Tumbuku people in Malawi Zambia Tanzania

The Tumbuka (or, Kamanga, Batumbuka and Matumbuka) is an ethnic group found in Northern

Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast ...

, Eastern

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most cent ...

and Southern

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...

.Tumbuka people
Encyclopædia Britannica Tumbuka is classified as a part of the

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...

language family, and with origins in a geographic region between the

Dwangwa River The Dwangwa River is a river in Malawi, which flows into Lake Malawi. Its source is in the Kasungu National Park Kasungu National Park is a national park in Malawi. It is located west of Kasungu, about 175 km north of Lilongwe, extending a ...

to the south, the

North Rukuru River North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

to the north,

Lake Malawi Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the East African Rift system, located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. It is the fifth largest fre ...

to the east, and the Luangwa River. They are found in the valleys near the rivers, lake as well as the highlands of

Nyika Plateau The Nyika Plateau lies in northern Malawi, with a small portion in north eastern Zambia. Most of it lies at elevations of between , the highest point being at Nganda Peak. It is roughly a diamond in shape, with a long north–south axis of about ...

, where they are frequently referred to as Henga although this is strictly speaking the name of a subdivision. The Tumbuka people can further be distinguished into several smaller tribes with related yet distinct heritages headed by different sub-chiefs who are all under the paramount chief Chikulamayembe. These subgroupings include the Henga, Poka and kamanga. The Tumbuka tribe was one of the small tribes who originated from

Luba Luba may refer to: Geography *Kingdom of Luba, a pre-colonial Central African empire * Ľubá, a village and municipality in the Nitra region of south-west Slovakia *Luba, Abra, a municipality in the Philippines *Luba, Equatorial Guinea, a town ...

in what is currently known as

Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. That was before any formal government setup and they had been staying the for hundreds of years after breaking away from the bantu tribes in upper central africa. The Tumbuka tribe and other small tribes were driven out of

by a Warrior tribe know as Kongolo tribe he tribe that merged with the tribes that remained in Lubaafter they tried to subdue the Tumbuka people and failed.

Demography and language

Various estimates suggest that over two million Tumbuka speakers live in north Malawi, northeast Zambia and Tanzania.

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

estimates a total of 2,546,000 Tumbuka speakers in 2000. However, Ember et al. estimate that about an additional million Tumbuka people live in central and southern African countries such as Tanzania because of the diffusion of Tumbuka people as migrant labor. The

Tumbuka language The Tumbuka language is a Bantu language which is spoken in the Northern Region of Malawi and Zambia in the districts of Lundazi, Lumezi, and Chasefu. is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

, similar to many other Bantu languages in structure and vocabulary. It is classified as a central Bantu language in the Niger-Congo family, and it has many dialects. The Tumbuka are collectively known as ''ŵaTumbuka'' and one is called "mutumbuka" meaning one of the Tumbuka tribe. The Tumbuka language is closely related to the Tonga language and it has been suggested that they originally formed a single group of mutually intelligible dialects until different missionaries treated two such dialects as the standard Tumbuka and Tonga languages. Before a British protectorate was created over

Nyasaland Nyasaland () was a British protectorate located 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 Nyasala ...

, there were many ethnic groups in what is now Malawi's Northern Region including a substantial group culturally-related people, scattered widely and loosely organized under largely autonomous village headmen who spoke dialects of the Tumbuka language. Missionaries in the late 19th century standardised these languages into a relatively small number of groups, and chose the standardised

Tumbuka language The Tumbuka language is a Bantu language which is spoken in the Northern Region of Malawi and Zambia in the districts of Lundazi, Lumezi, and Chasefu.Ngoni,

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

Ngonde The Nyakyusa (also called the Sokile, Ngonde or Nkonde) are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group who live in the fertile mountains of southern Tanzania. They speak the Nyakyusa language, a member of the Bantu language family. In 1993 the Nyakusa populati ...

languages which were also prominent in the area. By the start of the 20th century, the Ngoni and Ngonde languages were in decline, although Tonga was more resilient. In 1968, Tumbuka was abolished as an official language, as a medium of instruction and in examinations, and the secondary school entrance system was manipulated to assist candidates from the Central Region and disadvantage those from the Northern Region. Some of those that objected to the ban on the use of Tumbuka were arrested or harassed but both the

Church of Central Africa Presbyterian The Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) is a Presbyterian denomination. It consists of five synods: one in Zambia ( Zambia Synod), one in Zimbabwe ( Harare Synod) and three in Malawi – Livingstonia Synod in the north of the country, ...

and the Catholic Church continued to preach and use religious texts in Tumbuka in the Northern Region. After the advent of multi-party democracy, Tumbuka language programmes began to be broadcast on national radio in 1994 but a 1996 proposal for the reintroduced of Tumbuka as a medium for teaching in the first four years of compulsory education has not been fully implemented. One effect of the failure to restore the Tumbuka language as the standard language of the Northern Region is that speakers of other languages in the region, the Tonga, Ngonde and even the little-spoken Ngoni language are now seeking parity with Tumbuka.

History

The Tumbuka probably entered the area between the

Luangwa valley The Luangwa River is one of the major tributaries of the Zambezi River, and one of the four biggest rivers of Zambia. The river generally floods in the rainy season (December to March) and then falls considerably in the dry season. It is one of ...

and northern

in the 15th century. At the start of the 18th century, they formed a number of groups, of which the Henga was one, living in small, independent communities without a central organisation, spread thinly over this area. By the mid-18th century, traders dressed “as Arabs”, although coming from the

Unyamwezi Unyamwezi is a historical region in what is now Tanzania, around the modern city of Tabora to the south of Lake Victoria and east of Lake Tanganyika. It lay on the trade route from the coast to Lake Tanganyika and to the kingdoms to the west of L ...

region of what is now

were involved in trading for

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is ...

and to some extent slaves as far inland as the

. They formed alliances with groups of Henga, and their leader established the Chikulamayembe Dynasty ruling a federation of small chiefdoms However, by the 1830s, this Chikulamaybe dynasty was in decline and the area reverted to a state of political and military disorganisation The large

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae an ...

herds of the region attracted groups of coastal Swahili ivory hunters and traders followed in the colonial era by European ivory traders. In the 1840s, Swahili Arabs entered northern Malawi region, with Jumbe Salim bin Abdallah establishing a trading centre at

Nkhotakota Nkhotakota (Un-kho-tah-kho-tuh) (formerly Kota Kota) (name derived from the Chichewa for "Corner Corner") is a town and one of the districts in the Central Region, Malawi, Central Region of Malawi. It is on the shore of Lake Malawi (formerly Lak ...

near Lake Malawi. Jumbe Abdallah's trade in slaves to satisfy the demand for slaves on Zanzibar plantations of

cloves Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, ''Syzygium aromaticum'' (). They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice, flavoring or fragrance in consumer products, s ...

and for the Middle East triggered raids and violence against the Tumbuka people.Malawi Slave Routes and Dr. David Livingstone Trail
UNESCO (2011), Quote: "Slave trade was introduced in Malawi by the Swahili-Arab traders in the 19th century following a great demand for ivory and slave in the East African markets namely Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa and Quelimane. The Swahilis and Omani Arabs moved further into the interior of Africa including Malawi to obtain slaves and ivory. One of Slave Trade Route was Nkhotakota where one of the Swahili-Arab slave traders, Salim-bin Abdullah (Jumbe) set up his headquarters on the shore of Lake Malawi in the 1840s. From Nkhota kotawhere he organized his expeditions to obtain slaves and ship them across the lake to East African markets, Kilwa. About 20,000 slaves were annually shipped by Jumbe to Kilwa from Nkhotakota." A male slave was known as ''muzga'' or ''kapolo'', while a ''chituntulu'' meant a young female slave. AfricanElephant

The rising demand for ivory in the European market led to conflicts to control the export trade, resulting in greater social distinctions and politically centralized chiefdoms among the Tumbuka. These ruling groups collapsed around 1855, when the highly militarized warriors of the Ngoni ethnic group from

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

arrived seeking agricultural slaves and recruits, in addition to those acquired by the Swahili traders., Quote: "(...) raids on Tumbuka villages devastated the region as the demand for slaves by Zanzibar Arab traders increased in the early 1800s." The Ngoni of Mbelwa (also known as M'mbelwa) were a branch of

Zwangendaba Zwangendaba kaZiguda Jele Gumbi (c. 1785 – 1848) was the king of the Ngoni people for more than thirty years, from approximately 1815 to his death in 1848. He was the older brother of Somkhanda kaZiguda Jele who was also known as Gumbi and founded ...

’s Ngoni, which began its migration from South Africa between 1819 and 1822, eventually reaching southern Tanzania and remained there until Zwangendaba's death in the mid-1840s. After this, his followers split into several groups, one of which under his son Mbelwa settled permanently in what is now the

Mzimba Mzimba is a town in the Mzimba District of Malawi. The district is inhabited by descendants of Tumbuka and few Ngoni people. The district of Mzimba has a number of Traditional Authorities from the Ngoni people. The head of these Traditional ...

district of northern Malawi around 1855. Mbelwa's Ngoni treated the Henga as subjects, exacting tribute and taking captives through raiding. These captives were rarely sold to the Swahili traders, but retained as unfree agricultural workers or enrolled in Ngoni regiments. Some of these Henga

conscript Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...

soldiers revolted and fled north, entering Ngonde territory around 1881, where the Ngonde settled them as a buffer against their enemies. The Swahili traders had built most of their stockades in the area in which the Henga had been settled and, after the

African Lakes Company The African Lakes Corporation plc was a British company originally set-up in 1877 by Scottish businessmen to co-operate with Presbyterian missions in what is now Malawi. Despite its original connections with the Free Church of Scotland, it operated ...

set up a trading base at

Karonga Karonga is a township in the Karonga District in Northern Region of Malawi. Located on the western shore of Lake Nyasa, it was established as a slaving centre sometime before 1877. As of 2018 estimates, Karonga has a population of 61,609. Hi ...

, and as the threat of Ngoni raids had declined, the usefulness of Henga and Swahili to the Ngonde state lessened. Both groups were aliens among the Ngonde majority, and were suspicious of cooperation between the company and Ngonde, so they allied with each other. The alliance of the Swahili and the Henga faced a rival alliance between the Ngonde and the African Lakes Company which eventually led to the so-called

Karonga War The name Karonga War is given to a number of armed clashes that took place between mid-1887 and mid-1889 near Karonga at the northern end of Lake Malawi in what is now Malawi between a Scottish trading concern called the African Lakes Company Li ...

between them, a series of skirmishes and sieges of stockades between 1887 and 1889O. J. M. Kalinga (1980), The Karonga War: Commercial Rivalry and Politics of Survival, Journal of African History, Vol. 21, pages 215-8. The Ngoni invasion led initially to a devastation of the Tumbuka people, through the death, destruction, loss of family members, abandonment of the settled valleys, and disruption of their traditional agricultural methods as the Tumbuka people hid in mountains, small islands, and marshes to escape from the violence associated with large-scale human raids and elephant hunting. It also led to intermingling and intermarriage between the people of Tumbuka and the Ngoni cultures. The British explorer

David Livingstone David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...

wrote about the Lake Malawi region in 1858, mentioning slavery of the Tumbuka people both to the export of slaves to satisfy the Arab demand as well as domestic slavery in the form of "debt settlement".C. J. W. Fleming (1972)
The Peculiar Institution Among The Early Tumbuka
The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January, 1972), pages 5–10; Quote: "Arab traders began penetrating deeper and deeper into Central Africa, slaves became a common article of commerce and slavery took on the many cruel and degrading aspects which Livingstone encountered in these regions during the course of his explorations. Minor wars were carried on for the sole purpose of capturing slaves and they were freely traded, not only with the Arabs but among the inhabitants themselves." Christian missionaries arrived in this region in the 1870s. In 1895 British-led forces defeated the slave trader Mlozi at Karonga, ending the slave trade there. Although a British protectorate over what is now Malawi was proclaimed in 1891, the Northern Ngoni only finally accepted British rule in 1904, when the Tumbuka people ceased to be their vassals or returned from where they had taken refuge to their original homes. A Chikulamayembe paramount chief was restored to office in 1907, and Tumbuka culture reasserted itself. The education provided by Scottish-run missions at several sites in the Northern Region of Nyasaland was more eagerly embraced by the Tumbuka and Tonga peoples, whose earlier social organisation and religion had suffered from the attacks of slave raiders and Ngoni, than by the Ngoni and Ngonde peoples, who retained these institutions intact, and more mission schools were opened among the Tumbuka than any other group in Nyasaland. The education that these schools provided not only reached a greater numbers of pupils but was also superior to that found in other parts of the protectorate, although other Scottish missionaries at Blantyre Mission also provided educational advancement for some southerners. Those that these missions trained became an educated African elite, who found employment as teachers, in the colonial civil service or in commerce, and whose political aim was African advancement to higher positions in the administration. In contrast, the

Yao people The Yao people (its majority branch is also known as Mien; ; vi, người Dao) is a government classification for various minorities in China and Vietnam. They are one of the 55 officially recognised ethnic minorities in China and reside in ...

in the south, who included many Muslims excluded from Christian education, and Chewa people in the centre, where fewer missions had been founded, were less affected by these political aspirations. In the pre-colonial period, the Tumbuka people, like most of the people of what became Nyasaland relied on subsistence farming to support their families. During the first three decades of colonial rule, commercial agriculture developed both on European-owned states and the smallholdings of African peasants in the southern and central parts of the protectorate. However, attempts to introduce commercial agriculture into the Northern Region were frustrated by a lack of suitable crops and high transport costs arising from its distance from the available markets. As early as the 1880s, Tumbuka and Tonga men began to leave the region to work as porters and estate workers in the Southern Region of Nyasaland and, once those Tumbuka that had received a mission education reached adulthood, they travelled to

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kn ...

and South Africa where their literacy and numeracy commanded much high wages than they could earn in within Nyasaland. Although the colonial government was concerned about the scale of labour migration, it was a virtual necessity for many in the north of the country where there were few alternatives besides subsistence agriculture. The colonial government were concerned that the Tumbuka-speaking areas had become the "Dead North" of the country but only invested small amounts in developing infrastructure or promoting commercial crops One supporter of the

underdevelopment Underdevelopment, in the context of international development, reflects a broad condition or phenomena defined and critiqued by theorists in fields such as economics, development studies, and postcolonial studies. Used primarily to distinguish sta ...

hypothesis blames the impoverishment and stagnation of Tumbuka-speaking areas on a step-by-step process that started in the middle of the 19th century when the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

and

slave trade Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

created a demand for imported goods and prompted social differentiation within their traditional societies. This was worsened by the mid-19th century incursion of Ngoni people, which caused a further loss of status of among the Tumbuka people, who become Ngoni serfs or refugees with limited access to land. Ngoni agricultural practices of shifting or

slash-and-burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed veget ...

cultivation and overstocking cattle were said to impoverish the soil and promoted the spread of the

tsetse fly Tsetse ( , or ) (sometimes spelled tzetze; also known as tik-tik flies), are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus ''Glossina'', which are placed in their own family, Glo ...

. According to Vail, the effect of the Ngoni invasions was exacerbated during the period of colonial rule up to 1939 as, at best, local African men in the "Dead North" of Nyasaland had little choice but to become labour migrants and, at worst, their recruitment for the mines, farms and other employers of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa was forced. Much of Vail's account of environmental degradation in Northern Nyasaland is based on the views of 19th century missionaries who regarded Ngoni farming practices as environmentally destructive, wasteful and therefore morally wrong, although modern agronomists believe shifting cultivation may be efficient and sympathetic to the environment. His suggestions that both the recruitment of labour and the consumption of foreign goods was forced on the Tumbuka, seem overstated, and the first labour migrancy from this area was entirely voluntary and, in later years, was more often disapproved of by the Nyasaland government than promoted by them. Since independence, the economic conditions of the Tumbuka people have remained largely unchanged, their political power limited given the numerous ethnic groups in this region of Africa. Levi Mumba, Charles Chinula and many of the leading figures in organisations that later became part of

Nyasaland African Congress The Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) was an organisation that evolved into a political party in Nyasaland during the colonial period. The NAC was suppressed in 1959, but was succeeded in 1960 by the Malawi Congress Party, which went to on decisiv ...

, or of Congress itself, were Tumbuka-speaking northerners or graduates of Blantyre Mission. This movement ultimately gained independence for Malawi in 1964. After in 1963, in preparation for independence, Tumbuka speakers took a majority of the ministerial posts in the government of

Hastings Banda Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1898 – 25 November 1997) was the Prime Minister of Malawi, prime minister and later President of Malawi, president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994 (from 1964 to 1966, Malawi was an independent Dominion / Commonwealth realm) ...

. Shortly after independence, in the 1964 Cabinet Crisis, the demands of these ministers for more rapid Africanisation, a key demand of the mission-educated elite, led to their resignation or sacking and in many cases their exile. In the aftermath of this, Banda purged their supporters and other Tumbuka speakers from positions of influence and replaced them with Chewa nominees from the Central Region, at the same time promoting the Chewa culture as the only authentic Malawian culture.

Society, religion and culture

Even before colonial rule was established, Christian missionaries arrived amongst Tumbuka people. Thomas Cullen Young was one of the first missionaries to publish on the culture in ''Notes on the history of the Tumbuka-Kamanga peoples in the Northern Province of Nyasaland.'' To help the conversion process, hymnbook and mythologies of Christianity were written into Tumbuka language, into a Tumbuka hymnbook. In contemporary times, the Tumbuka people are officially Christian, but they retain their traditional beliefs and folklores. The Tumbuka people have had a sophisticated traditional religion. It included the concept of a supreme creator called ''Chiuta'' symbolizing the sun, who Tumbuka faith holds was "self created and all knowing". This religious belief has yield a rich mythology filled with morals. In a manner similar to neighboring regions of Africa, the Tumbuka have also revered ancestor worship, spirit possession, witchcraft and similar practices. Their spirit possession and witchcraft is related to folk therapies for illnesses. This practice is locally called ''Vimbuza'', includes a therapeutic dance performed by those possessed, and this is a part of modern syncretistic Christianity observed by the Tumbuka people. The Tumbuka people have been rural, living in villages or dispersed agnatically related clusters of rectangular thatched houses. A circular thatched granaries and kitchen would traditionally be a part of each household. The male members would spend their time mostly in a part of the house called ''Mpara'' and females in ''Ntanganini''. In the crop season, family members dispersed, sometimes residing in isolated thatched houses near the cultivated land. In the contemporary era, the primary staple crops of the Tumbuka people are maize, cassava, millet, and beans, along with a variety of pumpkins, vegetables, and fruits such as bananas and oranges as supplements often grown by Tumbuka women. Men have tended to be migrant workers. In the past, the farming was done manually using hoes. During the colonial rule, ox-drawn plows were introduced. '' Citemene'', or slash and burn agriculture by small farmers is a modern era practice and continues among the Tumbuka people.

Vimbuza

''Vimbuza'' (pl. of Chimbuza) is a term used among the Tumbuka-speaking peoples of northern Malawi and eastern Zambia to describe several classes of possessive spirits, the embodied states of illness they produce in a person, and the therapeutic drumming, music, dance, and ritual that is performed to remedy the symptoms. As a cultural practice, Vimbuza is a local version of a more widespread therapeutic complex known as ngoma, which is found throughout much of central and southern Africa and has been the focus of important scholarship by

John M. Janzen John M. Janzen is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. born on October 28, 1937. He has been a leading figure on issues of health, illness, and healing in Southern and Central Africa since the 1960s ...

and others, and even earlier by

Victor Turner Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as ...

in his writings about Ndembu ''drums of affliction''. ''Vimbuza'', in the traditional Tumbuka people's belief, are category of spirits that cause illnesses, a concept that according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey is similar to "bodily humours" in early European texts. The ''Vimbuza'' causes imbalance in the hot and cold forces within the human body, whose healing process, to Tumbuka people, is a ritual dance with singing and music. The UNESCO inscribed the ritualistic ''Vimbuza'' dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.Vimbuza healing dance
UNESCO, Malawi, Inscribed in 2008 (3.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005) The musical instruments that accompany the ''Vimbuza'' includes a Ng’oma or “drums of affliction”. A healer diagnoses spirit possession, and with the patient undertakes dance healing ritual treatment over several weeks or months.The dance tries to bring the patient into a trance, while the songs call the spirits to help. Men participate by creating drum rhythms that are spirit-specific and sometimes as the healer. ''Vimbuza'', states UNESCO, creates a "space for patients to dance their disease”. The Vimbuza tradition is effectively a set of practices and beliefs of which the Vimbuza dance is part; is a traditional healing procedure, to cure psychological illnesses as well as exorcise demons. In some places it is specifically called mkhalachitatu Vimbuza. Mkhalachitatu Vimbuza is one of the names given to Vimbuza dances performed as an exorcism rite when one is possessed by demons or evil spirits. It is predominantly performed in Rumphi, but has spread to Mzimba, Karonga, Kasungu and other districts. The dance is also performed in Nkhata Bay where it is called ''masyabi'' and here it incorporates indigenous variations.

Notable Tumbuka People

* Sheperd Bushiri (Christian preacher) *

Mwai Kumwenda Mwai Kumwenda ' (born 27 September 1989) is a Malawi netball international player. She represented Malawi at the 2010, 2014 and 2018 Commonwealth Games and at the 2011 and 2015 Netball World Cups. Kumwenda was the top goal scorer at three s ...

(netball player) * Briddget Kumwenda (netball player) *

Chakufwa Chihana Chakufwa Chihana (23 April 1939 – 12 June 2006) was a Malawian human rights activist, pro-democracy advocate, trade unionist and later, politician. He held the post of Second Vice President in Malawi, under President Bakili Muluzi. He is often ...

( human rights activist and politician) *

Enoch Chihana Enoch Chihana is a Malawian Member of Parliament for Rumphi Rumphi is the capital of the Rumphi District (Rumphi Boma) in the Northern Region of Malawi. It is a lively town with a market which serves the widespread farming community. Rumphi i ...

(member of parliament)

Notes

References

External links

Very brief report on Tumbuka language.
{{Authority control Ethnic groups in Malawi Ethnic groups in Zambia Ethnic groups in Tanzania