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Black Kos, Week In Review - Angola's Warrior Queen [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-02
Angola's Warrior Queen Nzinga
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Queen Nzinga Mbande 1583–1663 (also spelled Njinga), was a monarch of the Mbundu people. Mbande was a resilient leader who fought the Portuguese’s expanding slave trade in Central Africa. Nzingha Mbande was the queen of the ethnic Mbundu kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba, located in present-day northern Angola. (The Ambundu “Mbundus” are Angola’s second largest ethnic at about 25% of the population). The kingdoms she created would be a refuge for runaway slaves and a safe haven from European conquest for over two centuries after her death. Her actions as a women defying both male and colonial domination has also made her an important inspiration for more recent African feminists.
I first heard of Queen Nzinga during studying the Angolan civil war and Angolan wars for Independence. During the cold war when Angola was fighting for independence from a fascist Portuguese government Cuba sent troops to aid the rebels. Cuba has a famous Afro-Cuban slave rebellion leader Carlota Lucumi, La Negra Carlota de Cuba (see: Black Kos, La Negra Carlota de Cuba) that had some parallels to Queen Nzinga, so she became a rather noted figure in the Caribbean.
Nzinga reign was during a period of rapid growth in the African slave trade with the Portuguese Empire encroachment in South West Africa. Born into the ruling family of the Ndongo, the then princess Nzinga received military and political training as a child. Later as an adult she demonstrated an aptitude for defusing political crises as an ambassador to the Portuguese Empire. Portugal was attempting to corner the Atlantic slave trade. Nzinga fought for the indepence and stature of her kingdoms against the Portuguese and reigned for 37 years. Queen Nzinga's rise to power and her actions as a warrior, diplomat and nation builder would be an inspiration to those who would later fight for Angolan independence in the 20th century.
During the late half of 16th Century, both the stronger French and English kingdoms threatened Portugal’s near monopoly on the slave trade along the West African coast. This forced the Portuguese to seek fresh areas to exploit. By 1580 Portugal had already established a trading relationship with Afonso I in the nearby Kongo Kingdom (modern Congo). They then turned to Angolo, south of the Kongo.
The Portuguese first established a fort and settlement at Luanda the present-day capital of Angola in 1617, encroaching on Mbundu land. This outpost in Luanda would be a starting point for a long lasting conflict between the Ndongo and the Portuguese.
African states on the Central African coast soon found their economic power and territorial control threatened by these Portuguese establishing the Luanda colony. Many of these states had become regional powers through trade in African slaves.It was the growing demand for this human labor in New World colonies such as Brazil that ultimately led Portugal to seek military and economic control of this region. Old trading partners came under military attack by Portuguese soldiers and indigenous African raiders in search of captives for the slave trade, and rulers were forced to adapt to these new circumstances or face certain destruction. One leader who proved to be adept at overcoming these difficulties was the queen of Ndongo, Ana Nzinga.
In 1622 they invited Ngola (King) Mbande to attend a peace conference to end hostilities with the Mbundu people. Mbande was ruler of Ndongo a state to the east of Luanda populated primarily by Mbundu peoples. Mbande sent his sister Nzinga to represent him in a meeting with Portuguese Governor Joao Corria de Sousa. Nzinga was aware of her diplomatically awkward position. She knew of events in the Kongo which had led to Portuguese domination of the nominally independent nation. She also recognized, however, that to refuse to trade with the Portuguese would remove a potential ally and the major source of guns for her own state.
Njinga sitting on top of her servant and negotiating with the Portuguese governor of Luanda
Image source
In the first of a series of meetings Nzinga sought to establish her equality with the representative of the Portugal crown. The story goes that when Njinga entered the room to negotiate with the Portuguese Governor he was sitting in a chair while she was expected to sit on a mat on the floor. Not wanting to be seated lower than her opposition Nzinga immediately motioned to one of her assistants who fell on her hands and knees and served as a chair for Nzinga for the rest of the meeting so she could negotiate on equal terms
Despite that display, Nzinga made accommodations with the Portuguese. She converted to Christianity and adopted the name Dona Anna de Souza. She was baptized in honor of the governor’s wife who also became her godmother. Shortly afterwards Nzinga urged a reluctant Ngola Mbande to order the conversion of his people to Christianity.
After the death of her father her brother became king. But In 1626 her brother committed suicide in the face of rising Portuguese demands for slave trade concessions. After her brother’s suicide she effectively became Queen of the Kingdom of Ndongo. Nzinga negotiated a second treaty with the Portuguese in 1624 allowing for the Portuguese to trade (including slavery) and missionary work in return for the Portuguese respecting the territorial integrity of Ndongo and demolishing a Portuguese fort which was within Ndongo territory
Recreation of her dress based on historical accounts
But Ana Nzinga had inherited rule of Ndongo at a moment when the kingdom was under attack from both Portuguese as well as neighboring African aggressors. Nzinga realized that, to remain viable, Ndongo had to reposition itself as an intermediary rather than a supply zone in the slave trade. To achieve this, she allied Ndongo with Portugal, simultaneously acquiring a partner in its fight against its African enemies and ending Portuguese slave raiding in the kingdom. Ana Nzinga’s baptism, with the Portuguese colonial governor serving as godfather, sealed this relationship.
But unlike her brother Nzinga, refused to allow the Portuguese or any European to control her realm.
By 1626, however, Portugal had betrayed Ndongo, and Nzinga was forced to flee with her people further West, where they founded a new state at Matamba, well beyond the reach of the Portuguese. To bolster Matamba’s martial power, Nzinga offered sanctuary to runaway slaves and Portuguese-trained African soldiers and adopted a form of military organization known as kilombo, in which youths renounced family ties and were raised communally in militias.
Looking at how quickly the Portuguese had broken their first treaty Nzinga must have been suspicious of Portuguese intentions to keep their promises with the second treaty. So Nzinga also fomented rebellion within Ndongo itself, which was now governed indirectly by the Portuguese through a puppet ruler. To regain control over the internal politics of the Kingdom of Ndongo the Portuguese began to back rival claimants to the throne and pushed them to rebel against Nzinga.
To fight both the Portuguese and her domestic rivals she would need to increase her military strength. In 1627, after forming alliances with former rival African kingdoms, she led a united army waging a thirty-year war against the Portuguese.
Nzinga also exploited European rivalry by forging an alliance with the Netherlands, which seized Luanda for their own mercantile purposes in 1641. With Dutch help, Nzinga defeated a Portuguese army in 1647. But their combined forces were insufficient to drive the Portuguese completely out of Angola. The Dutch were defeated by the Portuguese the following year and withdrew from Central Africa in 1648. After Luanda was reclaimed by the Portuguese, Nzinga was again forced to retreat to Matamba. From this point on, Nzinga focused on developing Matamba as a trading power by capitalizing on its position as the gateway to the Central African interior. Now in her 60s she still personally led troops in battle. She also orchestrated guerrilla attacks on the Portuguese which would continue long after her death.
At the end of her life Queen Nzinga became more devoutly Catholic. Some academics argue that this was for strategic reasons to cement Portuguese support for her rule and silence any domestic dissent. According to some sources throughout the 1640s she had taken several men as husbands and many at the same time, these relationships soon developed into a kind of harem of male concubines. Some academics argue that the reason for adoption of concubines was to adopt typical masculine behaviors to increase her legitimacy in the eyes of the other noble lineages. In any case, after her re-affirmation to Catholicism in 1656 she gave up her concubines and married one man. After the peace treaty with Portugal her followers were told to give up their kilombo ways (youths raised communally in militias). This action meant that her people would finally settle in villages instead of mobile camps, and women would be allowed to once again raise their own children.
Despite repeated attempts by the Portuguese and their allies to capture or kill Queen Nzinga, she died peacefully in her eighties on December 17, 1663. By the time of her death in 1663, Matamba was a formidable commercial state that dealt with the Portuguese colony on an equal footing. Nzinga, who reconverted to Christianity before her death at the age of eighty-one, became a sensation in Europe following the 1769 publication of Jean Louis Castilhon’s colorful “biography,” Zingha, Reine d’Angola, in Paris.
x YouTube Video
In the years following her death, Nzinga has become a historical figure in Angola. Her memory is accredited with helping to inspire the successful 20th Century armed resistance against the Portuguese that resulted in an independent Angola in 1975. She is remembered for her intelligence, her political and diplomatic wisdom, and her brilliant military tactics. A major street in Luanda is named after her. In 2002, a statue of her in Largo do Kinaxixi, Luanda, Angola, was dedicated by Angolan President Santos to celebrate the 27th anniversary of Angolan independence. Queen Nzinga actions as a women defying both male and colonial domination has made her an important inspiration for African feminists and black woman of African descent world wide.
Sources
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Federal law aims to allow people to sue the government for agents searching the wrong house. But government lawyers contend FBI agents are immune and courts shouldn't second-guess them. USA TODAY: Can you sue the FBI when agents mistakenly raid wrong house? Supreme Court to weigh in
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Groggy and disoriented, Trina Martin awoke to the barrage of a half-dozen men smashing through the front door of her split-level Atlanta home. The clamor jolted her drowsy partner Toi Cliatt, who was lying on the bed. He jumped to his feet.
As Martin scrambled to protect her 7-year-old son in his room across the hall, Cliatt pulled her instead into a walk-in closet where he stored a shotgun to defend against intruders.
Then a flash-bang grenade detonated in a burst of white in a front room. Martin's son Gabe Watson, hiding alone under a blanket, said the explosion left his ears ringing and smelled like burning batteries.
“It was just monstrous, a really loud noise,” Martin told USA TODAY of the battering ram. “Whoever came into our home, they came for a mission. I felt like that mission was to kill us.”
She was mistaken, but so were the intruders.
The armed men storming Martin's home were FBI agents searching for a gang suspect in the wrong house at 4 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2017. The correct beige split-level house the FBI agents were targeting was 436 feet down the street.
The mistaken search is now the subject of a Supreme Court case over whether the family can sue the FBI for compensation, with oral arguments scheduled for April 29.
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The U.S. Department of Justice is, once again, failing to leave education to the states — a credo that President Donald Trump campaigned on — by meddling in the affairs of Chicago Public Schools. Now, if the MAGA-fied DOE is going after the public school system in Chicago, we all know it could only mean one thing: something is being done to help Black students.
According to ABC 7, sure enough, the Trump administration has launched an investigation into CPS over its Black Students Success Plan, alleging that the program violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, because, well, obviously, it has the word “Black” in it.
From ABC:
The DOE says the group Defending Education filed a complaint with the OCR, claiming that CPS’ 2023-2024 program racially discriminates against students and focuses “remedial measures only for black students, despite acknowledging that Chicago students of all races struggle academically.”
“Chicago Public Schools have a record of academic failure, leaving students from all backgrounds and races struggling and ill-prepared to meet the challenges and enjoy the rewards of contemporary American life,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “Rather than address its record honestly, CPS seeks to allocate additional resources to favored students on the basis of race. The Trump-McMahon Department of Education will not allow federal funds, provided for the benefit of all students, to be used in this pernicious and unlawful manner. To CPS, I say this: Every American student deserves access to a quality education, and the Trump Administration will fight tirelessly to uphold that ideal and ensure all students are treated equally under law.”
Ahhh — so, an “all lives matter” argument.
It’s funny because whenever white conservatives want to highlight Black criminality, their go-to is Chicago. This city, which doesn’t even make it into the top 25 most violent cities in the country per capita, somehow became the proverbial punching bag for white racists who are looking to justify their racism. Yet, MAGA-supporting government officials are launching an investigation into a CPS program that could effectively reduce the likelihood of Black criminality by reinforcing Black education.
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Growing up on the south side of Chicago, the Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley was given the message early on: What one wore as a Black man mattered.
Wesley’s pastor father, who migrated from Louisiana after World War II in search of more opportunities than those readily available to Black people in the Deep South, “always had an impeccable sense of shirt and tie and suit.”
“In order to move in certain spaces where colored people were not allowed to be, you want to be dressed the right way to be able to fit in,” says Wesley, 53, now a senior pastor in Alexandria, Virginia.
But Wesley also got an early warning: What he wore could be used against him. His father forbade baseball caps because some street gang members wore them in certain ways, and his father was concerned authorities would make stereotypical or racist assumptions about his son if he were seen wearing one. Clothing as message. Fashion and style as tools, signifiers of culture and identity, whether intentional or assumed. There’s likely no group for whom that’s been more true than Black men. It’s not just what they wear, but also how it’s been perceived by others seeing it on a Black man, sometimes at serious cost.
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trump has always had a special hate for haiti Miami Herald: Rubio’s plan to designate Haiti’s gangs as terrorists could deepen humanitarian crisis
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In the areas of Haiti controlled by gangs, nothing moves without their getting a cut: not food, not fuel, not even humanitarian aid.
Their extortion racket is so extensive that the country’s finance minister, Alfred Metellus, estimates that gangs, which charge $2,000 to allow passage for a shipping container, are pulling as much as $75 million a year from the ransoms they charge to allow goods transiting through the Dominican Republic to arrive at their destinations. Metellus made the comments in an interview this week with Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper.
That reality is prompting concerns that a plan by the U.S. State Department to designate the country’s gangs as foreign terrorist organizations could exacerbate suffering at a time when more than five million Haitians are struggling to find food and nearly 250,000 of the one million Haitians who are internally displaced reside in makeshift encampments, some with no latrines and dirt floors..
“The reality is that almost no commercial or humanitarian activity takes place in or near Port-au-Prince without some level of negotiation or payment to gangs. Even the U.S. ambassador acknowledged speaking with gangs,” said Jake Johnston, an analyst on Haiti with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.”
“The effect of this policy is likely to be the further isolation of Haiti, a de facto embargo that harms those most impoverished and does little to alter the power of the gangs,” he added.
Johnston’s concerns were echoed Wednesday by two Democratic lawmakers following a briefing by the State Department to members of Congress about the planned designation, which was first reported by the Miami Herald earlier this month.
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Black entrepreneurs recently gathered in Atlanta for a panel discussion to strategize, not stress, amid economic pressures. The Grio: Tariffs may be rising, but so is Black strategy
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As inflation surges and tariffs rise, Black entrepreneurs are not shrinking in fear—they’re showing up, strategizing, and pushing forward with purpose. I saw this firsthand Tuesday evening at the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE) in Atlanta, where dozens of Black founders gathered for a powerful night of solution-driven dialogue, connection, and clarity. The event, part of RICE’s ongoing “Retail Readiness” programming, was more than just a panel. It was a survival forum—and a reminder that Black business owners have always had the creativity and courage to adapt under pressure. In a time when economic headwinds are hitting product-based businesses hardest, this community is leaning into strategy, not scarcity. One of the core challenges explored was the growing strain of tariffs on imported goods, which are driving up costs across the board—from materials and packaging to international shipping. While the threat of economic uncertainty loomed large, the vibe in the room was anything but panicked.
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WELCOME TO THE FRIDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
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