Mbunda

The Mbunda, or Vambunda, are a Bantu people of southeastern Angola, between the Lunguevungu River and the upper Zambezi. Their oral tradition traces the Mbunda Kingdom to its first king, Mwene Nkuungu, and a settlement on Zambezi tributaries; successive kings expanded it south toward the Namibian border, with Lumbala Nguimbo as its capital.

The kingdom fought the Chokwe and routed a Luvale slave-raiding army. Mbunda iron- and copper-workers exchanged wax, ivory and rubber with Ovimbundu caravans for guns and cloth.

In the late 1700s groups migrated into Barotseland, where the Lozi king Mulambwa valued them as soldiers and settled them under the Mulambwa-Chiyengele treaty; in 1830 they helped the Lozi expel the Makololo.