I See Africa Africa in Memories of Kamuzu

In our Warm Heart of Africa, Africa’s most colourful but somber-faced flags stand and solemnly guard a hero well fallen in the storm of memories. Honoured and treasured in a tomb more than $600, 000 – a site all that see Africa should see, this Africa’s warrior sleeps in the Capital of Malawi now for ever.

Feared and great in his fighting times, fallen in his end, yet greater in our sober memories; he was one Africa’s rare son, Africa’s fighting and liberating spirit only fallen down in the memories of many as Malawi’s dictator.
Remembered in a storm of mixed feelings, but the wise ones know that memories are the best honour given of the dead. We also know virtues of the dead grow taller than their sins once buried.

Great men remember him well. Even of his tyranny, “We can forgive, but not forget”, says Jack Mapanje, now Malawi’s world-class poet who suffered a share of the worse of Kamuzu Banda’s times. He was complex, yes, and is in Western media described as “part African, part Victorian, part Mussolini, part Monty Python”.

Yet, "Notwithstanding his public image, he was a man who did many things people did not know about." And this is the voice of Nelson Mandela, a great man. "He did something that despite his image was unbelievable," Mandela said. This great fighter remembers Kanuzu as a Pan-African liberator fighter who “ensured that liberation armies had the necessary weapons to conduct their struggle.” What voice can outweigh Mandela?

And our wise ancestors knew it better, long before. They thought and said, “A child will remain dear and precious to the mother no matter how despicable to the public he might be. [Chiipira achaje make nati mwana].” Kamuzu’s government walked us through a storm where some were lost on the way, yes, but perhaps he was greater than we have said – for he was a Statesman of Africa: a true nationalist and liberator.

Great men know it well, and one Africa’s Statesman of our time describes him as “a great intellectual.” President Bingu wa Mutharika remembers well, “He was a man I greatly respected for his vision of Malawi, his wisdom and his statesmanship. I respected him as a great intellectual.”

And yes, we all remember the last of the wisdom of Kamuzu Banda. He accepted change. When the storm of change had begun to drift us into democratic times, Banda advised his followers not to resist inevitable change. How wise! And he bowed out of power honourably even after books had indelibly written that he was “The Life President of Malawi”, in vernacular ‘wamuyaya’ – meaning ‘the Eternal One’. It takes wisdom to accept how finite in nature and power Man is – and he “accepted defeat in an extraordinary show of mutual graciousness” as Bill Keller of The New York Times remembers. This single act of wisdom is now out to laugh with wide-mouthed mockery at the foolhardy of those African leaders who think can stay in power eternally.
Sadly, Banda’s political mistakes cast a hardly thin dark cloud over his virtues. The media world over has not seen the face of Africa in his statesmanship, unfortunately. Otherwise, he was a man whose greatness tiptoes on the heels of Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela once we have learnt to “Forgive but not forget,” and to remember him soberly.

He saw from a sober distance, he came from the clouds, fought and conquered. But he slipped into traps of power, and fell into the rest of those gone before us, gone never to return. A people without memory stagger into the danger of losing their destiny, lest we forget. Kamuzu Banda may be remembered as a dictator, yet a visionary nationalist in whom I see Africa liberated.
The year Kamuzu did not live to see, 2007, marked exactly half a century when Africa first got liberated from colonial claws. It was a year counting the last finger to a decade after his soul slept. This is the year when the gold dust of Ghana’s 50th Anniversary dances stirred with Mother Africa’s memories of her first independence. Now we have walked half a century of a storm questions. How long Africa? Wither Africa?

The destiny of Africa as a continent has always been decided by two counter-opposing forces. The force of exploiters and that of liberators. And Malawi has a place less talked about in the wars of Africa’s liberation. While the much of the continent had not figured out what the parasites of colonialism, Malawi had a John Chilembwe who took guns against the White man as early as 1915.

When the next storm of liberation swept across Africa, and Kwame Nkrumah led the war against colonialism, Kamuzu was there with him – fighting.

Nkrumah led Ghana’s independence from the British on 6 March 1957, and tattooed marks of the beginning of Africa’s political liberation. “But Ghana was more than just the beginning” says Julius Nyerere, for “Ghana inspired and deliberately spearheaded the independence struggle of the rest of Africa.”

This was a war of liberation launched at a grand scale, liberation from Africa’s worst repressive dictators. The colonialists did not just butcher, oppress and exploit us, but despite whatever development, they dehumanized and demonized us more than any other African dictator. Colonialists killed the soul of Africa, killed our dignity and made us look the West as a god of our salvation without which Africa cannot survive.

And since colonialism, says Ghana’s own celebrated novelist, poet and scholar – Ayi Kwei Armah, “the continent has been under a steady, devastating assault … [wreaked by] the work of thieves, murderers, pirates and all sorts of conscienceless adventurers driven by just one bloody god: profit.” He writes in his latest novel, The Eloquence of the Scribes.

When Nkrumah rose to lead the liberation of the land, the dignity and the soul of the butchered, exploited and dehumanized Africans, and Kamuzu was there, in that dust of independence. He was a great friend of Nkrumah’s, and a nationalist who strategically moved from Britain to Ghana in 1953 to practice medicine. Knowing the collective nationalist spirit of the leaders then, Kamuzu must have certainly been part of Ghana’s war for liberation. He was there.

Kamuzu and Nkrumah came a long way. They were there at the Pan-African Congress meeting of intellectuals of 1945 in Manchester. This “gave great impetus to the movement for African independence and fostered African leadership of the Pan-African movement.” They were there, sharing the fire, the vision and the Great Dream to free Africa.

Like a flower blossoming at a bright dawn, the Great Dream flourished into reality on Ghana’s sunrise. But Kamuzu did not wait to bask and enjoy in the Africa’s great sunrise for he had a good fight to fight. “The country’s independence inspired him to pack his bags and go to Malawi to join the independence struggle,” writes Dr. Kenneth Kaunda.

In 1958, Kamuzu arrived from the clouds at Chileka Airport against the storm of resistance mounted by the colonial exploiters and butchers who came to civilize us.

But Kamuzu Banda brought five things from Ghana. First was the great dream of Africa’s liberation. Then came the fighting spirit. Kamuzu brought a shared vision to develop the liberated country too. He shared Nkrumah’s political system. But perhaps the saddest thing Kamuzu brought home was fear – it is this that began to make Kamuzu a dictator.

Nkrumah’s vision of liberation was for the whole Africa. This great son of Africa, whom Namibia’s Sam Nujoma describes as “the epitome of pan-Africanism” who “moved mountains” of hope and walked shadowy “valleys of death in order to selflessly achieve freedom and independence for the people of Africa.” He wanted Ghana developed and Africa united because the independence of one country “is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.”

Kamuzu-Banda did not selfishly just come to liberate Nyasaland only, now Malawi. He came to free Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe which then formed the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. “I have come to break the stupid federation,” he said and he did just that. He launched the process of liberating the Zambians and Zimbabweans too. And Kenneth Kaunda saw it all, and honoured Kamuzu with a Doctor of Letters as the Destroyer of the Federation.
Even after liberating Malawi, one more thing haunted Kamuzu’s Ghana dreams. Zimbabwe’s liberation war was long drawn and bloody. Kamuzu fought with Zimbabweans in the Chimurenga Wars. He financed resistant guerrilla groups of Zimbabwe.

It is said he fought on the side of RENAMO in Mozambique, which for him was a war against Communism. Kamuzu was not a man could stand an ideology he despised right in his neighbourhood. He was a fighter who thought in regional spheres!


But Africa’s war of liberation from colonialism has been long drawn across time and space, running over 37 years from the first independence to the last one – from Ghana to South Africa. The gracious memories of Julius Nyerere take us across, “In 1994, we celebrated our final triumph when apartheid was crushed and Nelson Mandela was installed as the president of South Africa.”

Kamuzu was there in the beginning of independence, and in the end too. He was part of the last of the victories against colonialism in South Africa. Malawi financially assisted Nelson Mandela in an under-cover-of-darkness war against the Apartheid regime he befriended during day.
But indeed, both D.D. Phiri (the walking archives) and Mzati Nkolokosa the erudite journalist agree that “Kamuzu was very shrewd in his foreign policy.” He fooled the Apartheid regime.


Kamuzu openly defied the international community and feasted at the same table with the South African Apartheid regime. But he turned round supported Mandela in his fight against the same Apartheid system – for the sake of the liberation of Blacks.

Perhaps the longest lasting memories are the smiles of Mandela after the last of the wars against colonial oppression and dehumanisation. "He did something that despite his image was unbelievable," testifies Mandela, and “he ensured that liberation armies had the necessary weapons to conduct their struggle”. This Great Mandela recalls that when he came to Blantyre after his release to ask for financial assistance for the African National Congress, Kamuzu Banda had "responded magnificently" and sent large sums of money despite his open links with Apartheid.

This is the Kamuzu Banda who befriended Whites at every official level, even loved part of Western lifestyles to merit the portrayal of “an eccentric leader in three-piece suit and homburg”. Yet, he did not smile at much of the nonsense of the Whites. He fought the British and remained a great friend of the Queen of England.

If Nkrumah started the liberation, and Mandela concluded it, Kamuzu was actively all there despite invisibly like the spirit of the age. But the Nkrumah whom Sam Nujoma agrees to have been “the Indomitable Lion of Africa” was a great leader. And in President Bingu wa Mutharika’s words, “It was Kamuzu’s rare leadership quality that led to Egyptian president Abdel Nasser to name him “Lion of Africa”.

Yet these great men were haunted by fear of the forces of ill-will. Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party as a result formed a military wing parallel to the state machinery. Our roaring Lion pounced and dragged home that too by forming Malawi Young Pioneers, a well trained and disciplined but ruthless military wing beside the red-shirted notoriously hardnosed Youth League.

Nkrumah was haunted by six attempts at his life. Once, a grenade was thrown into his convoy and Kamuzu must have been awakened by the life-begging cries of fractured souls, and the crimson carnage from which his friend survived.

Finally, Nkrumah was toppled in a coup while in flight on a peace mission to Vietnam where America was at war. Africa was shot in mid-flight on that day of a darkening sky, 24 February 1966. Africa stepped into a season of coups and civil wars for the years that followed.
Yet the American leadership must have been rejoicing. Recently declassified files now testify that the CIA had engineered the mid-flight coup with a smiling blessing from the British as Nkrumah was flying too high for the world. But the plot was delivered by local collaborators of Ghana, Nkrumah’s own brothers.

The shrewd and complex Kamuzu Banda clearly developed fears and became too suspicious of his own brothers. How could he tell whether they were not local collaborators? Kamuzu would fight anyone suspected of plotting to shoot down Malawi’s flight to a greater destiny, for Kamuzu paradoxically had the vision and welfare of the people. The fear of a mid-flight coup of his agenda must have made Kamuzu a dictator.

Malawians walked their dignity in his days. One international journalist remembers, “No matter how menial their occupation, Malawians have never thought of themselves as slaves. They were sages, unfazed by the arrogance of their wealthier neighbours.”

That season of the self-worth and the dignity of a people was eroded with the Bakili Muluzi flood of change when the national leader himself public bragged of being an international beggar.
As we remember Malawi’s Kamuzu Banda and international place in political liberation, it has become impossible now to see President Bingu wa Mutharika’s international place in Africa’s economic liberation. After years of talking about SADC and COMESA regional blocs whose land was hardly connected, Bingu has brought the Shire-Zambezi Water way that opens up countries that thought are landlocked, as countries in the region physically open to each other more than ever.

Bingu stood in Paris and told Europe to perceive and support Africa become “an economic partner in development” who should be supported to generate its capital rather than support Africa to play the beggar for ever. And this was a new African visionary of Africa speaking to the world. When Bingu fearlessly told the world at the United Nations to stop playing the hypocrite and accept the Republic of China into the fold of the world – and Malawi went into diplomatic ties with the RoC in the eyes of Mainland China, it was a vision of a new world coming from Malawi.
In seeing Bingu, I we remember Ngwazi Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda the international Statesman. So, the female Chewa Senior Chief whose tongue slipped into calling Bingu our “Ngwazi” (meaning fighter, liberator) must have wisely seen Africa rising with Bingu to the heights Kamuzu reached for before he fell into washed memories of a dictator.

Soon, the world is seeing through the eyes Bingu’s global an economic liberator and beacon of Africa who confesses, admires and walks the towering stature of Kamuzu the political liberator. Even Great Mandela Mandela warmly testifies Malawi’s “unbelievable” liberation wars fought in the storms of controversy.

For whatever his story, Kamuzu has a place in the Heart of Africa, in the storm of memories that blow away tears of seasons gone.