Shimunenga is the tutelary divinity of the Ila of Maala, in the Namwala district of the Kafue flats, remembered as a warrior of roughly four centuries past who won the community its territory by defeating his brother and who led the people against raiders. At death he passed into a muzhimo, an ancestral shade, and rose among the guardian spirits of the land, held in local devotion to rank next after Leza himself. He is honoured at an annual ceremony timed to the full moon of September or October: the people gather before dawn at his shrine to chant, cattle, the great emblem of Ila wealth, are driven across the ceremonial ground so that he may look kindly on them and keep pestilence from the herds, and the women throw ceremonial sticks into Shimunenga's bush at the heart of the sacred grove to bring good fortune. His grave is said to lie in that ground outside the village.