Bemba people

The Bemba belong to a large group of Bantu peoples mainly in the Northern, Luapula, Muchinga, and the northern Central Province of Zambia. The Bemba entered modern-day Zambia before 1740 by crossing the Luapula River from Kola. A few other ethnic groups in the Northern and Luapula regions of Zambia speak languages that are similar to Bemba but do not share a similar origin. The Bemba people are not indigenous to the Copperbelt Province, having reached there only in the 1930s due to employment opportunities in copper mining. They lived in villages of 100 to 200 people and numbered 250,000 strong in 1963. The ethnicities known today as the Bemba have a ruling class called Abena Ng'andu. This clan traces its ancestry to Mbemba Nshinga who ruled Kongo 1509–1543. The traditional ruler of ethnic Bemba is Chitimukulu. The Bemba are one of the larger ethnic groups in Zambia, and their history is a significant historical phenomenon in the development of chieftainship in a large and culturally homogeneous region of Central Africa. The word Bemba originally meant a great expanse like the sea. A sharp distinction should be made between Bemba-speaking peoples and ethnic Bemba people. There are 18 Bemba clans. These clans put a halt to the northward march of the Nguni and Sotho-Tswana descended Ngoni people, through Chief Chileshe Chitapankwa Muluba. Bemba history is more aligned with the tribes of East Africa than the other tribes of Zambia. The fact that the Bemba is said to have come from Kola was misinterpreted by the Europeans to mean Angola. Oral Bemba folklore states that the Bemba originated from a woman who fell from heaven called Mumbi Mukasa, who had long ears. The Kikuyu of Kenya have the same folklore and similar traditions, including the way traditional huts were built. The Bemba have a rich vocabulary, including deserts and camels, which is certainly not something they would have known about if they were from Angola. AbaBemba (the Bemba people) of Zambia in Central Africa are Bantus.