Content uploaded by Susana Pimenta
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Susana Pimenta on Dec 05, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Available via license: CC BY
Content may be subject to copyright.
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-51
Nzinga Mbandi: From Story to Myth
Orquídea Moreira Ribeiro
CITCEM
UTAD, Portugal
-----
oribeiro@utad.pt
-----
Fernando Moreira
CITCEM
UTAD, Portugal
-----
fmoreira@utad.pt
-----
Susana Pimenta
CITCEM
UTAD, Portugal
-----
spimenta@utad.pt
-----
ABSTRACT
The figure of Queen Nzinga Mbandi continues to be
appreciated in fictional and/or historical narratives as
a myth of postcolonial Angolan identity, allowing a
continuous approach as to what concerns the modes
of cultural representation. In this article, the works of
Manuel Pedro Pacavira, Nzinga Mbandi (1975),
Pepetela, A gloriosa família: o tempo dos flamengos
(1997) and José Eduardo Agualusa, A Rainha Ginga
e de como os africanos inventaram o mundo (2014)
will be analyzed, as these authors, in different
moments of the recent Angolan history, look at this
emblematic figure, drawing on historical information
produced by Cavazzi, Cadornega or Jean Louis
Castilhon, among others. The works now in analysis
reiterate the mythical figure of resistance to the
European invaders, which was Nzinga Mbandi, or a
strong orientation towards the nationalist exaltation
supported by it, an evident strategy which, by the
rescue of figures and cultural practices, is defined as
a means to affirm negritude.
KEYWORDS
Nzinga; Memory; Identity; Pepetela; Pacavira;
Agualusa.
1 | INTRODUCTION
Angolan national heroine, with a statue symbolically
erected in the center of the Angolan capital Luanda,
Nzinga Mbandi [1] is also a name celebrated in the
streets of other cities and towns of Angola. Central
character of books, paintings and prominent in
various stories, she is also a prominent figure in
festive events that surpassed the African continent,
being established in Brazilian lands where Africanity
imposed itself through slavery.
In fact, what is known of Nzinga Mbandi comes
mainly from the works of António Cavazzi, an Italian
Capuchin priest and Nzinga’s last confessor
(Descrição Histórica dos Três Reinos do Congo,
Matamba e Angola, Lisbon, 1965, with illustrations by
Italian painters who had never been to Angola), of
António Gaeta or António Romano, also an Italian
Capuchin and also her confessor for years, (La
maravigliosa Conversione allá Santa Fede di Cristo
della Regina Ginga e del Regno di Matamba nell’a
Africa Meridionale, 1669) and of António de Oliveira
de Cadornega, Portuguese military officer, (História
Geral das Guerras Angolanas 1680-81), works
produced by foreign men and in a particular context
(and despite the inclusion of oral testimonies), that
lead to, even today, enormous doubts and favor
controversy.
As far as cultural representations are concerned,
there is no doubt that Nzinga Mbandi has boosted a
significant fantasy (see the illustrations
accompanying Cavazzi’s work), more recently
enriched by some works that see her as or make her
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-52
a protagonist of Angolan and African culture,
regardless of historical truth [2].
2 | NZINGA: THE FATE OF BEING QUEEN
Being born with the umbilical cord wrapped around
her neck (Heywood, 2017, p. 57) was interpreted by
the soothsayers of the tribe as a negative sign, of bad
omen, as Cavazzi reveals, supported in oral tradition;
it was surely the mark of a different fate, of resistance
and of survival. Nzinga descended from a line of
strong kings – father and grandfather – who “had
controlled a vast territory that covered a large portion
of modern-day northern Angola, garnering respect
from and instilling fear in their enemies and followers
alike during the majority of their reigns” (Heywood,
2017, p. 56).
According to different narratives and reports, Nzinga
Mbandi was her father Ngola Kiluanje’s favourite
child, for being intelligent and sagacious. It should be
noted that Cavazzi, more than Cadornega and Gaeta,
gives an image of Njinga that, as Alberto Oliveira
Pinto wrote, leads to her “enselvajamento”, her
portrayal as a savage (Pinto, 2014, s/p), by endowing
her with warlike, diabolic, anthropophagic or lewd
characteristics. This positioning of Cavazzi, although
it is evident that the main purpose of his “biography”
of Njinga was to emphasize what he considers to be
her miraculous conversion, has an obvious
explanation, according to Linda Heywood and John
Thornton:
However, whatever his deep feelings, Cavazzi
remains essentially Anti-African, and his
general contempt, even toward the Christian
natives, strongly suggests that he regarded
blacks as inferior, at least in virtue, to many
peoples of the world. (2013, p. 3).
In spite of this, the Capuchin priest provides a
fundamental indication for the understanding of
Njinga and of her future as queen and resistant:
The king, her father, ordered her to be
educated with great care and according to her
status, and because he loved her more than
any other child, because he recognized in her
an extraordinary spirit and wit, he often blessed
her during the ceremonies of the sect.
(Cavazzi, 1965, p. 59).
As her father’s favorite child, and before becoming
queen after her brother's death, Nzinga already
played a prominent role in the Ndungo kingdom and
her appointment as a representative to the
negotiations with the Portuguese based in Luanda
are proof of this: she presented herself for the
meeting with the Portuguese governor João Correia
de Sousa leading an embassy with plenipotentiary
powers (she was the bearer of the king's word), with
pomp and circumstance, as narrated by Cavazzi: “full
of precious gems, bizarrely adorned with feathers of
various colors, majestic in size and surrounded by a
large group of maidens and court officials” (Cavazzi,
1965, p. 63).
Nzinga was to star in two episodes worthy of
registration during this meeting, according to Cavazzi
and Cadornega, that revealed her political cunning: i)
being there no chair reserved for her in the room, she
sat on top of a female slave and then left the woman
there, “For it was not proper for the ambassador of a
great king to use the same chair twice” (Cavazzi,
1965, p. 65); ii) and her baptism, sponsored by the
Portuguese governor – “D. Ana de Sousa was born.”
Baptism, at the time and in the context that it
occurred, was a habitual requirement which implied
submission on the part of the defeated chief to the
colonizer.
Cavazzi, who characterizes the yet princess as “full
of spirit and dissimulation” (1965, p. 63), describes
Njinga's action in these negotiations:
She was greatly admired for the liveliness of
her attitude and the readiness of her
intelligence, qualities that were not conceived
in a woman. (...) She amazed, surprised,
convinced all the council and the magistrates
with such a natural disposition that they
remained without words for a long time
(Cavazzi, 1965, p. 64).
There is, therefore, an astute, defiant, intelligent,
pragmatic, courteous, argumentative, lively and
leading Nzinga; she will become queen in
circumstances commented further on in this text and,
according to Cavazzi, she “seemed to have been
born only for war. Always at the head of many groups
of ‘jagas’, she ran through the provinces dragging
desolation everywhere like an impetuous chain”
(Cavazzi, 1965, p. 83). She would die in 1663, at the
age of eighty, after intense battles with the
Portuguese, which, as she confessed to Father
Gaeta, were responsible for the extreme actions she
carried out (Cavazzi, 1965, p. 4); moreover, Gaeta,
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-53
unlike Cavazzi, sees the second and definitive
conversion of Nzinga, in 1654, to Christianity, as a
“miracle happening to a fundamentally intelligent,
spiritual, charming and pragmatic woman” (Heywood
& Thornton, 2013, p. 4). It will be based on these two
axioms that the future representations of the black
queen, her mythological status, her symbolic figure of
blackness and negritude and of African nationalism
and patriotism of resistance will be built on.
3 | HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL REPRESENTA-
TIONS OF NZINGA
Nzinga Mbandi and her resilience to the European
colonizing fury that was invested (and blessed) by the
mantle of Catholic evangelization, would become, in
Europe’s Enlightenment, and thanks to the texts of
Cavazzi and Gaeta, a Romanesque heroine, despite,
as Oliveira Pinto (2014, p. 13) correctly observed,
never having been enslaved and being a woman.
Jean-Louis Castilhon allowed himself to be seduced
by the black queen and made her the protagonist of
his book Zingha, reine de l'Angola. Histoire Africaine
en deux parties, published in 1769; this French
author, also a collaborator of the Grande
Encyclopédie (1751-1772) of Diderot and Dalembert,
closely focuses on the information provided by
Cavazzi, although in the preface to Zingha, reine de
l'Angola. he explains that his work is inspired by the
information provided by Gaeta; therefore, Oliveira
Pinto is emphatic: “Njinga is turned into a savage by
Castilhon by the same processes used by the Italian
Capuchin” (Pinto, 2014, p. 13). Even so, Patrick
Graille sees in the romanesque composition of
Castilhon “an enlightened Zingha, who could have
reigned loyally and peacefully (…) an unconventional
heroine” (Graille, 2016, p. 49); Patrick Graille
expresses his opinion regarding the way the French
writers of yesterday and today see Queen Nzinga as
the myth she would become:
To qualify Njinga, an adjective returns to the
pen of French, ancient, and contemporary
writers: 'extraordinary' (…) The queen remains
a complex, inaccessible, mysterious figure who
demands plural non-Manichaean readings
(Graille, 2016, p. 54).
In fact, Castilhon’s work, using as an example this
savage, cruel, brutal, and lewd Zhinga that he
retrieved from Cavazzi's text, presents the queen as
an exceptional heroine, an extraordinary woman who
lives with her court in a kind of paradise, thus fighting
the classical opposition between barbarians and
civilized. Her “bad behavior” is justified by herself in
response to the Capuchin friars who wanted to
convert her and, thus, clean her of guilt:
I would never have been cruel, wicked, if the
Portuguese had respected my crown and the
rights of my birth, and had not usurped my
states and defeated my throne. Against the
natural generosity of my feelings, against the
softness of my character, I became a monster
of ferocity. Which is! Are they not more fierce
than I, those who by anger and usurpation
have infuriated my wrath and pierced my soul
with the fire of vengeance? (Castilhon, 1769, p.
102).
If there is a character / personality whose secular
fortune symbolically includes a cultural
representation of the “bad savage” that the early
centuries of Portuguese African colonial domination
would call a “cafraria,” this figure is Queen Nzinga
Mbandi, in life and in times gone by. The “discourse
of demerit” mentioned by Inocência Mata (2012, p.
23) justified an exercise of power that had its
culmination in the commercialization of slaves. In
Portugal, at the end of the eighteenth century, there
were references to the vileness present in any
connection to the blackness that Nzinga symbolized.
See, for example, how this “stain” entered into the
discourse of Viradeira [3], under the pretext of a
supposed genealogical connection to Africa of the
minister of King José [4], Sebastião José de Carvalho
e Melo, Marquis of Pomba [5], fallen in disgrace after
the death of the king:
Return, return marquis the dark forest
Mansion of the fifth grandfather, the archdeacon
That of Mother Marta, for her black cuddle
In black he made your fortune fall
(...)
Friends, what's up? Does it smell like ‘catinga’?
For it is he who ruled by our sorrows
A fifth grandson of Queen Ginga
(Brito, 1990, p. 361).[6]
Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage's [7] verminous
pen also gave voice to this form of insult rooted in
society in two sonnets in which Bocage aimed at the
Brazilian mestizo poet Domingos Caldas Barbosa [8],
in the context of a literary quarrel:
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-54
Presides the grandson of Queen Ginga
To the vile, sycophantic, insane
Dirty little lad brings samples of goat stew
In unequal cups the ‘pinga’ [alcohol] runs out
(Bocage 1991: 11)
Disgusting offspring of Queen Ginga
(...)
Roasted gecko, stupid ‘resinga’
(...)
But your verses stink of ‘catinga’:
It is because, oh Caldas, being only
A kaffir, a joke, a noodle, a fool, an excrement
You want to stick your nose in people’s backside.
(Bocage 1991: 16). [9]
Oliveira Pinto correctly exposes the cultural (and
social) meaning of this phrasing:
the Portuguese of the eighteenth century
already persist in repudiating the idea that they
might descend from Africans, by means of an
attitude of social and identity exclusion of their
own countrymen on whom such suspicions
might fall. And the image of Queen Njinga is
reduced to the condition of allegory of this
feeling of racism (Pinto, 2014, p. 16).
4 | NZINGA, SYMBOL OF NATIONALIST RESIS-
TANCE
Nzinga Mbandi, the black queen who called herself
king, would become an African symbol of resistance
to European colonial domination and is, without a
doubt, the most important political figure in Angola, a
fact amplified by the exemplary role she has been
portrayed in during the past half a century in novels,
narratives and other texts.
4.1 | NZINGA MBANDI, BY MANUEL PEDRO
PACAVIRA
In Manuel Pedro Pacavira’s novel, Nzinga Mbandi,
the protagonist is “the central figure of a 'grand
narrative', proper to the logic of nationalist ideology,
in a discourse that contradicts the history of the
colonizer (the one that appears in the História geral
das guerras africanas of António de Oliveira de
Cadornega) and his ‘discourse of demeriting the
Africans’” (Mata, 2012, p. 23),” (Mata, 2016, p. 81);
for Mata, with Pacavira’s text the queen becomes part
of the “founding national history” as the author “takes
from documental historical ‘reality’ enough elements
to discuss her in the Angolan culture”, according to a
questioning perspective of the historical formation
(Mata 2016: 87-89). In fact, the essence of Pacavira’s
novel lies in a simple but grandiose act, as Linda
Heywood e John Thornton correctly mentioned, “The
entire text of Pacavira is an operation of
transformation of Queen Njinga into a figure of anti-
colonial resistance” (Heywood & Thornton, 2013, p.
19), opinion shared by Abreu Paxe, who explains it in
the following terms: “In fact, the novel Nzinga Mbandi
is a metaphor for the marks of what has become the
symbol of resistance to colonization” (Paxe 2012: 20).
The way Manuel Pedro Pacavira processes this
transformation and builds a mythical symbol of
resistance is worth analyzing. After producing a long
history of the relations of the Kongo and Ngola
peoples with the Portuguese since the arrival of Diogo
Cão in 1482 at the mouth of the river Zaire, Pacavira
introduces the character of Nzinga at a time when
African resistance is at a crucial point, the war is at its
peak, the fire burning, as described by the author:
The war never stops. The foreigners will not
triumph. The fire is on. More lit up than in the
times of Ngola Kiluanje Kia Samba. With a
woman's name running from mouth to mouth -
among the people, among the enemies. A
woman's name. To demand respect only by
listening to Nzinga Mbandi (Pacavira 1975,
p.116).
Nzinga is, therefore, invested with a natural power –
of the people and of the enemies ... and she is a
woman! A leader who already was before actually
becoming a leader; the king is still Ngola Mbandi, her
brother, but it is Nzinga that the people and the
adversaries respect. It is of her that there is talk
about, always her, the “beloved granddaughter of
Ngola Ndambi”, of her that at 40 years of age portrays
an image of vitality, of determination that the mother
country offered her; was “cheerful, jovial, in the vigor
of life, without white hair, with nothing. And without
anything to bend her” (Pacavira, 1975, p. 118). It was
with this image and this fame that, acting as king,
Nzinga will present herself in Luanda for negotiations
with the Portuguese in 1622; she is a woman who
carries with her the rumor “of walking where only the
bird-chicks could walk through before. And sleep
where only the animals could sleep” (Pacavira 1975:
118). She is Africa and its magic.
In Luanda a new Nzinga appears, the negotiator, the
strategist, who pushes her determination as leader to
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-55
the limit, strategically converting to Christianity,
receiving the name of Ana de Sousa. It was as if she
was legitimated as leader by the enemy, the
Portuguese governor João Correia de Sousa. Ngola
Mbandi, her brother and king, who had killed her son
and sterilized her, did not realize what had happened,
“for a daughter of her father could not have a name of
‘matumbos’ [word designating the Portuguese]. It
would be better for her to die.” (Pacavira 1975: 119).
Without knowing it, he was right. He would die
“instantly. Without being or feeling sick. (...) Poison in
the food?” (Pacavira, 1975, p. 122), while the
discussion regarding Nzinga's “betrayal” lasted, with
the future queen-king facing the charges firmly. The
mystery of his death remains unresolved: had it been
the intention of the gods since it was not a spell? This
explanation of Pacavira for the passage of power
between Ngola Mbandi and Nzinga Mbandi is
described by Mata as “a delicate and subtle solution”
(Mata 2016: 88), because the power struggle
between the two siblings “has been a difficult
crossroads to express in the narrative” (Mata, 2016,
p. 88) for Angolan historiography.
Pacavira was subtle, mainly because his speech
gives evident signs of the inevitability of the arrival to
power of Nzinga. Revenge and murder among her
people did not match the construction of a myth, a
symbol of the colonial resistance that he wants to
build. The son of Ngola Mbandi still calls himself the
new Ngola, but “True Ngola was she, Kalunga,
Nzinga Mbandi, and nobody else” (Pacavira 1975:
126), because the elderly and elders of the quilambas
and sanzalas wanted it so. They wanted the “elder”
(Nzinga) as king, “the one that had the full rights of
Kijinga. And she deserved it (...). Just her.” (Pacavira,
1975, p. 125).
The power speech of enthroned Nzinga is a display
of patriotism and resistance, a pure and natural
harangue of leadership. To the immense crowd that
heard it, “to that whole world the granddaughter of
Ngola Ndambi swore that the war was not going to
stop” (Pacavira, 1975, p. 126). She quoted her father
Ngola Kiluanje, the soldier-king, the one who had
declared total war against the ambitious Portuguese:
The triumph of the enemy, the ruin of the
Motherland, the loss of its independence. The
disappearance of its History and ways and
customs. Their children to serve as slave (...).
No one should want to be a slave. Rather die
holding a bow and spear than becoming a
slave (Pacavira, 1975, p. 126).
This refers to a seventeenth-century speech by
Queen Nzinga, but it is also a twentieth-century
resistance speech of the liberation struggle that would
lead to independence. This is a speech by the real
Ngola people, worthy heirs of this “True Ngola,
Nzinga Mbandi, and nobody else” (Pacavira, 1975, p.
126).
Nzinga Mbandi is the queen of the people: “Various
days the Mother-Queen remained home to confer
with ‘Kilambas’ and ‘Sobas’ (...) she met with the
elders in council, met with the people, listened to the
people (...) she does not live in palaces” (Pacavira,
1975, p. 132). She is always on the front lines of
battle, in victories and defeats (Pacavira 1975, p. 147-
148), years and years without “divert[ing] the paths
trodden by his eldest, he Ngola Mbandi. The paths his
father will highly recommend he follows. That death
holding a bow and spear was preferable, yes sir, to
life, even of a thousand years, serving. The life of a
slave” (Pacavira, 1975, p. 149). All this, writes
Pacavira, was as “our contemporary elders would
say: to impose the National War of Liberation”
(Pacavira, 1975, p. 149), that is, the mythification of
the struggle for independence through the Ngolas
and, in particular, the figure of Nzinga Mbandi.
Therefore, as Inocência Mata concludes,
‘Nzinga Mbandi’ is a work that thematizes the
history of Angola through identifiable figures in
time and space (...) aiming at a profile of
national identity from the territorial mapping
drawn on the cement of ethnic solidarity and
political consciousness of the territory of
Ngolas (Mata, 2016, p. 24).
The book by Pacavira is, as it turned out, an entire
nationalist and identity construction of an inaugural
past projected into the present, also inaugural, and
the figure of Nzinga Mbandi is built (and mythicized
from a 180-degree rotation: from the “Portuguese”
image that the historical texts of Cavazzi and
Cadornega combine, that is, a bloodthirsty, cruel and
demonic queen) to serve this purpose ... Not by
chance the dedication of the work is “To FAPLA –
Heroic Fighters of Freedom”, a dedication that fulfills,
according to Mata, “the ideological-cultural ideology
for the construction of a society that seeks an African
identity through the rescue and valorization of
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-56
elements excluded from 'the national culture'” (Mata
2012: 26-27).
4.2 | A GLORIOSA FAMÍLIA BY PEPETELA
Unlike the novel by Pacavira, A Gloriosa Família by
Pepetela, published more than twenty years later in
1997, does not have as an active character Nzinga
Mbandi, nor is it even a novel about her; however, the
time of the narrative is marked by this historical figure,
present through an “ostensible absence” (Mata,
2012, p. 27). In A Gloriosa Família the construction of
Jinga is more a deconstruction of a mute Ngola slave
who commands the narration and who, living in the
midst of the enemy, releases information that runs
counter to a negative image that the Portuguese
express (Pepetela, 1997, p. 19; 167; 224). He is also
a Ngola patriot, though a slave and exiled, or for that
very reason, who, moreover, is self-credited as the
most capable of exposing historical truth. Those who
tell the story are not the Flemings (the narrative
occurs between 1641 and 1648, time of the Dutch
occupation of Luanda and Benguela, and the subtitle
of the novel is O tempo dos Flamengos, are not the
Portuguese, but a slave from the court of Jinga, who
was raised by one of her sisters, known as Mocambo
or Dona Barbara. Baltazar Van Dum, Flemish of
origin, but Catholic and “Portuguese” by adoption, is
the owner of the slave, but Jinga is his king; the slave
lives between Luanda and the Van Dum plantation,
but the Ngola kingdom is his homeland, and he
considers Jinga as politically skilled, “amazingly
clever at making and breaking the silences at the
[perfect] moment for greater effect” (Pepetela, 1997,
p. 168); he is a worthy patriot, a manager of a
screaming silence, for throughout the text he says he
is writing the truth that others translate as
manipulated. He refers to that at the beginning of the
book:
Jinga made war against the Portuguese as she
still does. The Portuguese say she is cannibal,
a viper that cannot be trusted, but I have
another version. By the way, I still have not
seen an enemy disregarded as a demon
(Pepetela, 1997, p.23, our underlining).
Through the slave's voice, Jinga’s reason for the wars
is explained: “my king, who is Queen Ginga, always
said, was I very small, but already grasping some
things, whites are very hungry for gold and silver”
(Pepetela, 1997, p. 369). Jinga was king, and “she
demanded to be treated as king and not queen”
(Pepetela, 1997, p. 253) and in this capacity, unlike
other women, she only sits in armchairs or on the
backs of slaves (Pepetela, 1997, p. 86). In addition to
the mute slave, Cadornega also makes Jinga present
in the narrative plot and, despite the her diabolization
by the Portuguese, the lieutenant, who fought against
her, expresses his admiration for the black queen:
“foreigners were very impressed by her power. She
can always insinuate the idea that she is the strongest
and achieves everything. We have to pay homage to
her, she is diabolically intelligent and skilled”
(Pepetela, 1997, p. 253). The comment of the slave
to this statement by Cadornega is indeed elucidative
as to the historical truth and the future mythical
projection of the character: “I liked to hear lieutenant
Cadornega, a man of letters and of thought,
recognizing the merit of my king, being the most
hated enemy. Hated are those who have some value”
(Pepetela, 1997, p. 253-4).
The aura of Jinga’s power is also recognized by the
representative of the king of Congo and his
occasional ally, D. Agostinho de Corte-Real: “Ginga
does not complain, she kicks up a fuss, demands. It
is also true that she has always been the one that
faced the Portuguese” (Pepetela, 1997, p. 325), and
the slave concludes: “The king of Kongo’s
representative had to acknowledge Jinga's
determination, which contributed to increase my
vanity” (Pepetela, 1997, p. 325). As it turns out, Jinga
“circulates” in A Gloriosa Família by what others
narrate, which amplifies her presence: she already
belongs to the domain of the storytelling, of the
folktale, hovering over the reality of others.
4.3 | A RAINHA GINGA BY JOSÉ EDUARDO
AGUALUSA
José Eduardo Agualusa writes one of his last
historical novels around the mythical figure known as
Nzinga (writes Ginga). In A Rainha Ginga. E de como
os africanos inventaram o mundo (2014), Agualusa
builds and deconstructs the woman who invented “a
new world”, dedicating the edition “to all African
women, who, every day, are inventing the world”
(Agualusa, 2014a, s/p). José Eduardo Agualusa
presents, between history and fiction, the life of an
African queen who has become iconic and
representative in Angolan culture, particularly in the
black feminist movements, for the force with which
she fought against the various forms of oppression in
a world of men. It is thus a historical novel, with facts
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-57
“stolen from reality” (Agualusa, 2014, p. 280), and for
which the author has used works by authors such as
António de Oliveira Cadornega, Giovanni Cavazzi da
Monteccucolo or Andrew Battel complemented with
adaptations of texts by historian Luís Mott, in the case
of examples regarding the punishment of slaves
(Agualusa, 2014, p. 280).
The story of Ginga is written in an African perspective,
from the African court, but narrated by Father
Francisco José da Santa Cruz, from Pernambuco,
“resorting to a South/South dialogue in which the
North was no more than the subjugating instance that
led to the contact between the worlds of the different
occupied 'Suis'” (Wieser, 2017, p. 46). Santa Cruz is
a mestizo, the son of a Brazilian Indian and a mulatto,
and shares, in part, subalternity with Africans, and he
also seems to be “a cultural hybrid” (Wieser, 2017, p.
47), representative of the miscegenation of Brazil,
also a product of Portuguese colonization. However,
this does not mean that he does not identify with the
colonizers. Agualusa describes him as a “translator of
languages”, but essentially a “translator of worlds”,
with a “plausible” profile, justifying that “it would be
artificial to put the action in the mouth of Queen
Ginga”, considering that as “one of the errors of the
books published about her: [therefore] they do not
pass the truth” (Agualusa, 2014a, s/p).
In the voice of the Pernambucan priest, Agualusa
presents a positive portrait of the “queen-king” –
“queen Ginga, or better king Ginga, because that’s
how she demanded to be called” (Agualusa, 2014, p.
55), allowing the reader to regard her as a mythical
heroine of the struggle against Portuguese
colonization in her performance and “individual
eccentricity” (Wieser 2017: 49) of non-man and non-
woman, who governs according to her “laws,
intelligence and understanding” (Agualusa, 2014, p.
35), as it is denoted in the episode in which Ginga
goes to the palace of the governor João Correia de
Sousa. The Portuguese governor received her “sitting
in a high chair, almost a throne” and had reserved “a
cushion, draped in gold, on a silky carpet”, to which
Ginga renounces, giving “orders to one of her slaves,
a young woman with a graceful figure, named Henda,
to kneel on the carpet and, to the great astonishment
of all those present, sat on the back of the unfortunate
woman” (Agualusa, 2014, p. 35), an attitude that
“marked the tone of the meeting, or the ‘maca’, in the
words of the ‘ambundos’” (Agualusa, 2014, p. 36).
Ginga thus emerges as a determined and defiant
woman, secure and with the gift of oratory, to the
point that Francisco José da Santa Cruz, when he
heard her “speak with such brilliance and justice”
(Agualusa, 2014, p. 36), he set himself several times
on the side of the African barricade. Rodrigo de
Araújo, a Portuguese merchant, has a different
opinion; so much fluency “is something of the
supernatural (...) the intelligence, when it manifests
itself in a woman, and more so in a woman of black
color, so unheard of, should be the inspiration of the
evil one and, therefore, matter of the competence of
the Holy Office” (Agualusa, 2014, p. 37-38). Astutely,
with the intention of fortifying the agreement with the
Portuguese, Ginga wanted to receive the waters of
baptism; “The decision was not of a spiritual nature,
but of a political one” (Agualusa, 2014, p. 39),
becoming according to Christian law, Dona Ana de
Sousa.
In an interview, José Eduardo Agualusa mentions
that the main objective of his work is “to show that the
Africans were not a passive part in this whole process
of construction of Angola, Africa, Brazil, even
Portugal” (Agualusa, 2014ª, s/p). Hence, it is
important to inquire about the representation of
Queen Nzinga Mbandi in fiction and/or historical
narratives until the construction of this figure as a
myth of the postcolonial Angolan identity, with each
political power using the figure of Nzinga in his own
image. As José Eduardo Agualusa recalls, in an
interview with Visão magazine: “there was [on the one
hand] some colonial literature, that is, fiction
produced by the Portuguese, using the myth of the
queen in favor of the myth of the construction of the
empire”; on the other hand, in the post-independence
period, “a book with the opposite perspective,
hypernationalist, transforming Queen Ginga into an
icon of Angolan nationalism - which is also absurd”
was edited, referring to the queen as not “Angolan”
and as someone who did not fight “for the idea of
Angola” (Agualusa, 2014ª, s/p), considering her
rather an icon of the African woman. Moses
Malumbo, in the text “Ginga no alvor da diplomacia e
do nacionalismo angolano” (2012), exalts the
nationalist fervor that the figure of the “queen-king”
represents in Angolan society a model of struggle in
defense of the territory and its development, in the
struggle against obscurantism and, as an example of
life, in the struggle for the emancipation of women
(Malumbo, 2012, p. 83-85).
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-58
5 | CONCLUSION
Everything in the life of Nzinga Mbandi competes
towards the formation of the myth: her first
“biographers” compared her to the great female
figures of history, but being black, African, relentless
warrior, converted Christian and cannibal, and finally
reconverted into laity of holiness, one could almost
say that her legendary fortune was a kind of pre-
announced reality. Undoubtedly, the works of
Pacavira, Pepetela or Agualusa are two different
approaches in the way of facing the Angolan past,
one more political, others more identity and culture
related; each, in its own way, builds a mythical hero
figure around Nzinga Mbandi, the basis of both is
similar, namely, a process of inversion of the image
that for centuries crystallized: a savage, treacherous,
lewd, cruel, cannibal, murderous Nzinga, and,
moreover, since times then justified her actions, a
woman. After all, who contributed most to her
mythification, even if involuntarily, but the
Portuguese, her greatest detractors? Nzinga Mbandi,
D. Ana de Sousa, was the “Black Queen”, a
recognition that, beyond the inherent negativity of the
nickname, does not fail to consecrate her call for
leadership in defense of her people, her territories
and the neighboring peoples who she tried to
congregate/conquer. It is not by chance that Cornelio
Caley, former deputy minister of Culture of Angola,
affirmed in a congress dedicated to her: “Around
Queen Nzinga, the Ngola Kings and many others,
developed the dynamics that defined the territory that
is now known as Angola” (Caley, 2012, p. 8). She was
an “outstanding example of female governance”
(UNESCO, 2014, p. 7) in times of pure male power
[10].
ENDNOTES
[1] Historical figure, Angolan queen (1583-1663). The
Queen is referred to as Njinga, Nginga, Zingha,
Ginga, Jinga, Nzinga – the different forms of writing
her name – according to the different authors and
languages. The version used in the title of this article,
Nzinga Mbandi was inspired by the title of Manuel
Pedro Pacavira’s narrative.
[2] See Njinga Mbandi - Queen of Ndongo and
Matamba was published in the UNESCO Series on
Women in African History in 2014. It includes a
pedagogical unit and a comic strip. The UNESCO
Series “aims to highlight a selection of key women
figures in African history” and “highlight their legacy.”
[3] Set of satirical compositions written against the
Marquis of Pombal after his exit from power.
[4] (1714-1777); reigned 1750-1777.
[5] (1699-1782); Secretary of the State of Internal
Affairs of the Kingdom from 1750 to 1777.
[6] “Torna, torna marquês à mata escura / Solar do
quinto avô, o arcediago / Que da Mãe Marta, por seu
negro afago / Em preto fez cair tua ventura / (...) /
Amigos, e que tal? Cheira a catinga? / Pois é quem
governou por nossas penas / Um quinto neto da
rainha Ginga” (Brito, 1990, p. 361).
[7] Portuguese poet (1765-1805).
[8] (1739-1800)
[9] “Preside o neto da Rainha Ginga / À corja vil,
aduladora, insana / Traz sujo moço amostras de
chanfana / Em copos desiguais se esgota a pinga
(Bocage 1991: 11)
Nojenta prole da rainha Ginga / (...) / Osga torrada,
estúpido resinga / (...) / Mas teus versos tresandam a
catinga: / É porque sendo, oh Caldas, tão somente /
Um cafre, um gozo, um néscio, um parvo, um trampa
/ Queres meter o nariz em cu de gente.” (Bocage
1991: 16).
[10] Free translation of quotations in Portuguese and
French.
REFERENCES
Agualusa, José Eduardo (2014). A Rainga Ginga. E
de como os africanos inventaram o mundo. Lisboa:
Quetzal.
Agualusa, José Eduardo (2014a). Pela primeira vez,
sinto que posso dizer que sou escritor. Revista Visão.
Disponível em http://visao.sapo.pt.
Bocage, Manuel Maria Barbosa du (1991). Poesias
Eróticas, Burlescas e Satíricas. Lisboa: ERL.
Brito, António Ferreira de (1990). Cantigas de
Escárnio e mal-dizer do Marquês de Pombal ou a
crónica rimada da Viradeira. Porto: Associação de
Jornalistas e Homens de Letras.
Caley, Cornélio (2012). Nota de abertura. In: A
Rainha Nzinga Mbandi – História, Memória e Mito.
Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 7-9.
CITAR Journal, Volume 11, No. 1 · Thematic Dossier: Marginalized Narratives
CITARJ
2-59
Castilhon, Jean-Louis (1769). Zingha, Reine
d’Angola. Histoire Africaine en Deux Parties. Paris: A.
Bouillon.
Cavazzi de Montecúccolo, João António (1965
[1687]). Descrição Histórica dos Três Reinos do
Congo, Matamba e Angola, 2 Vols.. Lisboa: Junta de
Investigações do Ultramar.
Cavazzi, J. António (2013). Njinga, Rainha de
Angola. Edição de Linda Heywood e John Thornton.
Lisboa: Escolar Editora.
Gioia, Francesco Maria (1669). Antonio de Gaeta -
La maravigliosa conversione alla santa fede di Cristo
della Regina Singa e del suo regno di Matamba
nell’Africa Meridionale. Napoli: Giacinto Passaro.
Graille, Patrick (2016). La Reine Njinga d’Angola en
France d’hier à aujourd’hui. Angola e as Angolanas –
Memória, sociedade e cultura. São Paulo: Editora
Intermeios, 33-55.
Heywood, Linda M. (2017). Njinga of Angola: Africa’s
warrior queen. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press.
Heywood, Linda & Thornton, John (2013). Prefácio.
Njinga, Rainha de Angola. Lisboa: Escolar Editora, 1-
19.
Malumbo, Moisés (2012). Ginga no alvor da
diplomacia e nacionalismo angolano. Inocência Mata
(Org.), A Rainha Nzinga Mbandi. História, Memória e
Mito. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri, 77-87.
Mata, Inocência (2012). Representações da Rainha
Nzinga Mbandi na Literatura Angolana. A Rainha
Nzinga Mbandi – História, Memória e Mito. Lisboa:
Edições Colibri, 23-46.
Mata, Inocência (2016). Njinga a Mbandi: o desafio
da memória. Pantoja, Selma; Bergamo, Edvaldo J. &
Silva, Ana Cláudia (Org.). Angola e as Angolanas –
Memória, sociedade e cultura. São Paulo: Editora
Intermeios. 75-83.
Pacavira, Manuel Pedro (1979). Nzinga Mbandi.
Lisboa: Edições 70.
Paxe, Abreu (2012). Da semente à floresta – uma
metáfora para a leitura do romance histórico de
Manuel Pedro Pacavira. Inocência Mata (Org.). A
Rainha Nzinga Mbandi, História, Memória e Mito.
Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 17-21.
Pepetela (1997): A Gloriosa Família. Lisboa: D.
Quixote.
Pinto, Alberto Oliveira (2014). Representações
Culturais da Rainha Njinga Mbandi (c. 1582-1663) no
discurso colonial e no discurso colonialista africano.
In: Estudos Imagética. Rio de Janeiro: UERJ/CH-
FLUL. Internet.
http://repositorio.ul.pt/bitstream/10451/12027/1/Repr
esenta%C3%A7%C3%B5es%20Culturais%20da%2
0Rainha%20Njinga%20Mbandi%20com%20imagen
s.pdf
UNESCO (2014). Njinga Mbandi - Queen of Ndongo
and Matamba. UNESCO Series on Women in African
History. Paris. Editorial and artistic direction: Edouard
Joubeaud.
Wieser, Doris (2017): A Rainha Njinga no diálogo sul-
atlântico: género, raça e identidade. Iberoamericana,
XVII, 66, 31-53. Internet. https://journals.iai.spk-
berlin.de/index.php/iberoamericana/article/view/2409
CITARJ
60
2-60