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| Kamuzu Banda And Aleke Banda Arriving at Nyasaland Constitutional Review Conference in 1960 |
by Farai Sevenzo
Source: Transition, No. 85 (2000), pp. 4-29Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute
When Hastings "Kamuzu" Banda died on November 25, 1997, his country, Malawi, went into shock. He was Kamuzu the Conqueror, the Messiah, and he had dominated this modest nation in southern Africa from its inception. Larger than life, this tiny, decorous man had defied the British, the Rhodesians, and the Organization of African Unity; it seems his people had expected him to defy death, as well.
Barely three months earlier, Banda had been acquitted of murdering four opposition parliamentarians. His defense was encroaching senility-he couldn't remember if he was guilty. On December 3, 1997, the day Kamuzu Banda was laid to rest, his uncle produced his christening certificate. He did some quick arithmetic for the assembled masses and announced that the savior of Malawi had died at the age of 110.
Heads of state from across Africa were in attendance. Nelson Mandela had never quite known what to make of Kamuzu, the pan-African hero who had made a separate peace with South African apartheid. And yet when Mandela was released from prison in I990, Banda sent a financial contribution to the ANC, unprompted Robert Mugabe, Kenneth Kaunda, Joaquim Chissano they all came to pay their respects.
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| Late Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda Lying In State |
But it was ordinary people who wept the most and stayed the longest. Banda's funeral went on for eight hours. Witnesses report that women wailed and fainted as his casket was lowered into the ground. He was buried below Capital Hill in Lilongwe, granted an eternal place at the heart of the government. His $50,000 gold-plated coffin and his concrete- lined grave were designed to protect him from the elements-the coffin would not rust for a hundredy ears. Even in death, the lion was to be revered.
And so he is. Last year, thousands gathered at his tombstone to pay homage on the anniversary of his death.When the Malawi Congress Party is in trouble-and these days, it often is-party officials go to Kamuzu's grave and plead for guidance. On the streets of most Malawian cities today, you can buy cassettes and videotapes with titles like Kanmuzu Speeches, 1969-1997 and Kamuzu Agricultural Show, 1981. But the best-selling video remains Kaimuzu Funeral Ceremony.
The 1950s and 1960s were a golden age for Africa. It is a time that will be forever cocooned in colonial nostalgia not for white rule, but for the ecstasy of Uhuru: for freedom, black heroes, and the romance of liberation. That time is gone; it began to slip away many years ago, as heroes became presidents, and presidents became presidents for life. Why do our heroes so often become our greatest villains? Or are villains only fashioned from heroes? Kwame Nkrumah fired the imagination of a continent, leading the Gold Coast to freedom and railing against the depredations of the West; and yet he ruled his new nation, Ghana, like a tyrant. Sekou Toure said "no" to France; but then he said the same to the aspirations of his Guinean citizens. And now Robert Mugabe, the leader of the movement that destroyed the rabidly racist Rhodesian republic, seems determined to jettison his legacy in a vain attempt to relive the glory of liberation-and maintain power at any cost. The contrast with Nelson Mandela couldn't be sharper.
And then there was Banda: a sternfaced, wily, well-dressed man; an elder of the Church of Scotland; an unlikely prime minister, and an even unlikelier dictator; a surgeon who knew more about the manners of middle-class London than about the traditional values of the people he led. He was already in his sixties when he assumed the mantle of power, and he ruled for thirty-three years.
In 1993 Banda agreed to hold a referendum on one-party rule. It was effectively a referendum on Banda himself; perhaps it was a sign of his impending dotage that he allowed it to be held at all. He lost; the following spring, he lost another election and ceded the presidency to Bakili Muluzi. It was a strange end to one of the strangest political stories on the continent.
Imagine it: An intelligent but poor native of the British colony of Nyasaland travels around the world, at a time when few Africans had any concept of the world beyond their own village. He speaks English with a Scottish accent learned from missionaries in his turn-of the- century Nyasa village. He falls in love with classical literature and modern medicine, surrounds himself with the trappings of scholarship and sophistication. He is a good doctor who knows he was born to lead. In the U.S. as in England, he sees himself as every bit the equal of the whites around him, despite his Africanness, his difference.
And he throws himself passionately into the cause of a lifetime: independence. He had left Nyasaland as a teenager-when, legend has it, he walked some thirteen hundred miles throught he wilderness to the gold mines of Johannesburg. It would be another forty-threey ears before he would see the land of his birth again. By then, all of Nyasaland was waiting for him. The people knew that he could see the mountaintop.And so the doctor became a hero, a prime minister, a president, a president-for-life.
In the early years, Banda tried to recreate the world he had left behind. He established schools to teach his countrymen the joys of Latin and Greek, and he importedt he very best teachers. English castles rose up across the Malawian countryside.
But who was he? A man who liked to receive a salute from the back of a Rolls Royce convertible,who required his citizens to line the streets and applaud as his motorcade zoomed by. He was not only president-for-life of the country and president of its only legal political party, the Malawi Congress Party; he was also, at one point, minister of external affairs, minister of justice, minister of public works, minister of agriculture, minister of community development, and minister of social welfare. But he had been born to poor Chewa peasants in the central region of Kasungu. (Throughout Banda's reign, little was said or known of his father; he liked to tell people that his mother had raised him on her own.) Kamuzu means "little root," and Banda was given the name because root herbs were believed to have cured his mother's infertility. He was the Nyasa Napoleon: h e came from nowhere to conquer the world.
In Malawi, not even the Nativity compares to Banda's legend. Before his return, the young militants of the Congress Party made him a hero; afterward, the people did it themselves. People believed he possessed supernatural powers: they said he could appear among his enemies without being seen, he could take the shape of a crocodile, he rode the backs of hyenas at night; they even said the wind obeyed his will.
I am still haunted by an old newsreel of Hastings Banda with Samora Machel of Mozambique, one of my childhood heroes. Machel descends from his presidential jet at Kamuzu Airport in Lilongwe; he is there to take Banda to task for supporting rebels in Mozambique. Machel steps onto a tarmac studded with dignitaries and proceeds directly to Banda, shaking his finger in Kamuzu's face, almost speechless with rage. The sound is poor, but you can read his lips: "You ... you ... Kamuzu!" Twenty-four hours later, the first president of independent Mozambique was dead, killed in a plane crash. It's hard to find a connection between the two events, harder still to imagine there is none.
A filmmaker by profession, I was interested in documenting the most anomalous founding father of Africa's independence. Late last year, I took my first trip to Malawi, on a mission to find the real Kamuzu.
The political life of Hastings Banda was defined by his triumphant return in July 1958. He had been a key player in the rise of the Nyasaland African Congress, and his name was already well known across the territory. He came wearing a lion's skin, like a king, and the people thronged to welcome him. Four men held large poles across their shoulders to bear Kamuzu on his throne.
Four decades later, I walked across the tarmac at Chileka Airport, imagining the roar of Nyasaland's men and women. They believed that colonialism's grip on their tiny country had been shattered with the arrival of one man. Witnesses say that Kamuzu was startled by the reception; he had been uncertain of his decision in the hours and days before his return. But the boisterous crowds at Chileka had an inspiriting effect. "Kwacha!" he cried. The word means "dawn," and it was to become his rallying cry. Kamuzu continued: "Go and tell the British I have come here to destroy their stupid federation."
Though it took him a couple of years, Banda did destroy Britain's Central African Federation, which yoked Nyasaland to the white settler states of Southern and Northern Rhodesia. He led his country to independence in 1964. And he never let anyone forget it. His boldness against the British was the text or subtext of nearly every speech he ever delivered. Every public address began with "Kwacha!" But does saying "dawn" for thirty-three years create permanent sunshine? Or does it cancel out the meaning of light?
It's fifteen miles from Chileka Airport to Blantyre, Malawi's commercial center, a town of 1 million people at the country's southern tip. I had never been to Malawi, although my own homeland, Zimbabwe, is almost a neighbor. Malawi was off-limits when I was growing up: it belonged to a man who was not interested in Africa's Uhuru, a man who did not mind being a guest of honor at the table of John Vorster, the leader of apartheid South Africa. But we all knew Malawians: generations of emigrants have taken jobs as mine workers, grave diggers, maids, gardeners, chefs, and farm foremen throughout the region. Malawi has few resources, and its biggest export has always been its people. No matter how menial their occupation, Malawians have never thought of themselves as slaves. They were sages, unfazed by the arrogance of their wealthier neighbors. If Malawians have a national characteristic, it is patience-interminable, almost spiritual, patience.
The patience of Malawians is often mistaken for obsequiousness, a facile eagerness to please. One thinks of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man-"I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins." It's true that Malawians are known to be generous with their smiles. In 1989 Paul Theroux wrote that Malawians were "essentially conservative and quiet-minded and somewhat puritanical"; the Zimbabwean magazine Moto still jokes that Malawi is "the only country where you can knock someone down with a car and your victim will get up from the road and apologize to you." Perhaps this habit of reticence helps to explain Kamuzu's thirty-three-year reign. Or, perhaps it's simply one more story from a country overrun with myths?
When I was a schoolboy, my parents employed a gardener named Robson Phiri. I suspect it was he who sparked my fascination with the mysterious country to our north-he couldn't stop talking about the glories of Malawi. When I asked him why he never returned, he told me that President Banda had thrown his father to the crocodiles.Years later, I saw Bob Marley perform at Zimbabwe's independence celebration. It was 1980,
and Zimbabwe was heady with freedom. I was not yet sixteen. Marley introduced my generation to reggae, and he also introduced us to marijuana. In southern Africa, there was only one brand, and when the great singer sampled it during his stay in Harare, he told reporters that it made him feel invisible. He was smoking Malawi Gold.
and Zimbabwe was heady with freedom. I was not yet sixteen. Marley introduced my generation to reggae, and he also introduced us to marijuana. In southern Africa, there was only one brand, and when the great singer sampled it during his stay in Harare, he told reporters that it made him feel invisible. He was smoking Malawi Gold.
And so I was certain of three things when I embarked on my trip: that Malawi was beautiful, that Malawi Gold was powerful smoke, and that the man I was looking for fed people to crocodiles. It all came back to me as the taxi made its way into town, past rolling hills and palm trees and rows of crowded houses that climbed up the mountains. I had to concede it was beautiful. I absorbed the environs: faces on a bus, in the street; furniture makers carrying beds and sofas on bicycles; billboards exhorting people to buy mobile phones or fly British Airways. When I told the driver that I was making a movie about Kamuzu, he stared at me in the rearview mirror. "Let me say this," he announced peremptorily. "Kamuzu was the father of the nation. He made Malawi." He smiled. "We are a poor country. Kamuzu gave us faith in ourselves, and through that we became rich." He didn't mention the crocodiles. I had only ever heard about Malawi from people who had fled. Now it was time to hear from Kamuzu's children.
I wanted to see the whole country, talk to ordinary Malawians. But I also needed to meet with the country's elite: those who ruled alongside Kamuzu, and those who were imprisoned by him. I soon discovered that they were often one and the same. The list included Bakili Muluzi, who defeated Banda in the 1994 presidential elections, and whose recent reelection was charged with controversy. There was also Vera Chirwa, an activist who had spent over a decade in jail; Sam Mpasu, who went from promising politician to political prisoner and back again; and many others, including Aleke Banda, a cabinet minister at age nineteen, who lost Kamuzu's favor as quickly as he had attained it.
The most compelling member of Banda's menagerie was Cecilia Kadzamira, Malawi's "Official Hostess." In 1958 Banda hired this ravishing young nurse as a surgical assistant, and she remained at his side until his death. If the Scotophilic Banda was Malawi's Macbeth, then Kadzamira was his Lady. He never married her, although every state house and palace included a pair of adjacent bedrooms and cozy eating arrangements. But the Malawian people embraced her: Kamuzu's mistress was known as "Mama."
The ministry of information maintains the official Banda archive in Blantyre: the dictator's life lay in film cans,
strewn across three floors in an anonymous building. Banda was photogenic, and like the Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, he loved having his picture taken and seeing it in the papers. Cameras recorded his every speech; there are miles of footage of the Conqueror opening a bridge, inspecting a harvest, drinking tea at yet another Mother's Day celebration. It is always the same picture: the same man, in the same somber suits, carrying the same ivory-handled fly whisk. But no one was allowed to enter the archive without permission, and permission was difficult to obtain. I soon concluded that my research would be futile without official sanction from Banda's successor.
strewn across three floors in an anonymous building. Banda was photogenic, and like the Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, he loved having his picture taken and seeing it in the papers. Cameras recorded his every speech; there are miles of footage of the Conqueror opening a bridge, inspecting a harvest, drinking tea at yet another Mother's Day celebration. It is always the same picture: the same man, in the same somber suits, carrying the same ivory-handled fly whisk. But no one was allowed to enter the archive without permission, and permission was difficult to obtain. I soon concluded that my research would be futile without official sanction from Banda's successor.
Raphael Tenthani, a local journalist, told me about a press conference at Sanjika Palace, the official presidential residence in the hills overlooking the city. Malawi is peppered with presidential residences-Kamuzu built one at Zomba, the old colonial capital; at Kasungu, where he was born; and at Lilongwe, the new capital. To his credit, President Muluzi chose to live only in Sanjika.
Sangika Palace is carved out of sheer rock. The road to the palace was lined with jacaranda trees in bloom. It's a majestic estate, flanked by meticulously sculpted gardens that conceal the soccer stadium out back. I managed to befriend the press secretary,Willie Zinganie, who turned out to be an invaluable contact. He booked a presidential interview for me, and when word spread that Muluzi was willing to discuss Banda's legacy on the record, the bureaucrats began to cooperate.
Willie was partial to semisweet wine, a wretched hooch that tasted like it had been culled from the reject grapes of all southern Africa. He also liked to talk about soccer-a sport whose popularity is unbounded in the region. (Banda's backyard stadium was a shrewd political gambit: by inviting the national team onto his estate, he turned football fever to his own advantage.) Willie had been an uncompromising Journalist during the Banda years,which meant that he spent many of those years in jail. He enjoyed recounting the tale of his final indiscretion: when presidential security guards shot and killed a mountain lion on the grounds of the estate, Willie's Malawi News headline read, "Lion shot and killed at Sangika." Banda's secret police panicked. Did he mean to suggest that Kamuzu Banda-Ngwazi, the Conqueror, the all-powerful Lion-had been murdered? Was he trying to start a rebellion?
One of the first government officials who agreed to be interviewed was the Honorable Sam Mpasu, the speaker of Parliament and the first minister of information in the post-Banda era. His story of life under Banda was similarly surreal. It seems that Mpasu had written a racy pulp novel called Nobody's Friend. Malawian security agents naturally assumed that the title referred to Banda, and Mpasu spent two years in a particularly
brutal jail. He had written another book afterward, Political Prisoner3 /75, whose cover bore the detention order that put him away, signed by Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
I asked Mpasu if he remembered the moment he first heard of Kamuzu's death. "I was in Oxford attending a conference. When the news came, I felt nothing. I said to myself,'Thank God a god was no longer a god."' Mpasu said it was important to change Malawians' attitudes toward their history. He claimed that people had been "brainwashed" by the old regime.
They had certainly been browbeaten. Hastings Banda possessed a fearsome puritanical streak: in the late 1960s, when Malawi, Rhodesia, and South Africa all outlawed television, Banda went further, lecturing young women on the evils of the miniskirt and hectoring young men to eschew Afros and dreadlocks. Banda fulminated against the latest fashions, routinely banning dangerous imports like flared trousers. Kamuzu's rule was paternalistic in the extreme: though he called himself the Father of the Nation, his stodginess made him seem more like a grandparent. Indeed, he was old enough to be the grandfather of many young Malawians who dutifully followed his prescriptions.
Since Banda's downfall, things have begun to change. Young women wear trousers and makeup; the miniskirt is now ubiquitous. In some urban areas, prostitutes stalk the streets practically naked.Young men with dreadlocks peddle art and incense. The older generation decries the new dispensation; for them, the children of democracy are AIDS, bank robberies, carjacking, and murder. One wag put it succinctly: It's better to
be ruled by one lion than by a thousand rats.
Aubrey Simbuleta, another young Malawian journalist, told me that the changes in Blantyre were only superficial.In fact, he said, most of the country hadn't changed much at all these last five years. There were still villages where no one believed that Banda was dead, let alone that he had been a tyrant. Simbuleta
claimed that across the countryside, people still hung Banda's portrait in their huts.
Malawi is an extraordinarily fertile country: driving the byways, we saw fields crowded with maize and tobacco; children stood by the side of the road selling fish, coconuts, and fruit.We passed a young man who had just been married. He was carrying his new bride and their baby on his bicycle, pedaling furiously to get to his village before nightfall.
We saw a group of masked men dancing in the bushes by the road, trailed by a small but enthusiastic crowd who clapped and sang along in encouragement. Our driver said that the dancers were called Chinyawes. They were essentially a secret society, founded eons ago. It was said that they could create thunder and lightning with their dances, and children were especially terrified of them. Banda's Malawi was officially intolerant of tribalism and factionalism, but he never moved against the Chinyawes, perhaps because he had himself been an initiate. (The only religious group he did see fit to persecute, oddly enough, was the Jehovah's Witnesses-a fairly large minority in colonial Nyasaland.When the Malawi Congress Party moved to organize village people in the 1950s, the Witnesses demurred: for them allegiance to God was exclusive of nation and party. Banda never forgave them, and they were frequently tortured in Malawian jails.)
Suddenly, from beyond a cluster of eucalyptust rees,a strangee dificer oset oward the skies. I asked the driver to stop. It was a dilapidated castle; its roof had collapsed,a nd there were vines growing over its disintegrating walls. It looked like the kind of thing you might see in Venice, or Leeds, or Banda's beloved Scotland. A battered sign half-submerged in red dirt announced that we were standing among the ruins of the Mpanga Young Pioneers Training Centre, one of the most notorious schools for Banda's "boys." Malawian teenagers came hereto learn about agriculture, mechanics, and carpentry. They were also trained in the art of defending Banda's honor, and they were largely responsible for the nationwide paranoia that accompanied his rule. These were no Boy Scouts. Some Young Pioneers were trained in Israel or the Soviet Union, and they were better equipped than the army. It was the Pioneers' responsibility to harass and murder Banda's opponents, maintain order and public dignity, and enforce Kamuzu's peculiar edicts. Although the Pioneers were most often deployed against political enemies, they also intervened in domestic affairs: if a wife, irate at her husband's infidelity, told aYoung Pioneer that he had saids omethinga bout Kamuzu's advancing age, the unfortunate husband might be packed off to jail.
A slight man in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved khaki shirt rose hastily from a deck chair as we pulled up. He
was a policeman, it turned out, and he carried an ornate baton that looked like a riding crop. He saluted and told us that he was guarding the property from further molestation; the castle was slated to become a school for prison guards. When I asked what had happened to the place, he explained that it was one of the casualties of the democracy movement that had finally removed Banda from power. In the early 1990s, when Malawians took to the streets in great numbers, the army refused to quell the disturbances. Months went by; the army dithered; finally, the Young Pioneers decided to act. This was a turning point in Malawi's history: in November 1993, as the country prepared to vote in the referendum on democracy and the Young Pioneers prepared a campaign of violence and intimidation, the army moved against them. It demanded that the Pioneers surrender their weapons. When they refused, the army laid siege to training centers across the country, including this one.
On the outskirts of the castle there were a number of smaller, more modest buildings. These must have been classrooms or dormitories. Sunlights treamed through gaps in the roof, revealing thousands of shoes, rotting away, spilling out of broken closets. Pots and pans lay rusting in corners. Along the walls of one room, Banda's four-part slogan was painted in black, red, and green-the colors of Banda's Malawi Congress Party.
"Loyalty,Obedience, Discipline, Unity!"
"Loyalty,Obedience, Discipline, Unity!"
* * *
The first city we visited was Zomba, the old colonial capital, thirty miles north of Blantyre. The city was also the site of Zomba Prison, a warehouse for political prisoners that had long symbolized Banda's repressive regime; Willie Zinganie had arranged for us to see the place. But by the time we arrived at the prison, we were nearly six hours late for our appointment.
The first city we visited was Zomba, the old colonial capital, thirty miles north of Blantyre. The city was also the site of Zomba Prison, a warehouse for political prisoners that had long symbolized Banda's repressive regime; Willie Zinganie had arranged for us to see the place. But by the time we arrived at the prison, we were nearly six hours late for our appointment.
The prison was an imposing square structure, surrounded by barbed wire and khaki-clad policemen. As I tried to enter the building, six wardens appeared at the door.Why was I so late? The chief warden took me into his office to explain the rules of engagement: Willie had told the warden that I would like to see the cells of famous prisoners like Orton Chirwa and his wife,Vera. Therefore, I could see those two, and no more. I tried to suggest that Zinganie had intended no such restriction, but I was summarily dismissed.
The Chirwas were both English trained lawyers and founding members of the Nyasaland African Congress, and they were among those who had invited Banda back from his European exile to become the figurehead of the struggle against the British. It was the logic of African nationalism at the time: creating outsized heroes would focus and inspire the masses; too many leaders would dilute the movement's effectiveness. And it worked: as his deputies relentlessly compared him to Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Jesus Christ, Banda's authority swelled.
Only later, after the achievement of independence in 1964, did they realize the mistake they had made. Banda enjoyed exercising unlimited power, and he brooked no dissent; further more, he was convinced that Malawi-landlocked, flanked by Portuguese Mozambique to the west, south, and east-had to go its own way in African affairs. As Banda's minister of justice, Orton Chirwa tried to criticize the president's increasing authoritarianism, along with his policy of constructive engagement with Malawi's white-ruled neighbors.
This was the cabinet crisis of 1964. Banda, furious, fired his entire government, unleashing the full power of the state on his "treacherous" ministers. Most of them, including Orton and Vera Chirwa, fled into exile; a few took up arms in an abortive attempt to rally the Malawian people against the Father of the Nation.
The Chirwas made it to Dar es Salaam, where they found work as teachers and became part of a community of expatriate Malawians. But there was nowhere Banda's agents could not reach. Still on the run, the Chirwas eventually reached Zambia. But in I979 they and their teenaged son were abducted at gunpoint on their way to Sunday mass. They were brought back to Malawi, bound and gagged, and sent straight to Zomba Prison. Orton Chirwa, the man who had once served as Banda's personal lawyer, died in 199I of an illness caused by the prison's miserable conditions.Vera Chirwa, a few hundred feet away in the women's wing, knew nothing of her husband's ill health-she had seen him only once in twelve years. She was forbidden to attend his funeral.
When we arrived, Zomba Prison was no longer stocked with political dissidents; it was now full to bursting with actual criminals. Indeed, the prison population was exploding, and it was not uncommon for prisoners to go without food for a week or more, because there wasn't enough money to feed them. Banda had made prisoners grow their own vegetables, but that practice has been discontinued by the new regime, perhaps in an effort to make a clean break with the past.Walking through the courtyard of the prison with my chaperons,
I glimpsed scores of men gathered behind one water tap, waiting for a drink.
As the sun set over the large redbrick edifice, I saw eleven numbered shirts hanging on the barbed wire fence. They belonged to the prison warders' soccerteam; tomorrow was the big gameagainst the police.
* * *
Lake Malawi is the country's lifeblood. In Mozambique, on the eastern shore, it's still known as Lake Nyasa-a colonial misnomer with a life of its own. Nyasa is the word for "lake" in Nyanja, one of Malawi's three major languages. Legend has it that when Dr. Livingstone first encountered the seemingly infinite watery
expanse, he asked, "What is that?" "Nyasa," came the answer, and so the great explorer christened another colony for the British crown. Though the British have come and gone, people still use the lake as they have for thousands of years: they fish in small canoes, casting nets in groups of two or three. In the early hours of the morning, the lakeside is filled with women and children repairing the nets while men haul in catches of chambo, the nation's favorite fish.
Lake Malawi is the country's lifeblood. In Mozambique, on the eastern shore, it's still known as Lake Nyasa-a colonial misnomer with a life of its own. Nyasa is the word for "lake" in Nyanja, one of Malawi's three major languages. Legend has it that when Dr. Livingstone first encountered the seemingly infinite watery
expanse, he asked, "What is that?" "Nyasa," came the answer, and so the great explorer christened another colony for the British crown. Though the British have come and gone, people still use the lake as they have for thousands of years: they fish in small canoes, casting nets in groups of two or three. In the early hours of the morning, the lakeside is filled with women and children repairing the nets while men haul in catches of chambo, the nation's favorite fish.
Nkhotakota is the major town on Lake Malawi, some 130 miles north of Zomba. There are hot springs here,
which makes Nkhotakota an appealing destination for foreign tourists. Among Malawians, it is more famous as the home of chamba-not a fish, but that entrancing breed of marijuana known to Bob Marley as Malawi Gold. Despite Banda's puritanism, and despite the best efforts of his successor, the people of Nkhotakota continue to earn their living by cultivating the plant. There are families that have been growing marijuana for generations. I wanted to see the chamba fields for myself, but I was told it was too dangerous: chamba farmers have survived decades of state harassment by filling the area with inexpensive but deadly traps. Along the footpaths to their villages, an intruder might disappear int one of the innumerable snake-filled pits.
which makes Nkhotakota an appealing destination for foreign tourists. Among Malawians, it is more famous as the home of chamba-not a fish, but that entrancing breed of marijuana known to Bob Marley as Malawi Gold. Despite Banda's puritanism, and despite the best efforts of his successor, the people of Nkhotakota continue to earn their living by cultivating the plant. There are families that have been growing marijuana for generations. I wanted to see the chamba fields for myself, but I was told it was too dangerous: chamba farmers have survived decades of state harassment by filling the area with inexpensive but deadly traps. Along the footpaths to their villages, an intruder might disappear int one of the innumerable snake-filled pits.
If I could not walk the fields, I would nevertheless sample the harvest: I bought a bag of marijuana for about $20. The traders seemed to be all women, and I made first contact in an innocuous-looking village. We conducted our business over supper, as the sun went down. The women complained about the police, but no one talked about getting out of the business. Eighty-seven percent of Nkhotakota's population lives below the poverty line: if they were not fishermen, they were farmers; and if they were neither, Malawi Gold put food on the table.
Our next stop was Lilongwe, 80 miles south and west of Nkhotakota. Lilongwe became the official capital in 1975. It was built with the help of the South Africans-years of friendly relations with the pariah government to the south allowed Banda to build this vast, sprawling city, larger and more modern than Blantyre. Blantyre remained Banda's main base, because many businesses and banks were there, but Lilongwe felt more like an African capital-there were crowds, music, markets, bars, and endless townships; expatriate Nigerians, Cameroonians, Tanzanians, and Zimbabweans; tourists from Holland, the United States, and England. But more than anything, there was dust: the architects of Lilongwe didn't foresee the consequences of building a city on these dusty plains. Lilongwe attaches itself to everyone who passes through; at the end of each day, you must remove it in the shower-brown-red dust, running down the drain.
When we arrived in Lilongwe, the controversy over the last general election was reaching its peak. Banda's old MCP was convinced that the election had been rigged; party officials had been quoted as saying that if President Muluzi did not order a recount, they would go "into the bush" to prove they were the real winners.
There were roadblocks everywhere, and the army was carrying out house-to house searches-ostensibly to make sure no weapons were being stockpiled. Muluzi wanted to demonstrate to Malawians (and the international business community) that he was in control of the country, including the armed forces. It was
tense.
Our plans for Lilongwe were set back by an inopportune sweep of our hotel. One of my traveling companions was caught with enough marijuana to send him to prison. Having seen Malawi's prison system first hand, I was extremely concerned. But when I went to the police station to press my friend's case, the officer in charge invited me into the cafeteria and offered me a beer. We had a perfectly pleasant conversation, and eventually he asked how much I thought my friend's fine should be. I named my price, and he suggested it was a little low. By the next morning, my friend was out.
On the way back to Blantyre, we marveled at the constant reminders of Kamuzu. There was a Kamuzu Bridge at almost every river crossing; the main highway that we traveled-the only highway in the country-is Kamuzu Highway; the country's top high school is Kamuzu Academy. The airport at Lilongwe only recently ceased to be known as Kamuzu International Airport. And yet Malawianso ften seem reluctant to pronounce Banda's name. Some of the people we spoke to call him "He who was here before." Does his name still conjuret he dictator's wrath?
Sam Mpasu had agreed to be filmed in his former cell at Mikuyu, the dank heart of Banda's dictatorshipI. t's a prison in the middle of nowhere, memorialized by the novelist Jack Mpanga in The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993). Inside, it was little more than four dormitories where eighty prisoners shared a floor and a toilet. The new government has made Mikuyu into a museum; the chains and the handcuffs are still embedded in cement, as they were when Mpasu was detained here. I noticed a grubby line marking the wall beneath the three small windows like a scar. Mpasu explained that the line was created by people's feet: "If we heard anything the approach of a Land Rover-everyone jumped up to try and catch a glimpse of the world outside."
Mikuyu is resplendent with little ironies. The man who built Mikuyu in 1970 had flown to South Africa's infamous Robben Island to copy aspects of its architecture; he ended up dying in Mikuyu. Focus Gwende, the leader of the secret police, turned up in Mikuyu. Today, most people blame Banda for these decisions, but they weren't necessarily his. His culture of suspicion made every policeman a judge. Banda's signature appeared on every detention order, but it was only a stencil. Every police station had a rubber stamp.
I had come to Malawi looking for traces of Hastings Banda, but it had become clear that, five years after his death, Kamuzu is impossible to avoid. He engineered his own immortality, affixed himself permanently to the shifting landscape. Malawians still talk in hushed tones about Ngulu Ya Nawambe, "the King's House," Banda's fortress in Kasungu, his birthplace. It's an obscenely opulent palace, painted in pink, built into the hills and surrounded by poverty. Then there is New State House in Lilongwe, which now houses all 179 members
of the Malawian Parliament. The parliament secretary, Roosevelt Gondwe, had shown me around the place; it took four hours to see all the rooms. "If you were to turn on every light and electrical appliance in the state house,"he told me, "Lilongwe would be plunged into darkness.Malawi has no oil, but Banda built petroleum tanks underground. To this day, we are still using the gas from those tanks for government vehicles. Banda wanted to make sure that if there should ever be a fuel crisis in Malawi, Banda would keep on running."
of the Malawian Parliament. The parliament secretary, Roosevelt Gondwe, had shown me around the place; it took four hours to see all the rooms. "If you were to turn on every light and electrical appliance in the state house,"he told me, "Lilongwe would be plunged into darkness.Malawi has no oil, but Banda built petroleum tanks underground. To this day, we are still using the gas from those tanks for government vehicles. Banda wanted to make sure that if there should ever be a fuel crisis in Malawi, Banda would keep on running."
In the end, not even a dictator can control the power he has created: absolute power has a character of its own, unfettered by mortality. In 1994 Muluzi, the former secretary general of Banda's Malawi Congress Party, defeated his old boss. Will President Muluzi be able to outrun Banda's shadow? He doesn't seem like the type of man who would declare himself president-for-life. And yet Muluzi has willingly adopted Kamuzu's
trappings of power: women dance for him at the airport, and his ministers call him "His Excellency." Ofcourse, there are no automatic jail sentences for dissent and opposition; Malawians are free to criticize him. For now.
trappings of power: women dance for him at the airport, and his ministers call him "His Excellency." Ofcourse, there are no automatic jail sentences for dissent and opposition; Malawians are free to criticize him. For now.
* *
Near the end of my stay in Malawi, I received word that Cecilia Kadzamira, Banda's Official Hostess, had agreed to see me. It was her first interview in ten years. When I met her at her modest house on the outskirts of Blantyre, she was wearing a silky white dress decorated with large blue lilies. She had a slight limp, but at sixty-four years old, she was still quite prim and still beautiful, the personification of Banda's aesthetic. We sat in a room full of pictures: Banda and Cecilia with Queen Elizabeth, with Princess Diana and Prince Charles, with the king and queen of Spain, with the gold tycoon Tiny Rowland, with Henry Kissinger, with countless other dignitaries and captains of industry. Her servants brought us tea and pancakes.
It all seemed a little much. I suggested that many Malawians resent the wealth that Banda accumulated during his reign. I asked her whether she understood the criticism of Banda's opulent lifestyle. She was incredulous. "No, I wouldn't understand it. Dr. Banda had money before he came to rescue his country. It was his money that set up the Nyasaland African Congress. But now it has all changed, everyone says Dr. Banda stole your cattle, your chickens your eggs.They say he was a dictator. A dictator? Yes! But he was a dictator by the will of the people.They wanted him to be Life President. They bestowed his titles on him. He was a dictator by the will of the people."
A cockroach crawled across the lapel of her well-ironed dress. I tried to change the subject. I asked if Banda had ever told her anything about his childhood. She smiled. "I remember one story he used to love to tell after dinner. He said that when he was about twelve, he could already hunt for himself. There was a great lack of food in Kasungu, where he was raised. He was supposed to provide for his family, so he walked for miles in the forest hoping to find a hare or a deer to kill. But then he came across a leopard that had just made a kill of a large antelope. Only half the antelope had been eaten; the leopard seemed to be playing with its food. Kamuzu crawled on his hands and knees until he was a few feet away. The leopard watched him-"
At this point she broke into a giggle. "You should have heard it from him. He said he was determined not to blink. He watched the leopard watching him and carried on, staring at it without blinking. Finally the leopard got bored and walked away."She laughed again, more heartily this time. "Kamuzu took the remains of the kill and was able to provide for his family."
If Hastings Banda planned to ensure that death could not erase him from Malawi's national consciousness he was successful. Perhaps too successful. His words and image and legacy are so insistently trumpeted that his very existence has started to seem like propaganda. Was there ever a Hastings Banda? Did he really rule Malawi for thirty-three years? Who was it who died at Johannesburg's Garden City Clinic on November 25, 1997? The Young Pioneers were the bedrock of Banda's power: it was their responsibility to harass and murder his opponents, maintain order, and enforce Kamuzu's peculiar edicts.
As I traversed the country, talking to people, I heard a curious unofficial biography of the Father of the Nation. It was said that Hastings Banda died in the United States while in medical school in the I940s. A fellow student named Richard Armstrong-an African American- had befriended the lonely Banda, and when Banda died, Armstrong took his place. They say Armstrong learned the young Kamuzus' life and history with
the same deliberateness he had applied to medicine. They say it was Armstrong who returned to Malawi in 1958. He revealed his true identity to a small band of collaborators who paid Banda's relatives in Kasungu to keep quiet. Had Malawi been liberated from the British by an American?
the same deliberateness he had applied to medicine. They say it was Armstrong who returned to Malawi in 1958. He revealed his true identity to a small band of collaborators who paid Banda's relatives in Kasungu to keep quiet. Had Malawi been liberated from the British by an American?
Over and over, I heard stories like this. There's the tale of an elderly aunt from Kasungu who knew Banda as a child. After he became president-for-life he invited all of his aunts to come and live in his state houses. But they knew something was amiss and insisted that Banda show them his toe, which he had injured while working in the garden at the age of twelve. Flustered, Banda ordered all the aunts sent home.
Is this the man whose messianic presence hovers over Malawi today? Was Hastings Banda pure myth, even before he assumed power? Has his death changed anything? Maybe it doesn't matter who he was. He instilled a fierce sense of pride among the inhabitants of one of the poorest countries in Africa. What kind of actor would have been able to pull that off without detection? One with a very strong will, indeed.
