Tonga people (Malawi)

The Tonga (also called Nyasa Tonga) are an ethnic group living in northern Malawi in Nkhata Bay District who are part of the Tumbuka group of peoples. The Nyasa Tongas speak a dialect of Chitumbuka called Chitonga.

Their language dialect and Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe belong to different branches of the Bantu family and are not related.

History

The Tonga people came from the Tumbuka people who broke away from the group when the Nkhamanga Kingdom declined in the early 17th century. When the Ngoni from South Africa who had fled from the Zulu warriors raided the western Nkhamanga Kingdom, the kingdom split into two with one group being currently called Tonga and the other Tumbuka. In reality, the two groups are part of one family and Glottolog categorizes Tonga language and Tumbuka language in a single language family.

Language

According to the 2018 census, there were nearly 170,000 speakers of the Malawi Tonga language which is a dialect of Tumbuka language.^[1] During colonial time, the Tonga learnt Chitumbuka in school as it was one of the official languages of Malawi.