south and the twa of the lukanga swamps. their territory: chisamba, chibombo, kapiri mposhi, and ngabwe districts. their people: between 240,000 and 310,000.
the founding story centres not on a king, not on a warrior, not on a migration led by a male chief. it centres on a woman.
the great founding mother of the lenje led her people to the territory they now inhabit. five of her children became lenje chiefs. among those five, a grandchild also became a chief. the founding mother is believed to have been buried at a place called likonde lyaba nkanga in chibombo district — a shrine still honoured today, the sacred centre of the lenje's most important traditional ceremony.
the lenje chiefs descended from this founding lineage: senior chief mukuni ng'ombe — also known as chipepo — and chiefs liteta, mungule, chitanda, and mukubwe. the grandchild ngabwe is also a chief. all related to one another through the founding woman's lineage.
the lenje praise themselves as ba lenje bantanshi — the first lenje, the original people — and bene chishi — people of the land. these praise names encode the lenje's self-understanding as a people whose relationship to their territory is one of original inhabitation. not of conquest. not of arrival after others. of first presence.
the kulamba ku bwalo ceremony — held in october every year at likonde lya ba nkanga shrine in chibombo district — is the unifying moment among the lenje speaking people. it takes place at the burial place of the great founding mother. it gives homage to senior chief mukuni ng'ombe and the lenje chiefs. it is a time of thanksgiving for the good harvest. the lenje food is displayed, and singing and dancing continues both day and night. among the outstanding dances is the mooba dance — associated with spiritism and the ancestral forces the lenje believe inhabit their land.
and now — the fact that most accounts of the lenje do not fully explore.
the broken hill man — officially named kabwe 1, a human fossil that is one of the most significant in the entire african palaeontological record — was discovered in 1921 by mine workers at the broken hill lead and zinc mine in what is now kabwe. this is lenjeland. the first mining town in zambia was built on lenje territory. the lead and zinc mined here from 1902 — making broken hill the first large-scale mining operation in northern rhodesia — was extracted from the earth of a people who had inhabited this territory for centuries before the first colonial surveyor arrived.
the lenje are, in the most literal sense, the original custodians of the land on which zambia's mining history began.
the lenje are cattle keepers and farmers — millet and maize along the kafue river corridor. they fish. they farm. they believe in unity and love for mankind, in treating other people fairly, in the ancestral spirits acknowledged through ceremony and through the daily practices of a people who have never forgotten where they come from.
the zambian kingdoms series continues. 🇿🇲
