Kunda

The Kunda, or Akunda, are a Bantu people whose own traditions place their origin in the Luba country of the upper Congo basin. Led by a migration hero named Mambwe, they drifted south with other groups leaving the Luba and Lunda sphere, and by the 1700s had settled in the middle Luangwa valley, a land they call Malambo, in what is now eastern Zambia.

They live by farming and hunting in villages ruled by hereditary chiefs of the Mambwe title, six of whom recognize a single senior chief, and they preserve the memory of the migration and of legendary hunts in their annual Malaila ceremony.

Their language, Chikunda, is a Bantu tongue closely related to Bisa and Nsenga, spoken by neighboring peoples who shared the same movement out of the Luba heartland.