WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW – CHIMBUYA 101
By Eugene Makai
For those who may not know, Barotse are NOT a tribe but rather collection of at least 30 ethnicities and tribes forged by common socio-cultural aspects and lingua-franca. Barotse or Lozi are terms generally confused with Luyi the actual tribe and ethnicity that the ruling class of the Trans-Congo tribe that came down into the Zambezi flood plains and subjugated the inhabitants thereof.
Lozi is therefore NOT a tribe but a collective ethnolinguistic term. The Lozi language is in fact the only other foreign language brought into Zambia apart from English at the behest of a colonial power.
It is a dialect of Sesotho-Tswana cultivated outside its natural environs with localized input of the Luyana and other local tribal languages it found after the Bafokeng warrior leader, Sebetwane invaded, defeated and colonized the Luyi and subject tribes in the 1830s.
When someone says they are Lozi, they simply mean they are one of the following or more ethnicities or tribes:
Luyi, Kwangwa, Mbowe, Ndundulu, Mashi, Kwandi, Simaa, Nkoya, Mbunda, Subiya, Shanjo, Totela, Lushange, Lukolwe, Makoma, Nyengo, Mwenyi, etc.
Note that within the Barotse there are tribes and ethnicities that still speak their own languages distinct from SiKololo/Silozi.
What is labeled LOZI in this map should rightfully be LUYI.