Around the year 1484, Diego Cam came across the Congo River on the Atlantic central African coast (Bandinel, 1842). He explored the river and came into contact with the Kongo Kingdom, a Bantu kingdom that covered a vast area in many parts of the present countries of Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Congo-Brazzaville. The ruling monarch of the Kongo at that time was Nzinga a Nkuwu (Gondola, 2002). Locally, the monarchical title was "Mani Kongo" or "Mwene Kongo" which translated as ‘the owner of the Kongo Kingdom’. Nzinga (known by AbaBemba as "Nshinga") was Mwene Kongo VII. ‘Nkuwu’, with the grammatical prefix ‘a’, is a patronymic: Mwene Kongo Nzinga was a son of Nkuwu.