Nkanda is the leader of the Babinza settlers in the founding tradition of the Sukuma chiefdoms. Remembered as coming from Lushamba in the present Geita District — in some tellings under the guidance of his father Muletwa, chief of Lushamba — he brought his following to a settlement site in the country south of the Mwanza Gulf and declared, in words the tradition preserves, 'nsukumala aha', 'let us rest here'; the resting-place became Sukumalaha (Nsukumale), the first Sukuma chiefdom, and tradition derives from the utterance the very name of the Sukuma. In the accounts studied by the historian Buluda Itandala, Nkanda is the war-leader of the pioneering generation beside the hunter Ilembo, uniting the scattered local settlements under Babinza leadership, and nearly every chiefly clan of Usukuma afterwards claimed descent from his line. The chiefship itself he is said not to have taken: the first stool passed to Sanga, son of his kinswoman Minza, whose name the traditional greeting of the Sukuma chiefdom, Iminza, still recalls, and from Sukumalaha the chiefdoms of Usukuma multiplied to more than fifty.