People from this tribe are called Atumbuka. Tumbuka is the main tribe found in the northern region of Malawi (Viphya and Nyika). The Tumbuka are a Bantu ethnic group. Their language is Chitumbuku, a Bantu language similar in structure to Swahili. The chief god of Tumbuka traditional religion is Chiuta, an all-powerful, omniscient, self-created being. Chiuta literally translates as ‘Great Bow of Heaven’ or ‘Owner of All’ or ‘The Creator’. This tribe has got a higher percentage of educated people. Its people believe there is a direct link between dancing and the healing process; these curative dances are called Vimbuza. Traditional Doctors (Witchcraft Doctors) among the Tumbuka people use these dances to cure some diseases.
The Tumbuka, (or, Kamanga, Batumbuka and Matumbuka), is an ethnic group found in Northern Malawi, Eastern Zambia and Southern Tanzania. Tumbuka is classified as a part of the Bantu language family, with origins in a geographic region between the Dwangwa River to the south, the North Rukuru River to the north, Lake Malawi to the east, and the Luangwa River. They are found in the valleys near the rivers, lake as well as the highlands of Nyika Plateau, where they are frequently referred to as Henga although this is strictly speaking the name of a subdivision.
The Tumbuka people were a victim of invasion and raiding by the Ngoni tribe, originating from South Africa, of socio-politics behind the ivory trade, and by slave trading controlled by the so-called Arabs, a group including Swahili and non-Muslim Africans but subsequently prospered in the colonial period as the result of the educational opportunities they benefited from. The Tumbuka have had a subsistence farming culture, with many adult men leaving their families to seek migrant work, due to the underdevelopedness of their homeland by government.
The Tumbuka people can further be distinguished into several smaller tribes with related yet distinct heritages headed by different sub-chiefs who are all under the paramount chief Chikulamayembe . These subgroupings include the Henga, Poka and kamanga.
Various estimates suggest that over two million Tumbuka speakers live in north Malawi, northeast Zambia and Tanzania. Ethnologue estimates a total of 1,546,000 Tumbuka speakers. However, Ember et al. estimate that about an additional million Tumbuka people live in central and southern African countries such as Tanzania because of the diffusion of Tumbuka people as migrant labor.
The Tumbuka language, also called chiTumbuka, is a Bantu language, similar to many other Bantu languages in structure and vocabulary. It is classified as a central Bantu language in the Niger-Congo family, and it has many dialects.
The Tumbuka are collectively known as ŵaTumbuka and one is called “mutumbuka” meaning one of the Tumbuka tribe. The Tumbuka language is closely related to the Tonga language and it has been suggested that they originally formed a single group of mutually intelligible dialects until different missionaries treated two such dialects as the standard Tumbuka and Tonga languages.
Before a British protectorate was created over Nyasaland, there were many ethnic groups in what is now Malawi’s Northern Region including a substantial group culturally-related people, scattered widely and loosely organized under largely autonomous village headmen who spoke dialects of the Tumbuka language.
Missionaries in the late 19th century standardised these languages into a relatively small number of groups, and chose the standardised Tumbuka language as the usual medium for teaching in the north of the country, in preference to the Ngoni, Tonga or Ngonde languages which were also prominent in the area. By the start of the 20th century, the Ngoni and Ngonde languages were in decline, although Tonga was more resilient.
In 1968, Tumbuka was abolished as an official language, as a medium of instruction and in examinations, and the secondary school entrance system was manipulated to assist candidates from the Central Region and disadvantage those from the Northern Region. Some of those that objected to the ban on the use of Tumbuka were arrested or harassed but both the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian and the Catholic Church continued to preach and use religious texts in Tumbuka in the Northern Region.
After the advent of multi-party democracy, Tumbuka language programmes began to be broadcast on national radio in 1994 but a 1996 proposal for the reintroduced of Tumbuka as a medium for teaching in the first four years of compulsory education has not been fully implemented. One effect of the failure to restore the Tumbuka language as the standard language of the Northern Region is that speakers of other languages in the region, the Tonga, Ngonde and even the little-spoken Ngoni language are now seeking parity with Tumbuka.
Even before colonial rule was established, Christian missionaries arrived amongst Tumbuka people. Thomas Cullen Young was one of the first missionaries to publish on the culture in Notes on the history of the Tumbuka-Kamanga peoples in the Northern Province of Nyasaland. To help the conversion process, hymnbook and mythologies of Christianity were written into Tumbuka language, into a Tumbuka hymnbook. In contemporary times, the Tumbuka people are officially Christian, but they retain their traditional beliefs and folklores.
The Tumbuka people have had a sophisticated traditional religion. It included the concept of a supreme creator called Chiuta symbolizing the sun, who Tumbuka faith holds was “self created and all knowing”. This religious belief has yield a rich mythology filled with morals. In a manner similar to neighboring regions of Africa, the Tumbuka have also revered ancestor worship, spirit possession, witchcraft and similar practices. Their spirit possession and witchcraft is related to folk therapies for illnesses. This practice is locally called Vimbuza, includes a therapeutic dance performed by those possessed, and this is a part of modern syncretistic Christianity observed by the Tumbuka people.
The Tumbuka people have been rural, living in villages or dispersed agnatically related clusters of rectangular thatched houses. A circular thatched granaries and kitchen would traditionally be a part of each household. The male members would spend their time mostly in a part of the house called Mpara and females in Ntanganini. In the crop season, family members dispersed, sometimes residing in isolated thatched houses near the cultivated land.
In the contemporary era, the primary staple crops of the Tumbuka people are maize, cassava, millet, and beans, along with a variety of pumpkins, vegetables, and fruits such as bananas and oranges as supplements often grown by Tumbuka women.
Men have tended to be migrant workers. In the past, the farming was done manually using hoes. During the colonial rule, ox-drawn plows were introduced. Citemene, or slash and burn agriculture by small farmers is a modern era practice and continues among the Tumbuka people.
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