StapleMozambique
Xima
also Ncima
Maize meal cooked stiff and eaten with fish, greens or matapa. The base of the Mozambican plate from Maputo to the Rovuma.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Nyungwe
The people of Tete — Zambezi valley farmers and traders at the old Portuguese river port, heirs to the chikunda slave-soldier tradition, and now the community sitting on top of one of the world's largest coking coal deposits.
Nyungwe people
Sunrise over Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda.jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Around 500,000 in Mozambique's Tete province
Location: The middle Zambezi around Tete city, Moatize and Changara
Language: Nyungwe (Cinyungwe)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (N40)
Traditional governance: Chiefs and lineage heads; historically under the prazo estates and their chikunda armies; Mozambican district administration today.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Tete and Moatize
Urban and peri-urban communities around the provincial capital and the coalfield.
Changara and the south bank
Farming communities of the drier south bank.
Chikunda-descended lineages
Families descended from the estate soldiery, with their own traditions.
Gallery
1 images
Culture
Clothing: Capulana wrappers and printed cloth; ceremonial dress for the nyau-related masked traditions of the region.
Food: Maize and sorghum with river fish, goat and vegetables; the valley is hot and dry and agriculture depends on the river and the rains equally.
Ceremonies: Masked dance traditions related to those of the Chewa across the border; rain ceremonies; funerals with drumming; the Zambezi crossing festivals at Tete.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth negotiated between lineages; the valley's history of estate labour and soldiery has produced mixed descent practices.
Initiation rites: Boys' and girls' initiation with seclusion; historically, incorporation into chikunda military units for young men on the estates.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, at national rather than community level — 24 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Mozambique
8 dishes
StapleMozambique
Mucapata
also Mung bean rice, Arroz com feijão verde
Rice cooked with mung beans and coconut milk, a northern Mozambican dish showing the Indian Ocean's long reach into the Swahili coast's cooking.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
National dishMozambique
Matapa
Pounded cassava leaves cooked with coconut milk, groundnut and crab or prawn, Mozambique's national dish. The pounding is done in a wooden mortar and takes an hour.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Street foodMozambique
Frango Piri-Piri
Chicken spatchcocked, marinated in bird's eye chilli, garlic and lime and grilled over charcoal, then basted repeatedly. Mozambique's best-known export to the world's high streets.
Serves 4 · 1 hour, plus overnight marinating
Festival & feastMozambique
Caril de Camarão
Prawn curry in coconut milk with cashew, from a coast that supplies both. Made for Sundays and celebrations and served with rice.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Regional specialityMozambique
Badjias
Fritters of ground cowpeas or split peas with onion and chilli, fried and sold in cones on Maputo's streets. An Indian Ocean arrival that became Mozambican.
Serves Makes 24 · 40 minutes, plus 4 hours soaking
Regional specialityMozambique
Galinha à Zambeziana
also Zambezia chicken
Chicken grilled with a coconut, lime and piri-piri baste from Quelimane and the Zambezia coast — richer and less fiercely hot than the southern piri-piri chicken.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Drink & sweetMozambique
Sura
Coconut palm wine tapped along the northern coast, drunk sweet the same morning or sour by evening. Sold from bottles at the roadside in Nampula and Cabo Delgado.
Serves Varies · Tapped daily
Zambia
8 dishes
StapleZambia
Nshima
Maize meal cooked stiff and served in smooth rounds with relish. Zambians eat it twice a day and a meal without it is not counted as one.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
StapleZambia
Delele
also Okra relish, Slippery relish
Okra cooked with bicarbonate of soda until deliberately slippery, a Zambian relish that people either love or refuse outright.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
National dishZambia
Ifisashi
Greens cooked in groundnut paste, served with nshima. Meatless, cheap and eaten across the country, and the dish Zambians most often name as their own.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Street foodZambia
Vitumbuwa
Rice or maize flour fritters, fried and sold at markets and roadsides with tea, eaten at breakfast and by children on the way home.
Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours
Street foodZambia
Chikanda
also African polony, Wild orchid cake
Wild orchid tubers pounded with groundnut and chilli and set into a firm pink cake, sliced and sold at Zambian markets. Sought after enough that the orchids are now threatened.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastZambia
Village Chicken with Nshima
Free-range chicken stewed slowly with onion and tomato, cooked when guests arrive. Village chicken takes far longer than the frozen kind and is worth every minute.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Regional specialityZambia
Kapenta
Tiny dried lake sardines fried with tomato and onion, from Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kariba. Cheap protein, eaten with nshima across the country.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
Drink & sweetZambia
Munkoyo
Maize porridge fermented with the root of the munkoyo shrub into a sweet-sour drink, made in villages and sold in bottles in Lusaka.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 1 to 2 days
Zimbabwe
8 dishes
StapleZimbabwe
Sadza
White maize meal cooked stiff, eaten twice a day with relish. Zimbabweans measure a meal by whether sadza was on the plate.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
StapleZimbabwe
Muriwo une Dovi
also Greens in peanut butter
Collard or pumpkin greens stewed with peanut butter until thick and nutty, the Zimbabwean relish eaten with sadza more often than any other.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
National dishZimbabwe
Sadza ne Nyama
Sadza with beef stewed in tomato and onion, the country's default meal and its national dish. Simple, and judged on the depth of the gravy.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Street foodZimbabwe
Maputi
Popped maize kernels, salted or sugared, sold in plastic bags at bus stops and outside schools. Harder and nuttier than popcorn, made from field maize.
Serves 6 · 20 minutes
Festival & feastZimbabwe
Mabhonzo eMombe
Oxtail or beef bones stewed for hours until the meat falls away and the gravy thickens on its own gelatine. Cooked for family occasions and Christmas.
Serves 6 · 4 hours
Regional specialityZimbabwe
Madora
Mopane worms, dried and then fried with onion and tomato. High in protein, harvested from mopane woodland in season and a significant rural income.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Regional specialityZimbabwe
Matemba
also Dried bream, Small dried fish
Small sun-dried fish from Lake Kariba, fried with onion and tomato into a salty relish. The cheapest protein in Zimbabwe and one of the best-loved.
Serves 4 · 35 minutes
Drink & sweetZimbabwe
Maheu
Fermented maize drink, thick, sour and lightly sweet, sold in cartons nationwide and made at home from leftover sadza.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 1 to 2 days
Stories & Oral Literature
The ChikundaHistorical account
The chikunda were slave soldiers of the Zambezi prazos, armed and trained by the estate holders, who over generations became a distinct people with their own identity, hunting elephants and raiding across the valley. When the estates collapsed, chikunda groups moved up the Zambezi into what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe as traders and hunters, and their descendants form communities in three countries.
Coal Under the VillageContemporary account
The Moatize basin holds enormous coking coal reserves, and mining from 2009 displaced thousands of families to resettlement sites where farmland and water proved inadequate. Protests, including the blocking of the coal railway, followed. It is among the most-documented cases of mining resettlement failure in southern Africa.
Proverbs
“The river cools what the valley burns.”
Life in one of Africa's hottest inhabited places.
“The soldier's grandchild farms the same ground.”
Chikunda descent and continuity.
“What is under the field is not the farmer's.”
Mineral rights, stated plainly.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Mulungu as creator; territorial spirits and rain shrines governing the valley; ancestors active in lineage affairs.
Beliefs: Territorial spirit mediums and rain shrines; ancestor veneration; masked dance societies; Christianity and Islam both present in Tete.
Ancestors: Ancestral graves anchor land claims, which resettlement for mining has directly severed — a grievance repeatedly raised in the Moatize disputes.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Mulungu
The creator
Territorial spirits
Powers of stretches of the valley, addressed through mediums
Ancestors
Consulted in land and lineage matters
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of pole-and-mud houses with thatch; Tete's colonial river town and its suspension bridge; mining resettlement sites of standardised concrete housing.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with thatch; brick in the town; the 1970s Samora Machel suspension bridge across the Zambezi at Tete.
Village layout: Village around a swept yard with granaries; resettlement villages laid out in grids by mining companies.
Artifacts
Chikunda hunting equipment
Heritage
Guns and gear of the estate soldiery turned elephant hunters.
Tete suspension bridge
Heritage site
Zambezi crossing that made Tete the valley's road hub.
Masked dance regalia
Performance
Costume of the valley's masked societies.
Moatize coalfield
Heritage
Coking coal basin whose development displaced thousands of families.
Historical Timeline
1500s
Portuguese establish a trading post at Tete on the Zambezi.
1600s–1900s
Prazo estates and chikunda armies dominate the valley.
1970s
Cahora Bassa dam is built upstream; the Tete bridge opens.
2009–2015
Coal mining at Moatize begins; thousands of families are resettled amid protest.
Present
Coal, transport corridors and displacement dominate the province's politics.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Human Rights Watch: Mozambique coal resettlementHuman Rights Watch
- Britannica: TeteEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources