Part 17 (1/2)

Besides the UNHCR, a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have a.s.sisted with the general welfare of the refugees, and this includes educational and agricultural projects. Among such NGOs are the Malawi Red Cross (MRCS), Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), World Relief Malawi (WRM), and the World University Society of Canada (WUSC). In all refugee-related matters, the Malawi government works through its Department of Poverty and Disaster Management Affairs.

RELIGION. The majority of Malawians profess to belong to some religious organization. According to the Population and Housing Census of 2008, of the 13,029,498 people, 82 percent (10,770,229) are Christians, 13 percent (1,690,087) are Muslims, 1.9 percent (242,503) belong to other religions, including indigenous religions, Hinduism, and the Baha'i faith. Only 2.5 percent (326,679) have no religious affiliation. The census indicates that there has been growth in all religions since 1998. It should also be pointed out that many Christians and Muslims tend to incorporate modified indigenous beliefs into the two world regions.

The largest Christian churches are the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) and the Catholic Church, and both have a significant presence in all corners of Malawi. Also with a sizable members.h.i.+p is the Anglican Church in Malawi, formerly the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), which tended to concentrate mostly in the Lake Malawis.h.i.+re River area, the major urban centers, and the s.h.i.+re Highlands. The Seventh-Day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses also have a notable presence. There are numerous other Christian denominations and, in the past 40 years, the number of evangelical churches, many with United States connections, have mushroomed and have adherents in many parts of the country.

Both Christianity and Islam arrived in Malawi in the second half of the 19th century, the former through mainly European mission organizations, and the latter through Yao immigrants and Muslim missionaries from the east coast. Christianity expanded in the 20th century as more missionaries arrived in the country and as some Malawians broke away from the main religions to start their own (see CHINULA, CHARLES CHIDONGO; MWASI, YESAYA ZERENJI). On the other hand, Islam tended to be confined mostly to the southeastern part of the country.

President Hastings Banda was an elder in the CCAP, and most national occasions, such as the annual Independence Day celebrations, started with prayers, usually led by clergy representing the various faiths and denominations. Former President Bakili Muluzi is a Muslim and, during his time in office, Islam and Islamic organizations became particularly prominent in different facets of life. Although churches did openly criticize the one party system or the abuse of human rights during the Banda era, it was the Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Letter of March 1992 that started the path toward democratization. In the post-Banda period, religious organizations have been relentless in acting as the conscience of the people. The Episcopal Conference of Malawi, the CCAP, and the Anglican Church in Malawi have issued open letters criticizing governments for mismanagement, corruption, nonaccountability, and for failing to deal with poverty, which still dominates the country. The Catholic Church and Islamic organizations have radio stations that broadcast nationally, and some of the religious organizations, including the Catholics, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the Livingstonia synod of the CCAP have universities.

RENAMO. See MOZAMBIQUE.

REPUBLICAN PARTY. See CHAKUAMBA, GAWNDANGULUWBE ”GWANDA.”

RHODES, CECIL JOHN (18531902). Mining mogul, politician, and leading player in European imperialism in 19th-century Africa, Cecil Rhodes was born in England in July 1853. Sixteen years later, he joined his brother Herbert Rhodes in South Africa where they grew cotton in the Natal region. In the early 1870s, Rhodes joined the hundreds of prospectors who were attracted to the emerging diamond mining industry farther west at Kimberley. He became a successful digger and formed his own company, which in 1890 grew into the DeBeers Mining Company, and seven years later, the DeBeers Consolidated Mines. In the meantime, he returned to England several times to, among other things, study at Oxford University. As gold mining was becoming a reality in the Transvaal, Rhodes transferred some of his energy to that area, forming the Gold Fields of South Africa. With so much wealth at his disposal, Rhodes was elected to the Cape Parliament, becoming prime minister of the colony in 1890. A year earlier, he had secured a charter to form the British South Africa Company (BSAC) with which he planned to execute his ambition of establis.h.i.+ng the British empire from the ”Cape to Cairo.”

Although not fully achieved, the BSAC came to control Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and most of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). Rhodes also became interested in Nyasaland (Malawi), buying tracts of land in the new colony and in the early 1890s maintaining influence in the area through a substantial subvention to Harry Johnston's fledgling administration. In 1896, Rhodes resigned from the office of prime minister because he supported Starr Jameson's failed invasion of the Transvaal. The land he owned in Nyasaland became part of a commission inquiry, the North Nyasa Reserve Commission of 1929.

RHODES, HERBERT. Cecil Rhodes's eldest brother, Herbert Rhodes, farmed cotton in Natal before joining the diamond rush in Kimberley, South Africa, in the 1870s. More interested in adventure than a settled business life, he sold his mining claims and left to travel north of the Zambezi, arriving in the Lake Malawi region in the 1880s. He hunted, mostly elephants, along the s.h.i.+re River, on the western sh.o.r.es of Lake Malawi, especially in the Karonga plains. He built a house in the area between Kambwe lagoon and present Karonga boma, the first European to do so in that area. Rhodes died when his house at Chikwawa burned.

RHODESIA. See ZAMBIA; ZIMBABWE.

RHODESIA NATIVE LABOUR BUREAU (RNLB). This organization was formed in Salisbury (Harare) in 1903 to recruit contract labor in northern Zambezia (Nyasaland), Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) for the emerging mining and agricultural industries in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The recently introduced taxes in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia and the rise of forced cash production in Mozambique made these areas easy targets for the bureau's recruiters whose methods were initially most ruthless. Ironically, in Nyasaland, the bureau promoted itself as m.u.t.h.andizi (the helper) and came to be known by that name; it built recruiting stations in most rural districts, especially those in the northern province where poor prospects of employment and problems of cash crops ensured a large pool of prospective labor recruits. Once laborers reached their places of employment in Southern Rhodesia, they encountered very harsh working conditions: extremely low wages, long working hours, poor and unsanitary accommodation, little health care, and employers and overseers who had no respect for Africans. It is for these reasons that one of the first measures of the first African-dominated government in Malawi, formed in 1961, was to cancel the operations of the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau.

RHODESLIVINGSTONE INSt.i.tUTE. Famous as a pioneering Africa-based research center, jointly funded by mining interests in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and the government in that colony, the Rhodes Livingstone Inst.i.tute for Social Research was established in 1938 to carry out independent sociological and anthropological studies that it was hoped would promote race relations on the copper belt and along the railway line. Originally based in Livingstone, it moved its headquarters to Lusaka in 1952. G.o.dfrey Wilson, its first director, who had earlier undertaken some research in northern Nyasaland, modified the mandate of the inst.i.tute to include urbanization and socioeconomic change, especially in light of the industrialization taking place in the region. When Max Gluckman succeeded Wilson in 1942, he broadened the field even more to reflect emerging themes such as African legal systems, and by the 1950s a wide range of topics in the humanities and social sciences were subjects of study. The area covered was also widened to include the two Rhodesias, Nyasaland, and southern Belgian Congo.

Also by the 1950s, the inst.i.tute was attracting graduate students and postdoctoral students who would form the core of Africa specialists in most anthropology departments in England and the United States. Many of their papers, some of them path-breaking, were published in the inst.i.tute's journal, the RhodesLivingstone's Journal. Several scholars a.s.sociated with RhodesLivingstone undertook their research in Malawi: Clyde Mitch.e.l.l (1956) researched the social systems of the Yao; Jaap van Velsen (1959) researched the Tonga in Nkhata Bay; Barnes (1954), David Bettison, Raymond Apthorpe, and others (1958, 1961) researched the Mpezeni Ngoni and urban Blantyre, respectively. The inst.i.tute was much a.s.sociated with the University of Manchester, to which the majority of researchers were linked.

When the University of Zambia opened in 1966, the inst.i.tute became affiliated to it, and, five years later, it changed its name to the Inst.i.tute for African Studies of the University of Zambia. Its journal came to be known as African Social Research. In 1996, the inst.i.tute changed its name once again, this time to the Inst.i.tute for Economic and Social Research of the University of Zambia.

RICE. A popular grain, rice is grown mainly in the lakesh.o.r.e areas of Karonga, Nkhotakota, and Salima, and to a lesser extent in Mangochi, the Upper and Lower s.h.i.+re, and in the Lake Chilwa area. Although certain types of rice have been grown in Malawi for a long time, newer varieties such as the fragrant faya were introduced in the region by Swahili-Arab traders from the East African Coast in the 19th century. The colonial government cla.s.sified rice as an African economic crop and, in the interwar period, it encouraged growers to increase production so as to meet growing demands for the crop. At the end of the 1930s, plans were made to form a rice-trading establishment in Nkhotakota, but it did not materialize until the end of the war in 1945, when the Kota Kota Rice Trading Company was formed and began to play a major role in rice marketing in Malawi. At the same time, rice cooperative societies emerged, the most successful one being the Kilupula Rice Growers Co-operative Union in Karonga. For part of the colonial period, Nyasaland was the leading rice producer in South Central Africa, exporting rice mostly to the Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe), and South Africa and Mozambique.

Although the government disbanded cooperative societies in the 1960s, it further stimulated rice production through a bilateral arrangement with the government of Taiwan, China. Rice was central to the Taiwanese, which placed emphasis on high-yielding varieties and biannual yields. Mainly a smallholder crop, the production of rice fluctuated in the 1990s, varying from 39,000 metric tons in 1945 to 73,000 in 1990, and rising during the 2000s to 92,000 in 2007. See also AGRICULTURE.

RICHARDS, EDMUND CHARLES SMITH (18891955). Governor of Nyasaland from 1942 to 1947, Richards had earlier served in a junior capacity in Tanganyika, Nyasaland, and had just transferred from Basutoland, where he had been resident commissioner from 1935 to 1942. One of his notable acts in Nyasaland was the establishment of the Abrahams Commission of 1946 with a view to finally solving the land problem.

ROADS. See TRANSPORTATION.

ROBERTS, BRYAN CLIEVE, KCMG, QC (19231996). Born in England on 22 March 1923, and a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, Bryan Roberts served in Europe during World War II as an officer in the Royal Artillery and the Royal Horse Artillery. In 1950, he became a barrister after being called to the bar as a member of Grays Inn. After working in Viscount Hailsham's chambers and in the Treasury Solicitor's Department, he joined the Colonial Civil Service in 1953 and was posted to Northern Rhodesia as a Crown counsel and attained the position of director of public prosecutions six years later. In 1960, he transferred to Nyasaland, and was solicitor general at independence in 1964. After the Cabinet Crisis in August that year, he took over from Orton Chirwa as attorney general. Upon the retirement of Peter Youens in 1966, Roberts also became secretary to the president and cabinet and head of the civil service in Malawi. In this capacity, he became chairman of the Malawi Army Council and the National Security and Intelligence Council, making him one of the closest and most important advisors to President Hastings Banda.

In 1972, Roberts retired, and George Jaffu replaced him as head of the civil service. Back in England, he rejoined the British civil service, in Lord Chancellor's Department, and from 1982 to 1993, when he retired, he was a metropolitan stipendiary magistrate. Knighted in 1973, Sir Bryan was an active member of the Commonwealth Magistrates' and Judges a.s.sociation, serving as its chairman in 1979 and becoming its life vice chairman in 1994. He died on 6 December 1996.

RUBBER. One of the main exports from early colonial Malawi, rubber (latex) was produced from the local Landolphia vine, which grows naturally in the thick forests of the lakesh.o.r.e region of Nkhata Bay district. In the 1880s, the African Lakes Company (ALC) began to take interest in producing rubber commercially, using some seeds from Kew Gardens in London. Further experimentation did not take place until 1903, when seeds from Landolphia were nurtured, and within three years, 3 million seedlings were transplanted to a nearby area that would be developed as the Vizara Rubber Estates. At about the same time, seedlings of the Para and Castilloa varieties were brought from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), but many did not fare well in the area. By the beginning of World War I, rubber was no longer a significant export of the colony, and although the ALC continued to maintain the Vizara plantation, its production was greatly reduced. In the 1970s, the rubber estate expanded into the nearby Chombe tea estates, which the company bought from the Commonwealth Development Corporation. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a revival of interest in rubber, and redevelopment started at Vizara with the result that the estate expanded further.

In 2004, the ALC sold the Vizara Rubber Estate to Nyasa Investments, a firm with South African connections. By 2008, the Vizara estate consisted of 3,507 hectares, of which 2,285 were already planted with rubber trees; it also has a rubber processing factory. At the end of that year, it had latex rubber-producing trees yielding 1,300 tons per year, and there were strong possibilities of increasing this to 4,000 tons. Of the 1,300 tons, 10 percent was used locally, mainly in retreading tires and in manufacturing paint and mattresses. Two years earlier, Nyasa Investments started a subsidiary, the Vizara Eco Timber, which processes the old rubber trees into timber for local use and for export. In September 2008, President Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika officially opened the Vizara Eco Timber factory, which also treats wood from the nearby Viphya Highlands. See also AGRICULTURE.

RUGARUGA. Youthful mercenaries, sometimes full-time security employees, rugaruga guarded prominent traders in 19th century East Africa. With the help of the fearless rugaruga, many such traders, including Mirambo and Msiri, went on to establish powerful polities in their areas. As guns became readily available in the region, rugaruga tended to be equipped with guns, which they did not hesitate to use. Mlozi bin Kazbadema and his commercial a.s.sociates had their own rugaruga whom Europeans described as always ill-tempered and undisciplined; Europeans also often accused them of being responsible for violent incidents that led Mlozi and the Ngonde into conflicts.

RUMPHI. Name of the boma and district that shares borders with all districts of the northern region of Malawi, Rumphi is the traditional home of the Phoka and other Tumbuka-speaking peoples. Agriculturally rich, it is particularly famous as the main bean-producing area of Malawi and is also a.s.sociated with coffee, most of which is grown in the eastern section of the district. Since the 1980s, Rumphi has also become one of the major tobacco-growing regions of Malawi. The main features of the district are the Henga Valley in the east, the Nkhamanga plains in the west, and the rolling Nyika plateau in the north. Rumphi has long been linked with western education as the home of the Livingstonia Mission and also the site of the Overtoun Inst.i.tution, and from the 1980s, as the location of the Phwezi Education Foundation. Rumphi boma was the seat of the Northern Co-operative Union and, in the colonial period, it was a main labor-recruiting district for mining and farming establishments in South Africa or Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).

S.

SABBATINI, ALBERTO. One of the most successful tobacco farmers in early colonial Malawi, Sabbatini was born in the vicinity of Poggio Mirteto, just north of Rome, Italy, from where he went to Nyasaland in 1904. He bought 17,000 acres of freehold land at Mapanga, about nine miles from Limbe on the Zomba road, and turned it into a major tobacco-growing farm. He sold the tobacco to local exporters and processors and exported some of it directly to European interests. At the end of World War I, Sabbatini established sisal estates in the Lower s.h.i.+re and Mozambique and had numerous other business ideas, including an artificial manure-producing factory propelled by power generated from hydroelectricity. When the Great Depression forced him to close most of his operations, including those in the BlantyreLimbe area, he started a transport company on the s.h.i.+re, and with the sisal tried a rope and twine-making factory at Chiromo, but both ventures failed. At the end of the 1930s, he sold his Mapanga estate, which included his striking castle-like house. Ironically, during World War II, the colonial administration turned the house into a prison for many of the Italians, including Sabbatini himself. After the war, Sabbatini resumed farming, and as in the past, diversified his commercial interests. When he died, his children continued with his businesses; the motor repair shop in Blantyre has ensured that Sabbatini remains a household name in Malawi.

SACRANIE, ABDUL SATTAR (?1984). One of the most respected lawyers in Malawi, Sacranie was born in Limbe where his father was a prominent businessman. He received a university education in India and thereafter qualified as a barrister at one of the Inns of Court in London, England. On his return to Malawi, he practiced law in BlantyreLimbe, establis.h.i.+ng a flouris.h.i.+ng legal firm, Sacranie & Gow. In the late 1950s, Sacranie became leader of the Asian Convention, whose sympathies lay with the National African Congress (NAC) and its successor, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). He was legal counsel to many African politicians facing trials during the period following the State of Emergency of 1959. As leader of the Asian Convention, Sacranie attended the Lancaster House const.i.tutional talks in 1961, and within two years, he became the first non-European mayor of the munic.i.p.ality of BlantyreLimbe. After his term in munic.i.p.al politics, he devoted most of his time to his law practice. However, his a.s.sociation with Dr. Hastings Banda and the MCP continued as he often acted as personal legal advisor to the former, and counsel to the latter and to Press Holdings Ltd.

SADYALUNDA, FERN NAJERE (1944 ). Born in Lilongwe district, Sadyalunda trained as a teacher at Kapeni College, Blantyre, and subsequently obtained a Cambridge school certificate. In 1974, Sadyalunda was nominated to Parliament as a member for Lilongwe, and in October of the following year, was appointed minister of community development and social welfare, becoming the first female cabinet minister in Malawi. In a cabinet reshuffle she was a.s.signed to the Ministry of Health. As Sadyalunda was close to Albert Muwalo-Nqumayo and suspected of being part of his political designs, she was imprisoned without trial. Upon her release, Sadyalunda retired from politics and became a businesswoman in Lilongwe.

SALIMA. Name of the boma and district, Salima is located on the southwest sh.o.r.e of Lake Malawi, and since 1935 is the northern terminus of the Malawi rail system. Part of Dowa district until Malawi independence from British rule, in the 1970s Salima was linked to the new capital at Lilongwe by a railway, a project financed by the Canadian government. The district is a major cotton- and rice-growing area and was the site of the German-sponsored Salima Lakesh.o.r.e Development project aimed at improving the production of the two crops. It has also become a tourist destination and has hotels of varying sizes, the most prominent ones being the Livingstone Beach Hotel and the Kambili Lodge.

SALISBURY, LORD (Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC, 18301903). Lord Salisbury was the Conservative Party prime minister of Great Britain when the Lake Malawi region was declared a British Protectorate in the period 188991. Originally reluctant to extend British authority in the area, Lord Salisbury bowed to overwhelming Scottish opinion, which, determined to ensure that the work of the Livingstonia and Blantyre Missions continued without Portuguese-Catholic threat, strongly pet.i.tioned him to take special interest in this part of northern Zambezia. In 1889, the s.h.i.+re Highlands fell under British rule and, two years later, most of what would become Nyasaland followed suit.

SANGALA, AARON (1958 ). Grandson of one of the most respected leaders in the Malawi decolonization movement, James Frederick M. Sangala, Aaron Sangala worked for Lever Brothers (see UNILEVER SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA) from 1974 to 1981 and taught languages and music at the French Cultural Center and at St. Andrew's Secondary School, both in Blantyre. He was also active in the arts in the city of Blantyre and was a founder of organizations, including the Sambang'oma Cultural Troupe, Capital Theatre, and the Tiakalulu Guitar Quartet, and was a member of the Blantyre Round Table. In 2004, he was elected to the National a.s.sembly as the member for the Blantyre Ndirande Malabada, and served as deputy minister of health (20067), deputy minister of women and child development (20078), and minister of national defense (20089). Reelected in May 2009, Sangala was appointed as minister of home affairs and public security.

SANGALA, JAMES FREDERICK MATEWERE (19001971?). Sportsman, gifted organizer, avid reader, a leading intellectual of his time, and with Levi Mumba and others, founding father of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), James Sangala was born in December 1900 on the Malosa side of the Zomba Mountain in Chief Malemia's area. His father, Grant, was a junior chief under Malemia and a mission-trained mason. James Sangala attended Church of Scotland Mission Schools at Malosa (191015) and at Domasi (191620) before going to the Henry Henderson Inst.i.tute (HHI), Blantyre (192023) to complete his education. He trained as a teacher at the HHI (192425) and returned to Zomba, where he taught at Katsonga and at the Domasi Central School. In April 1927, he resigned from his teaching job because he refused to follow his headmaster's instructions that, as an African, he should not wear shoes in cla.s.s. Three years later he joined the civil service as a clerk in the office of the senior provincial commissioner's office in Blantyre, where his immediate superior was Ellerton Mposa. Although happy with his new job, he would encounter many aspects of racism, such as the insistence that an African should not wear a hat in the presence of a European. Always optimistic, Sangala sought to establish good relations between races and, with M. E. Leslie, a European working in the same office, started the Black and White Club, which was short-lived because after the departure of Leslie and his successor, Ion Ramsay, there was no support from the European side.

As a filing clerk, Sangala came across much information on the growing number of African Welfare a.s.sociations, and soon he joined the one in Blantyre and that in Zomba. It became obvious to him that effective African representation required a vigorous national organization, just as the non-Africans had with the Convention of a.s.sociations. Encouraged by the advice given to him in 1938 by William Henry Mainwaring, a British Labour Party member of the Bledisloe Commission, on the power of unity in the fight against colonial rule, Sangala sought to change things. In September 1943, he organized a meeting in Blantyre attended by 21 people, including Charles Matinga, Charles J. Mlanga, Andrew Mponda, Frank Kahumbe, Lewis Bandawe, Isa Macdonald Lawrence, and Thomas Grant. This and subsequent meetings led to the formation of the Nyasaland African Council. Through the advice of W. H. Timcke, he contacted Mrs. Margaret Ballinger, a left-leaning member of the South African Parliament, and Charles Mzingeli, an activist in Southern Rhodesia. The two provided Sangala with the material with which to write a const.i.tution for the new organization. Levi Mumba drafted the const.i.tution, which was duly approved in 1944, and the name of the council changed to Nyasaland African Congress. Levi Mumba was elected president general of the new political party and, upon his death early in 1945, his deputy, Charles Matinga, became head of the organization.

Although Sangala did not immediately occupy a major office in the NAC, he remained a powerful force in the party. Sangala campaigned vigorously against the introduction of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. At his own expense, he visited most chiefs in the southern province and wrote to all of the other traditional rulers in the country, trying to dissuade them from accepting the Federation. In 1952, he, Mtalika Banda, and Elias Mtepuka, toured the Rhodesias to raise money from Malawian workers in the hope of sending a Congress delegation to London to oppose the proposed union. In the following year, Sangala, joined by the Anglican Church missionary Rev. Michael Scott, visited Northern Rhodesia to confer with local African organizations; back home he organized meetings in Lilongwe and Blantyre so that people could hear Scott's anti-Federation views. Again, at his own expense, he arranged for as many chiefs as possible to attend such gatherings.

By this time, Sangala had come to embrace peaceful resistance modeled on Gandhi's satyagraha, and he always made sure that he had the cooperation of chiefs, especially through the newly formed Chiefs Council. To his dismay, peaceful resistance failed as the 1953 disturbances in Ntcheu and four districts in the southern province showed. On 25 September, he himself was arrested and charged with possession of seditious material; acquitted, he continued his activism. By the late 1950s, Congress was in disarray because, among other things, the leaders.h.i.+p had in effect allowed Wellington Chirwa and Clement k.u.mbikano to go to the Federal Parliament. By the end of 1956, Sangala and others had virtually retired from active politics, leaving a younger generation to gradually take over. Thamar D. T. Banda became president general of the NAC.

James Sangala, or ”Pyagusi,” as his friends called him, had many other interests outside politics. Besides boxing, he was a keen football (soccer) player and organizer; in 1938, he and his European supervisor founded the s.h.i.+re Highlands Football League, which would flourish throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. In 1948, he led a team from Blantyre to play the formidable Grupo Desportivo Rebenta Fongo of Beira and, although his team lost, the compet.i.tion was a rare and cherished experience for Sangala and the Nyasaland players.

After independence, Sangala, now back home in Chief Malemia's area, was appointed to the Public Service Commission, which, besides his business concerns and interest in church matters, kept him very occupied.

SANGAYA, JONATHAN DOUGLAS (19071979). First Malawian general secretary of the Blantyre synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, and one of the most respected and influential clergymen in postcolonial Malawi, Jonathan Sangaya was born of Ngoni and Yao parentage in Blantyre in 1907. He qualified as a teacher and, except for the period 194045, he taught mostly in local schools until 1948 when he joined theological college at Mulanje Mission. After his ordination in 1952, he was posted to Bemvu in Ntcheu district and, two years later, was transferred to Blantyre Mission where he served until 1962 when he was appointed general secretary of the Blantyre synod, taking over from Rev. Andrew Doig, and becoming the first African to hold the position. Sangaya died in office in August 1979.

SCOTT, DAVID CLEMENT RUFFELLE (18531907). Head of the Blantyre Mission from 1881 to 1898, David Scott was a medical doctor as well as an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the University of Edinburgh, Scott took over the mantle of the mission after the scandal that had led to the resignation and dismissal in 1880 of most of the original group of missionaries, including Duff Macdonald, John Buchanan, and George Fenwick. Convinced that the mission's aims and programs would flourish only with the involvement of local people, Scott promoted programs that strengthened African culture and worked closely with African colleagues. He laid the groundwork for the African church by encouraging his deacons to take charge of mission work in other parts of the s.h.i.+re Highlands and in Mozambique.

African students, among them Joseph Bismarck and Rondau Kaferanjila, from the mission school at Blantyre, were sent to Lovedale Missionary Inst.i.tute for further education. Others such as Mungo Chisuse and Nacho Ntimawanzako were trained in Scotland. Others still, including John Gray Kufa, were trained locally at colleges Scott had initiated at the Blantyre Mission: the teacher training, theological, medical a.s.sistant's schools, and technical college. Scott also often spoke against the land and labor situation in the s.h.i.+re Highlands, and for this, he earned the ire of the colonial administration in Zomba and of the European business and settler community whose att.i.tude toward indigenous peoples was mostly unfavorable. Without any meaningful knowledge of, or experience in, construction, Scott and his African workers built an impressive cathedral-like church in Blantyre, which was completed in 1892 and is known as St. Michael's and All Angels.

A keen student of Yao and Mang'anja cultures and languages, Scott wrote An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language Spoken in British Central Africa (1892), which is 737 pages long and still highly regarded today. A compact issue of it was revised and edited by Alexander Hetherwick under the t.i.tle Dictionary of the Nyanja Language (1929). Another of Scott's numerous contributions was the mission's influential magazine, Life and Work in British Central Africa, which published articles covering a variety of subjects. Scott himself used the paper to publicize his views on, among other things, colonial rule. In 1898, Scott retired to Scotland, convinced that he had laid a strong foundation for an African church that was ready to move into the 20th century under a leaders.h.i.+p that would be significantly African. In 1901, he went to head the Church of Scotland Mission in the Kikuyu area, Kenya. He died there on 13 October 1907.