Introduction
Among Zambia's many ethnic communities, few have developed as strong a collective memory of political and social marginalisation as the Tonga-speaking peoples of Southern Province and the wider Bantu Botatwe region.
The grievance is sometimes expressed simply: “Tongas have always been looked down upon by other tribes.” That statement is too broad to be established as a historical fact. Zambia's ethnic relations have never been so simple. Tongas have occupied prominent positions in government, business, academia and national politics, and the country has produced senior national leaders of Tonga origin, most notably Mainza Chona and President Levy Mwanawasa, and since 2021 President Hakainde Hichilema.
Yet dismissing the grievance as merely political propaganda is equally inadequate.
There is documentary evidence, personal testimony, parliamentary debate, political speeches, academic research and, more recently, court proceedings showing that anti-Tonga stereotypes and explicitly tribal rhetoric have existed in Zambia. Some of the material concerns politics; some concerns ordinary social interaction. Together, they help explain why sections of the Tonga population have developed a perception that their identity has periodically been treated as inferior, undesirable or politically illegitimate.
The history is therefore better understood not as a continuous conspiracy against the Tonga, but as a recurring interaction between ethnic stereotyping, regional political competition, political patronage, historical differences in social organisation, and the tendency of Zambian politics to interpret national power through ethnicity.
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1. Before independence: a society that did not fit the colonial model
An important part of the story begins before modern party politics.
The Tonga societies of Southern Province were historically distinctive in their political organisation. Anthropological scholarship has traditionally described pre-colonial Tonga society as relatively decentralised, with political authority operating at local rather than highly centralised chiefly levels. More recent scholarship has challenged aspects of the older interpretation, but the basic point remains important: the Tonga social and political system did not resemble the strongly centralised chieftaincies that colonial administrators encountered elsewhere.
British indirect rule therefore introduced institutions that substantially altered Tonga political organisation.
A University of Zambia historical study of Monze District found that indirect rule was introduced among the Tonga in 1929 through Native Authorities, Native Courts and Native Treasuries, with chiefs appointed by the British administration. Oral interviews with chiefs, headmen and elderly residents formed part of the research.
This is not evidence that another Zambian tribe oppressed the Tongas. It is important not to make that leap.
But it does establish an early historical context in which outsiders imposed a model of political authority upon a society whose own institutions worked differently.
That distinction becomes relevant later, because some of the characteristics outsiders interpreted as Tonga “backwardness,” “lack of organisation” or, conversely, excessive independence may have been misunderstandings of a different social structure.
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2. The Tonga political tradition: independence, achievement and resistance to interference
There is another side to the historical picture which is often lost in modern arguments.
Scholarship on the political culture of the Bantu Botatwe region suggests that Tonga political culture placed considerable emphasis on individual achievement, independence and economic improvement.
In the Zambian National Assembly in 1968, Edward Mungoni Liso, a close political associate of Harry Nkumbula, described Southern Province society in terms of achievement and social differentiation. He stated that achievement was highly respected and that even within village society a poor person could be looked down upon.
Three years earlier, ANC politician Maxwell Beyani described his Tonga constituents as hardworking people who wanted to improve their way of life and disliked interference that did not contribute to prosperity.
This creates an important complication.
Some characteristics which outsiders subsequently interpreted as Tonga arrogance, aloofness or superiority may have originated partly in a social culture that placed a strong premium on self-reliance, achievement and independence.
That does not mean the stereotypes were justified. It means that cultural misunderstanding may have contributed to the mutual suspicion.
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3. Harry Nkumbula and the first major political divide
At independence, the ethnic geography of Zambian politics was already highly significant.
Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula's African National Congress had particularly strong support among Ila and Tonga-speaking populations of Southern Province. The party became associated with the Southern regional political constituency, while other political organisations developed stronger bases elsewhere.
Academic literature consequently describes the ANC as being associated with the Ila and Tonga populations of Southern Province, while the United Progressive Party of Simon Kapwepwe was perceived as predominantly Bemba. Whether these were genuinely “tribal parties” or regional political formations is a matter of scholarly debate.
This distinction is crucial.
The existence of strong Tonga support for Nkumbula did not necessarily mean that Tongas were inherently tribalistic. It meant that regional political identity had become one of the mechanisms through which people negotiated access to the new Zambian state.
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4. The 1960s: tribal competition enters the machinery of the new state
The problem became particularly visible within UNIP.
Research into Zambia's political development describes the 1967 Mulungushi Conference as a period of serious internal ethnic competition. Bemba-speaking leaders campaigned for votes along sectional lines in contests for party positions, while different ethnic blocs competed for representation in the Central Committee. The resulting divisions became sufficiently serious that Kaunda increasingly attempted to construct ethnically balanced governments.
This is important because it demonstrates that tribal balancing was not invented by contemporary Zambian politicians.
It emerged very early in the republic.
The logic became:
«If one ethnic group obtains too much institutional power, another group will feel threatened.»
That logic has survived for decades.
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5. Mainza Chona and the “tribal balancing” problem
The appointment of Mainza Chona as vice-president in 1970 illustrates the problem particularly well.
When Simon Kapwepwe, a Bemba, left the vice-presidency, Kenneth Kaunda appointed Mainza Chona, a Tonga.
Contemporary political reactions reportedly included complaints from some Bemba politicians that replacing Kapwepwe with Chona was an injustice to Bembas. Scholars analysing the episode have described it as an example of the ethnic balancing taking place within UNIP, although they also emphasise that Chona was an exceptionally qualified lawyer and that Kaunda had strategic reasons for choosing him.
The irony is revealing.
A Tonga obtaining one of the highest positions in the republic could itself become interpreted as an ethnic transaction.
This illustrates one of the fundamental problems in Zambia: once politics becomes ethnicised, even a merit-based appointment can be interpreted as “our tribe has gained” or “their tribe has gained.”
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6. The emergence of the modern Tonga political grievance
The return to multiparty politics in 1991 changed the political landscape.
The MMD initially attempted to construct a national coalition, and Frederick Chiluba's presidency did not simply reproduce the old UNIP regional structure.
But the emergence of Anderson Mazoka and the UPND created a new political vehicle with particularly strong support in Southern Province.
The 2001 election was consequently a watershed.
Academic research on the period notes that the UPND carried a persistent “tribal” label. The Tonga Traditional Association openly encouraged Lozis, Tongas and Nkoyas to support Mazoka, and the UPND subsequently struggled with the perception that it was essentially a Southern/Tonga party.
This was not solely something imposed upon the UPND from outside. There was also genuine regional mobilisation in support of Mazoka.
That distinction matters.
The accusation of tribalism had both an external component—other political actors portraying UPND as a Tonga party—and an internal component—Tonga and allied traditional organisations explicitly mobilising ethnic and regional support.
The resulting dynamic became self-reinforcing.
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7. After Mazoka's death: “A Tonga must replace Mazoka”
The death of Anderson Mazoka in 2006 intensified the question of whether the UPND was a national party or essentially a Tonga political organisation.
Contemporary reporting recorded a statement by Rex Natala, Mazoka's cousin, arguing that a Tonga or another member of the Bantu Botatwe grouping should replace Mazoka. The statement was subsequently used by critics as evidence of UPND tribalism.
Parliamentary debate in 2009 revisited the issue. Daniel Munkombwe recalled that after Mazoka's death, powerful politicians had insisted that the party would be led by a Tonga and that non-Tonga candidates would be “playing with fire.”
The episode is significant because it demonstrates both sides of the argument.
To critics:
«“The Tongas want the UPND for themselves.”»
To supporters:
«“After decades of other groups dominating national politics, why shouldn't Tongas have a political vehicle through which they can compete?”»
Both interpretations have existed simultaneously.
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8. But social prejudice goes beyond politics
The strongest evidence for the claim that Tongas have sometimes been looked down upon as ordinary people, rather than merely politically opposed, comes from personal accounts.
In 2010, Wesley Ngwenya published an article titled “Tribalism in Zambia—Zambians Speak Up.”
Rather than analysing election statistics, Ngwenya described personal experiences of hearing derogatory comments about Tongas.
He recounted living with a Mambwe woman who repeatedly described Tongas negatively, including making a generalisation that Tongas were selfish and therefore should not be voted into political office.
He also described travelling on a bus to Livingstone where a passenger made derogatory remarks about Tongas in Bemba. Ngwenya noted that nobody on the bus challenged the remarks. He was particularly disturbed by hearing children repeat anti-Tonga sentiments.
This type of evidence cannot establish the prevalence of anti-Tonga sentiment across Zambia.
But it establishes something different and important:
Zambians themselves have reported encountering ordinary, non-political anti-Tonga prejudice.
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9. The “tribal hybrid” experience
Another valuable personal account is the article “Recollections of a Tribal Hybrid.”
The author describes having a Tonga first name while also belonging culturally to a Bemba-speaking family through the surname. The author's first vivid experience of tribalism came during adolescence, when people disapproved of the person because of the tribal association of the name.
The author subsequently describes encountering harsher prejudice and hearing accounts of other people's experiences. The experience eventually motivated the author to write a book, Routes, dealing explicitly with tribalism in Zambia.
This is especially significant because it demonstrates that ethnic discrimination can occur without a person actually doing anything politically tribal.
A name can become enough.
A language can become enough.
A perceived place of origin can become enough.
That is much closer to what ordinary people mean when they say they have been “looked down upon.”
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10. The stereotype becomes political ammunition
By the 2010s, anti-Tonga rhetoric became increasingly visible in political discourse.
In 2012, parliamentary proceedings included a statement describing Tongas as “polygamous by nature.” The remark occurred in a discussion about women's empowerment and was directed at a generalised characteristic attributed to Tongas.
More controversially, later reporting documented remarks attributed to then-PF Secretary-General Davies Chama in 2015 that Tongas would not rule Zambia for perhaps 100 years and that their population might eventually increase sufficiently through their supposed polygamy to enable them to take power.
The PF subsequently disputed the interpretation and argued that Chama's remarks had been distorted, although the reported wording was widely reproduced in the Zambian press.
The significance is not merely that a politician insulted a group.
The statement effectively transformed ethnic demography into an argument about political entitlement:
«Tongas are too few to rule Zambia.»
That idea has appeared repeatedly in Zambian political discourse.
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11. “Zambia is not ready for a Tonga president”
In February 2020, PF mobilisation official Bizwell Mutale was reported as saying that Zambia was not ready for a Tonga president and that a Tonga would not be allowed to become president in 2021 and beyond.
The reported remarks went further, suggesting that only a Bemba or Easterner would be allowed to become president. Other political figures condemned the comments as tribalism.
This episode is particularly important because it moved beyond a negative stereotype about Tonga behaviour.
It was a statement about whether a member of an ethnic group should be permitted to occupy the highest constitutional office in the country.
That is qualitatively different from political disagreement with Hichilema.
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12. The 2021 election: tribal identity becomes an explicit campaign weapon
The 2021 election produced some of the most serious documented examples.
The Electoral Commission of Zambia suspended Chishimba Kambwili from campaign activities after finding that he had repeatedly made tribalistic comments. Among the controversy was the reported assertion that Tongas belonged to UPND and had no place in the PF.
The Law Association of Zambia subsequently warned that political tribalism amounted to discrimination and threatened national peace. It specifically cited Kambwili's remarks concerning Tonga-speaking people.
This matters because the issue was no longer merely:
«“Some Tongas think other tribes dislike them.”»
A national professional body was explicitly identifying tribal remarks concerning Tongas as a constitutional and public-order problem.
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13. Kambwili's Radio Mano case
The most concrete modern example is the criminal case against Chishimba Kambwili.
The alleged remarks were made during a Radio Mano programme in Kasama on 2 August 2021.
Kambwili denied that his statements constituted hate speech and argued that he had been responding to alleged tribal comments by UPND figures and campaigning against voting along tribal lines. His defence therefore illustrates the other side of the dispute: the speaker maintained that his comments were political counterattack rather than hatred against Tongas.
The courts ultimately rejected that defence.
In November 2023, the Kasama Magistrates' Court convicted Kambwili and sentenced him to five months' imprisonment with hard labour for expressing hatred or ridicule against persons on the basis of tribe and place of origin.
In July 2025, the High Court upheld the conviction. The National Prosecution Authority stated that the remarks were found to be hateful and demeaning toward Tonga-speaking people and capable of aggravating tribal tensions.
This is arguably the strongest documentary evidence available for the modern period because the issue moved beyond journalism and political accusation into judicial determination.
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14. The perception of a double standard
There is another dimension to the grievance that deserves attention.
Some Tonga commentators argue that when Tongas assert their own political interests, they are rapidly labelled “tribalists,” while similar behaviour by larger or more politically powerful groups is treated as ordinary politics.
This perception appears repeatedly in commentary.
For example, a 2025 article in The Editor Zambia argued that anti-Tonga statements by figures such as Miles Sampa, Davies Chama and Chishimba Kambwili were treated more lightly than comparable statements associated with Tonga politicians. The article is explicitly opinionated and should therefore not be treated as an impartial historical source, but it accurately captures an important strand of the Tonga grievance itself.
The argument is essentially:
«When we defend ourselves, it is called tribalism.
When others attack us, it is called politics.»
Whether that perception is objectively correct across all cases is debatable. But its existence is important because perceptions themselves influence political behaviour.
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15. The paradox: Tongas have also been accused of tribalism
Any serious history has to acknowledge this.
The Tonga grievance cannot honestly be presented as a history in which Tongas are always victims and other groups are always perpetrators.
The UPND acquired a tribal reputation partly because of its extraordinarily concentrated Southern Province support and because Tonga and Bantu Botatwe organisations themselves sometimes mobilised voters around regional and ethnic identity. Academic research explicitly discusses this problem.
The 2001 campaign is an example.
The Tonga Traditional Association's call for Tongas, Lozis and Nkoyas to support Mazoka was itself ethnic/regional mobilisation.
Similarly, the insistence by some UPND supporters after Mazoka's death that his successor should be Tonga can reasonably be interpreted as exclusionary.
This does not prove that the UPND was inherently tribalist.
It does demonstrate that Tonga political solidarity is real, and that solidarity can itself produce behaviour that other Zambians experience as tribal.
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16. Why the cycle persists
The tragedy is that the two narratives reinforce one another.
A simplified version of the cycle looks like this:
Anti-Tonga prejudice
↓
Tongas become politically defensive
↓
Strong regional support develops for Tonga-associated political leaders
↓
Other groups interpret that solidarity as Tonga tribalism
↓
Political opponents attack the “Tonga party”
↓
Tongas become even more defensive
↓
Regional voting becomes stronger
↓
The original accusation appears to have been proven
↓
The cycle begins again.
This is one reason the UPND's long-standing tribal label has proved so difficult to remove.
Recent political research describes the UPND as having been dogged by accusations of tribalism since Hichilema succeeded Mazoka in 2006, despite its evolution into a national political organisation.
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17. A particularly revealing comparison: Tonga communities in Zimbabwe
There is also comparative evidence that should not simply be transplanted into Zambia but is nevertheless worth considering.
A scholarly study of the Tonga of Binga, Zimbabwe, describes a community displaced by the construction of the Kariba Dam and states explicitly that other tribes looked down upon the Tonga people.
Other scholarship on Tonga communities in Zimbabwe has documented derogatory stereotypes portraying Tongas as backward, lazy or childlike.
This does not prove that Zambian Tongas experienced precisely the same treatment.
But it raises an interesting historical question:
Did some stereotypes attached to Tonga people predate modern Zambian party politics and exist across the broader Tonga cultural region?
That question deserves considerably more research.
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18. What can actually be established?
The historical evidence supports several propositions with varying degrees of confidence.
Strongly supported
There have been explicit anti-Tonga statements by Zambian politicians, including statements questioning whether a Tonga could become president.
There have been documented personal experiences of ordinary social prejudice against Tongas, including derogatory generalisations and comments about Tonga names and identity.
There have been political campaigns in which Tonga identity was explicitly used as an electoral weapon, both by opponents of Tonga-associated parties and, at times, by Tonga-associated political organisations themselves.
There is at least one recent case in which a Zambian court ultimately convicted a prominent politician for hate speech directed at Tonga-speaking people.
More difficult to establish
It is much harder to prove that:
«“Most other tribes in Zambia have historically looked down on Tongas.”»
The available evidence does not justify such a sweeping conclusion.
Nor does it establish that the Zambian state has maintained a continuous policy of discriminating against Tongas.
The evidence instead suggests periodic and context-dependent discrimination, particularly when political competition becomes ethnicised.
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19. The deeper grievance
The most defensible formulation of the Tonga grievance may therefore be considerably more nuanced than “Tongas have been oppressed.”
It is something like this:
«The Tonga-speaking peoples entered independence with a strong regional political identity and a social culture emphasising independence and achievement. Their political interests subsequently became associated with opposition movements based in Southern Province. As national politics became increasingly competitive, Tonga identity became a convenient object of political stereotyping. Over time, derogatory social stereotypes, accusations of tribalism, demographic arguments about their inability to rule Zambia, and actual political discrimination became intertwined. This produced a collective perception among many Tongas that they were not merely politically opposed, but socially regarded as an inferior or politically undesirable people.»
That is a considerably more defensible historical proposition.
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20. The irony of “One Zambia, One Nation”
Kenneth Kaunda's famous national philosophy was intended to prevent precisely this problem.
Yet Kaunda himself discovered that tribal identity did not disappear simply because the state declared national unity. His early hope was that Zambians would eventually cease thinking primarily as Bemba, Lozi or Tonga and instead think of themselves as Zambians. His later political experience demonstrated how persistent ethnic and regional loyalties remained.
The Tonga experience therefore exposes a fundamental contradiction in the Zambian national project:
Zambia has formally rejected tribalism while repeatedly organising political power through ethnic balancing.
That contradiction is at the heart of the problem.
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Conclusion
There is a danger in turning the Tonga grievance into another tribal narrative.
It would be historically inaccurate to say that “Bembas,” “Easterners,” “Nyanjas” or any other group collectively oppressed the Tongas. Millions of individual Zambians have no part in such behaviour, and Tonga people themselves have participated in ethnic politics.
But it would be equally inaccurate to dismiss the Tonga sense of grievance as invented.
There is documentary evidence of anti-Tonga stereotypes in ordinary social interaction; political statements questioning whether Tongas should rule Zambia; accusations based explicitly on Tonga demographic size; political organisations being characterised as tribal because of their Southern/Tonga support base; and a recent criminal conviction arising from remarks directed at Tonga-speaking people.
The important historical question is therefore not:
«“Are Tongas victims?”»
Nor:
«“Are Tongas tribalists?”»
It is:
«“How did Zambia develop a political culture in which a person's tribe could become a reason to question their character, their political legitimacy, or even their right to aspire to national leadership?”»
The Tonga experience is one of the clearest windows into that larger Zambian problem.
And perhaps the most important lesson is that a community does not need to be institutionally excluded at every point in history for a genuine collective memory of humiliation to develop. Repeated social insults, political stereotyping, exclusionary rhetoric and experiences of being treated differently can accumulate over generations. At the same time, that historical grievance can itself become the foundation for defensive ethnic mobilisation—which then gives opponents new evidence with which to accuse the community of tribalism.
That is the cycle Zambia has yet to break.
Selected sources and further reading
- Wesley Ngwenya, “Tribalism in Zambia—Zambians Speak Up,” Lusaka Times (2010) — first-person accounts of anti-Tonga prejudice.
- “Recollections of a Tribal Hybrid,” Nkwazi Magazine — personal account of discrimination associated with a Tonga name/identity.
- “Debating ‘The Rediscovery of Liberalism’ in Zambia,” Africa/Cambridge University Press — discussion of Tonga/Bantu Botatwe political culture and achievement.
- Dan O'Brien, “Chiefs of rain – chiefs of ruling: a reinterpretation of pre-colonial Tonga (Zambia) social and political structure,” Africa.
- University of Zambia, “The British policy of indirect rule among the acephalous society of Monze District…” — colonial administration and Tonga oral history.
- “From One-Party Participatory Democracy to Multiparty Liberal Democracy in Zambia Since 1990” — UPND, Mazoka and the 2001 tribal politics debate.
- Law Association of Zambia reporting on tribal remarks in 2021.
- National Prosecution Authority, Kambwili hate-speech conviction and appeal — the strongest recent legal record concerning anti-Tonga remarks.
- Christopher Munikwa, “The Binga Outreach” — comparative historical evidence concerning the marginalisation and stereotyping of Tonga communities in Zimbabwe.
