History
The Bemba people are descendants of inhabitants of the Luba kingdom, which existed in what is now the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in north-eastern Zambia.
Since British rule, English has been Zambia's main literary language, and is now its only official language. However, the Bemba language has played a prominent political role. Zambia's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, though Malawian by descent, was raised in a Bemba-speaking community, and every Zambian president since has been a Bemba-speaker. In the years after the MMD took power in 1991, it was accused numerous times of promoting Bemba over other regional languages in the country.
Read more about this topic: Bemba Language
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (17351826)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis wont do. Its an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (19151987)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)