Kamuzu Banda

Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1898 – 25 November 1997) was the prime minister and later president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994 (from 1964 to 1966, Malawi was an independent Dominion / Commonwealth realm).

In 1966, the country became a republic and he became the first president as a result.

After receiving much of his education in ethnography, linguistics, history, and medicine overseas, Banda returned to Nyasaland to speak against colonialism and advocate independence from the United Kingdom. He was formally appointed Prime Minister of Nyasaland, and led the country to independence in 1964.

Two years later, he proclaimed Malawi a republic with himself as the first president. He consolidated power and later declared Malawi a one-party state under the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). In 1970, the MCP made him the party's President for Life. In 1971, he became President for Life of Malawi itself. A renowned anti-communist leader in Africa, he received support from the Western Bloc during the Cold War. He generally supported women's rights, improved the country's infrastructure and maintained a good educational system relative to other African countries. However, he presided over one of the most repressive regimes in Africa, an era that saw political opponents regularly tortured and murdered. Human rights groups estimate that at least 6,000 people were killed, tortured and jailed without trial. As many as 18,000 people were killed during his rule, according to one estimate. His rule has been characterised as a "highly repressive autocracy." He received criticism for maintaining full diplomatic relations with the apartheid government in South Africa.

By 1993, amid increasing domestic and international pressure, he agreed to hold a referendum which ended the one-party system. Soon afterwards, a special assembly ended his life-term presidency and stripped him of most of his powers. Banda ran for president in the democratic elections that followed and was defeated. He died in South Africa on 25 November 1997.

Early life

Kamuzu Banda was born Akim Kamnkhwala Mtunthama Banda near Kasungu in Malawi (then British Central Africa) to Mphonongo Banda and Akupingamnyama Phiri. His date of birth is unknown, as it took place when there was no birth registration documentation but Banda himself often gave his date of birth as 14 May 1906. Later, when presented with evidence of certain tribal customs by a friend, Dr Donal Brody, Banda said: "No one knows the hour, the date, the month or the year in which I was born, although I now accept the evidence that you give me – March or April 1898."

He left his village school near Mtunthama for his maternal grandparents' home and attended Chayamba Primary School in Chikondwa. In 1908, he moved to Chilanga mission station and was baptised in 1910.

The name Kamnkhwala, meaning "little medicine", was replaced with Kamuzu, which means "little root". The name Kamuzu was given to him because he was conceived after his mother had been given root herbs by a medicine man to cure infertility. He took the Christian name of Hastings after being baptised into the Church of Scotland by Dr George Prentice, a Scot, in 1910, naming himself after John Hastings, a Scottish missionary working near his village whom he admired. The prefix "doctor" was earned through his education.

Around 1915–16, Banda left home on foot with Hanock Msokera Phiri, an uncle who had been a teacher at the nearby Livingstonia mission school, for Hartley, Southern Rhodesia (now Chegutu, Zimbabwe). He apparently wanted to enrol at the famous Scottish Presbyterian Lovedale Missionary Institute in South Africa but completed his Standard 8 education without studying there. In 1917, he left on foot for Johannesburg in South Africa. He worked at the Witwatersrand Deep Mine on the Transvaal Reef for several years. During this time, he met Bishop William Tecumseh Vernon of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) who offered to pay his tuition fee at a Methodist school in the United States if he could pay his own passage. In 1925, he left for New York.

Life abroad (1925–1958)

United States

Banda studied in the high school section of the Wilberforce Institute, an African American AME college (a member of AME), now known as Central State University, in Wilberforce, Ohio, and graduated in 1928 with a diploma. With his financial support now ended, Banda earned some money on speaking engagements arranged by the Ghanaian educationalist Kweyir Aggrey, whom he had met in South Africa.

Speaking at a Kiwanis club meeting he met Dr Herald, with whose help he enrolled as a pre-medical student at Indiana University, where he lodged with Mrs W. N. Culmer. At Bloomington, he wrote several essays about his native Chewa tribe for the folklorist Stith Thompson, who introduced him to Edward Sapir, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, to which, after four semesters, he transferred. During his period there, he collaborated with the Afro-American anthropologist and linguist Mark Hanna Watkins, providing information on his native Chewa language. This led to the publication of a grammar book of the language. In Chicago, he lodged with an African-American, Corinna Saunders. He majored in history, graduating with a B.Phil. degree in 1931.

During this time he enjoyed financial support from Mrs Smith, whose husband, Douglas Smith, had made fortunes from patent medicines and Pepsodent toothpaste and as a member of the Eastman Kodak board. He then, still with financial support from these and other benefactors (including Walter B. Stephenson of the Delta Electric Company), studied medicine at Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, from which he obtained an M.D. degree in 1937. Banda became the second Malawian person to receive a medical degree, following Daniel Sharpe Malekebu.

United Kingdom

To practise medicine in territories of the British Empire, however, Banda was apparently required to gain a second medical degree; he attended the University of Edinburgh and was subsequently awarded a Scottish triple conjoint diploma (with post-nominals LRCP(Edin), LRCS(Edin) and LRCPSG) in 1941. His studies were funded by stipends of £300 per year from the government of Nyasaland (to facilitate his return there as a doctor) and from the Church of Scotland; neither of these benefactors was aware of the other. (There are conflicting accounts of this. He might still have been funded by Mrs Smith.) When he enrolled for courses in tropical diseases in Liverpool, the Nyasaland government terminated his stipend. He was forced to leave Liverpool when he refused on conscientious grounds to be conscripted as an Army doctor. He also became an elder of a parish in the Church of Scotland.

Between 1941 and 1945, he worked as a doctor in North Shields, near Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a tenant of Mrs Amy Walton at this time in Alma Place in North Shields and sent a Christmas card to her every year right up until her death in the late-1960s.. In 1944, he met Merene French, the daughter-in-law of one of his patients, and began a relationship with her.

After World War II, he established a practice at the London suburb of Kilburn and became politically active by joining the Labour Party and Fabian Colonial Bureau, which was founded in 1940.

Banda moved to London in 1945, buying a practice in the North London suburb of Harlesden. Initially, he stayed at Mrs French's house, with Mr French joining them in October 1945. Later, he bought his own house in Brondesbury Park. Mrs French moved in as his housekeeper, together with her husband. According to other accounts, he lodged in a hotel, The Conway Court, in Paddington run by Mrs Janet Evans. Reportedly, he avoided returning to Nyasaland for fear that his new-found financial resources would be consumed by his extended family back home.

In 1945, at the behest of Chief Mwase of Kasungu, whom he had met in England in 1939, and other politically active Malawians, he represented the Nyasaland African Congress at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester. From this time, he took an increasingly active interest in his native land, advising the Congress and providing it with some financial support. With help from sympathetic Britons, he also lobbied in London on behalf of the Congress.

Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and move to Ghana

Banda was actively opposed to the efforts of Sir Roy Welensky, a politician in Northern Rhodesia, to form a federation between Southern and Northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland, a move which he feared would result in further deprivation of rights for the Nyasaland blacks. The (as he called it) "stupid" federation was formed in 1953.

It was rumoured with some excitement that he would return to Nyasaland in 1951, but he moved instead to the Gold Coast in West Africa. He went there partly because of a scandal involving his receptionist in Harlesden, Merene French (Mrs French); despite reports that she became pregnant with his child, this has never been confirmed. Banda was cited as co-respondent in the divorce of Mr French and accused of adultery with Mrs French. She followed Banda to West Africa, but he wanted nothing more to do with her. (She died in 1976.)

Call to return home

Several influential Congress leaders, including Henry Chipembere, Kanyama Chiume, Dunduzu Chisiza and T.D.T. Banda (no relation) pleaded with him to return to Nyasaland to take up leadership of their cause. A delegation sent to London met with Banda at the Port of Liverpool where he was making arrangements to return to Ghana. He agreed to return, but asked for some time to sort out a few private matters. The delegation returned without him and proceeded to make arrangements for his imminent return. After two false starts, including a fracas between the police and African crowds threatening to storm a BOAC aeroplane rumoured to be carrying Dr Banda at Chileka Airport, Banda finally made a showing on 6 July 1958 after an absence of about 42 years. In August, at Nkata Bay, he was acclaimed as the leader of the Congress.

Return to Nyasaland

He soon began touring the country, speaking against the Central African Federation (also known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland), and urging its citizens to become members of the party. Allegedly, he was so out of practice in his native Chichewa that he needed an interpreter, a role which was apparently performed by John Msonthi and later by John Tembo