Part 15 (2/2)
NKRUMAH, FRANCIS KWAME (19001972). First president of Ghana and onetime friend of Hastings Banda, Nkrumah was born in Nkroful, Western Ghana (then the Gold Coast). He attended Catholic mission schools before proceeding to Achimota College, where he trained as a teacher, qualifying in 1930. He taught in primary schools until 1935 when he left for Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where, four years later, he graduated, having majored in economics and sociology. Nkrumah went on to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1945, registered at the London School of Economics, University of London. In London, he became active in Pan-African politics and was a joint secretary at the Fifth Pan-African Conference in Manchester in 1945. While in London, he also became friends with many future African leaders who were studying or working in England, among them Dr. Hastings Banda.
When Banda became angry because of the establishment of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953, he left England for Ghana and lived there for five years. By 1953, Nkrumah's Convention People's Party was the majority party in the Legislative Council (LEGCO), and in 1957 Ghana became independent, followed by republican status within the British Commonwealth three years later. In 1966, Nkrumah was overthrown by a military junta. He died in exile in Romania in April 1972. But even before his death, Nkrumah's relations with Banda were no longer warm because of differences on foreign policy, particularly Banda's close relations with the settler colonies of southern Africa. Nkrumah, a strongly committed Pan-Africanist, went to the extent of advocating the formation of an African military force to help the African peoples in those regions regain independence.
NKUDZI BAY. Located immediately south of Nkope Bay in Mangochi district, Nkudzi Bay forms part of the fis.h.i.+ng areas of Lake Malawi and is the site of many holiday homes owned by companies and individuals. The bay area is also an archaeological site identified with the late Iron Age.
NKULA. See ELECTRICITY.
Nk.u.mBULA, HARRY MWAANGA (19161983). Zambia's early nationalist leader, Nk.u.mbula was born in Namwala district, completed the teachers course in 1934, and for 12 years taught in this area's schools and in the copper belt region of that country. In 1942, he went to England to study advanced teacher education and, while there, also attended the London School of Economics. In London, he began to play an active role in Pan-Africanist activities, working with future leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, Hastings Banda, and the West Indian, George Padmore, whom he had admired since his youth. Nk.u.mbula strongly campaigned against the introduction of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and, in 1951, he and Banda wrote Federation in Central Africa, detailing their opposition to the proposed union.
In that year, Nk.u.mbula returned to Zambia (then called Northern Rhodesia) and, within a short time, became leader of the Northern Rhodesia African Congress, renaming it the African National Congress. In January 1955, the government accused Nk.u.mbula and Kenneth Kaunda, the party's secretary general, of distributing banned literature and imprisoned them for two months. Three years later, he and Kaunda parted company's when the latter formed his own Zambia African National Congress, which later became the United National Independence Party (UNIP) and went on to win the elections leading to independence on 24 October 1964. Although Nk.u.mbula's African National Congress attempted a major revival in 1968, it was defeated in the general elections of that year. In 1973, he joined the UNIP, and five years later unsuccessfully contested for its leaders.h.i.+p. He died on 8 October 1983.
NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs). In 2011, about 200 NGOs operated in Malawi. Nonprofit, private, and voluntary agencies with no ties to government, NGOs have been active in Malawi throughout the postcolonial period. Until the political reforms in the early 1990s, they were mostly concerned with economic development, an adequate supply of clean water, poverty alleviation, and general health improvement. Some are religious, others secular. Some, including Oxfam, World Vision, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and Save the Children Fund, are divisions of international organizations with headquarters outside Malawi; others are Malawian in origin but are dependent on funds and some technical a.s.sistance from abroad. Typical of these is the Christian Service Committee, which, besides its own development projects, allocates some of its funds to other NGOs such as Christian Health a.s.sociation of Malawi (CHAM). Others still solicit external financial and technical a.s.sistance but also rely heavily on funds raised within Malawi and on local volunteers; among such NGOs are the Red Cross, the Malawi Council for the Handicapped (MACOHA), and the Leprosy Relief a.s.sociation (LEPRA). Human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and Africa Watch were never allowed to work in President Hastings Banda's Malawi, and the reports that they wrote on the country were based on, among other sources, confidential stringers based in Malawi, contacts in the diplomatic corps, and religious organizations.
Since the early 1990s, human rights and civil liberties agencies have become an accepted part of Malawi's civic society. Among them are the Center of Human Rights Rehabilitation, Centre for Youth and Children Affairs, Civil Liberties Committee, and Malawi Center for Advice, Research and Education on Rights (CARER). Nearly all NGOs are members of the umbrella organization, Council for Non-Governmental Organizations in Malawi (CONGOMA).
NORTH CHARTERLAND EXPLORATION COMPANY. Formed in 1895, this London-based company in that the British South Africa Company (BSAC) had a 30 percent share, bought the mining concessions which Karl Wiese had secured from Mpezeni, the Ngoni chief. In 1896, Mpezeni granted the company permission to prospect for gold in his area, but increased European activity in the area and the possibility of losing their independence to the British worried the Ngoni. When the suspicions led to the death of some European prospectors, Wiese asked for a.s.sistance, which came from the British Central African Administration in Zomba. Colonel William Manning led the British Central African Rifles to fight the Ngoni under the command of Mpezeni's son, Nsingu. The latter were defeated and the area came under the administration of the company, which proceeded to divide most of the prime land among European settlers. The company also established new administrative headquarters at Fort Jameson.
NORTH NYASA NATIVE a.s.sOCIATION. Formed in 1912 at Karonga boma, this was the first organization that sought to improve the social and economic welfare of localities. Although traditional rulers such as Peter Mwakasungula, future Kyungu of the Ngonde, were founding members, its leaders.h.i.+p and active members.h.i.+p consisted of Western-educated individuals, mostly clerks, teachers, and preachers. Among its founders were Levi Mumba, Robert Sambo Mhango, and Peter Mwakangula who was also its first president. Among its non-African supporters were Dr. Meredith Sanderson, medical officer at Karonga, and Dr. Robert Laws, head of the Livingstonia Mission.
NORTH NYASA NATIVE RESERVES COMMISSION. This commission was appointed in 1929 to settle the matter of three million acres of land in North Nyasa district (most of the current Rumphi, Karonga, and Chitipa districts) given to the British South Africa Company in the era of Harry Johnston's Certificate of Claims. Many indigenous people lived on this land, and among the possibilities facing the commissioners was either to remove the African occupants to enable the company to lease it to Europeans or to let Africans use it for their own socioeconomic development. In the end, the commission recommended that the company abandon its claim to freehold of the land on the a.s.surance of retention of the mineral rights.
NORTH RUKURU. One of the main sources of Lake Malawi waters, the North Rukuru River rises in the slopes on Nyika plateau, pa.s.ses through Nthalire descending to the Karonga lakesh.o.r.e at Mw.a.n.kenja, and empties into the lake near Karonga boma. In the past, the banks of the Karonga section of the river were lined with banana plantations; in recent times, bananas have been replaced by cotton and maize fields.
NORTHERN CO-OPERATIVE UNION. Formed in 1951, with its headquarters at Rumphi boma, this was the umbrella organization of most of the cooperative unions in the northern province of Malawi and oversaw the marketing of ghee on behalf of its members. It had lorries that transported the union's produce within the province, ghee packaging machinery, and a modern department shop, which was open to the public and competed effectively with Mandala and Kandodo. It also made arrangements with the larger and better internationally connected Kilimanjaro Native Co-operative Union (KNCU) in Arusha, Tanzania, so its members could sell their coffee abroad.
NORTHERN RHODESIA. Until independence from the British in 1964, this was the designation of the modern Republic of Zambia. Named after John Cecil Rhodes, founder of the British South Africa Company, which had major territorial and commercial interests in the area north of the Zambezi, the whole of Northern Rhodesia fell under direct British rule in 1924. See ZAMBIA.
NORTHERN RHODESIA AND NYASALAND JOINT PUBLICATIONS BUREAU. Established in 1948 to replace the African Literature Committee and the Northern Rhodesia Publications Bureau, the Joint Publication Bureau has published short books, mostly in African languages, in fields such as fiction, folklore, history, dictionaries, grammar of African languages, proper manners, home economics (then called domestic science), and school textbooks. The bureau published many books on Malawi and by Malawian authors, including Nthara's Mau Okuluwika (1964).
NSANJE. Located in the southernmost part of Malawi and called Port Herald in colonial times, Nsanje became the administrative headquarters of the Lower s.h.i.+re district in 1891. Nsanje was the main entry into the Lake Malawi region for those using the Zambezis.h.i.+re rivers. In 1904, the s.h.i.+re Highlands Railway was extended from Chiromo to Nsanje and then to the Zambezi by 1915. A major cotton-producing district, Nsanje is the lowest point above sea level and one of the hottest areas in Malawi. Nsanje is also the site of Khulubvi, the shrine of the M'bona, an important part of the Mang'anja religious belief.
NSENGA. This is the name of the people who live in Petauke district and parts of the Chipata district of Zambia; it is also the name of their language, parts of which are incorporated in the chiChewa spoken in sections of Mchinji district of Malawi. In precolonial times, the Nsenga were noted cotton growers and produced cloth; like the Bisa to their north, they were famous ivory traders. When Mpezeni and his Ngoni settled in the Luangwa Valley, they colonized the Nsenga, intermarried with them, and within a short time adopted the language of the indigenous peoples.
NSIMA. This is the staple food of all Malawian peoples as it is of most Africans in sub-Saharan Africa. It is made of maize or ca.s.sava flour or a combination of the two, which is boiled until it forms a very thick porridge and is traditionally eaten with the hands. The nsima is served with vegetables, fish, or meat. In times when millet and sorghum were extensively grown in Malawi, flour from these grains was popularly used for nsima. See also DIET.
NSINGU. See FORT MANNING; MPEZENI; WIESE, KARL.
NTABA, HETHERWICK MAURICE. Minister of external affairs in President Hastings Banda's last government, Ntaba was educated at Blantyre secondary school before going to the United States where he qualified as a medical doctor. Later he went to England where he specialized as a surgeon. Back in Malawi he rose rapidly, becoming head of health services and, in 1990, he was nominated to Parliament and appointed minister of health. In the period leading to political reform, Ntaba became the Malawi Congress Party's (MCP) chief spokesperson and minister of external affairs. In 1994, he was elected to Parliament as a member for Lilongwe and, five years later was returned to represent Lilongwe South-East. Regarded as the most articulate member of the MCP executive, Ntaba strongly supported his party's partners.h.i.+p with the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) in the 1999 general elections. After the elections, he joined the United Democratic Front (UDF), becoming one of its most important committee members. In 2005, he, like many UDF members of the National a.s.sembly, moved to the benches of the recently formed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), of which he would serve as secretary general. He was minister of health in Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika's government but, in the 2009 elections, he lost the Lilongwe South-East const.i.tuency to the MCP. He remained a senior member of the DPP but he became more identified as the combative Presidential spokesperson who sought to explain and justify the policies, actions, and utterences of Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika.
NTARA, SAMUEL JOSIAH (19051976). Educationist, author, and leading historian, Ntara was born at Mvera on 24 September 1905. His father, Josiah Kamfumu, one of the first students at the Dutch Reformed Mission School at Mvera, qualified as a teacher at Livingstonia Mission and taught at Mvera for many years. Samuel Ntara himself attended the Mvera school to Standard 3 level, after which he became a teacher in local village schools. He studied privately and, in 1927, went to Nkhoma Mission and qualified as a third-grade teacher. After attending further short courses at Nkhoma, he was awarded a second teacher's' certificate, the highest teaching qualification he could expect to obtain. Thereafter, he taught at various schools in Lilongwe district, and in 1932, he was transferred to Nkhoma, where he enrolled for the South African Junior Certificate (Standard 8) through the Union College, which offered a variety of professional and academic courses by correspondence. In 1944, Ntara went to teach at Kongwe School and, two years later, he became a member of the Dowa district council. He was also a member of the Teachers' a.s.sociation, an active elder of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP), and, with Levi Mumba, Gresham Masanghe, and George Simeon Mwase, part of the Lilongwe delegation to the first meeting of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) in 1944. In 1951, he was transferred back to Nkhoma Mission and, in the early 1960s, retired to his home near Kamphata in Lilongwe district. In 1968, Ntara was appointed to the Censors.h.i.+p Board and, in 1975, became the first chairman of the National Monuments Advisory Council.
Ntara is most famous as an author and historian. In 1932, he entered a literary compet.i.tion organized by the International Inst.i.tute of African Languages and Cultures in London. His entry, Nthondo, a fictional biography, won the biography division of the contest. Rev. Thomas Cullen Young translated the ma.n.u.script into English, Julian S. Huxley, the respected scholar, wrote a foreword to Nthondo, which the Bible and Tract Society, London, published in 1933 as Man of Africa. Ntara went on to write other books including Mbiri ya Achewa based on notes dictated to him by the Rev. Namon Katengeza in 1944. The Dutch Reformed Church published the book that year and, in the late 1960s, Kamphandira Jere translated Mbiri ya Achewa into English; Harry Langworthy later edited it, and in 1973, Franz Steiner Verlag published it under the t.i.tle History of the Chewa. In 1949, Longman Green published Nchowa, a fictional story of a lady of Nyasaland, and it is considered the female complement to Nthondo. In the same year, Nkhoma Mission Press published Msyambozya, the story of a Chimbazi village headman who lived near Kongwe from about 1830 to 1926. Although a biography, it is also a social and political history of today's central Malawi. Cullen Young translated Msyambozya into English, and Luterworth Press published it in 1949 as Headman's Enterprise: An Unexpected Page in Central African History. In the early 1950s, Nkhoma Mission commissioned Ntara to write a biography of Namon Katengeza, which the Mission Press published in 1964 as Namon Katengeza. In that same year, Ntara's Mau Okuluwika, a collection of Nyanja (Chewa) idioms, was published by the Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland Joint Publications Bureau. See also LITERATURE.
NTCHEU. This is the designation of the boma and district bordering with Mozambique in the west, Mangochi in the east, Dedza in the north, and Mwanza and Balaka in the south and southeast. Ntcheu is much identified with the Maseko Ngoni who have dominated the area since settling there toward the end of the 19th century. Lizulu, the seat of the Gomani dynasty, is in the northern part of the district. Christian missionaries such as the Church of Scotland, the Catholics, and the Zambezi Industrial Mission (ZIM) have been present in the district since the 1880s and the 1890s, with the result that many people in the district have been exposed to Western education longer than in most other areas of Malawi. The Maseko Ngoni are also identified with resistance to British authority; they did not easily accept British rule in the 1890s. John Chilembwe had significant support in Ntcheu, a district that was also a center of civil disobedience in 1953. See also CHINYAMA, FILIPO; GOMANI I; GOMANI II; LIVULEZI.
NTCHISI. The name of the boma and district formerly known as Visanza, it is located in the mountainous region southwest of Nkhotakota district and was one of the first areas to which the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) church expanded out of Likoma. The district produces citrus fruit and coffee, both of which are consumed within the Malawi market.
NTIMAWANZAKO, NACHO. One of the first students at the Blantyre Mission and a contemporary of Mungo Chisuse and Joseph Bismarck, Nacho Ntimawanzako became a teacher and leading evangelist. As advisor to Rev. David Clement Scott on the Mang'anja dictionary, Ntimawanzako accompanied the pastor to Scotland in the mid-1880s and stayed there for two years. On his return in 1887, he became a teacher and evangelist and served at different stations, including Mulanje, which he managed for some time.
NTINTILI, MAPAS. One of the first Lovedale Missionary Inst.i.tute evangelists in the service of the Livingstonia Mission, Ntintili worked at Cape Maclear and for a brief period at Kaning'ina. In 1880, he and other Lovedale missionaries went home on vacation; but Ntintili did not return to the Lake Malawi area.
NTONDEZA, CHIEF. In the late 1930s, this traditional ruler in Thyolo district was in conflict with Wilfrid Gudu and his Ana a Mulungu adherents, finally banis.h.i.+ng them from his territory. In September 1953, chief Ntondeza was at the center of another dispute, this time with his own people, who, after accusing him of supporting the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, threatened to depose him and proceeded to destroy property, including that belonging to nearby European plantations. The troubles in Thyolo, as in the rest of the country in that year, have been attributed to the Federation, the introduction of unpopular agricultural and conservation measures, and to the thangata system.
NUNAN, JOHN JOSEPH. The first judge and chief justice of Nyasaland, appointed by Sir Alfred Sharpe in 1900, Nunan laid the foundation of the judicial system in the colony and was also instrumental in codifying its laws. A Catholic of Irish origins, Nunan was very helpful to the early Catholic missionaries, the White Fathers and the Montforts, in their attempts to establish themselves in the colony at a time when the Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed churches claimed the area to themselves. In 1905, Nunan was appointed solicitor general of Guyana, and Charles Griffin became the new chief justice of Nyasaland.
NYAKYUSA. This is the name of the people immediately north of the Ngonde. The Nyakyusa are closely related to the Ngonde, many of whom migrated from Unyakyusa. KiNyakyusa, the language of the Nyakyusa, is primarily the same as Kyangonde.
NYAMBADWE. Low-density suburb of Blantyre located between the Blantyre Mission in the south, Ndirande in the east, and Chirimba in the north. Nyambadwe is the site of a government house, which, in the late colonial period, was the official residence of the provincial commissioner for the south. In postcolonial Malawi, it came to be known as Nyambadwe House, and it was used mainly to accommodate important foreign dignitaries visiting the country as guests of the government.
NYAMBO, PETER (c. 18841968). Missionary, teacher, preacher, political activist, and traveler, Nyambo was born in Ntcheu district around 1884 and, between 1895 and 1900, attended school at Blantyre Mission. Two years later, Nyambo joined Joseph Booth at Plainfield, Thyolo, where he continued his education. At the beginning of the following year, Booth and his family went to England via South Africa, taking with them Nyambo, who spent the rest of 1903 at a school in Matlock, Derby, where the Booths also resided. For eight months in 1904, he was at the African Inst.i.tute, Colwyn Bay, North Wales, an establishment directed by W. Hughes whom Booth had a year earlier coopted into an abortive training plan for Christian workers in the Lake Malawi area. In 1905 and 1906, he was at Duncombe Hall, the Seventh-Day Adventist College in Holloway, London, and while there, he was baptized into the faith. Nyambo also spent part of 1906 touring Great Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, attending and speaking at 160 meetings. Toward the end of 1906, he was a member of a party of British missionaries to set up an Adventist presence at Kisumu in western Kenya, and he remained there until December 1907 when he went back to Nyasaland, arriving in the s.h.i.+re Highlands early in 1908.
In the meantime, Plainfield, Nyambo's home mission in Thyolo, was given a Mang'anja name, Malamulo (commandments/laws). Thomas Branch, the African American head of Plainfield, had been replaced by Joel Rogers, an American with South African experience. On his return to Nyasaland, Nyambo was posted to Malamulo, and after a period, Nyambo was transferred to Matandani, northwest of Blantyre where he and S. M. Konigmacher founded a new mission. At the time, Adventist schools did not go beyond the Standard 3 level, and English was only taught at Malamulo; vernacular was the medium of communications at satellite stations. The confident Nyambo found the environment in the Adventist mission conservative and stifling, and in 1911 he left for Ntcheu, his home district. Toward the end of that year, Booth, now in South Africa and a Seventh-Day Baptist, reestablished contact with Nyambo. Nyambo opened many independent schools, manned by teachers, mainly from the Zambezi Industrial Mission (ZIM), founded by Booth before he left Malawi. At the beginning of 1912, Nyambo, Alexander Makwinja, and others, left for South Africa, and by the following year, Nyambo had become Central African secretary of the British Christian Union, which Booth had established in Cape Town.
In March 1913, the South African Spectator published Nyambo's article critical of white authority in Nyasaland and the rest of southern Africa. This was followed by other protests against segregation and land problems in the region, but it was his Rhodesia Nyasaland Appeal of May 1914 that brought attention to him as a significant political activist. In this pet.i.tion, signed by, among others, Booth and some South African members of the legislature, he appealed to the British Crown to intervene in the situation in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland because of the manner in which Africans were being treated by the colonial government. Booth seems to have played a part in the pet.i.tion and seems to have sent copies to Filipo Chinyama, John Chilembwe, and the Nyasaland Times. A copy was also sent to the high commissioner in Cape Town for onward transmission to Great Britain and to the governor of Nyasaland.
In May 1914, Nyambo went to England but, contrary to his expectations, the king did not receive him nor did the British government acknowledge his presence in the country. However, he and Booth spent some time addressing meetings, mostly those a.s.sociated with churches explaining the subject of the pet.i.tion. Later that year, Booth returned to South Africa, proceeding to Lesotho where he carried out his plans for African education and economic development. Nyambo remained in England until 1917 when he sailed back to South Africa. When Nyambo finally returned to Nyasaland in 1943, he founded a church, Calici ca Makolo or Church of Ancestors, which was much influenced by the creed of Sri Ramakrishna. Nyambo lived for another 25 years.
NYANJA. Often also referred to as ciMang'anja or ciNyanja, and basically the same as chiChewa, this is the language of the indigenous peoples of the Upper and Lower s.h.i.+re regions and of the s.h.i.+re Highlands. Nyanja also means lake. See also MANG'ANJA.
NYASA. This was the name David Livingstone gave to Lake Malawi, a misnomer because his informants were merely telling him that Nyasa or Nyanja means the great waters. In effect, he called it ”lake lake.” Tanzania still refers to the lake by its old name, Lake Nyasa. In 1907, Nyasaland was adopted as the official name of the colony hitherto called British Central Africa; in 1964, Nyasaland became Malawi. Throughout the colonial period, people from Nyasaland were generally called the Nyasa; this is what labor migrants in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa were referred to as.
NYASA INDUSTRIAL MISSION (NIM). Established by Joseph Booth in 1893, the Nyasa Industrial Mission had its headquarters near the source of the Likhubula stream, immediately northeast of Mitsidi the location of the seat of the Zambezi Industrial Mission (ZIM), also founded by Booth. Initially manned by Australian missionaries, Booth regarded the new mission as playing a complementary role to the ZIM. Unlike the latter, which was interdenominational, the NIM was Baptist in dogma and, when Booth was expelled from the ZIM in 1894, he concentrated on the NIM, seeking new backers in Great Britain. By 1897, Booth had loosened his links with the NIM, which was then expanding to other parts of the s.h.i.+re Highlands.
NYASALAND. This was the name of Malawi between 1907 and 6 July 1964, when the British colony became an independent nation. From 1891 to 1893, the country was known as the Nyasaland Protectorate and, from the latter year to 1907, its designation was British Central Africa.
NYASALAND AFRICAN CONGRESS (NAC). Founded in 1944 when the various African Welfare a.s.sociations joined together to form the NAC as the princ.i.p.al mouthpiece of African aspirations in the colony, this political organization was banned in March 1959 and was succeeded in September of that year by the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). During the years 1944 to 1959, the NAC changed from a narrow-based organization to a ma.s.s movement in pursuit of national independence. Until the mid-1950s, when its leaders.h.i.+p was challenged, the Congress followed moderate policies. When the NAC committed itself to a more militant position, it also persuaded Dr. Hastings Banda to return home in 1958 to lead the struggle for decolonization.
The person most responsible for the formation of the NAC was James Sangala, who during his career was a teacher and a government civil servant. An early nationalist, Sangala knew the necessity of united action. He received encouragement from the European settler W. H. Timke and support from the members of the Blantyre Native a.s.sociation. In August and September 1943, Sangala and his a.s.sociates convened meetings in Blantyre that resulted in the formation of the Nyasaland Educated African Council. Anxious to have an all-embracing organization, ”Educated” was removed from the name and it became the Nyasaland African Council. In October 1944, another meeting approved a const.i.tution and another change of name, this time to Nyasaland African Congress. The office bearers were Levi Mumba (president general), Charles Matinga (vice president general), Charles Wesley Mlanga (secretary general), James Dixon Phiri (vice secretary general), Harry Tung'ande (second vice secretary General), Isa M. Lawrence (treasurer general), and H. B. Dallah (vice treasurer general). Among the executive committee members of the NAC were George Simeon Mwase, Charles Chinula, B. Namboyah, Raphael Mbwana, A. Mbebuwa, and Alexander Phambala. The meeting agreed to make several demands on the government: the right to hold seats in the Legislative Council (LEGCO) and not be represented by the missionaries; the right to form labor unions; the right to have access to the best educational facilities and responsible civil service positions. As a result of these demands, Sangala found himself under government surveillance, but several months later his new umbrella organization represented 20 a.s.sociations.
The first year of the young NAC was a difficult one, partly because of the deaths of its treasurer, Isa Lawrence, and its president, Levi Mumba. Furthermore, the government did not acknowledge any of the resolutions pa.s.sed by the organization. Although it received funds and advice from Hastings Banda, who was practicing medicine in England, the NAC remained a victim of its own internal weakness. The central leaders.h.i.+p had no effective hold on the autonomous branches. Full-time officers of the Congress were not paid. The Executive Committee met infrequently, resulting in a distinct lack of communication between senior members of the organization. The NAC's income was raised locally and was not centralized, which meant that several branches retained financial autonomy as well. In 1948, a scandal in the NAC pointed out its financial inefficiencies: Charles Matinga embezzled Congress funds to cover personal debts. The already weak leaders.h.i.+p exhibited in the organization was allegedly also corrupt. When Dr. Banda attempted to reform the Congress financially and organizationally, the NAC leaders.h.i.+p ignored his pleas.
The issues faced by NAC in the 1940s and 1950s were serious, but the tactics employed were largely unsuccessful. The most absorbing problems were the land situation, the colonial imposition of new farming methods, and the revival of the federation concept. In the first instance, population pressure in the s.h.i.+re Highlands had increased, reaching a density of nearly 200 people per square mile. Treatment of African tenants on European estates also had grown intolerable; in some instances, the cutting of timber or building of huts had been prohibited by the white owners (see THANGATA). Ill-feelings between Africans and Europeans were spotlighted in Thyolo district in 1953 when a petty larceny incident on a Luchenza estate mushroomed into a rumored murder and resulted in weeklong disorders (see NGAMWANE, CHIEF). Shortly thereafter, the government initiated a program to repurchase land from European owners.
At the same time, the government was imposing unpopular agricultural policies on the rural farmers. Inefficient cultivation and a rising population had led the government to seek an end to soil erosion. For most African farmers, forsaking a traditional procedure for an uncertain experiment was not a worthwhile risk. Sometimes what British agrarian experts demanded made more work for the African farmers; such demands included digging embankments for contouring before the first rains had softened the soil, and work of this nature often had to be undertaken with hand tools. The government was convinced that only coercion would succeed, and so fines and imprisonment soon followed for failure to comply. African resentment of the Europeans grew and African fears for their land deepened. The third issue that resulted in ma.s.sive disaffection was that of the federation plan. Africans were convinced that any closer a.s.sociation with Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) would result in the loss of land. Many of Malawi's men had seen for themselves the amount of land alienation while working there. These observations by migrant workers intensified African concern over the possible loss of more land.
The NAC response to these grievances was ineffectual. Like the a.s.sociations that preceded the formation of the Congress, the leaders.h.i.+p insisted that patient prodding of the government would yield results. Since the NAC chose to operate within a colonial frame of reference, two weaknesses persisted: one, it failed to develop a popular following, and two, the inefficient internal structure continued with a leaders.h.i.+p that did not see the need to change or grow. Although Africans were articulate in their opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as well as to the land situation, the NAC was unable to transform those thoughts into action. In the mid-1950s, the organization gave up its verbal campaign against the Federation and announced hopes to utilize appropriate const.i.tution
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