The Kasempa Salient

While most studies of the imposition of British South Africa Company rule in Northwestern Rhodesia in the late nineteenth century have tended to focus on the Lozi and the concessions coaxed out of the Lozi ruler Lewanika by Cecil Rhodes's emissaries, little attention has been paid to the less numerous peoples who also lived in the region affected by the grants. No doubt this is a reflection of the relative weakness and remoteness of tribes such as the Kaonde, who were subject to a plethora of petty chiefs instead of one powerful paramount. Indeed, the only thing which the Kaonde, who were a rather mobile and divided people, seemed to have shared was a Luban ancestry and a language which was a testimony to that heritage. In the last decades before the European intrusion, both the economic pressure exerted on them by their Lunda overlord in the Congo, Musokantanda,2 and the violent visitations of the Yeke raiders of Msiri had provided the major impetus for movement. To escape such demanding and dangerous neighbors, many Kaonde gravitated south, in turn displacing the Nkoya and Mashasha whom they despoiled for slaves, using them to purchase firearms from the Mbundu to the west. In the autumn of 1900, when Robert T. Coryndon persuaded Lewanika to sign a new agreement which replaced the old Lochner Treaty, LoziKaonde relations still had not yet crystallized into any definite pattern. In part, this was because the monarch had been both an ally and adversary of the fragmented Kaonde. His major antagonist, Jipumpu Kasempa, was

Political science · Salient · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Law · South African History and Culture

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