Martin Chirwa during the time period presented in this blog
Events during the 1958 to 1964 phase of Martin Chirwa’s life
helped define his view of the world and shape the rest of his life. More
importantly, this time period impressed on him how he would raise his children.
It is not an accident that this period coincided with the climax of the
independence phase of the nation of Malawi.
At the time Martin Chirwa was starting school at Chikhutu in
1948, his teacher Grayson Chikanda had a young family. The rest of the family
will be introduced later but for now let it suffice to bring to the reader’s
attention that Grayson and his wife Jane had a second born daughter named
Elinart who was born on 25th May 1941. After establishing the
school at Chikhutu, Grayson Chikanda was transferred to Nkhoma and later to
Dzenza (currently on the edge of the city of Lilongwe). Martin continued to be
in contact with his teacher and visited him and his family from time to time.
By the time he finished school at Namitete, these visits had drawn him to
Elinart and he fell in love with her.
When Martin found a job at the Post
Office in Limbe, he proposed to Elinart for a hand in marriage. Elinart was hesitant
because at 17 she had plans. She had an eighth grade education and had
ambitions to become a nurse. But Martin convinced Elinart that he was going to
take care of her. So the two got married in 1958 and went to live in Blantyre.
Martin and Elinart Chirwa in 1988
To put the events in Martin’s life from 1958 to 1964 in
perspective, the colonial history of Malawi needs to be revisited.
David Livingstone came from Scotland to Malawi as a missionary/explorer in 1859.
Three types of British settlers followed Livingstone’s visit. The first type
was made of Presbyterian and Anglican missionaries. The second type was made of
farmers. And the third type was made of British business people who came to
trade with the missionaries and farmers. Livingstone personally pushed for the
settlers to come. His rationale was that it would help fight slave trade. At that
time, Arabs came to Malawi and bought slaves from chiefs using salt and
clothing. The Arabs then sold the slaves in Zanzibar to people from Europe and the Americas .
The settlers sought protection from the British government. A
British Central Africa (BCA) protectorate was established in Malawi in 1860. The
settlers gave the name of Nyasaland to Malawi. In 1891 the BCA became the
Nyasaland Region Protectorate and then simply the Nyasaland Protectorate in
1907. In 1953, the British Colony of Southern Rhodedia (now Zimbabwe), the
Northern Rhodesia Protectorate (now Zambia), and Nyasaland were merged into a
British run semi-independent country called Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland run by the settlers.
There was a political group of Malawian Africans called
Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) that was fighting for independence. This group
decided they needed a messiah figure to start an uprising in the fight for
independence. They settled on a friend of Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana
which had just won independence from Britain in 1957. This friend of Kwame Nkrumah
was Hastings Banda. Hastings Banda left Malawi when he was young and trained as
a medical doctor in Tennessee, USA and Glasgow, Scotland. He then practiced
medicine in Liverpool, England and then moved to Ghana where he practiced
medicine from 1953. Hastings Banda accepted the invitation of NAC and came from
Ghana in 1958 to lead the independence movement in Malawi.
The reader will notice that the year that Martin Chirwa started working
coincides with the return of Hastings Banda to lead the independence movement.
Martin immediately became politically active. He became a chair of the local
Limbe branch of Hastings Banda’s party. He organized political meetings, sold
NAC membership cards to raise money for the party, and went door to door
recruiting for NAC. The British federation government decided to crush the
independence movement. Hastings Banda and some of the leaders of NAC were
arrested for political agitation and a state of emergency was declared in March
1959. Martin Chirwa was arrested for a false charge of embezzling post office
money. Martin suspected that the true reason for the arrest was that he was a
NAC leader. He appeared before a court judge on 19th June 1959. The
judge could not find evidence of the charge brought against Martin and ordered
that he should not go to prison. However, the Post Office decided that Martin
should lose his job. A day after the court ruling, Elinart gave birth to their
first born son on 20th June 1959. She named him Aubrey Chimwai (“Very
Lucky”). Thus, barely one year after finding a job, Martin was unemployed and
had responsibilities of taking care of a wife and young son.
From "Nyasaland Demands Secession and Independence" by Chiume, July 1959
Notice the only woman on the NAC committee, Rose Chibambo, who was imprisoned
With his wife and newly born son, Martin went back home to
northwestern Lilongwe to live with his father and mother at Dzalo in Fulatira
village. However, the village would not allocate land for Martin and his family
at Fulatira because Chewa culture is matrilineal. Fulatira is Martin’s father’s
village and that is a problem. Martin went to his mother’s village of Mumbi
near his school of Chikhutu. There he was given a garden that he farmed for one
season.
Martin continued political activism. The leaders of NAC who
were not arrested including Orton Chirwa (no relation) and Kanyama Chiume
decided to change the name of the political party to Malawi Congress Party
(MCP). Martin Chirwa rode his bike around Northern Lilongwe selling MCP cards
to raise money for the party while recruiting members at the same time.
Political meetings were outlawed by the state of emergency. It is important to
note that there were many skeptics of the possibility that the Caucasian
settlers who had been entrenched could ever be uprooted from Nyasaland.
Therefore, convincing people in the villages to join the independence movement
was a difficult task. For three years (1959 to 1962), Martin crisscrossed
Lilongwe as a political activist fighting for independence.
Back at Dzenza, Grayson Chikanda was now in his early 40s
and was beginning to think about life after teaching. Grayson’s father had been
more or less a nomad. One of the places that he lived briefly was Mngwangwa
Village. This village is in Northwestern Lilongwe, 18 miles (about 30
kilometers) from the city on the road that goes from the city to the border
with Dowa district. Mngwangwa had a Farmers Marketing Board which meant one
Caucasian worker lived there. The British established a government corporation
to buy tobacco, corn (maize), peanuts (groundnuts), and other crops from
African farmers all over Malawi. This helped the government to control how much
farming was taking place and how much money native Africans had. But then I
digress. Grayson Chikanda claimed the property given by the chief of Mngwangwa
to his father. He built a house on the bushy edge of Mngwangwa Village. Grayson
asked his unemployed son-in-law Martin to go and live in his house at
Mngwangwa. Thus Martin, Elinart, and their son Aubrey moved to an isolated
house surrounded by bush. They farmed a garden about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers)
from their house.
Grayson and Jane Chikanda effectively adopted Martin as their own son from this point onwards. Martin was treated as a son in addition to their own children: Drovia, Elinart, Clifford, Mercy, Baxton, Velinace, Cleanness, and Patricia. Elinart had a second son at her parents’ home at Dzenza whom she named Robert Masautso (“Problems”). (In case you are wondering, Jane was a midwife). Grayson and Jane immediately took Robert with them as a baby and started raising him at Dzenza.
Hastings Banda was released from prison in 1960 and
independence negotiations started immediately. By 1962 it was clear that
independence was won. Martin was now 26. Grayson decided to have a talk with
Martin. Grayson advised Martin to train for a more stable career. He impressed
upon Martin that farming in the village was hard and does not provide a steady
income for raising a family.
Martin heed the advice of his father-in-law, stopped
political activism, and took up a more traditional career. He decided to go
into teaching. In 1962, the young man, Martin, enrolled in the Presbyterian
William Murray Teachers Training College at Nkhoma. Elinart lived alone in the
isolated house in the bushy portion of Mngwangwa village at the time of her
husband’s absence away in teacher training. It was a difficult time for
Elinart. Martin graduated in 1964 and obtained his teaching certificate. This
is a very appropriate coda of the independence fight portion of Martin’s life.
As it turns out, his new training would be useful in the next phase of the
nation of Malawi. The life of Martin Chirwa was interwoven with the transitions
of the nation of Malawi which incidentally gained independence in 1964.
People like Martin Chirwa are the reason independence came
to Malawi. Their names will not be written in books. They will just be
mentioned as “people” who demanded independence. They will not be studied in history classes. But they are the unsung
heroes of the country of Malawi.
First Malawi Cabinet
Courtesy of Ebony Magazine, Vol 1. No. 7 September 1964
