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Authors: Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
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as Njinga’s infant son. As you might imagine, Mbandi was neither a benevolent nor a sensible ruler. One story claims that when Njinga spoke out against his plans to pit his spear-armed warriors in open battle against the cannon-armed Portuguese, he had her forcibly sterilized. The Portuguese also knew his faults and pressed their advantage, sending missionaries and soldiers farther into Ndongo territory.
So in 1621, Princess Njinga was sent by her cowardly, villainous sibling to meet with the Portuguese governor and negotiate the end of hostilities. Njinga forced the governor to meet her eye to eye, both figuratively and literally. The treaty was signed, the Portuguese recognized the sovereignty of the Mbundu-speaking people, and all it cost was the return of a few European captives.
Three years later, Mbandi was dead and Njinga took the throne with the backing of a grateful people. She reengaged the Portuguese after they broke the peace treaty (surprise!) and relocated her subjects to a more defensible location in the highlands. From there, Njinga directed a guerilla war that left the invaders demoralized and weakened, holding them off for four decades. After her death, the kingdom disintegrated. Yet, even as Ndongo became Angola under Portuguese rule, her people still remembered her. In 1860, a Scottish missionary recorded meeting an Angolan man who told him, “In Angola, every living, breathing thing, down to the last blade of grass in your path, still remembers our great queen.”
N JINGA W ARRIOR
So now you’ve heard the lore. The reality is messier … and bloodier. Rather than deferring to her brother until her country needed her, Njingahad in fact been looking for a path to the throne since her father’s death. Because Ndongo precedent disallowed women rulers, she publicly supported Mbandi while busily amassing supporters and justifications for her own claim to the throne.
When Njinga met with the governor in 1621, she really did use her maidservant as a chair. But that gutsy move may have been motivated more by her own political ambitions than by a desire to represent her people: Njinga wanted the Portuguese to reinforce her claim to the throne. Given the political realities of colonized Central Africa, the best way to accomplish that goal was to share a religion with the invaders, so Njinga was baptized as a Christian in 1622. She took as her new Christian name Anna de Sousa, the name of the governor’s wife.
Mbandi’s death was the opening Njinga needed; pretty much everyone agrees that she created that opportunity herself by poisoning him. Her apologists later claimed that she’d done so only because he was an awful ruler and she was desperate to protect her people. But as ambitious as she was, Njinga was not the popular choice for ruler, owing to her gender and the pervasive suspicion that she’d killed Mbandi. So she initially stepped up as regent for Mbandi’s 8-year-old son. Within two years, however, she had her nephew murdered and assumed power.
Njinga’s power grab precipitated an internal war, prompting her to call on the Portuguese for support. Unfortunately for her, they sided with a rival faction whose male heir was more malleable to their own agenda. Njinga renounced Christianity and made it her life’s mission—for a while at least—to thwart Portuguese efforts to monopolize the slave trade. She even began to offer sanctuary to slaves who escaped Portuguese coastal plantations, in the process swelling the ranks of her supporters.
This succession war led to one of the more grisly aspects of Njinga’s reign: her alliance of convenience with the Imbangala, marauding bands of mercenaries. In probably the first documented instances of African child soldiers, the Imbangala descended upon villages with a bloody ferocity, enslaving children and killing everyone else before moving on to the next town. Starting in 1628, Njinga not only employed Imbangala soldiers but, to keep them loyal,
So in 1621, Princess Njinga was sent by her cowardly, villainous sibling to meet with the Portuguese governor and negotiate the end of hostilities. Njinga forced the governor to meet her eye to eye, both figuratively and literally. The treaty was signed, the Portuguese recognized the sovereignty of the Mbundu-speaking people, and all it cost was the return of a few European captives.
Three years later, Mbandi was dead and Njinga took the throne with the backing of a grateful people. She reengaged the Portuguese after they broke the peace treaty (surprise!) and relocated her subjects to a more defensible location in the highlands. From there, Njinga directed a guerilla war that left the invaders demoralized and weakened, holding them off for four decades. After her death, the kingdom disintegrated. Yet, even as Ndongo became Angola under Portuguese rule, her people still remembered her. In 1860, a Scottish missionary recorded meeting an Angolan man who told him, “In Angola, every living, breathing thing, down to the last blade of grass in your path, still remembers our great queen.”
N JINGA W ARRIOR
So now you’ve heard the lore. The reality is messier … and bloodier. Rather than deferring to her brother until her country needed her, Njingahad in fact been looking for a path to the throne since her father’s death. Because Ndongo precedent disallowed women rulers, she publicly supported Mbandi while busily amassing supporters and justifications for her own claim to the throne.
When Njinga met with the governor in 1621, she really did use her maidservant as a chair. But that gutsy move may have been motivated more by her own political ambitions than by a desire to represent her people: Njinga wanted the Portuguese to reinforce her claim to the throne. Given the political realities of colonized Central Africa, the best way to accomplish that goal was to share a religion with the invaders, so Njinga was baptized as a Christian in 1622. She took as her new Christian name Anna de Sousa, the name of the governor’s wife.
Mbandi’s death was the opening Njinga needed; pretty much everyone agrees that she created that opportunity herself by poisoning him. Her apologists later claimed that she’d done so only because he was an awful ruler and she was desperate to protect her people. But as ambitious as she was, Njinga was not the popular choice for ruler, owing to her gender and the pervasive suspicion that she’d killed Mbandi. So she initially stepped up as regent for Mbandi’s 8-year-old son. Within two years, however, she had her nephew murdered and assumed power.
Njinga’s power grab precipitated an internal war, prompting her to call on the Portuguese for support. Unfortunately for her, they sided with a rival faction whose male heir was more malleable to their own agenda. Njinga renounced Christianity and made it her life’s mission—for a while at least—to thwart Portuguese efforts to monopolize the slave trade. She even began to offer sanctuary to slaves who escaped Portuguese coastal plantations, in the process swelling the ranks of her supporters.
This succession war led to one of the more grisly aspects of Njinga’s reign: her alliance of convenience with the Imbangala, marauding bands of mercenaries. In probably the first documented instances of African child soldiers, the Imbangala descended upon villages with a bloody ferocity, enslaving children and killing everyone else before moving on to the next town. Starting in 1628, Njinga not only employed Imbangala soldiers but, to keep them loyal,
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