CHITIMUKULU CHITAPANKWA

Chitapankwa (d.1883) was one of the greatest Chitimukulus (paramount chiefs) of the Bemba people in north-east Zambia.

The first Chitimukulus is a legendary figure, who is said to have led his followers from Luba country in the Congo; this may have been sometime in the 17th century. The Bemba then took over the country in the early century. The Bemba then took over the country from the Mambwe and Bisa tribes; new chieftainships were founded; and one lineage within the royal clan became especially powerful.

These processes continued under Chitimukulu Chileshye Chepela (r.c.1825? – c.1860?), but it was during his reign that the Bemba was first troubled by the Ngoni. The next Chitimukulu, Chileshye’s brother Bwembya, was a weak character, and it seems that in the early 1860’s an Ngoni band passed through the heart of Bemba country. In this critical situation, the royal councilors decided to replace Bwembya with his nephew Chitapankwa (also called Mutuka), a fierce young man who had proved his fighting spirit.

One group of Ngoni, led by Mperembe, had encamped in Mambwe country and harassed the northern Bemba. Chitapankwa soon led an army against them but was defeated. Undismayed, he gathered new forces for a second assault and used an ingenious battle plan to divide the Ngoni forces, who fled east into Nyamwanga country. This Bemba victory, which deterred the Ngoni from settling again on the north-eastern plateau, may have happened by 1867. David Livingstone visited the Bemba capital in that year and found Chitapankwa’s stockade ornamented with Ngoni skulls.

Livingstone also found Arabs from the east coast at Chitapankwa’s, and in 1869/70 Chitapankwa supplied ivory to the great Tippu Tip. Such trade provided Bemba chiefs with cloth, copper wire, guns, and other manufactures with which they attracted his hold in eastern Bembaland, where he installed a nephew in the old Chewe chieftainship and appointed sons of his predecessor, Chileshye, to rule over country taken from the Bisa.

In 1872, Chitapankwa overreached himself: he planned an attack to the north, on the Lungu chief Zombe, and got some Arabs or Swahili to join him. But his brother, who held the important Mwamba chieftainship, refused to help him, and Chitapankwa was routed. The defeat was avenged a few years later, however, and part of Lungu country was taken over by Chitapankwa’s nephew Ponde.

Perhaps the most important conquest of Chitapankwa’s reign was in Chinama, the country around Mpika, which was valued for its salt. The Bemba had taken Chinama from the Bisa in about 1830, but later the Bisa drove out their Bemba rulers. In about 1875, the Bemba reoccupied Chinama, and another nephew of Chitapankwa was appointed as chief.

In 1883, Chitapankwa was visited by another European, the Frenchman Victor Giraud. Soon afterward, probably in October, Chitapankwa died, and only a few months earlier his brother Mwanba had also died. War broke out at once between the new Mwamba Mubanga Chipoya and the new Chitimukulu. The Bemba continued to dominate north-eastern Zambia, but they lost the measure of unity they had achieved under Chitapankwa. The great days of Bemba conquest were over.

ANDREW D. ROBERTS