Legitimacy and Political Power: Queen Njinga, 1624-1663

Author(s): John K. Thornton

Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1991), pp. 25-40
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/182577
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J7ournal of African History, 32

Printed in Great Britain

(1991),

LEGITIMACY
QUEEN
BY

pp.

25-40

25

POWER:
AND POLITICAL
1624-16631
NJINGA,
JOHN

K. THORNTON

Millersville University, Pennsylvania

QUEEN Njinga (often written Nzinga)2 is undoubtedly pre-colonial Africa's
most famous, and certainly her best documented queen. She is also surely the
most romanticized - given that her long fight against the Portuguese in
seventeenth-century Angola, her survival on the throne of Ndongo-Matamba
against considerable odds and her apparently bizarre personal behavior are
the stuff that legend and romance are made of. By the I96os and I970S she
had become firmly entrenched in Angolan nationalist and much of liberal
Africanist historiography as a proto-nationalist heroine - the only heroic
figure, in fact, upon whom MPLA and UNITA ideologues could agree.3
In 1975, however, Joseph C. Miller argued that Njinga was not a
legitimate candidate for the throne of Ndongo when she came to power in
I624 and proceeded to analyse most of her career as a long-lasting and largely
unsuccessful search for that legitimacy.4 Viewed from this perspective,
Njinga appears less heroic and more as a power-hungry scion of the Ndongo
nobility.5
' An earlier version of this paper was presented at the African Studies Association
(U.S.) Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, in October I987 and was partially funded by
a Faculty Development Grant from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Revision has
benefited from comments by Joseph C. Miller and Linda Heywood. Earlier support for
this project was provided originally by a grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities to translate the Araldi Mss of Cavazzi (I982-84);
see n. 9.
2 I have adopted this spelling of her name (rather than the more common English form
of Nzinga) because it seems to correspond to the rules of the new orthography of
Kimbundu adopted by the People's Republic of Angola in 1980; see MPLA/PT,
Instituto Nacional de Lfnguas [Maria Celeste P. A. Kounta], Histdrico sobre a Cria-fao dos
Alfabetos em Li'nguas Nacionais (Lisbon, 1980), 64-6, where there are minimal pairs
/nz/nj/.
Here the sound of the Kimbundu /j/ is equivalent to the French or Portuguese
/j/. I have been persuaded in this by the usage of Graziano Maria (Saccardo) de
Leguzzano, an excellent speaker of Kimbundu, who also devoted much of his long career
in Angola to historical research and who rendered her name as 'Jinga' or 'Njinga'; see
his translation of Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, Istorica Descrizione de' Tre
Regni Congo, Angola ed Matamba (Bologna, I687) as Descripf o Historica dos Tr's Reinos
Congo, Matamba e Angola (2 vols) (Lisbon, I965), and his later study, Congo e Angola con
la storia dell'antica missione dei Cappuccini (3 vols) (Venice, I982-3).
3 For example, Walter Rodney, 'European
actions and African reactions in Angola', in
T. 0. Ranger (ed.), Aspects of Central African History (London, I968); Roy Glasgow,
Nzinga: Resistencia Africana a Investida do Colonialismo Portugues em Angola, I582-I663
(Sao Paulo, I982,
originally composed ca. I972).
Also MPLA [Henrique Abranches],
Historia de Angola (Porto, I976, originally composed I966), and UNITA,
UNITA:
Identity of a Free Angola (Jamba, I985), 2I.
4 Joseph C. Miller,
'Queen Nzinga of Matamba in a new perspective', J. Afr. Hist.,
XIII (I975),

20I-I6.

Abranches in the MPLA Historia de Angola, 69-72, had already noted that Njinga
had class interests that set her apart from modern nationalists, though he, true to the
5

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26

JOHN

K. THORNTON

Miller was the first scholar to examine Njinga seriously in terms of the
internal structure and ideology of African politics, rather than through her
relationship to the Portuguese colonizers of Angola or to the Catholic
Church.6 This perspective gave Miller the opportunity to show that, when
viewed from the internal structure of Ndongo, Njinga was fighting a constant
battle to legitimize her succession to office against opponents who saw her as
an usurper unfit to rule. Once this point was grasped, much of Njinga's
apparently bizarre behavior and her frequent shifts of alliance made good
sense as strategies to balance her use of raw power with attempts to achieve
legitimacy. More recently, Adriano Parreira has re-examined Miller's work
and criticized elements of it, largely by suggesting that Njinga possessed
greater legitimacy than Miller's reconstruction allowed.7
Miller focused largely on Njinga's search for legitimacy from sources
outside the kingdom of Ndongo - the Portuguese, Imbangala and Matamba.
But Njinga never abandoned the campaign for justification within her home
state either, and this domestic quest may well have been more important than
her search for external alliances and supporters. Njinga never gave up the
idea that she was queen of Ndongo and had a right to rule that state, even
when she had to re-locate her capital in Matamba and surrender much of
Ndongo's original territory to the Portuguese or to her principal domestic
rivals, Hari a Kiluanji (I624-6) and his successor, Ngola Hari (I626-64). It
was probably for this reason that she sought at all costs to maintain a
presence on the Kindonga islands in the Kwanza river, the capital of Ndongo
when she came to power. Though she lost them twice to the Portuguese and
to her domestic rivals in I626 and I628, she reoccupied them, at some cost,
as soon afterwards as possible.8 She kept Kindonga Island as a symbolic
capital and carefully maintained the burial grounds of her royal ancestors
right up to the end of her life, despite the strategic vulnerability of the site.9
If Njinga wanted to be queen, was she entitled to the position, or was she
simply an usurper? In trying to answer this question both Miller and
conception of history, argued that she was progressive through her
Marxist-nationalist
resistance to Portugal.
largely in the context of Portuguese colonialism in Rodney,
6 She was assessed
'European Actions'; Abranches, Historia de Angola; and Glasgow, Nzinga. Her relationship to the Church forms the principal theme of the most important and best
documented study of her by a priest, Jean Cuvelier and 0. Boone, Koningin Nzinga van
It was on this theme that Cuvelier and Boone were subjected
Matamba (Bruges, I957).

to a scathing review by Jean Stengers in Zaire,

XI (I957),

I059-60,

a review which

nevertheless passed over the major merit of the book's meticulous research.
Adriano Parreira, Economia e Sociedade em Angola na Epoca da Rainha Jinga, Setculo
XVII (Lisbon, I990), I78-83. Parreira has benefited especially from a fuller consultation
of the documents of Fernao de Sousa (see Heintze [ed.] cited in n. 20), published after
Miller wrote.
of these events, see Beatrix Heintze, 'Das Ende des unabhangigen
8 For the chronology
(I6I7-I630)',
und Reinterpretation
(Angola): neue Chronologie
Staates Ndongo
246-53.
222-9,
Paideuma, XXVII (I98I),
9 This position is clear from notes of the visit of Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da
Montecuccolo to the Kindonga islands in I662, just a year before Njinga's death. Mss
'Missione evangelica al
Araldi (Modena), Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo,
Regno de Congo', vol. A, Book 2, I66-74 (Mss composed between i66o and i665 and
revised up to i668). A modern edition (by John Thornton) and English translation (by
Carolyn Beckingham) is currently in preparation.

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LEGITIMACY

AND

POLITICAL

POWER

27

Parreira assumed that Ndongo possessed a fairly clear-cut constitution that

specified who could and who could not rule, Miller producing reasons why
she could not, Parreira arguing that she could. The idea of a constitution,
whether as a fixed document, as Americans are likely to envision it, or as a
set of well-established and consistently followed customs and precedents, as
it is often used in historical literature,10 is crucial here.
Ndongo's constitution would have to be found in the orally preserved
traditions which recalled historical precedents and in commentaries upon
them that would have been known to most of the elite of the kingdom. Not
being an explicit text, this corpus would have left both seventeenth-century
legists and modern scholars to discover the relevant principles by studying
the traditions. Both Njinga's right to rule, and her rivals' disputation of her
right, would have to be established by reference to these historical precedents.
Njinga certainly used this mode of justification in discussing her own
policies and decisions. Her approach is revealed by a case cited by Antonio
Gaeta da Napoli, who resided at her court from i655 to i658. During one
interview with Njinga, Gaeta suggested that she should not allow her most
senior officials to disagree or argue with her. In order to answer him, Njinga
related a story of her father's reign in which a nobleman ('macotta' [makota])
had entered another man's house and stolen some goods. He was surprised
by the owner as he was leaving and was taken to the king. The king, however,
refused to punish him and dismissed the case, saying 'I will make restitution,
but I must protect the good name of my soldiers'.11 This case, she said, was
the precedent she had followed.
Any discussion of legitimacy, whether by actors of the seventeenth century
or by modern historians, assumes that resort to these historical precedents
will produce a clear and unambiguous answer on the correct rules to follow.
But such an attitude also assumes that the constitution is essentially fixed and
unchanging. Indeed, constitutions may appear unchanging at times, but
typically such times are situations in which there is a stable, unchallenged
political establishment, in which most political actors accept the historical or
genealogical validity of the precedents and are willing to channel their
personal or group ambitions along the lines provided in the constitution.
But the idea of a fixed constitution can hold only in a situation of stability
and widespread agreement on what the rules are. In situations where political
conditions are changing, the fixity of constitutional law quickly breaks down.
This has been demonstrated by several recent studies of 'customary law' in
colonial Africa. For example, Martin Chanock's study of customary law in
Zambia and Malawi argues that in the confused period of the late nineteenth
century there was no consensus on what law was, if there had ever been a law.
A uniform law appeared only with the establishment of a dominant colonial
state, as traditionalists, colonial lawyers and the administration gradually
10

For example, see the lengthy discussion on the medieval German constitution found
in Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (2nd rev. ed., London, I947),
which sought constitutional principles by examining events and their descriptions in
chronicles and other contemporary sources.
11 Antonio Gaeta da Napoli, La Maravigliosa Conversione alla Santa Fede di Cristo
della Regina Singa e del svo Regno di Matamba nell'Africa Meridionale, ed. Francesco
Maria Gioia da Napoli (Naples, i668), I88-9I.

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28

JOHN

K. THORNTON

shaped a 'customary' law out of bits and pieces of received precedent to

make a new legal system that served their own needs.12
In seventeenth-century Ndongo these issues were not resolved by a
colonial state, of course, but could be settled by the emergence of a powerful
ruler or stable polity which would enforce law and ensure that the historical
precedents supporting his or her claims were accepted as legitimate. But at
the time of Njinga, and for some years before her succession, this comfortable
situation of clearly defined constitutional precedent was far from being
established, and various rival social groups struggled to create a constitution
that favored them.
As with all such situations of change, the political struggle of the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries engendered rivalries and power
struggles which reduced consensus about the exact nature of the constitution.
The effect of political rivalry on constitutional consensus can be illustrated
by the situation in the neighboring kingdom of Kongo, where a succession
crisis between i6I5 and I630 had generated a substantial correspondence
from rival factions of the Kongo royal family and their supporters, in which
they often cited completely opposed principles extracted from the 'most
ancient customs and laws' as found in the 'chronicles of those kings'. 13
However, it would be wrong to use these situations where historical
precedent was disputed, or rival versions of tradition were cited to assert that
constitutions or constitutional reasoning did not exist, even there. Were that
true, of course, the rivals would not have bothered to cite precedents as they
did. All might agree that there was, or at least ought to be, a constitution.
Rather their conflict was over exactly what it was. As with their Kongo
neighbors, therefore, rivals in Ndongo could cite historical precedents or
myths to support their positions, and like their counterparts to the north they
could also draw on a large and heterogeneous group of precedents and rival
versions of the country's history.
Ultimately, of course, the real resolution of the constitutional problems lay
as much in who could win the struggles in the material field, through
marshalling supporters or armies, as in who could convince their rivals of the
truth of historical or legal precedents. The arguments of the material victors
were obviously quite likely to be accepted even if they were untrue, both in
the seventeenth century and in the modern colonial and post-colonial states.
Although we cannot know all the details of raw political power in Njinga's
time, the limited source material describing the structure of Ndongo from
the mid-sixteenth century gives us an idea. When the earliest Portuguese
arrived in Ndongo in the 1560s they found a fairly decentralized state. The
king ruled along with a number of powerful, territorially based nobles (the
12
Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi
and Zambia (Cambridge, UK, I985). For a similar argument see Charles Ambler, 'The
renovation of custom in colonial Kenya: the 1932 generation succession ceremonies in
Embu', J. Afr. Hist., xxx (I989), 139-56.
problems of
'The correspondence of the Kongo kings, I614-35:
13 John Thornton,
internal written evidence on a Central African kingdom', Paideuma, xxx (I987), 4I0-I8.
The quotation comes from a letter of Bras Correa (President of the Royal Council of
Kongo) to Monsignor Juan Bautista Vives (Kongo's 'Protector' at the Vatican), 20 Oct.
in Ant6nio Brasio (ed.), Monumenta Missionaria Africana (Ist series, I5 volumes)
I6I9,
(Lisbon, 1952-88), vol. 6, 408.

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LEGITIMACY

AND

POLITICAL

POWER

29

makota, singular dikota)," who represented a check on his absolute power.15

Though the documents do not prove it, it is likely that the makota also held
the right to elect, or at least confirm, the ruler in power, while enjoying rights
to succession in their own territories.16
But the kings of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries moved
to centralize their authority, especially making use of royal slaves, the ijiko
(singular kijiko). They had also perhaps asserted the right to hereditary
succession according to the rules of kinship rather than election by the
makota. Late-sixteenth-century kings drew substantial revenues from villages of their slaves planted throughout the country,17 and at the same time
slave officials managed affairs at court and formed the elite and officer corps
of the royal army. Moreover, they placed the ijiko as judicial and military
supervisors over the territorial nobles, thus reducing their power while
insuring the collection of taxes.18 This use of slaves greatly enhanced royal
revenues and probably allowed the rulers to take in many members of the
lesser nobility as clients. Royally appointed officials could be sent on
missions to collect taxes from the nobility, thus becoming enriched.'9
It was this growing and increasingly powerful class of court slaves that
supported Njinga in her quest for power, and her struggle against rivals over
who controlled the military slaves (kimbare, plural imbare) was the crux of
her early relations with Portugal.20 What is more, Njinga's first rival, Hari a
Kiluanji, was essentially a dikota who might benefit from reversing the
tendency to centralization under royal slaves that benefited Njinga. As
Fernao de Sousa, the Portuguese governor of Angola, put it, when speaking
of the 'quizicos' (kijiko), who were 'captives of the king', one could dispense
14 The term is mentioned
only in Jesuit descriptions composed around I 58o; see Pierre
du Jarric, Histoire des Choses les plus Meomorables Advenues des Portugais...
(3 vols.,
Bordeaux, i6io), vol. 2, 79.
" Letter of Antonio Mendes, 9 May 1563, in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 2, 5o8-io;
Apontamentos sobre Paulo Dias de Novais (O56o-6i)
in ibid. vol. 2, 467-8; Francisco de
Gouveia to Jesuit General, I Nov. I564, ibid. vol. I5, 230-I.
16 This structure is mentioned
as the normal state in the Jesuit accounts. It may well
have been informed by the kind of historical precedents that are found in the later
traditions, though they do not provide a full text; see du Jarric, Histoire, vol. 2, 79-80.
17 Arquivo
Hist6rico Ultramarino (Lisbon), Papeis avulsos, Angola, Caixa I, document dated 4 March I612, quoted in Beatrix Heintze, 'Unbekanntes Angola: Der Staat
Ndongo im i6. Jahrhundert', Anthropos, LXXII (I977), 776 n. 13I.
18 Francisco Rodrigues,
'Hist6ria da residencia dos padres da Companhia de Jesus em
Angola', (1594) in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 4, 559, 562.
19 Garcia Sim6es to Provincial
of Portugal, 20 OCt. I575,
in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta,

vol. 3,

I39.

Fernao de Sousa to Governo, I9 March I625, in Beatrix Heintze (ed.), Fontes para
a Historia de Angola do SeCculo XVII. I. Memorias, RelafJes e Outros Manuscritos da
Colectanea Documental de Ferndo de Sousa (i622-I635).
II. Cartas e Documentos Oficiais
da Colectanea Documental de Ferndo de Sousa (i624-i635)
(2 vols., Stuttgart, I985-8),
vol.
2, I29;
'RellaSAo de Dongo que foy a ElRey nosso Senhor' (6 Sept. I625), in ibid. vol. I,
199. Reflecting on the period some years later, de Sousa felt that the conflict over control
of the imbare was the issue that changed the relations between the two powers; de Sousa
to GonSalo di Sousa and his brothers, undated but compiled between I625 and I63I, in
ibid. vol. i, 227.
20

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JOHN

30

K. THORNTON

with the ruler were it not for them,21 and the country might revert to rule by
sobas (nobles, of whom the dikota formed a special group), each of whom was
'lord of his morinda [group of free people] and lands where they live'.22
Indeed, it was perhaps this fundamental struggle, more than the fact that
Hari a Kiluanji had sought Portuguese support, in exchange for giving the
governor his vassalage, that set him and his Portuguese supporters against
Njinga, who had herself initially offered to swear vassalage to Portugal and
to accept the terms of her predecessors.23
The war of the Ndongo succession in the early i620S was thus as much a
struggle over the fundamental constitution of Ndongo as simply an episode
in the Portuguese invasion of Angola, and Hari a Kiluanji and Ngola Hari
were therefore more than simply Portuguese puppets. This point is well
illustrated by the earlier attempt of the Portuguese to establish a puppet ruler
in Ndongo after a victory over Njinga's predecessor and brother, Ngola
Mbande, in about I621. The puppet, Samba a Ntumba, had met with
general rejection 'as not being the legitimate son or descendant of the kings'
and quickly had to be withdrawn,24 while Portuguese support of Hari a
Kiluanji always met with some local approval. On the other hand, de Sousa
was often told that Hari a Kiluanji's successor, Ngola Hari, was not a
legitimate king since his mother had been a slave.25
Clearly, the people in a position to make decisions were moved by claims
to legitimacy, for in rejecting Samba a Ntumba and accepting Hari a Kiluanji
in these terms they were expressing themselves in terms of historical
precedents. Yet both decisions were essentially connected to acknowledging
a major Portuguese role in the state and surrendering some sovereignty.
Obviously, there was a limit to how much the precedents of the kingdom
could be manipulated by the Portuguese or by an Mbundu. If Ndongo did
not have a fixed, widely accepted constitution, constitutional thinking still
functioned as if it did.
In order to determine which of the constitutional principles operated in all
these cases one may examine the historical precedents available to the
partisans in the events. Did ijiko have the right to enthrone Njinga against
21 Fernao de Sousa, 'RellaSao de Dongo', in ibid. vol. I, 200.
I'he passage is ambiguous
in Portuguese: 'porque sdo quizacos que he o mesmo que captivos d'E/Rey, e faltando rej

acabardo co elle'.
22 Ibid. vol. I, 200.
De Sousa was responding here to discussions as to whether Ndongo
should be annexed under its own ruler and assessed a tribute, or treated like the province
of Ilamba near Luanda had been, where the royal group had been disbanded. All such
plans were contingent, of course, on the Portuguese ability to make the conquests they
envisioned, which in the event in Ndongo they were not.
23 See the telling letter of Fernao de Sousa to the Governo,
I5 Aug. I624, ibid. vol. 2,
85, in which he notes receiving these terms from Njinga and finding them acceptable. It
was only later, as the struggle over the slaves came to a head, that he began to doubt the
wisdom of this policy. Still later, in retrospect, he formed the opinion that Njinga had
a long-standing hatred of the Portuguese and Christianity and could never negotiate. See
de Sousa's retrospective 'InformaSAo que mandey ao Conselho da Fazenda', 6 Aug. 163 1,
in ibid. vol. I, 20I-2.
24 Fernao de Sousa, 'LembranSa do estado em que achej ElRey de Angola', Autumn
i624, in ibid. vol. I, 195. For chronology and background, see Heintze, 'Ende', 203.
a retrospective analysis
25 Fernao de Sousa to GonSalo di Sousa, ibid. vol. I, 229-30,
of his proceedings. The doubts about Ngola Hari's claims are set out in 'LembranSa das
in ibid. vol. I, 209.
rezoens que ha pera Angolla Are nao ser rey' (Late summer i629),

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LEGITIMACY

AND

POLITICAL

POWER

31

the wishes of the makota, or did the makota have the final say in succession?
Could these electors abandon hereditary succession should they choose,
especially if an eligible heir were lacking? If hereditary factors had to be
considered, what determined who was eligible to succeed? Finally, did the
precedents exclude females from power, as partisans of Hari a Kiluanji
assured Fernao de Sousa,26 or did the freedom of choice allowed electors
(whether ijiko or makota) mean that potentially they could choose anyone?
The earliest documents discuss historical precedent in specific cases, for
example, the advice that de Sousa heard that women could not rule or his
own memorandum indicating that Ngola Hari was also illegitimate because
his mother was a slave. No doubt all parties referred to an extended historical
description of the kingdom's past, but the earliest texts do not cite it. It was
only after i655 when full versions of these histories were recorded by Italian
Capuchin missionaries, that the historical precedents favored by the rivals in
the still unresolved constitutional crisis become available for study by
modern historians.
Unfortunately, these historical traditions are not verbatim renderings of
the testimony of single informants whose social and political positions can
be identified. Instead, they are histories assembled from a variety of
informants by foreign missionaries who believed that it was possible to
discover the early history of the country, as opposed to its legal and
constitutional structure, from them. Not being the raw testimony that would
be cited in a specific case, their value as sources for understanding precedent
is reduced.
To make matters even more complicated, Njinga's court in the i65os was
riven by new rivalries and dissension beyond those of the earlier period. The
most significant of these were caused by Njinga's decision to make a close
alliance with the Imbangala, for they had different ideas about a number of
significant elements of political structure than did the elite of Ndongo.
Although the origin of the Imbangala is unclear, by the time of the first
descriptions of them they functioned essentially as freebooting bands of
mercenary soldiers.27 They recruited their members by enslaving adolescent
boys. They even maintained that they had no children themselves, killing all
children when they were born. Within the band, promotion was based on
loyalty and service, and selection ito positions of leadership was ultimately a
democratic one, conducted by an election of the senior commanders. These
rules recognized no lines of descent or hereditary principles, since the origin
of all alike was held to have been as 'slaves .
26

Fernao de Sousa to King, 2i Feb. I626, in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 7, 4I7.
Joseph Miller, foremost historian of the Imbangala, has most recently proposed that
the ultimate origins of the Imbangala were among people displaced by droughts in the
central highlands of Angola and refugees from the extension of slave raiding and trading
activities in the same area; see 'The paradoxes of impoverishment in the Atlantic zone',
in David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin (eds.), History of Central Africa (2 vols.,
London and New York, I983), vol. I, I39-41.
28 The best secondary
account remains that of Joseph C. Miller, Kings and Kinsmen:
The Imbangala Impact on the Mbundu of Angola (Oxford, I976). See Mss Araldi, Cavazzi,
'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book I, I8-73, and Book 3. An early account is in E. G.
Ravenstein (ed.), The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battel ii Angola and Adjacent
Regions (London, I90I [account first published in I625]).
27

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JOHN

K. THORNTON

In I624, Njinga, like her brother before her, hired Imbangala bands as
mercenaries to supplement her following in Ndongo, just as other states of
the area, including the Portuguese colonial forces, customarily did. Kaza, her
chief Imbangala ally, had protected Njinga's brother's son and had turned
him over to her at her request, and other Imbangala armies also occasionally
supported her.29 But these alliances were not always secure, and in the
context of the succession dispute Njinga had to form a more secure base of
support. Thus, when two Imbangala armies changed sides in the midst of a
battle in i628 and nearly cost Njinga her freedom,30 she decided to 'become
an Imbangala' herself, after first attempting unsuccessfully to take over the
Imbangala company of Kasanje (about i632).31
From that point, Njinga's own army operated like an Imbangala company,
and apparently her own forces were integrated into the new army which
functioned under Imbangala rules. By the I65os, Njinga Mona ('Njinga's
son') was the senior commander after the queen and was regarded by most
as the successor of Njinga as commander and ruler under Imbangala rules.32
But if Njinga's taking in Njinga Mona as her nominal son implied that she
hoped to join her ideas about hereditary descent with Imbangala rules of free
election, her subsequent decisions clearly showed her to have no such
commitment.
Njinga and her partisans from Ndongo's elite did not favor any application
of Imbangala rules, for they always considered the decision to join the
Imbangala as a desperate expedient and not a permanent policy. Starting in
the late I640s, Njinga and her supporters symbolically attempted to oust
Imbangala influence by returning to Christianity. The queen had been
baptized in i622. Later, she convinced Gaeta that she had always been a
Christian and had been driven only by extreme circumstances to become
Imbangala.33 Christian reconversion had the advantage of allowing her to
repudiate the bloody sacrifices, cannibalism and child killing of the Imbangala, and with them the Imbangala rules.
Reconversion also allowed her to settle affairs with Portugal, who might
then second her ideas about hereditary succession in Ndongo politics. In her
29 For an overview of the Imbangala armies in Ndongo and its vicinity during this
period, see Fernao de Sousa, 'Guerras do Reino de Angola' (undated, but after 4 Aug.
for the politics of purchasing their services, see
in Heintze, Fontes, vol. I, 2I2;
I630),

Heintze, 'Ende,

202-3,

209,

2 I,

22I,

249,

256-7.

The best account is in Ant6nio de Oliveira de Cadornega, Historia Geral das Guerras
(mod. ed. Matias Delgado and Manuel Alves da Cunha, 3 vols.,
Angolanas (i68o-8i)
Though written much later (Cadornega
reissued I972), vol. I, I48-50.
Lisbon, I940-2,
arrived in Angola only in I639) it is based on the testimony of old Portuguese veterans and
their service reports of earlier actions. The de Sousa documents, though contemporary,
provide less detail on this action.
Fontes, vol. I, 345. The dramatic
31 De Sousa to Goncalo di Sousa, in Heintze,
conversion of Njinga to Imbangala rules is described on the basis of posterior testimony
in Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 35-7. She is alleged to have
pounded up a baby in a grain mortar, like the legendary Ndumba Tembo, founder of the
Imbangala company of Kasanje, and to have obtained the right to rule as an Imbangala;
Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 35-7.
32 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, Book 6, no. I23.
Even Cavazzi, who was
2II-I3.
Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, 97, 99-I03,
3
generally negative in his assessments of Njinga, believed that she was good to priests and
honored Christianity during this period. Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol.
A, Book 2, 64.
30

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negotiations with the Portuguese in I655 she was careful to demand that they
recognize her sister Barbara as her heir and specifically none of her 'slaves'
- excluding either ambitious ijiko or the Imbangala.34 She obviously hoped
to restore the idea that descent should count in any election. Even knowing
that neither she nor Barbara had any children, she sought to promote Joao
Guterres Ngola Kanini, scion of a junior branch of the Ndongo royal family,
to an important position. This move seems to have been intended to insure
that some member of the Mbundu nobility would continue to rule, even if
rule by descent might complicate matters by making potential rivals who had
compromised themselves by service to the Portuguese eligible.35
Njinga's court split into two factions over these points, a 'Christian' one
that favored Mbundu rules (though it might still not be completely resolved
as to what they were) and an 'Imbangala' party that favored Imbangala rules.
Thus, in addition to the questions unresolved from the succession dispute of
I624, Imbangala precedents that allowed an unrestricted choice by military
commanders initiated into the Imbangala society without regard for descent
joined Mbundu ideas about election by other officials, makota, and about
eligibility by descent.
All these points were jumbled into the traditions as Cavazzi and others
recorded them in the mid-i65os. Needless to say, such a complex situation
makes it very hard to use these traditions to understand exactly how
individuals used precedents from the whole assemblage. The traditions do,
however, contain sufficient information to give modern historians a good idea
of the range of these precedents and how they might have been used in
general.
The earliest version, recorded sometime before I658 by Antonio Gaeta da
Napoli,36 came directly from Njinga's court. Gaeta had journeyed to
Njinga's court in I655 to implement the terms of the peace treaty that Njinga
had just completed with the Portuguese government, in which Njinga agreed
to allow missionaries to reside in her kingdom. He mentions specifically as
his informant an African priest, probably Calisto Zelotes dos Reis Magros
from Kongo, who had lived with Njinga since i648 and was her personal
confessor, as well as other unnamed Africans at her court who probably were
also members of the Christian faction.37 All these informants would have
given him more or less entirely the version of the tradition that Njinga and
her party favored. However, Gaeta also amplified this account with documents that he found at the Portuguese archives in Massangano. a military
See Njinga [D. Ana de Sousa] to Governor of Angola, I3 Dec. I655, in Brasio (ed.),
II, 526.
3 Cadornega, Histo'ria, vol. I, 353. Njinga sought to marry him to Barbara, but when
that strategy failed, he arranged for Barbara to marry Njinga Mona, perhaps in the aim
of a compromise between the aristocratic and Imbangala rules. Gaeta da Napoli,
Maravigliosa Conversione, 280-2.
36 Gaeta da Napoli refers to an account of Ndongo history which he had written, which
he called the 'Relatione' in a letter to the Secretary of the Propaganda Fide in Rome,
shortly after he left Matamba in June, I658 in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. I2, I60-2.
Gioia da Napoli, editor of the account (see citation in n. iI), is often cited in
bibliographies as author, though he states in his unpaginated introduction that he wrote
the book from a 'Relatione sent to me by Antonio Gaeta da Napoli'.
3
Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa Conversione, I34-48.
Though Gaeta identifies his
informant only as a 'black priest of the country' who was 'well versed in the antiquities
of kingdom', the identification of this source as Calisto Zelotes dos Reis Magros is
34

Monumenta, vol.

AFH 32

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post in regular contact with Ndongo, and oral tradition from older Portuguese residents of Angola, which might well give a very different slant to the
resulting history. This distorting effect is reduced, however, by the fact that
the Portuguese documents referred only to the later events of the history and
not to the earlier sections on state 'origins' crucial for constitutional
thinking.38
If Gaeta's account of Ndongo's origin is largely partisan to Queen Njinga,
Cavazzi's account is more problematic. Cavazzi came to Angola in I654, and
his varied missionary career took him to virtually all the sections of the
country, starting with a long residence at the court of Njinga's principal rival,
Ngola Hari, from I655 to i658. He visited Njinga's court briefly in i658 and
then stayed there permanently from i66o until early in I664, during which
time he officiated at the queen's funeral in December I663.39 Cavazzi's
account of Ndongo traditions was probably commenced in i66o, and the
presently extant version was completed in i665 but updated by marginal
notes until i668.40
Unlike Gaeta, who based his account largely on the testimony of a single
informant, supplemented by others who were likely to be of the same party
in the disputes, Cavazzi's account was based on a variety of informants of
widely differing allegiances. Cavazzi's informants probably included partisans of both Ngola Hari and Njinga, and perhaps also the military as well as
the Imbangala Christian factions within her court, since he has detailed
versions of Imbangala traditions as well, Portuguese documents and oral
testimony, and even published books.4' Trying to reconcile these two
accounts and reconstruct a 'true' constitution of Ndongo from the sources
embedded in them represents a ferocious problem for historians, and
indeed, even to recreate an accurate king list using these materials presents
virtually certain. He was one of the few ordained Africans in the area and, since his
capture in Wandu in Kongo in I 648, the only priest resident in Matamba. See Mss Araldi,
Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 77.
The possibility that some of this Portuguese tradition affected the
38 Ibid. I49-72.
account cannot be ruled out entirely, for the Portuguese also had versions of Ndongo
history, largely collected in the late sixteenth century by Jesuit priests. These accounts do
not contain the historical anecdote crucial for constitutional mythology. On some of these
early sources, see Joseph C. Miller and John Thornton, 'The chronicle as source, history
and historiography: the Catclogo dos Governadores de Angola', Paideuma, xxxiii (1987),
375-9" For a detailed account of Cavazzi's travels, see Leguzzano's biography in his
translation of Cavazzi's Istorica Descrizione, Descripf do historica, vol. 2, 430-2.
evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 1-24. Interlineal and
40 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione
marginal references, as well as scraps of documents attached to pictures in the front
matter, make it clear that the version found here is not the first version of the Mss that
Cavazzi wrote. I have argued in the introduction to my critical edition (in preparation)
that Cavazzi probably began writing this history in about i66o.
41 For example, his account of the 'Jaga' invasion is based on Joao dos Santos, Etiopia
He also includes an account of the Portuguese invasion that
Oriental (Lisbon, i609).
clearly came from local Portuguese sources and resembles that found in Gaeta da Napoli
(based on Massangano archives and local Portuguese tradition). He himself says, in
'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I9, that his account of 'what I have written of the
Jagas and what remains to be written on Queen Ginga is from personal witness and
conversations during the course of twelve years travel...'. Cavazzi's mention of twelve
years would make this passage date to i666, which is unlikely, as the Mss carries the date
of i665.

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thorny problems.42 However, the texts do show us what was probably the
constitutional reality of Ndongo in the mid-seventeenth century: rival
precedents which could be cited by diverse parties to support their positions.
Which ones can be ascribed to Njinga's court, to factions within her court or
to Ngola Hari and his Portuguese supporters does not matter so much as to
recognize the prospects for constitutional argument they present.
In discussing these precedents, it is best to consider two aspects. One
concerned the basic constitution of the state, how kings were selected and the
relative powers and positions of its various constituent elements (ijiko,
makota, royal descendants). The second aspect concerned eligibility for
succession by rules of descent, insofar as they applied. The first element was
largely contained in the stories of the kingdom's origin and accounts of the
succession of various kings. The second element was contained in the various
genealogies of the kings and other important personages given in the
traditions.
Gaeta's tradition probably represents the closest that we can come to the
selection of historical anecdotes and precedents that Njinga favored to
support her position in the constitution of the country. According to this
tradition, Ndongo was founded by a wise and generous blacksmith, Angola
Bumbambula, who came to the area from Kongo and founded the country.43
In central Africa, blacksmith kings are typically seen as essentially conciliatory rulers of decentralized politics.44 This general idiom was not
restricted to Ndongo, for when King Pedro IV of Kongo sought to conciliate
factions in the civil wars in his state in the early eighteenth century, his
ideologues also represented Kongo's founder as a wise and skilful blacksmith.45
Such a blacksmith tradition would accommodate a collective leadership for
king and followers in Ndongo and perhaps represented the constitutional
foundation for the power of the makota. If Njinga admitted the validity of
this tradition, it was because it was too widely known and supported to be
discredited or forgotten. But the Gaeta tradition goes on to emphasize
Njinga's primacy among these equals by saying that the blacksmith was
succeeded by a wicked son, who was driven from power by one of his
wronged subjects, Chiluangi Quiasamba (Kiluanji kia Samba), who then
seized royal power and subsequently took the title of Ngola, and whose son
Ngola Kiluanji founded the dynasty that was ruling in Njinga's day.46
Forceful, military seizures of power would generally establish a more
authoritarian precedent for a king who could rule by command and thus
allow the political centralization of the late sixteenth century to be justified
without effacing the blacksmith tradition and its implied support for the
makota.
42
See the attempt to use the traditions for historical reconstruction in Beatrix Heintze,
'Written sources, oral traditions and oral traditions as written sources: the steep and
thorny way to early Angolan history', Paideuma, XXXIII (i987), 263-87.
43 Gaeta da Napoli,
Maravigliosa Conversione, I34-6.
44 On the imagery of the blacksmith,
see Pierre de Maret, 'The smith's myth and the
origin of leadership in Central Africa', in Randi Haaland and Peter Shinnie (eds.),
African Iron Working - Ancient and Traditional (Bergen, I985), 73-87.
45 On the changes in Kongo tradition and their connection
to the civil wars, see John
Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, I64I-I7I8
(Madison, I983),
46 Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa
II7-I9.
Conversione, 136-43.

2-2

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Cavazzi's later version includes other precedents not found in Gaeta's, that
extend the precedent for Njinga's personal and military power. For example,
he cites an event that would create a precedent that kings should be elected,
not necessarily following some rigid rule of descent, by noting that when an
early king, Angola Chiluange Quiandambi, died without heirs 'they elected
as king... a grandson... of the first king'.47 He also provided precedent for
election by court officials, the tendala, manigico, manilumbo and manimiscotte
as opposed to the makota, for by failing to gain their support another ruler,
Angola Bandi, had lost his claim to the throne.48 These officials were mostly
slaves, and thus the account established a precedent for these slave officials
to resolve succession issues.
Cavazzi's historical account is especially supportive of the power of the
slaves in its tales of the slave and companion of Angola Mussuri, Ndongo's
first king and, like the first king of Gaeta's account, a blacksmith. Angola
Mussuri elevated this slave to the position of tendala, or chief slave official.
When Angola Mussuri grew old, the tendala buried the old man alive and
seized power for himself, an act for which he received no punishment and
which had the constitutional function of establishing the right of the slaves
to intervene in royal affairs. On the other hand, this slave founded no
dynasty, and upon his death the kingdom reverted to its natural heir, the
daughter of the Angola Mussuri.
The prominence of slaves in these precedents seems to support all of
Njinga's general contentions for, while she favored the idea of election by
slave officials (her own probable route to power), she still believed that
descent ought to play a role in determining who should be elected, for her
own claim rested firmly on the fact that she was a sister of her predecessor,
who was himself of the royal line. The genealogies of the tradition and
Njinga's claims to be legitimate by descent were significant not only in
establishing her equality to another legitimate heir, Ngola Hari, but also in
her attempt to defend the idea of succession by descent against Imbangala
claims to rule by power alone.
Thus, Njinga used genealogy to support her claim to the throne of Ndongo
against aristocratic rivals who might claim it by descent and simultaneously
referred to narratives that established the right of the aristocracy as a group
to rule her state and showed that this aristocracy ought to be properly
descended according to rules. Njinga supported her claims with genealogies
that helped her cause while hurting that of Ngola Hari. Both Gaeta and
Cavazzi place Angola Hari as a descendant of a junior son of the founder,50
while the main line of descent passes through the first son. Gaeta's tradition
has this primary line an unbroken succession from the first king down to
Njinga.51
Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione
49

evangelica',

vol. A, Book

2,

I2.

48

Ibid.

I5.

Ibid. 5-7.

is not the person named as the creator of the

50 For our purposes here, the 'founder'
kingdom itself, Angola Mussuri or Angola Bumbambula, but rather Ngola Chiluangi or
Chiluangi Angola, the founder of the ruling dynasty. Although Cavazzi and Gaeta
disagree on the exact relationships among the earlier kings, both derive the genealogies of
the leading families from this figure.
Conversione, I44-5; Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione
51 Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa
evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I0.

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On the other hand, Cavazzi's genealogy contains elements which might

better support claims of Ngola Hari, perhaps derived from informants heard
while the missionary resided at his court. For one thing, Cavazzi does not
show the royal line as an unbroken descent from the founder but includes the
precedent of Njinga Angola Quilombo Quiacasenda, who, according to
Cavazzi's tradition (but not Gaeta's), was elected from a junior line when the
senior line died out after the death of Angola Chiluangi Chiandambi.2 It was
from this line that he has Njinga descended, and it was a line which had no
better claim than that of Ngola Hari. Cavazzi also includes a claim that
Njinga's predecessor and brother, Ngolambande (Ngola Mbandi), had no
right to the throne because he was a second son of his father and moreover
was the son by a slave wife rather than the first wife. He had illegally seized
power and murdered his brother.53 None of these precedents discrediting
Njinga's claim to rule is in Gaeta's version of the tradition, which has
Njinga's brother simply succeed his father from a legitimate line.
Both the constitutional and genealogical precedents found in the traditions
provided Njinga with the claims that she made to rule the country: that she
was properly descended from the main royal line, while her rivals were not,
and that she had been elected by the proper officials. Her opponents, on the
other hand, adduced other precedents to discredit her: that she was a female
and thus ineligible and that other claims by descent were as good or better
than hers. Ngola Hari was descended from a junior branch of the royal
family, but there were precedents for election of such heirs. Perhaps there
was the implication that an election carried out by the makota rather than the
court slave officials might have a different result.
However, if historical precedents from a variety of conflicting accounts of
Ndongo's history could be cited selectively to support various positions, and
if the 'true' constitution of the state was often created by the version of the
history of whoever held power, there were clearly some elements of the
story that were sufficiently widely accepted that even the victorious could not
deny them. Precedent could be chosen, and perhaps even created, but even
in situations of conflict it could not simply be created out of thin air.
Thus, Njinga was never able to cite a suitable precedent for a woman to
rule. She was clearly aware that being female reduced her legitimacy in the
eyes of even her supporters. This was true even though the histories
circulating in the i650s provide instances of females ruling the state that
Njinga might have been able to use, though apparently not with enough force
to quiet the doubts of all her rivals and partisans. The historical precedents
of ruling queens cited by both Gaeta and Cavazzi tend to reduce their
legitimacy. In Gaeta's version, Angola Bumbambula's daughter, Hohoria
Angola, was forced to dethrone her brother, Zunduria Angola, because of his
cruelty. However, when she took power, she ruled jointly with her husband,
who in fact seems to have been a king.54 Cavazzi's slightly different version
of the same story has the wicked ruler who is dethroned as female rather than
male, thus hardly establishing a positive precedent, and in addition has the
victorious couple decline the royal honor, she specifically because of her

52
54

Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica',

Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, I4I.

vol. A, Book

2,

12.

Ibid.

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sex, he because of his foreign birth. Instead, they agreed to a compromise to

allow their son to rule since he did possess royal blood, with the parents
serving as regents.55
Njinga seems to have been acutely conscious of the fact that her sex
weakened her claim. She therefore began her rule simply as a regent for her
brother's son, the legitimate male heir, who was still a minor and had been
entrusted to the 'Jaga' (Imbangala leader) Kaza. Fernao de Sousa, in his first
communications with her, in I624, notes that he received letters from Dona
Anna, 'Lady of Angola' (senhora de Angola). He distinguished this title from
that of queen, no doubt because her nephew, the heir, was still in the hands
of Kaza.56 Cavazzi, basing himself on interviews with Njinga conducted in
the i 66os, recounts that she had begun as a regent for the young boy of about
eight as well, indicating that she made no attempt to manipulate the history
of this period nor distort this meaning.57
However, Njinga was not content with the regency, which she probably
saw as ultimately a barrier to her obtaining full power. As a result she had her
nephew killed and assumed power herself.58 It was this act as much as her
manipulation of the royal court slaves or the recruiting of military slaves
from her rivals, that led to war and gave both Hari a Kiluanji and Ngola Hari
the basis to deny Njinga's claims to the throne.59
If she had ended the potential rivalry of her nephew by killing him,
however, she was apparently still not satisfied of her right to rule alone.
Perhaps to meet the contentions of her rivals that she could not rule as a
woman, Njinga devised a second method of insuring her power. Cavazzi
maintained in the i 66os that she married dependent men, who ruled
nominally as kings,60 while she exercised the real power. None of the sources
of the I63os and -40s confirms this arrangement, though it is certainly not
impossible, and it must be said that little information about life in Njinga's
court survives in any sources from this period.
These dependent spouses were obviously not sufficiently well accepted as
kings for her to continue with the scheme, and as a result Njinga adopted a
still more radical method of overcoming the illegitimacy of her sex. At some
point in the I 640s Njinga decided to 'become a man'. Some of her
apparently bizarre behavior in later life can be explained by this ideological
requirement. Njinga's husbands became her 'concubines',61 and she took
several at the same time. She required these husbands to dress in women's
clothes and to sleep among her maids in waiting. Should they touch these
maids sexually they would be instantly killed.62
Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I0.
Fernao de Sousa to Governo, I5 Aug. I624, in Heintze, Fontes, vol. 2, 85. Also see
'LembranSa do estado em que achej a ElRey de Angola...' (Autumn, i624), in ibid. vol.
56

I,

I97.

Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, i6, and in more detail,
in Heintze, Fontes, vol. I, I99.
58 Fernao de Sousa, 'Rellacao de Dongo',
Ibid. vol. I, i99, and followed by Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol.
A, Book 2, 34, and Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, 205-6.
60 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione
evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 33, 4I, I24.
61 Italian sources use the unusual masculine
forms concubino (plural concubini) as
concubina (concubine) is feminine.
62 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, ' Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 4I; Gaeta, Maravigliosa
Conversione, 2 I8-I9. These observations, made by the Italian Capuchins in the late I650s
57

33_4.
5

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Njinga reinforced this maleness by engaging in virile pursuits. She led her
troops personally in battle. The Portuguese soldier and chronicler Antonio
de Oliveria de Cadornega personally saw her just behind the battle lines in
the engagement at Ngolomene a Kaita in i646.63 She equipped a battalion of
her ladies in waiting as soldiers and used them as her personal guard as well,64
and she was quite dexterous in the use of arms herself. Cavazzi, observing
her at one military parade in i 662 when she was over eighty years of age, was
deeply impressed with her mastery of this manly art.65
Njinga's gender change was not simply a personal quirk or a psychological
reaction to her illegitimate situation. There were precedents for gender
change among powerful women in central Africa, where the distinction
between sex as a biological condition and gender as a social condition is made
clear in law. In Kongo, for example, women who obtained or were given
positions of political power had the right to marry several men and also had
the right to dispose of them whenever they saw fit.66 This form of polyandry
was only for the upper class and certainly did not occur in other settings.
The various twists of Njinga's coping with the barrier of her female sex,
and even the assertions of maleness by which she finally overcame it,
demonstrate that, as powerful as Njinga became, she could not simply create
the constitutional precedents she needed to establish her power. If the
guardians of traditions in Ndongo knew of contradictory historical precedents, or even if fundamental disagreements over exactly what was
Ndongo's history provided opportunities to manipulate it, the elite of
Ndongo still had some fundamental constitutional beliefs which could not be
easily altered, even with uncontested power.
In the end, Njinga ultimately managed to shape her state into a form that
tolerated her authority, though surely the fact that she survived all attacks on
her and built up a strong base of loyal supporters helped as much as the
relevance of the precedents she cited. Although the Imbangala faction of
Njinga Mona made a serious attempt to seize power after her death,
ultimately forces of the Christian faction led by Joao Guterres Ngola Kanini
succeeded in defeating them and the Imbangala principles.67
Ngola Kanini might have faced a potential rival from among Ngola Hari's
descendants, who still ruled under Portuguese control, for both lines were
derived from junior relatives of the founder.68 But by the i66os Ngola Hari
no longer was in a position to enforce the claims of his line, as the Portuguese
had decided to support Njinga's desires and not press his case. Indeed the
disappointment of Ngola Hari and his successors at the treaty of I656 was
such that it eventually led to war between Ngola Hari's successor, Joao Ngola

and i66os, were also recorded by Dutch soldiers who served in her army during the
Dutch occupation of Angola, i64i-8;
see Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der
Afrikaensche Gewester (2nd ed., Amsterdam, i676 [Ist ed., i668]), second pagination,
237.
63 Cadornega, Histdria, vol. I, 405.
64 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione
evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 96. Cadornega mentions
her guard battalion but does not describe it as being composed of women, Historia, vol.
65 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, Book 6, para 3I.
I, 405.
66 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, Book 2, para 76.
67 The struggle is detailed in Cadornega,
Historia, vol. 2, 246-9, 254-6, 295-7.
68 Gaeta, Maravigliosa
to cite the most obviously pro-Njinga
Conversione, I44-5,
source.

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K. THORNTON

Hari, and Portugal in i67I."9 As a result, the question which had been so
important in the i65os no longer retained much significance.
The epilogue to the case of Njinga confirms the role of precedent in
African constitutional law. Obviously, once Njinga had secured her power
and based it on historical precedent, and once she and her successors had
defeated those who challenged her claim, she became a historical precedent
herself. While Njinga had obviously not overcome the idea that females
could not rule in Ndongo during her lifetime, and had to 'become a male' to
retain power, her female successors faced little problem in being accepted as
rulers.
The combined kingdom of Ndongo and Matamba (a title still in use in
which she had ruled, had numerous queens in the following century:
I756),70
Njinga's sister Barbara ruled briefly, until i666 after she died, and then after
the civil war that defeated Njinga Mona's claims, she had two male
successors, Joao Guterres Ngola Kanini and his son Francisco (i669-8I).
But in i68i, Veronica I became queen, followed by a son in I7 i6,71 and then
by Ana II (died I744), Veronica II (crowned 1756) and Ana III (died in
I767). In the period of I04 years that followed Njinga's death in I663,
queens ruled for at least eighty of them. All these rulers bore the surname
Guterres, suggesting that the line founded by Francisco Guterres Ngola
Kanini continued in power as well.72 Indeed there are few examples in
history of a country ruled so consistently by a queen as Matamba in the
century after Njinga.
The case of Queen Njinga shows us the complexity of the issue of
legitimacy in central Africa. African constitutions, like other laws, were not
fixed, eternal entities but rather grounded in complex and often contradictory
webs of precedent. This precedent, and the historical narratives that
expressed and supported it, was itself an ambiguous and highly manipulated
body of material, answering the competing demands of those who fought
over power. Historians who wish to use this material must obviously be
aware of these issues if they hope to use it to establish history as well as law.

SUMMARY

Queen Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba has recently been viewed as a usurper of
the throne, largely because some contemporary documents describe her as such.
But the issue of legitimacy to rule in Ndongo was a complex one, based not on a
fixed constitution but a set of contradictory historical precedents which were cited
to establish authority. Njinga managed to find such precedents to support her
claims, which were further reinforced by her control of the chief military officials
of the country. In so doing, she was able to establish her legitimacy and even
became a precedent for female rule in the years that followed her death.
3I4-29.
The crisis is traced in Cadornega, Historia, vol. 2, 298-300,
The title was so used in a formal document of Queen Ver6nica II: Biblioteca da
f. 64; Veronica statement, undated, cited and
Universidade de Coimbra, Mss 2529,
quoted in Fernando Campos, 'A data da morte da Rainha Jinga D. Ver6nica I', Africa
at iv, 86.
VI (I983),
89-I28,
V (I982),
I72-204;
79-I04;
(SAo Paulo), IV (i981),
Monari da Modena, who helped in the
71 The date of her death was given by Giuseppe
funeral; see Archivio de Propaganda Fide, Scritture Originale nel Congregazione
'Data da morte', IV, 79-90.
72 Campos,
Generale, vol. 64I, ff. 129-33.
69

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