Kazembe

Kazembe is the title of a Lunda ruler whose kingdom grew around the lower Luapula and Lake Mweru. The river enters the lake through a broad floodplain, while its outlet, the Luvua, carries the waters towards the Lualaba. The country around the lake became the eastern seat of a ruling house whose origins lay in the Lunda lands farther west.

In the eighteenth century, an ancestor of the Kazembe crossed the Lualaba and established a capital near Lake Mweru. Under Lukwesa Ilunga, who came to power around 1760, the royal seat moved south to Kantapala near the Mofwe lagoon. The ruler appointed Lunda chiefs to administer outlying territories, and Portuguese visitors approached the court from the east before the close of the century.