Across this series we have put one question to the cosmologies of Africa. When something goes wrong, where do we look for the cause? The Luba of the Congo, the Baluba, gives an answer tied to power. For them, the deepest cause of trouble is power that has run hot, raw, and unbound. And the deepest source of order is power that has been cooled, cultured, and made to accept restraint.
The Luba wrote that answer into the most celebrated political myth in Central Africa, the story of two kings: Nkongolo Mwamba, the red and drunken tyrant, and Mbidi Kiluwe, the black and gentle prince. It is a story that a great anthropologist would later call the myth of the drunken king, and it is not really about how the world was made. It is about how power should be held, what it does when it is not held rightly, and why every ruler is a danger to be managed. To see how a people came to think this way, begin with their God, who is found wherever there is power of any kind.
The usual caution first. The Baluba are not one tidy nation but a broad family, the Luba-Katanga of the savanna and the Luba-Kasai to the west chief among them, whose empire rose in the marshy Upemba Depression around the late sixteenth century and was broken up only by Belgian conquest three centuries later. Their traditions were guarded for generations by a society of official rememberers and were written down comparatively late, by missionaries and then by ethnographers. There was never a single fixed text. What follows draws the mainstream of the tradition and one influential reading of it, not a creed every Luba would recite the same way.
Nkongolo, the Red King
The origin story of the Luba people of Congo begins with a man named Kyuaka (Maker of Huts) and a woman called Kibumba Bumba (Pottery Maker) who both lived east of the upper Zaire River. Kyuaka fell in love with Kibumba and they had 3 sons named Kabamba, Changachanga and Nyoka Nkindu. Kibumba's children were supernatural in wisdom and fate. They were not ordinary children but destined spirit beings. Some accounts say the boys were born together as triplets.
The first king of the Luba was Kalala Ilunga, son of Mbidi Kiluwe and grandson of Nkongolo — or, in some telling, descendant of Nkongolo Mwamba, the red king. But before that was Nkongolo Mwamba, the first king of the Luba Empire, who was born of the incest of his mother, whose name has not come down to us, and her son. He was born, according to the myths, being completely red — red skin, red hair, red eyes, and so on. His skin was so red that it shone. He was, the story says, a monster. The people said of him that he was not a man but a devil, a spirit, a god. He lived in a cave, and he was a great hunter and a great warrior. He was also a great drinker, and he was always drunk. He was a man of great power, but he was also a man of great cruelty. He was a tyrant, and he was feared by all.
But as the missionaries, Roman Catholics, made clear in their reports, Nkongolo was a god of evil, the devil himself. Swiss colonel and ethnographer Van Damme wrote that Nkongolo was a red god (Strother, 1949).
Nkongolo built a great palace at Mwibele and a great kingdom around it. He conquered the surrounding peoples and made them his subjects. He was a great king, but he was also a great tyrant. He drank too much, and he was always drunk. He was a man of great power, but he was also a man of great cruelty. He was feared by all, and he was hated by all.
In other words, Nkongolo was the very image of unbridled, destructive power, running hot and free, and he was the first king of the Luba. The story of Nkongolo is the story of what happens when the man who is given power cannot — or will not — accept the restraints that kingship is supposed to bear.
He built a great palace at Mwibele and it was full of wives and concubines and children and servants. He was a great king, but he was also a great tyrant. He was always drunk, and he was always cruel. He was a man of great power, but he was also a man of great cruelty. He was feared by all.
There was a taboo in the court of Nkongolo: no one was to see him eat or drink. He ate and drank in secret, in his own private chamber, and anyone who saw him do so was to be killed. One day, a man named Kibanza, a servant, accidentally saw Nkongolo drinking, and Nkongolo ordered him to be killed. Kibanza fled, and Nkongolo ordered his men to chase him. Kibanza ran to a cave, and there he found a giant python. The python told him to hide in the cave, and it would protect him. Nkongolo's men searched for Kibanza, but they could not find him, and they returned to Nkongolo and told him that Kibanza had escaped.
Nkongolo was furious, and he ordered his men to kill the python. The python was a great spirit, and it was very powerful. Nkongolo's men attacked the python, but the python killed them all. Nkongolo was furious, and he ordered his men to kill the python. The python was a great spirit, and it was very powerful.
When Mbidi arrived at Mwibele, which Nkongolo ruled at the time, they stopped by a pool. His servant hid while Mbidi himself climbed a tree beside the pool. At that moment, two of Nkongolo's sisters came to the pool to fetch water and saw his face in the pool's reflection. Knowing he had been seen, Mbidi jumped down and they became mesmerised by his gleaming black skin and handsome features. He thereafter instructed them to go back to the village and announce his arrival to their brother, the king. Upon returning to the village, one of the sisters narrated their encounter with a dark handsome man but Nkongolo did not believe her so he named her Mabela (Liar). He did not believe it until the second sister gave the same narration with a restless gaze. Ngolo finally believed and named the second sister Bulanda (Sadness). Then he asked that Mbidi Kiluwe be brought into his village.
Mbidi's arrival marked the beginning of several lessons in royal behaviour for Nkongolo. For example, he learnt that Mbidi ate and drank only in privacy guarded by a screen held by two wives kneeling with their backs to him. Similarly, he watched how Mbidi spoke with deliberation and held himself at a distance. As a matter of fact, a court prophet named Mujibu had foretold his coming. Nkongolo, the prophet warned, could never truly reign, because he was a commoner without the sacred blood of kingship; but if he welcomed the bearer of that blood when he came, prosperity would follow, and if he turned against him, he would be destroyed.
Hence, Nkongolo received Mbidi, made him his war-leader, and gave him his sisters, Bulanda and Mabela, in marriage. However, Mbidi, ever a stranger, at length returned east to his own land. Before he left, he called a meeting with both his wives who were pregnant at the time, alongside Mijibu Kalenga, a god, and told them that if the children were black-skinned, then they were his, but if red-skinned, they were Nkongolo's. He then entrusted Mijibu Kalenga with the care of his unborn children, leaving him a basket containing a magical rubber ball, specially fashioned arrows, and an iron ball. Mbidi also gave instructions for the day his children might seek him in his homeland. They were to carry one of the special arrowheads, which would serve as a token by which he could recognise them.
Mbidi thereafter began his journey back to the east. When he arrived on the Zaire River, he instructed the ferryman never to allow any red-skinned man cross the river. However, if a dark-skinned man like himself sought to cross, he was to be allowed to cross.
Mbidi Kiluwe, the Dark Prince
Mbidi Kiluwe was the son of a great king in the east, a prince of the royal blood, and he was black-skinned, handsome, and gentle. He was the very opposite of Nkongolo. Where Nkongolo was red, hot, and drunken, Mbidi was black, cool, and restrained. Where Nkongolo was a commoner who had seized power by force, Mbidi was a prince who had been born to it. Where Nkongolo was a monster, Mbidi was a man.
Everything about Mbidi stands in sharp contrast to Nkongolo. Nkongolo's redness is the redness of blood, of fire, of the rainbow that scorches the earth. Mbidi's blackness is the blackness of the cool, dark earth, of the night, of the rain that feeds the earth. Nkongolo is the very image of nature, raw and ungoverned. Mbidi is the very image of culture, cool and restrained.
Mbidi is a culture hero in the most literal sense: he brings to the Luba not just a new king but a new way of being a king. He brings manners, distance, and prohibition. He brings the idea that power must be held at a distance, that it must be cooled, that it must be bound by taboo. He is the prince who teaches the Luba that power is not to be used, but to be contained.
The story says that Mbidi came from the east, from a land where the sun rises, and that he was a stranger. He was not of the Luba land, and he was not of the Luba people. He was a foreigner, and he was a prince. He was a man who had been born to rule, and he was a man who knew how to rule. He was a man who had been taught the arts of kingship, and he was a man who had been taught the restraints of kingship.
He taught Nkongolo, and he taught the Luba, that a king must not be seen eating or drinking, that a king must not be seen in his private moments, that a king must hold himself at a distance from his people. He taught them that a king must be cool, that he must be restrained, that he must be bound by taboo. He taught them that power is a dangerous thing, and that it must be held carefully, or it will destroy the man who holds it, and the people he rules.
The Luba learned from Mbidi that power is a sacred thing, and that it must be treated with reverence. They learned that a king is not a man, but a god, and that he must be treated as such. They learned that a king is a dangerous thing, and that he must be held in check by the institutions of the kingdom, by the Mbudye, by the lukasa, by the taboos and the prohibitions that surround him.
But Mbidi did not stay. He was ever a stranger, and he returned to his own land in the east. He left behind him two wives, both pregnant, and a promise that his children would one day come to seek him. He left behind him a lesson, and he left behind him a bloodline. The children of Mbidi would be the kings of the Luba, and they would carry in their blood the cool, black power of their father, and the hot, red power of their grandfather.
Kalala Ilunga, the First King
Mbidi's son by Bulanda was Kalala Ilunga, who would become the first king of the Luba Empire in the proper sense. He was born in the east, in the land of his father, and he was raised by his mother, Bulanda, who told him of his father and of the land of his birth. When he was grown, he set out to find his father, carrying with him one of the special arrowheads that his father had left as a token. He crossed the Zaire River, and the ferryman, seeing that he was dark-skinned, allowed him to cross. He came to the land of his father, and he was recognised by his father, who gave him the basket, the rubber ball, the arrows, and the iron ball, and who told him to return to the land of his mother and to take the kingship from Nkongolo.
Kalala Ilunga returned to Mwibele, and he was received by Nkongolo, who welcomed him as a guest. Nkongolo gave him a palace, and he gave him wives, and he gave him servants. But Nkongolo was afraid of Kalala Ilunga, for he knew that Kalala Ilunga was the son of Mbidi, and that he was the bearer of the sacred blood. Nkongolo plotted to kill Kalala Ilunga, but Kalala Ilunga was warned by his mother, Bulanda, and by his aunt, Mabela, and he escaped.
Kalala Ilunga fled to the east, and he raised an army, and he returned to Mwibele, and he defeated Nkongolo in battle. Nkongolo was killed, and his body was cut into pieces, and his head was taken to the east, where it was buried. The story says that Nkongolo's head was taken to the east, and that it was buried there, and that it became a shrine. The story also says that Nkongolo's body was cut into pieces, and that his pieces were scattered across the land, and that wherever a piece fell, a new kingdom was founded.
During this period, Nkongolo's mother became very ill and subsequently died, while his father had died long before. The people of Mwibele were in turmoil, and they did not know what to do. They were afraid, and they were confused, and they did not know who would be their king. Kalala Ilunga came forward, and he was accepted as king, and he was crowned, and he became the first king of the Luba Empire.
In Luba today, we still hear that Kalala Ilunga is the first king. His mother bore him, having been a slave who was sold to a servant — a stranger — who carried him across the land. Some say he is the one who lives in the river, and others say he is the one who is the great hunter who crossed the land with a bow and arrow and killed all the great beasts, and he conquered the land and made a great kingdom around it. He was the first king, and he was the greatest king, and he was the king who founded the Luba Empire.
To the Luba, the story of Kalala Ilunga is the story of the founding of the empire, and it is the story of the founding of the kingship. It is the story of how the Luba came to be a people, and how they came to have a king. It is the story of how power was cooled, and how it was bound, and how it was made to serve the people.
And yet, in that story, there is a warning. The story says that Kalala Ilunga was the son of Mbidi, but he was also the grandson of Nkongolo. He carried in his blood both the cool, black power of his father and the hot, red power of his grandfather. He was a king who had learned to contain his power, but he was also a king who carried in his blood the very power that had destroyed Nkongolo. He was a king who was both cool and hot, both black and red, both culture and nature. He was a king who was both the solution and the problem.
He walked the land in search of a new bride, and he married the daughter of a great chief, and he had many children, and he founded many kingdoms. He was a great king, and he was a great hunter, and he was a great warrior. He was a man of great power, but he was also a man of great restraint. He was the very image of the good king, the king who has learned to contain his power, and who has learned to use it for the good of his people.
And yet, in the end, Kalala Ilunga was also a man who was destroyed by his own power. He was a king who had learned to contain his power, but he was also a king who carried in his blood the very power that had destroyed Nkongolo. He was a king who was both cool and hot, both black and red, both culture and nature. He was a king who was both the solution and the problem.
"I am the long umbilical cord that links the living to the dead, the living to the living, and the living to the unborn. I am the one who carries the history of the people in my body, and I am the one who carries the power of the people in my blood." — Kalala Ilunga, as told by the Mbudye
There is another tradition, in which Kalala Ilunga is not the son of Mbidi, but the son of a great hunter, and in which he is not the grandson of Nkongolo, but the son of a great chief. In this tradition, Kalala Ilunga is a man who was born in the east, and who came to the Luba land, and who founded the empire. In this tradition, Kalala Ilunga is a man who was born of the earth, and who was a great hunter, and who was a great warrior, and who was a great king.
But in the mainstream of the tradition, Kalala Ilunga is the son of Mbidi, and the grandson of Nkongolo, and he is the first king of the Luba Empire, and he is the king who founded the Luba Empire, and he is the king who taught the Luba how to hold power.
The Children of Mbidi and the Founding of the Empire
Kalala Ilunga had many children, and they founded many kingdoms. His son, Ilunga Mwila, became the second king of the Luba Empire, and he was a great king, and he was a great hunter, and he was a great warrior. He was a man of great power, but he was also a man of great restraint. He was the very image of the good king.
Ilunga Mwila had two sons, Kazadi Milele and Ilunga Mwila the younger. Kazadi Milele was the elder, and he was a great hunter, and he was a great warrior. Ilunga Mwila the younger was abnormal because he had hair all over his body. Despite now having only two sons, Ilunga ordered that his abnormal son be killed because of his condition. The people Ilunga had ordered to kill his son, the royal executioner and his titleholders, however, decided that he might be needed in the future, sent him to Bisonge, where his maternal kin lived. To show that he had been killed, they showed Ilung a bloodied spear.
It was a fortunate thing that Ilunga Mwila was hidden because Kazadi Milele eventually died while on a mission. Ilunga became distraught, fearing that there would be no male heir to take over his kingship. The conspirators who had hidden Ilunga Mwila, however, became his saving grace. With wisdom, they presented the boy to Ilunga who accepted him with joy. Ilunga Mwila eventually succeeded the throne, and Kalala Ilunga became the first in line of Luba's sacral kingship which continued for generations.
The Melding of Power: Nkongolo, Mbidi and Ilunga
Read the two kings as a pair and the argument leaps out. The Belgian anthropologist Luc de Heusch, in a famous study he titled after this very story, read Nkongolo and Mbidi as the two poles of a single idea about power. Nkongolo is nature: raw, hot, red, autochthonous, the untamed force of the land, fertile in its way but ungoverned and therefore murderous; the rainbow that scorches rather than the rain that feeds. Mbidi is culture: cool, black, foreign, mannered, bound by taboo; the restraint that makes power bearable. The drought-king against the rain-prince.
The crucial move, and the reason this is a theory of power rather than a simple contest of good and evil, is what happens to the two forces in the end. Kingship is not the erasure of the red by the black. Kalala Ilunga is the grandson of the raw and the son of the cool, and the sacred blood he carries, the bulopwe, is itself a dangerous, burning thing, a power close to the wild power of Nkongolo. The point of true kingship is not to be free of that fire but to contain it, to carry the hot sacred force inside a shell of manners, distance, and prohibition so that it warms the land instead of consuming it. The good king is the one in whom raw power has agreed to be bound. Disorder, in this cosmology, is power that has thrown off its restraints and reverted to Nkongolo. Order is power that has agreed, once again, to be cooled, cultured, and bound.
That is why the Luba king is never simply a good man. He is a dangerous man, made safe — or safer — by the institutions that surround him. He is a man who carries in his blood the very power that could destroy him, and the very power that could destroy his people. He is a man who must be watched, and who must be held in check, and who must be taught to contain his power. He is a man who must be taught to be cool, and to be restrained, and to be bound by taboo. He is a man who must be taught to be a king.
The Luba king is not a man who is born to rule, but a man who is made to rule. He is a man who is trained, and who is initiated, and who is taught the arts of kingship. He is a man who is taught to contain his power, and who is taught to use it for the good of his people. He is a man who is taught to be cool, and to be restrained, and to be bound by taboo.
This is the theory of power that the Luba have given to Africa, and it is a theory that is still relevant today. It is a theory that says that power is a dangerous thing, and that it must be held carefully, or it will destroy the man who holds it, and the people he rules. It is a theory that says that a king is never simply a good man, but a dangerous man, made safe — or safer — by the institutions that surround him.
The Mbudye, the Keepers of Power
Most leave a lesson like this inside the story. Instead, the Luba built the lesson into institutions whose whole purpose was to keep the fire of kingship bound, and it is here that the Luba worldview becomes genuinely extraordinary. Luba power, it was said, was never personal. It was held not by one man but by a body of people, and chief among the bodies that held it was the Mbudye, a society of official rememberers, men and women both, who underwent long initiation to master the codes, prohibitions, and history of sacred kingship. The Mbudye were the keepers of the constitution, and their authority had teeth: a king who violated the royal codes could be judged and removed by them. The bearer of the dangerous sacred blood was, from the start, answerable to the guardians of the rules.
To carry the enormous body of law and history this required, the Mbudye used one of Africa's great information technologies, the lukasa, a hand-held wooden memory board studded with beads and shells in deliberate patterns. To an outsider it is an abstract object. To a trained interpreter it was a text. Its beads and lines encoded the migration routes of the founders, the genealogies of kings, the names of sacred places and spirits, the organization of the Mbudye itself, and the secret precepts of chiefship. Different boards carried different registers of knowledge, from the deeds of the first heroes to the classified lore of divine rule. A non-alphabetic script, read spatially by those who held the key, let a preliterate empire keep and transmit a constitution across generations. A people who believed that unbound power was the root of all ruin did not merely say so in a story. They trained a corps of rememberers to hold their rulers to account, and they wrote the rules in beads.
The Luba King and the World
The Luba king was not a man who ruled by force alone. He was a man who ruled by the power of his blood, by the power of his ancestors, and by the power of the institutions that surrounded him. He was a man who was both a god and a man, both a king and a subject, both a ruler and a servant. He was a man who was both hot and cool, both red and black, both nature and culture. He was a man who was both the solution and the problem.
The history of the Luba Empire is the history of a people who learned to hold power in check. It is the history of a people who learned that power is a dangerous thing, and that it must be held carefully, or it will destroy the man who holds it, and the people he rules. It is the history of a people who learned that a king is never simply a good man, but a dangerous man, made safe — or safer — by the institutions that surround him.
The Luba Empire eventually fell through the migrations to Zambia and Zimbabwe, the Luba identity cemented and it eventually made its way into the history of the region. The Luba people, too, would no longer repeat the mistake its predecessors had made, and they would learn to hold power in check, and they would learn to contain it, and they would learn to use it for the good of their people.
In Luba today, we still hear that the Luba are a people who live by the river and ride the wave. They are a people who are both settled and mobile, both rooted and wandering. They are a people who are both hot and cool, both red and black, both nature and culture. They are a people who are both the solution and the problem.
The settled ones saw themselves as beings who live in a perfect world, that is, they are in an unfinished world. The wandering ones saw themselves as beings who live in an imperfect world, and who are always searching for a perfect world. The settled ones saw themselves as beings who live in a world that is already complete, and the wandering ones saw themselves as beings who live in a world that is always becoming.
This is the difference between stylised, intertwined myths and haphazardly presented events. The Songye and the Luba, unquestionably, say that the Luba are a people who live by the river and ride the wave. They are a people who are both settled and mobile, both rooted and wandering. They are a people who are both hot and cool, both red and black, both nature and culture. They are a people who are both the solution and the problem.
A Note on Sources
Primary and early record. The Luba genesis survives through the oral tradition guarded by the Mbudye society and read from the lukasa, recorded from the early twentieth century onward by missionaries and colonial observers, among them W. F. P. Burton, whose Luba Religion and Magic in Custom and Belief remains a much-cited early compilation. As with all such records, the collectors' aims and the court origins of the royal myth should be kept in view.
Secondary and scholarly. Thomas Q. Reefe's The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to 1891 is the standard history and the source for the political reading of the Nkongolo tradition. Luc de Heusch's The Drunken King, or the Origin of the State offers the influential structuralist interpretation of the red and black kings as nature and culture; it is one reading among several and has been debated. Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts, Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History, is essential on the Mbudye and the lukasa. Broader regional context, including the spread of Luba kingship ideas to the Lunda, draws on the work of Jan Vansina.
This piece continues Africa Rebirth's series on African origin myths and cosmologies, following the Dogon, Yoruba, Akan, and Kongo, the Shona, the Kikuyu, and the founding myth of the Twa, Hutu, and Tutsi. Where a reading is contested or the record was shaped by its collectors, we have said so rather than smoothing it over.
