Hastings Kamuzu Banda Quotable Quotes

There are many quotable quotes from Late Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first President of Malawi. Before going on to some of those quotes, I found an interesting view from Time Magazine of 15th July 1966 which I think accurately described Dr Kamuzu Banda as I used to know him. Here it goes:-

Banda is just as emphatically his own man on Africa-wide matters. Last week Diallo Telli, Guinea's leftist secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity, was in Malawi for Banda's inauguration when he suddenly found some of his pet schemes under scathing attack during a Banda press conference. "I didn't fight the British to exchange British imperialism for Eastern imperialism," Banda snapped. Then looking Telli straight in the eye, Banda shouted: "I mean that! I'm saying that because you are here. You can expel Malawi from the O.A.U." As Telli shrank lower and lower in his chair, Banda sneered at African countries that claim Socialist countries are their friends: "Tell that to the marines, not to Kamuzu."

The following are some of the other quotes I have gleaned from the internet.

"They practice disunity, not unity, while posing as the liberators of Africa. While they play in the orchestra of Pan Africanism, their own Romes are burning."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda responding to accusations about Malawi's relationship with South Africa in Malawi Parliament in 1967

"In Nyasaland we mean to be masters, and if this is treasonable, make the most of it."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi, as quoted in Neil Hamilton's Founders of Modern Nations, California, 1995.

"It is only contact like this [between South Africa and Malawi] that can reveal to your people that there are civilized people other than white..."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi, as quoted in the Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 24 May 1970.

"If I am a dictator, it is because my people want me to be. I am a dictator of the people, by the people and for the people."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda speaking in July 1966.

"They say my people love me and I would be naïve to deny it."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi, as quoted in David Lamb's The Africans, New York, 1985.

" I wish I could bring Stonehenge to Nyasaland, to show that there was a time when Britain had a savage culture."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi, as quoted in The Observer, 10 March 1963.

"What do you want? I don't have to fawn on you. I think you're all a pack of liars!"

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi, speaking to journalists at the All African Peoples' Conference in Accra, shortly after his return to Nyasaland in 1959. As quoted in Rolf Italiaander's The New Leaders of Africa, New Jersey, 1961.

"We have to start talking to each other. I go to South Africa. You come here. I allow your people to come here and see how the people live. This might not solve the problem today, next month, in five years, ten years, or even twenty years. But I honestly believe that this in the end is the only solution."

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi, in a comment made after the official visit of South African prime minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster, twenty or so years before the end of Apartheid. As quoted in the Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 24 May 1970.