Bemba, Bantu-speaking people inhabiting the northeastern plateau of Zambia and neighbouring areas of Congo (Kinshasa) and Zimbabwe. The Bantu language of the Bemba has become the lingua franca of Zambia.
The people practice shifting cultivation, pollarding the forest trees and planting the staple, finger millet, in the ash derived from burning the branches. Poor soil and inadequate transportation have hindered the production and sale of cash crops, and in the 1960s and 1970s many men began to leave the area to find work in the copper mines more than 400 miles (640 km) to the south.
The Bemba claim to be an offshoot of the Luba empire (see Luba-Lunda states) and are thought to have left the Congo in the 18th or early 19th century. They achieved a centralized government under a supreme chief, the Chitimukulu, who was a member of a single, matrilineal, royal clan. The power of members of this clan rested on the sacredness of their persons and on their prayers to ancestral spirits at relic shrines, which were thought to have influence on the fertility of the land and on the general welfare of the people. Their burial and accession ceremonies are among the most elaborate found among the Bantu speakers.
The Bemba are divided into 40 matrilineal, exogamous clans, with members dispersed over the country. The local group is the village, which is largely composed of the matrilineal relatives of the headman. It contains about 30 huts and moves every four or five years when the soil is exhausted. Polygyny is practiced; each co-wife occupies her own home, although the first wife enjoys special status.