ON BEING ASKED TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT DR. BANDA

The enigma: Ngwazi Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda

Thandi Chunga, a young protégé of mine from Mzuzu, remembered to remind me that the 14^th of May was the birthday of Ngwazi Dr. Hastings Banda, the father and founder of the Malawi nation. In fact, he asked me to write something for the great son of the soil who passed on in November 1997. But honestly speaking, I never intended to write anything on Dr. Hastings Banda. The man was an enigma who led an elusive life, so why bother writing something about him? After all he never wrote a book himself and never wanted one to be written about him. As a historian, I feel Dr. Hastings Banda let me down big time.

However, for the sake of Thandi, I will remind followers of this blog the following facts on Dr. Banda:

• He once was married to Mrs. French, a white woman whom he snatched from a British legal practitioner.
• He found himself on the wrong side of the law in Ghana because he was carrying out abortions at his clinic.
• He destroyed the stupid Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
• He added the words ku-mvuma and ku-nzambwe to Chichewa vocabulary.
• He was given the title of “Honorary Whiteman” in apartheid South Africa.
• During his tenure of office, his nephew was a long time prisoner at Mulanje Prison.
• He was the first African president to bring the attention of the United Nations to the systematic killing of blacks by Arabs in Darfur in the 1960s.
• He is became the oldest president in the world. He was 96 when he lost his presidency in 1994.