the zambian kingdoms series: the lamba people
the copperbelt was not inhabited before the arrival of the lamba people from the luba and lunda kingdoms. the lamba settled at lake kashiba — a sacred lake in what is now mpongwe district, a body of water so deep it has never been fully plumbed, whose blue-green waters the lamba have regarded as spiritually significant for centuries — and from lake kashiba the lamba kingdom spread eastward, northward, southward, and westward across the plateau that would one day become the most industrialised province in zambia.
the lamba founder is believed to have been a woman — chembo kasako chimbala, the youngest wife of the great king mwata yamvo of the luba-lunda kingdom, who did not accept being part of a polygamous marriage and fled with her son chembo to settle in what is today known as lambaland — ilamba — on the copperbelt. from lake kashiba near ndola, the lamba people spread across the plateau, establishing chiefdoms in the territory that includes what is now ndola, kitwe, luanshya, mufulira, chingola, kalulushi, and chililabombwe.
every major copper mining town on the zambian copperbelt sits on land that was lamba land.
the lamba society is matrilineal. they use slash-and-burn farming methods and historically dwelt in small, dispersed villages — well adapted to the woodland-savanna environment of the copperbelt plateau.
the most extraordinary fact about the lamba: the copper ore had been worked by the local lamba people since the seventeenth century. not a secret that colonial prospectors discovered in the wilderness. a resource that lamba communities had been processing and trading for at least two hundred years before the british south africa company sent its first representative to sign a treaty with a lamba chief.
the lamba smelted copper. they moulded it into ingots. they traded it regionally. most of the deposits discovered by the colonial settlers were found with the assistance of local scouts who had knowledge of the whereabouts of the copper minerals. the chibuluma mine deposits are the only ones in zambia known to have been discovered without information passed on from the local people.
the colonial mining industry that built ndola and kitwe and luanshya and mufulira — the industrial engine of british central africa — was built on lamba land and, at its very beginning, guided by lamba knowledge of where the copper was.
the lamba have 15 chiefs in the zambian copperbelt and 8 in the katanga province of the DRC. senior chief mushili — the endless land or mother earth — is the paramount chief of all lamba in both zambia and the DRC.
the ukusefya pa ng'wena ceremony — held annually in ndola — celebrates the lamba people's history, their relationship to the land, and the continuity of a culture established on this plateau long before the first mine shaft was sunk.
the zambian kingdoms series continues. 🇿🇲
