Country: Zambia

Group: Lamba

Date Finalized: 4/06/2023

Team: Austyn Evans (Lead), Esha Kubavat, Jacob Kebe, Julia Curtiss, Likith Munigala, Madison Schulz

Content Warnings:  Forced labor, genocide, violence

Approximate Time Period: 1860s – 1950s

The Lamba people are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group that live in the Copper Belt region of Africa. They traded elephant tusks and copper and had no centralized government before colonization. The Portuguese trading post accelerated the demand for slaves from this region. Colonial officers and labor recruiters used strong arm methods against the Lamba. Colonial officers gave a BSAC officer the nickname “the flogger” for enforcing a road building project by administering his “hippo-hide whip.” These acts of violence forced the Lamba chief Kabalu Mushili I to flee to Katanga. The Lamba used passive resistance and obtained their independence. As a result of the harsh conditions endured by the Lamba from European colonizers, Lamba are distrustful of most “strangers.” There is not much current information on the Lamba, but it appears they have gone back to their traditional practices of agriculture (Staden 2020; Vail 1989).

Sources

  1. Staden, G. (2020, January 21). –Lamba. Zambia’s Traditional History. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://traditionalzambia.home.blog/tribes-of-zambia/second-bantu-invasion/luba/lamba/
  2. Vail, Leroy, editor. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London Berkeley:  Currey University of California Press,  1989. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft158004rs/