Queen Njinga fought Portugal for three decades and won a second kingdom
Her name comes from the Kimbundu word for twisting, because she was born with the umbilical cord around her neck, and such births were thought to mark a proud, powerful person. Njinga of Ndongo lived up to it, battling the Portuguese Empire for decades in what is now northern Angola.
Born around 1583 into Ndongo's royal family, she was the daughter of King Kilombo and one of his favourite slave wives. Because she was not an heir, her father could dote on her without upsetting his sons. She trained as a warrior with the battle axe, Ndongo's traditional weapon, sat in on legal and war councils, and learned to read and write Portuguese from visiting missionaries.
As an envoy to the Portuguese she showed a gift for calming crises. She took power in 1624 when her brother Mbandi died, at a time when the Atlantic slave trade was booming and Portugal was pushing inland. War came in 1626, and within two years her army was badly weakened and she was driven into exile. Seeking allies, she married the Imbangala warlord Kasanje and used that alliance to rebuild, conquering the neighbouring kingdom of Matamba between 1631 and 1635.
In 1641 she allied with the Dutch West India Company, which had seized Luanda from Portugal. Over the next three years she won back much of Ndongo and beat the Portuguese in several battles, though the fortress of Massangano held out. Portugal retook Luanda in 1648 and the Dutch left, yet she kept fighting until a peace treaty in 1656. She died in 1663, still queen of both kingdoms.
She appears under many spellings, from Nzinga and Njinga to Ginga and Zinga, and also under a baptismal name, Ana de Sousa, the first part honouring the Portuguese woman who stood as her godmother and the surname borrowed from João Correia de Souza, then serving as Angola's acting governor. Today she is honoured as a major figure in Angola and in Atlantic Creole culture, admired for her intelligence, diplomacy and generalship.
Source: Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba
