Tonga, Bantu-speaking people who inhabit the southern portion of Zambia and neighbouring areas of northern Zimbabwe and Botswana. Numbering more than one million in the early 21st century, the Tonga are concentrated along the Zambezi Escarpment and along the shores of Lake Kariba. They are settled agriculturists who grow corn (maize) primarily for subsistence but also for limited commercial purposes. The vast majority of Tonga live in small, dispersed villages; they are the only one of Zambia’s major ethnic groupings whose wealth and power are founded upon rural, agricultural activities as opposed to urban pursuits.
Descent and land inheritance are reckoned among the Tonga along matrilineal lines, and a newly married couple go to live near the bride’s relatives. They attribute marked importance to spirits associated with rainfall, and thus rainmakers are prominent in Tonga society.
Before the British colonization of what is now Zambia, the Tonga were loosely organized into a number of matrilineal clans that had neither leaders nor defined political functions. These clans were subdivided into numerous small lineages that controlled property and arbitrated disputes among their members. The British appointed village chiefs from among prominent local Tongas, and gradually this network of local officials coalesced into a single, unified political structure comprising a hierarchy of chiefs. Both the ethnic identity and political organization of the Tonga are thus ultimately the products of British attempts to administer them.
In the early 21st century the Tonga proper constituted about one-eighth of Zambia’s population, making them the second largest ethnic group (after the Bemba) in the country.