History of Malawi - The Independence Struggle

The Independence Struggle

The history of Nyasaland was marked by a number of unsuccessful Malawian attempts to obtain independence. A growing European and United States-educated African elite. This included John Chilembwe; taken and educated in the USA by a missionary family. Later he returned to Nyasaland to resist the British practices of 'recruiting' African men into the Kings African Rifles (KAR) as forced labor and carriers. After John Chilembwe's tragic death other more vocal and politically active groups-first through associations-emerged. In 1944, the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), inspired by the African National Congress Peace Charter of 1914, emerged. NAC soon spread across Southern African with powerful branches emerging among migrant Malawian workers in Salisbury (now Harare) in Rhodesia and Lusaka, in Zambia. When the cash strapped NAC Executive Council voted to send a team to London to persuade Dr. Banda to return to Malawi and lead the movement, the powerful Salisbury Branch raised the funds required for the two men, Masauko Chipembere and Harry Bwanausi, to make the boat trip to England. They finally rendezvous with Dr. Banda at the Port of Liverpool (on his way from Ghana) to sort out the mess in his private life over the former Mrs. French. Banda agreed to return to Malawi whereupon the team returned to Nyasaland. However, it would be months before Dr. Banda's whereabouts could be known leading to his scheduled arrival at Chileka Airport in 1958 being postponed twice; causing the local white Police to forcefully remove 'disappointed' crowds that had threatened to storm the BOAC flight, inside of which they had believed Dr. Banda was being held hostage! Finally Dr. Banda arrived in Nyasaland on 6 July 1958 and proceeded to cause a storm and a shiver among the local British settlers with his powerful speeches and demand that the 'Stupid Federation' be abandoned 'Now! Now! Now!' His trips across the country attracted large crowds of Africans and the country was in a state of turmoil. However, the British weathered some of his vociferous talk and Dr. Banda gradually settled for a long slog by opening a medical surgery in Limbe where, to thank John Kadzamira (one of the main organizers of the Harare NAC Branch), Dr. Banda dutifully took in Cecilia Kadzamira (a newly trained nurse from Salisbury Hospital) as his first nursing staff member! To control the volatile political situation Dr. Banda created, through an emotive public speech (while suffering from a rare bout of malaria): that the British intended his death, the Federation Government arrested Dr. Banda and sent him to Gwelo in Rhodesia.

It took a different kind of tinder to ignite the struggle for political independence in Malawi. Alec Russell says: '...for the many colorful episodes in Banda's rise to power.. tale of 'the bruising of Miss Phombeya's toe' . She was a young woman who came to the Ryall's Hotel in Blantyre, where Harold Macmillan was lunching on the homeward leg of his famous 'wind of change' tour in Cape Town. A junior officer in Macmillan's advance entourage owed Miss Phombeya some money for 'services rendered'. But instead of paying up, local police officers panicked and tried to get rid of Miss Phombeya (now visibly parading her anger in front of the verandah restaurant) in the process hurting her toe; whereupon a crowd soon gathered outside Ryall's Hotel and quickly the mood shifted from the 'hurting toe' to protesting the imprisonment of Banda and other local leaders by the federation government.