The Tumbuka (or, Kamanga, Batumbuka and Matumbuka) are a Bantu ethnic group found in Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. Ethnologue estimated a total of 10,346,000 Tumbuka speakers in 2022. The Tumbuka people still practice subsistence hoe agriculture, and their incomes are supplemented by the earnings sent home by migrant workers outside the Tumbuka area. The Tumbuka are collectively known as ŵaTumbuka and one is called “mutumbuka” meaning one of the Tumbuka tribe.
Tumbuka language is classified as a member of the Bantu language family and it has many dialects. It originated in the area between the Luangwa River, Lake Malawi to the east, the North Rukuru River to the north, and the Dwangwa River to the south. They are commonly referred to as Henga, even though this is strictly the name of a subdivision, and are located in the valleys close to rivers, lakes, and the highlands of the Nyika Plateau.
According to sources, Tumbuka is one of the small tribes that came from Luba in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. They had been living there for hundreds of years after splitting off from the Bantu tribes in upper central Africa, and that was before any official government was established.
The Tumbuka people’s main staple crops in contemporary times include maize, cassava, millet, and beans. Tumbuka women also frequently raise a variety of pumpkins, vegetables, and fruits including oranges and bananas as supplements. The majority of migrant workers have been men. In the past, hoes were used for manual farming. The introduction of ox-drawn plows occurred during colonial control. Citemene, or small-scale slash-and-burn farming, is a contemporary practice that is still practiced by the Tumbuka people.
The majority of Tumbuka are arranged into scattered exogamous patrilineal descent groupings, or agnatic lineages, whose members can trace their ancestry back to a common ancestor from a certain area. Members of clans with the same name are called lineages. While lineages are exogamous, clans are not invariably exogamous.
They were among the first to establish political organizations to oppose the British colonial system. Under the leadership of such men as Levi Mumba and Charles Chinula, Tumbuka speakers were in the fore of early nationalist movements, which in the 1940s coalesced to form the Nyasaland African Congress.
