Ngoni

Ngoni, approximately 12 groups of people of the Nguni (q.v.) branch of Bantu-speaking peoples that are scattered throughout eastern Africa. Their dispersal was due to the rise of the Zulu empire early in the 19th century, during which many refugee bands moved away from Zululand. One Ngoni chief, Zwangendaba, led his party to Lake Tanganyika; the descendants of his group, the Ngoni cluster proper, are located in northern Malaŵi, in Zambia, and in southern Tanzania. Another group found its way to Mozambique.

Each Ngoni group formed a small independent state with a central administration based on patrilineal succession. It raided its weaker neighbours, and when the fertility of its own cultivated area was exhausted, the group moved elsewhere.

The superior Ngoni military organization, based, like that of the Zulu, on universal conscription into age-set regiments, enabled them to capture many of the people whose lands they seized or pillaged. Some captives were sold as slaves to Arabs, but many were assimilated into the tribe, some achieving high rank in the army and administration. Despite losses from warfare, the population increased greatly, leading eventually to splits in the state and the dispersal of rival segments.

Internally, each state, at least among Zwangendaba’s people, was divided into several such segments, many of which were under the nominal leadership of queens.

The settlement pattern was characterized by large, compact villages surrounding a central cattle pen. Villages were built quite close to one another and might contain 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants. A belt of empty land surrounded the settled area, separating it from the territories of the tribes raided by the Ngoni.

At the end of the 19th century, Portuguese, British, and German forces invaded the areas in which the Ngoni had been unchallenged for 50 years, and by 1910 all Ngoni had come under colonial control.