Gonapamuhanya (also Khalapamuhanya) is remembered in Tumbuka oral tradition as the son of the lake-crossing trader Mlowoka and, through his mother, kinsman of a leading indigenous clan. He became the first holder of the Chikulamayembe title, ruling the Nkhamanga plain west and south of the Nyika Plateau around the early nineteenth century. His title, 'the great one of the hoes', recalls his distribution of imported iron hoes to influential clans. As founding paramount he is a heroic ancestor of the Tumbuka, commemorated today in the annual Gonapamuhanya cultural festival at Bolero in Rumphi District, northern Malawi.