The Black Rocks of Pungo Andongo

Queen Njinga’s footprints, and the end of the Kingdom of Ndongo

The Black Rocks of Pungo Andongo, the Pedras Negras, rise out of the savanna of Angola's Malanje Province like a range of dark, rounded towers, monoliths millions of years old that stand out all the more for the flat grassland around them. They are an extension of the Cacuso Plateau and fall into four groups, western, southern, northern and south-eastern. The western group, in the municipality of Cacuso about 116 km from the city of Malanje, is the best known and most visited, and one of Angola's important tourist attractions.

The rocks carry a queen's footprints. Pressed into the stone are prints that tradition says belong to Ana de Sousa, better known as Nzinga Mbande, Queen Njinga, who ruled the Ambundu kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba in what is now northern Angola for much of the 17th century. She first came to power in Ndongo in 1624, became queen of Matamba in 1631, and spent decades fighting and negotiating with the Portuguese pressing inland from Luanda, as soldier, diplomat and ruler, until she died in December 1663 at about 80.

The rocks themselves became a fortress. In its last years the kingdom of Ndongo had its capital at Pungo Andongo, in the heart of the western group. In 1671 the Portuguese besieged and captured it, enslaved many of its people and destroyed the kingdom. On the site they built the Fortress of Pungo Andongo, and its ruins still stand in the small modern town among the rocks, where older residents tell the local history to visitors.

The Black Rocks belong to a wider circuit of Malanje sights. Not far away the Lucala River drops 105 metres over the Kalandula Falls, said to be the second highest in Africa, and the Kwanza rapids and the colonial and mission buildings of the province draw domestic and foreign travellers alike.