Mbundu

Mbundu, second largest ethnolinguistic group of Angola, comprising a diversity of peoples who speak Kimbundu, a Bantu language. Numbering about 2,420,000 in the late 20th century, they occupy much of north-central Angola and live in the area from the coastal national capital of Luanda eastward, between the Dande (north) and Kwanza (Cuanza; south) rivers. They are distinct from the more populous Ovimbundu, their neighbours who occupy the Benguela Highlands to the south.

In the 16th century the Mbundu were organized into groups that had loose political connections. In response to pressure from the Kongo Kingdom to the north, the Mbundu leadership centred on the ngola (ruler) of the Ndongo people. This centralization was destroyed by the Portuguese, who from the late 16th to the late 17th century provoked warfare and slaving among the peoples of the region.

The small amount of ethnological study of the Mbundu shows them to be related linguistically to the Ovimbundu and culturally to the Kongo, their neighbours to the north. Their cultural diversity has been reinforced by a traditional restraint on intertribal marriage and by long contact with the Portuguese and other Europeans. The Mbundu include many acculturated persons in the Luanda area as well as the staunchly conservative Dembo (Ndembo) of the interior. Major groups of the Mbundu are the Ngbaka (Mbaka), Ndongo, and Mbondo. In the 1970s the Mbundu peoples provided the main ethnic support for the Marxist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which assumed power in 1976 after the end of Portuguese colonial rule in 1975.