Tonga

The Tonga, or Batonga, are a Bantu people of the middle Zambezi valley and the adjoining plateaus of southern Zambia and northern Zimbabwe, divided into Valley Tonga and Plateau Tonga groups and speaking Chitonga, a member of the Bantu Botatwe group. They are related to the Batoka of the same region.

Their country lay on old commercial routes: Ingombe Ilede, near where the Lusitu joins the Zambezi, was a major trading centre around the 1500s, where salt, copper, gold, ivory and slaves from the interior were exchanged for Indian Ocean glass beads, cloth and cowrie shells.

Tonga communities lived mainly by subsistence farming and cattle keeping, and Chitonga remained a spoken language until missionaries gave it a written form in the 1800s.