Mbundu

Mbundu, black African ethnic group, W Angola. The Mbundu speak Bantu languages and number about 6 million. By the late 15th cent. they had formed the Ndongo kingdom, ruled by the ngola (from which the Portuguese derived the name Angola). Beginning in the early 16th cent. Ndongo was raided for slaves by its northern neighbor, the kingdom of the Kongo, which sold them to the Portuguese. In 1579 the Portuguese first attempted to conquer Ndongo; however, the Mbundu resisted fiercely and it was not until 1683 that the kingdom was definitively defeated. In the 1970s the Mbundu were the strongest supporters of the Marxist-oriented movement for the Liberation of Angola.

Group of Bantu-speaking peoples of north-central Angola. In the 15th century they founded the Ndongo kingdom, a rival of the Kongo kingdom. It was destroyed by the Portuguese in the late 1600s. In the 1970s the Mbundu provided the main support for the Marxist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which assumed power in 1976. Today they number about 2.3 million.

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The Mbundu people are the second largest ethnic group in Angola. About one quarter of the people in Angola are of Mbundu origin however a smaller percentage of Mbundu people speak the Kimbundu language in favor of Portuguese because of strong influence of the Portuguese in Mbundu territory. The Mbundu people live in the region surrounding Angola's capital city of Luanda. They also are predominant in the Bengo, Cuanza Norte, Cuanza Sul, and Malanje provinces. The head of the Mbundu kingdom was called the N'gola which is the origin of the name of the country, Angola.

Famous Mbundu

The American actor Chris Tucker discovered that he was of the Mbundu ethnic group on the PBS special African American Lives.