Chewa

The Chewa, also called Mang'anja, are a Bantu people of central and southern Malawi and the neighbouring borderlands of Zambia and Mozambique, main surviving branch of the Maravi peoples. Oral tradition traces them to Malambo in Luba country of the Congo, then through northern Zambia into the Malawi highlands.

The first Chewa kingdom arose around 1480; by the sixteenth century its two leading clans, the Banda at Mankhamba and the Phiri at Manthimba, ruled separately, before Maravi unification in the following century. Portuguese traders and missionaries recorded contacts with Maravi chiefs from 1608 to 1667, never reaching the state's heartland.

By 1750 Maravi dynasties ruled central Malawi; the Chewa kept their identity through language, mphini tattoos and the Nyau secret brotherhoods, whose masked Gule Wamkulu dances mark male initiation. Chewa society is matrilineal: land and lineage pass through the mother, guarded by her brothers.