Group of Bantu-speaking peoples of north-central Angola.
In the 15th century they founded the Ndongo kingdom, a rival of the Kongo kingdom. It was destroyed by the Portuguese in the late 1600s. In the 1970s the Mbundu provided the main support for the Marxist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which assumed power in 1976. Today they number about 2.3 million.