Kazembe
Its position on trade routes in a well-watered, relatively fertile and well-populated area of forestry, fishery and agricultural resources[1] drew expeditions by traders and explorers (such as Scottish missionary David Livingstone[2]) who called it variously Kasembe, Cazembe and Casembe.
Known by the title Mwata Yav now equivalent to 'Paramount Chief'or King, the monarchy with its annual Mutomboko festival stands out in the Luapula Valley and Lake Mweru in present-day Zambia, though its history in colonial times is an example of how Europeans divided traditional kingdoms and tribes without regard to the consequences.
[1] The kingdom prospered from the fisheries of Lake Mweru and the Mofwe Lagoon, and natural resources, including copper ore in Katanga, west of the Luapula.
In addition to trading with the interior, the Portuguese hoped to establish a route through it connecting their territories of Angola in the west and Mozambique in the east.
Mwata Kazembe III Lukwesa Ilunga and IV Kanyembo Keleka Mayi rebuffed Portuguese attempts to set up the alliance which would control the Atlantic-Indian Ocean trade route from beginning to end.
He was clothed in a coarse blue and white Manchester print edged with red baize, and arranged in large folds so as to look like a crinoline put on wrong side foremost.
[2]Livingstone noted that Mwata Kazembe VII's administration was harsh: A common punishment for court officials was to have the ears cropped by shears.
Throughout the 1860s, Kazembe's copper and ivory trade was usurped by Msiri,[1] growing his power with the help of local traders and their descendents, known as bayeke.
[9] After Msiri's death, the Luapula valley was divided in 1894 between Britain – the eastern shores of the Luapula and Lake Mweru became part of North-Eastern Rhodesia, administered by the British South Africa Company (BSAC) – and King Leopold II of Belgium's misnamed Congo Free State (CFS), or rather its agent, the Compagnie du Katanga, which took over the western shores.
“Belgian administration in Mweru-Luapula was glossed over by a thin veneer of traditional justifications.”[4] This included ‘creating’ a tribe from what was a clan, the Bena Ngoma.
[4] Mwata Kazembe X made his way south and crossed back over the river to take refuge in the Johnston Falls Mission run by a Mr and Mrs Anderson of Dan Crawford's missionary society.
The British troops took a number of old and valuable works of art of Luba origin from the court, which they gave to Codrington[citation needed].
[16] Though by the mid-20th century Mwata Kazembe's realm had become overshadowed by the copper mines and industry of Elisabethville (Lubumbashi) and the Copperbelt, through their education gained mostly in mission schools, many Luba-Lunda-Kazembe people made their mark in those towns and in Lusaka, and their experience and influence there flowed back the other way.
Its work had to be reported to the British District Commissioners who preferred to base themselves in the climate and environment of Kawambwa on the plateau rather than in the heat and mosquitoes of the valley where most of the population lived.
[4] Essentially the functions of the kingdom are in the realm of local government, with a stronger emphasis on cultural, social and historical aspects of the life of Kazembe people wherever they may live.
The District Commissioner worried that some of these, such as Dauti Yamba were nationalists who might stir up trouble against the colonial administration, but relationships remained workable.
He wrote an account of the chieftainship which was edited by a White Father missionary, Edouard Labreque,[16] and finally published in Chibemba as Ifikolwe Fyandi na Bantu Bandi (My Ancestors and My People)[1] built the current two-storey Mwata's residence but died two days before it was complete.
[4] The modernising of the kingdom was matched by an increase in prosperity as the Pedicle road connected the Luapula Province to the Copperbelt, and fish and labour flowed more easily to that market.
[17] The Mwata Kazembe chieftainship has endured and though originating in war and being surrounded by countries that have experienced much conflict, it has presided over peace on the eastern shores of the Luapula and Lake Mweru for more than a century.
[17] Drawing on previous ceremonies and traditions, it was started in its present form in 1971 to mark the tenth anniversary of the instalment of Mwata Kazembe XVII Paul Kanyembo Lutaba[7] (whose photograph appears at the top of the page).
