Flag of Barotseland, the Republic of South Africa

Barotseland (Lozi: Mubuso Bulozi) is a region between Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe including half of north-western province, southern province, and parts of Lusaka, Central, and Copperbelt provinces of Zambia and the whole of Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province. It is the homeland of the Lozi people or Barotse, or Malozi, who are a unified group of over 46 individual formerly diverse tribes related through kinship, whose original branch are the Luyi (Maluyi), and also assimilated Batswana tribe of South Africa and Botswana known as the Makololo. The Barotse speak siLozi, a language most closely related to Setswana. Barotseland covers an area of 252,386 square kilometres, but is estimated to have been twice as large at certain points in its history. Once an empire, the Kingdom stretched into Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe including half of eastern and northern provinces of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province. Under the British colonial administration, Barotseland was a protectorate of the British Crown from the late 19th-century. The Litunga, the monarch of Barotseland, had negotiated agreements, first with the British South African Company (BSAC), and then with the British government that ensured the kingdom maintained much of its traditional authority under the Litunga. Barotseland was essentially a nation-state, a protectorate within the larger protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. In return for this protectorate status, the Litunga gave the BSAC mineral exploration rights in Barotseland. In 1964, Barotseland became part of Zambia when that country achieved independence. In 2012, a group of traditional Lozi leaders, calling itself the Barotseland National Council, called for independence; other tribal chieftains oppose secession, however.