Songo

The Homeland

It is believed that the Songo and other people were drawn to this plateau because of the fertility of the land and the impressive rivers and streams, chief among them the Lundu River. Two of Angola's most important rivers and valleys, the Kwanza and the Kunene, converge at the homeland of the Songo. Alongside the Kongo River, these two rivers make a direct highway through the Benguela Highlands into the Katanga region, where there is an abundance of ivory, beeswax, rubber, and copper. The largest populations who occupy this region are the Luimbi, Songo, and Luchazi. They appear to have similar origins because of their common rituals, symbols, customs, traditions, and ancestry.

Narrative Myth

According to the ancient narratives of the people, the origin of the Bié of Ovimbundu, for instance, is told to date back to the marriage of a hunter, Viye, with a Songo princess, Kahanda. In another version, the Ndulu claim that when their founder, an elephant-hunter called Katekula-Mengo, and his wife, Ukungu, came into the region, they got permission from the local king to settle in Kakoko. These narratives of origin are similar and have given rise to comparable cultural forms in terms of religion and respect for ancestors.

Most of the Songo live as fishers. Many of the groups around them, such as the Luena, the Suto, the Lozi, the Bondo, the Jaga, the Luimbi, the Luchazi, and the militarily powerful Chokwe, came into the area as agrarians and pastoralists. The Songo people are related to a branch of the Chokwe called the Imbangala. The Imbangala are descendants of Kasanje Tembo, brother of Ndumba Tembo, founder of the Chokwe, and Muzumbo Tembo, founder of the Songo. These three brothers, the Tembos, are three of the most important state founders in the history of Africa because each one created his own kingdom, while the empire founded by Kibinda Ilunga can be traced at any time from 1550 or even earlier to 1612.

At the turn of the 17th century, a group of Lunda left the country under the leadership of Kinguri. They were under the hegemony of a Luba king who had seized the kingdom. They settled in the area of Kwango and Kasai, but went farther west and arrived in Songo country near Boia Cassache.

When they arrived in Boia Cassache, the king, Kinguri, was assassinated by the local king named Sungwe, who was the leader of the Mboluma people. Kasanje, who called himself Kinguri's [Page 622]nephew, succeeded to the leadership of the Songo. They fought with the Ngolas and the Pende and were brought under the hegemony of the Portuguese. Like the Jaga, who lived as a vassal people under the Portuguese, the Songo did the same thing until they started to move beyond the influence of the whites. After the death of Kasanje in 1616, the Songo led a new campaign against the Ngola and Matamba. Involved in the slave trade, the Songo established trading stations with the Portuguese. Their culture became distorted and a mixture of Western and African ideals. With the intense slave trade activities, the culture of Songo was brutalized.

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