Lozi

The Lozi, or Barotse, are a Bantu people of the upper Zambezi, whose name means people of the plain after the vast Barotse floodplain they call Bulozi. A composite of tribes, they united a Luyana core with others under a single monarchy.

The Lozi kingdom took shape in the seventeenth century under a paramount king titled the Litunga, keeper of the earth, its hierarchical society ruled through royal clans and titled indunas over the floodplain villages. Life follows the Zambezi flood cycle: each wet season the court and villages move from the plain to higher ground in the Kuomboka migration.

Their Silozi language already carried Sotho contacts before about 1830, when Sotho-speaking Makololo under Sebetwane invaded from the south, conquered Barotseland and imposed a new ruling clique on the old kingdom.