African Queens #1: Queen Nzinga
The writer profiles Queen Nzinga Mbande (c. 1583–1663), ruler of the Angolan kingdoms of Matamba and Ndongo, tracing her diplomatic missions, military campaigns against Portuguese colonizers, and eventual peace treaty. The piece centres her as a figure of statecraft and resistance whose legacy has been overshadowed in popular African historical discourse.
On PoiseSocial this week, we are going to do a series on great African queens. I was having an interesting discussion with a few friends a couple of days ago, on the role and influence of women in the African society. We were talking about women who helped shape the anti-apartheid movement when I made allusion to another strong female African character while trying to draw a parallel between her and Winnie Mandela. No one had heard of her. So I decided to write this series on great African queens. So here we go.
Queen Nzinga Mbande was an Angolan queen. Born circa 1583, she was the ‘Ngola’ (ruler of the Kingdoms of Matamba and Ndongo a powerful Kingdom that flourished during the 15th and 16th century. The Portuguese mistook the title of the ruler to be the name of the land and called it Angola.
Her brother was the Ngola in 1616 when he rebelled against the Portuguese who had settled on the coast and made their headquarters around what is present-day Luanda, the capital. He lost to the Portuguese at a very heavy price. Hundreds of his people were captured and almost all the noblemen were killed. He then decided to send his sister on a diplomatic mission in 1618 when she was 35 years old.
The aim of the meeting was to foster peace by agreeing on a number of issues; notably the return of captives whom the Portuguese had decided to sell as slaves and also the independence of the Kingdoms of Matamba and Ndongo. In exchange, they were to become a vassal state of Portugal.
During the meeting, the Portuguese envoy had prepared a mat for Nzinga to sit on. She denied that since it was below her stature to sit on the mat. She asked one of her servants to crouch on the mat and she sat on him. The ensuing discussions were unfruitful, even after she had accepted to be baptised by the Portuguese and taking the name Ana De Souza in a conciliatory move.
She returned to her Kingdom and her brother committed suicide after this diplomatic failure. Some accounts say that Nzinga poisoned him. This could be further confirmed as she murdered her nephew, her brother’s son who was a child and next in line for succession. She did this to consolidate her power.
However, this move was not liked by some people who did not think she should be in power. One of them was a Ndongo man called Hari. Hari contested her right to the throne and it was this contestation along with the rumours of her killing her brother that led the Portuguese to repudiate her reign as Ngola. Hari and other nobles conspired and she was forced to flee after many unsuccessful battles against the Portuguese.
The Portuguese then set her sister up as the new ruler who also acted as a spy.
In 1625 she waged another unsuccessful battle and withdrew further into the country.
In 1641 she got into an alliance with the Dutch whom had now seized Luanda from the Portuguese hoping to use them to defeat the Portuguese. Hoping to recover lost lands with Dutch help, she moved her capital to Kavanga in the northern part of Ndongo's former domains. In 1644 she defeated the Portuguese but lost in 1646 at Kavanga.
The Dutch in Luanda now sent Nzinga reinforcements, and with their help, Nzinga routed a Portuguese army in 1647. Nzinga then laid siege to the new Portuguese capital of Masangano. The Portuguese recaptured Luanda in 1648 and Nzinga retreated but continued to resist Portugal well into her sixties.
She personally led her troops into battle.
In 1657, weary from the long struggle, Nzinga signed a peace treaty with Portugal and devoted the rest of her life to rebuilding her nation which had been devastated by years of war. She died at the age of 80 on December 17th, 1663 in Matamba.
Legend has it that she had an all-male harem. The men in her harem were effeminate males (called ‘Chibados) who dressed in women clothing and fought, sometimes to death, for the right to sleep with her.
Chibados were involved as "spiritual arbiters in political and military decisions" and also performed burials. They were described as shamans "who walk dressed like women. Portuguese priests described how chibados lived as women and were able to marry other men with no social sanctions. Instead, "such marriages were honored and even prized. Chibados made up a separate caste and elders referred to themselves as "Grandmother.” – quoted directly from Wikipedia
It is also rumoured that she burnt these men to death after she slept with them.
- Wandji Wilfred.
The post emerges from a casual conversation about influential African women and the anti-apartheid movement, revealing a gap in public knowledge about pre-modern African female leaders. In 2019, there was growing interest in recovering and amplifying African women's histories often eclipsed by colonial narratives and twentieth-century focus.
The piece serves Poise's mission to recover dignified, complex African figures from obscurity—not to mythologize, but to restore historical context. Nzinga's story of political acumen, military leadership, and resistance across decades remains instructive: she negotiated, fought, allied strategically, and ultimately rebuilt her nation, embodying a model of power that colonial accounts have often reduced to anecdote or rumour.