Part 6 (1/2)

c.h.i.n.kONDENJI, C. M. In 1959, c.h.i.n.kondenji was nominated to the Legislative Council (LEGCO) and, with Ernest Mtawali, appointed to the Executive Council, becoming the first Africans to hold such positions in the colonial administration. This made c.h.i.n.kondenji most unpopular in African nationalist circles where it was felt that he had betrayed his countrymen by joining a government that had strongly frustrated African aspirations through the declaration of the State of Emergency. After the general elections of 1961, c.h.i.n.kondenji retired from politics.

CHINTHECHE. Located in the southern part of Nkhata Bay district, Chintheche is in the heartland of Tonga country, and during the 1870s and 1880s was heavily stockaded because of the regular Ngoni raids into the area. Five miles north of Bandawe, the second site of the Livingstonia Mission, Chintheche fell in the immediate catchment area of the mission, resulting in a comparatively high rate of Western education among the Tonga. Many inhabitants of this locality would distinguish themselves in different walks of life in Nyasaland and the wider Southern Africa region. When British colonial authority was established in the Lake Nyasa region, Chintheche became the boma of the West Nyasa district and then of the Chintheche district, before the main offices moved north to Nkhata Bay, which also became the new name of the district.

Chintheche has not been developed much physically but, in the 1970s, the government hoped it would be the site of the Viphya Pulp and Paper Corporation Limited (VIPCOR) mill. Investors found it more expensive to get the trees out than originally expected, and with an impossible transportation situation, VIPCOR became a dead project. However, wood from this beautifully forested area is used locally, mainly for furniture and for building material. Chintheche has now become a popular low-cost tourist destination. See also FORESTRY.

CHINULA, CHARLES CHIDONGO (18851971). One of the leading intellectuals in the pre-1960 era of Malawian history, Charles Chinula was born at the end of 1885 in Mthimba village on the Kasitu River, Mzimba. At age 11, he started school at Hora where he was taught by, among others, the Lovedale-educated lakesh.o.r.e Tongan David Marawanthu. In 1900, Chinula entered the more advanced school at Ekwendeni, where his teachers included Muhabi Amon Jere and Donald Fraser. Two years later, he went to the Overtoun Inst.i.tution at Kondowe, and there he met Charles Domingo who gave his own name to the younger man so that from then on he would be referred to as Charles Chidongo Chinula. In 1907, he completed the Teacher Probationer's Certificate, pa.s.sing first in a cla.s.s of 11.

Even as early as 1908, when he was a teacher at Loudon Mission, Chinula was vehemently opposed to the missionary att.i.tude toward African culture, especially their attempts to limit traditional African dances. He was ordained minister in 1925 and soon developed a reputation as a powerful preacher and composer of about 21 church hymns, one of his most famous being ”Hena mwana wa mberere” (See the Lamb of G.o.d). Impressed and influenced by Yesaya Zerenje Mwase, Chinula became a major advocate of African advancement and rights, including the insistence that mission education should be open to all children, even those who came from non-Christian families. Viewed by some as arrogant and a militant, Chinula gave his opponents an opportunity to silence him. At a meeting of the presbytery in November 1930, Chinula, then a minister for the Hoho congregation, confessed to adultery; he was defrocked and his members.h.i.+p of the church suspended. Within two years he regained members.h.i.+p and, at a reduced salary, he was a.s.signed to oversee and aid those who, like him, had committed church offenses.

Despite the repeated requests of his congregation that he be restored, the ministry failed, and Chinula, encouraged by Zerenje Mwase's success as an independent pastor, left the church in July 1934 and established his own, Eklesia Lanangwa (Church of Freedom), with the headquarters at Sazu Home Mission, a short distance from Edingeni, the seat of northern Ngoni authority. There he established a school and opened others in the Mzimba district. However, without a proper source of finance, most of the schools closed eventually, leaving only the one at Sazu to survive into the 1990s. While waiting to be reinstated in the church, Chinula translated the Pilgrim's Progress into ciTumbuka; he also wrote a condensed version of the book and called it Vyaro na Vyaro (Lands and Lands).

A year later, he, Zerenji Mwase, and Yaphet Mkandawire formed a loose union of churches that they called the Blackman's Church. In 1941, he unsuccessfully suggested to the Livingstonia Mission that there should be a mutual recognition and interchange of members.h.i.+p and communality between their respective churches. When the M'mbelwa African Administrative Council was established in 1933, Chinula became advisor to M'mbelwa II and, in this capacity, he was considered as the new Ng'onomo Makamo, in spite of his Tumbuka roots. He was to hold this distinguished post until 1961 when the M'mbelwa District Council replaced the Administrative Council. A committed nationalist, Chinula was in 1920 the founding secretary of the Mombera Native a.s.sociation, and in 1924 of the Representative Committee of the Northern Province Native a.s.sociations. As a close advisor to M'mbelwa II, Chinula was the author of the memorandum that the Ngoni paramount ruler presented to the Bledisloe Commission. When the Nyasaland African Congress was formed in 1944, he became chairman of the Mzimba district branch and vice president at the national level; he was also a member of the Northern Provincial Council.

A first-rate preacher and teacher and a productive composer of hymns, Chinula retired from active politics after 1950. In 1967, he returned to the Livingstonia synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP), which had suspended him in 1930, and, although his ministry was not restored, he preached many times, reminding his listeners of his oratory. Chinula died at home on 3 November 1971. See also LOVEDALE MISSIONARY INSt.i.tUTE.

CHINYAMA, FILIPO (?1915). This Ntcheu-based clergyman, co-conspirator of John Chilembwe, and friend of Alexander Makwinja and Peter Nyambo, became a.s.sociated with the Baptist Industrial Mission from about 1903, when he studied at Malamulo, which Joseph Booth had just established. In 1908, John Hollis of the Church of Christ baptized Chinyama at Chikunda and, in the following year, he went to the Nyasa Industrial Mission Training Inst.i.tute in Thyolo, only to leave after a brief period in protest against the mandatory daily three hours' manual labor required of students. Between that time and 1911, he was a labor migrant in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), but, by mid-1911, he was once again active in church work in Ntcheu, reviving a church and school at Uchinda, also known as Ntinda, near Dzunje, which the Church of Christ had earlier vacated. Chinyama and Booth corresponded and, in this manner, he received a copy of Peter Nyambo's pet.i.tion to the king of England. In November 1914, he spent over a week at Mbombwe as a guest of Chilembwe, and during that time they most likely discussed plans for the 15 January uprising. As Chilembwe's forces moved on to Blantyre, Chinyama and 300 supporters, armed with spears, descended on Ntcheu boma aiming to seize the armory. The plan failed, and the government, led by its local representative, Claude Ambrose Cardew, pursued Chinyama and captured and executed him.

CHINYAMA, JAMES RALPH NTHINDA. Son of Filipo Chinyama, James was a Lilongwe-based businessman who from the 1940s was active in nationalist politics. In 1950, he replaced Charles Matinga as president general of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) but was voted out three years later for providing ineffective leaders.h.i.+p in the struggle against the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In the elections of 1956, Chinyama and Dunstan Chijozi were elected to represent Africans in the Nyasaland Legislative Council (LEGCO). After Dr. Hastings Banda returned to the colony in 1958, James Chinyama came to be identified with the less progressive politicians and, eventually, he became a forgotten factor.

CHIONA, BISHOP JAMES (19242008). Archbishop of Blantyre from 1967 to 2001 and one of the signatories of the Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Letter of 1992, the Right Rev. Chiona was born in Zomba district where he attended the Nakhunda seminary before proceeding to Kachebere Major Seminary and was ordained in 1954. After ordination he served in different parishes and, in 1965, became auxiliary bishop of Blantyre. In 1967, he succeeded Jean-Baptist Theunissen as senior Catholic prelate in Malawi. He retired on 23 January 2001, and died on 18 August 2008.

CHIONA, PETER (19372011). One of the senior office bearers of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) in the postHastings Banda era, Peter Chiona was born in Misuku, Chitipa district. He went to Bulambya Primary School, Zomba Catholic Secondary School, and the Domasi Teachers Training College. After teaching at Iponjora, Misuku, and at Soche Hill Secondary School, he proceeded to Oxford University in England, graduating in 1968 with a BA degree. On his return to Malawi, he joined the Planning Department at the Ministry of Education headquarters and, in October 1969, he went to Paris to study education planning. Two years later, he returned to the Ministry of Education but, within a short time, he joined the teaching staff of the Soche Hill College, a const.i.tuent inst.i.tute of the University of Malawi. In 1973, Chiona relocated to Zomba because his inst.i.tution became part of the expanded Chancellor College at its new campus at Chirunga Farm.

In 1976, he was one of the hundreds of people who were victims of arbitrary political detentions (see GWEDE, MARTIN FOCUS; MUWALO-NQUMAYO, ALBERT); released at the end of the year, he became unemployed but was reemployed by the university in 1978. A year later, he joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he specialized in education planning. In the early 1990s, retired from the ECA, he became a businessman in Mzuzu but also became active in politics. In 1997, he was appointed secretary general of the MCP and, two years later, second deputy president of the party, and, in that capacity, he was instrumental in forging the partners.h.i.+p between his party and the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD). At the same time, he became one of the two vice presidents of the MCP. In the 1999 general elections, Chiona was elected MCP MP for Chitipa East, one of the few non-AFORD legislators in the northern part of Malawi, but he lost the seat in 2004. Later, he joined the Democratic Progressive Party, becoming its deputy secretary general. From 2006 until his death at Mzuzu on 17 August 2011, he was the board chairman of the Malawi Inst.i.tute of Management (MIM) CHIPATA. See FORT JAMESON.

CHIPATULA. A Kololo chief who lived at Chiromo in the Lower s.h.i.+re region, Chipatula, like many Kololo, grew sesame, which, in addition to ivory, he sold to Europeans. His relations with Portuguese officials, businessmen, and their a.s.sociates was tense and, much to the liking of the British, he sought to curtail Portugal's influence in the area. Chipatula had a good working relations.h.i.+p with the British, who found him to be temperamental; the indigenous Mang'anja regarded him as a despot. In 1884, Chipatula was shot dead by George Fenwick, who was in turn killed by the dead chief's subjects. His son and successor, Chikuse, had equally bad relations with the Portuguese and their a.s.sociates, and for some time considered the African Lakes Company (ALC), Fenwick's employers, as being responsible for his father's death. See also KASISI.

CHIPEMBERE, CATHERINE. A teacher by profession, this Likoma-born widow of Henry Chipembere played a significant role behind the scenes in the days leading to decolonization. After the Cabinet Crisis, she joined her husband in Tanzania and, later, in the United States where she and their children remained even after her husband's death in 1975. She returned to Malawi to contest the 1994 elections for a Mangoche const.i.tuency and, upon the formation of the United Democratic Front government in June 1994, she was appointed deputy minister, first for education and later for health. In 1999, she retired from active politics.

CHIPEMBERE, HABIL MATTHEW, CANON (c. 19001966). Habil Chipembere, father of Henry Chipembere, was born in Masiye on the eastern sh.o.r.es of Lake Malawi in Nia.s.sa province, Mozambique, of Mang'anja parentage. After completing his teacher's training at St. Michael's College, Likoma, in 1921, he taught at Nkhotakota and Visanza (Ntchisi), and some years later, he trained for the priesthood at St. Andrews' College of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA). In 1935, he became a deacon and was posted to Lungwena on the southeastern sh.o.r.es of Lake Malawi. Three years later, Habil Chipembere was ordained a full priest, and he was to serve at, among other places, Liuli in southwest Tanzania, Malindi, and Matope. In World War II, Habil Chipembere served as chaplain to the King's African Rifles (KAR) and traveled as far as India. A highly regarded priest, in 1957, he represented the Anglicans in Malawi at the UMCA centenary celebrations in England. A canon, in 1961, he acted as vicar general and soon was appointed archdeacon, the first Malawian to hold the position.

Following the first adult suffrage elections, Habil Chipembere was a member of Parliament for Fort Johnston (later renamed Mangochi), a seat he handed to his son, Henry, when he was released from prison. He returned to full-time priesthood, but his life was disturbed in 1964 when the government hounded him out of the country because of his a.s.sociation with his son, who was at the time regarded as an enemy of the state. Canon Chipembere went into exile in Tanzania, and for three years he served as a priest at Mbamba Bay before retiring.

CHIPEMBERE, HENRY BLASIUS MASAUKO (1930-1975). Popularly known as ”Chip,” Henry Chipembere was one of Malawi's foremost nationalists. Of Nyanja and Yao parentage, he was born on 5 August 1930, at Kayoyo, Nkhotakota district, where his father, Habil Chipembere, a priest in the Anglican Church, was stationed. Later, the family moved to Malindi Mission in Mangochi district, then known as Fort Johnston, where Chipembere went to school before proceeding to Malosa and on to Blantyre Secondary School. He then proceeded to Goromonzi High School near Harare, Zimbabwe, where he distinguished himself as an excellent student. The Nyasaland government awarded him a bursary to study at Fort Hare University, South Africa, majoring in history and political science. He graduated in 1954 and became a.s.sistant district commissioner at Domasi, but resigned from the civil service to become a political activist in the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC).

At its 1955 general meeting at Lilongwe, the NAC demanded the right to secede from the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and urged the resignation of the Federal a.s.sembly representatives, Wellington Chirwa and Clement k.u.mbikano. Both Chipembere and W. Kanyama Chiume were behind this more militant stand of the NAC as well as responsible for reorganizing and increasing the members.h.i.+p in the Congress. In 1956, he ran for and was elected to the Legislative Council (LEGCO) where he and four other African members began a vigorous parliamentary campaign (195659) that criticized the Federation with a severity not witnessed before. Chipembere, Chiume, and other young politicians were responsible for revitalizing the NAC, for encouraging Dr. Hastings K. Banda to return home, and for relentlessly pursuing freedom for his homeland. Chipembere was probably Banda's most militant lieutenant.

In 1957, the annual meeting of the NAC took place at Lilongwe and, at the behest of Chipembere, Chiume, Dunduzu Chisiza, and others, it was decided to contact Banda, then living in Ghana, and urge him to return home and become the leader of the Congress, to provide a saviorhero figure for the nationalist movement. Chipembere actually wrote to him, detailing the message. The new militancy in the NAC and the outspokenness of its members in LEGCO were positive factors in Banda's decision to return to Malawi. In July 1958, Banda had demanded and received from Chipembere guarantees that upon his return he would be president of the NAC and he could then direct the movement as he thought best. In August 1958, Banda chose Chipembere to be NAC treasurer, Chiume as publicity secretary, Chisiza as secretary general, and Rose Chibambo as leader of the women's section of the NAC. Over the next several months, the Congress hara.s.sed the government with speeches and a.s.semblies and occasional outbreaks of violence. Security forces had their hands full, Southern Rhodesian troops were called in, and, finally, on 3 March 1959, the government declared a State of Emergency (see OPERATION SUNRISE).

Chipembere was jailed from March 1959 to September 1960, when upon his release, Banda, at a large rally in Nkhotakota, reinstated him as treasurer of the Congress, by that time renamed the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). In February 1961, four months later, the government found Chipembere guilty of sedition and incitement, on account of a speech he had made at Rumphi, and sentenced him to three years in Zomba prison. Although promised by Banda that he would exert pressure on the governor, Glyn Jones, for an early release from prison, Chipembere received no such help, perhaps because Banda found it easier to rule without his young cohort. Early in 1963, Chipembere was released and was greeted with enthusiasm and much excitement. Banda immediately a.s.signed him the Ministry of Local Government, and in early 1964, he became minister of education, which he retained after Malawi became an independent nation on 6 July 1964.

From August to September 1964, ministerial dissent erupted into the Cabinet Crisis in which Banda dismissed (on 7 September) Augustine Bwanausi, Rose Chibambo, Orton Chirwa, and Chiume. When on 8 September Chipembere returned from a visit to Canada, he learned of the difficulties of the past two weeks. Like Yatuta Chisiza and Willie Chokani, who had resigned in sympathy, he did so too, but he remained conciliatory in his speeches in Parliament and he tried to let Glyn Jones mediate the rift. Reconciliation hopes were dashed in the next week as Banda replaced the vacated posts in the cabinet, and the ex-ministers took a firmer stance, especially when Chipembere attacked Banda's slow Africanization policy. Although Chipembere, like the other ministers, had declared their loyalty to Banda, the prime minister called them irresponsible and refused to negotiate. Chipembere had been restricted to his Malindi home by police. Banda had banned public meetings and restricted the ”conspirators.” In February 1965, Chipembere led about 200 armed men from Malindi to Mangochi where they seized rifles and proceeded to Liwonde, where government reinforcements forced a retreat to Malindi.

Chipembere then fled to the United States, where he studied for a master's degree at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Encouraged by old friends to return to Africa, Chipembere went to live in Tanzania from 1966 to 1969. In addition to his teaching duties at Kivukoni College, Chipembere worked with Malawian refugees and exiled leaders. He also led his party, the Panafrican Democratic Party of Malawi. After Eduardo Mondlane was a.s.sa.s.sinated, Chipembere, having experienced several attempts on his own life, again left East Africa for the west coast of the United States. He also needed to be near better facilities for the treatment of diabetes from which he had suffered for some time. He and his family settled in Los Angeles where he taught at California State University while also pursuing his PhD studies at UCLA. He died on 24 September 1975, leaving behind his wife, Catherine Chipembere and their seven children who remained in exile until 1993.

CHIPERONI. These are moist and cool winds that blow into southeastern Malawi from the Indian Ocean through Mozambique, bringing with them enough rain to render tea growing possible in Mulanje and Thyolo districts. In the 1960s, a popular sorghum/maize beer, basically the same as chibuku, was named after this weather condition. Similarly, a popular brand of blanket manufactured at the Conforzi Blanket factory in Thyolo bears the name Chiperoni.

CHIPETA, O'BRIEN MAPOPA. The second minister of external affairs in the first United Democratic Front (UDF) government, Chipeta was raised in Mzimba district and went to the local secondary school before going to the University of Malawi, where in 1979 he graduated with a BA (Hons.), majoring in history. He joined the Antiquities Department and, between 1981 and 1986, he was a graduate student at Dalhousie University, Canada, which awarded him an MA and a PhD in history. He returned to the Antiquities Department but left after 18 months to work as a research officer at the Southern Africa Political and Social Research Trust in Harare, Zimbabwe.

In 1992, Chipeta took leave of absence to devote time to campaign for political reform in Malawi. With colleagues such as Frank Mayinga Mkandawire, he began to clandestinely send literature into Malawi, advocating multiparty democracy. They also published a weekly newsletter, the Democrat, which was also sent to Malawi, much to the anger of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and its government. Late in 1992, Dr. Hastings K. Banda accepted the reality of political reform, leading Chipeta and other political activists abroad to return to Malawi in the following year. By this time, he had identified himself with Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), and the Democrat had become the organ of the party. He became one of AFORD's leading ideologues and, in 1994, was elected to Parliament as a member for Mzimba West.

When, in late 1994, the UDF and AFORD formed a coalition government, Chipeta was appointed minister of agriculture. Two years later, he replaced Edward Bwa.n.a.li as minister of external affairs and would remain in that position until the 1999 general elections. In the meantime, he had fallen out of favor with AFORD for refusing to leave government when the leaders.h.i.+p decided against continuing with the coalition arrangement. In June 1999, he contested the Mzimba West seat as an independent but he lost to Loveness Gondwe, an AFORD candidate. Bakli Muluzi then appointed him as director general of the National Economic Council. He died while still in office.

CHIPOKA. Since the mid-1930s when the railway line was extended north of Blantyre, this natural port on Lake Malawi has been a crucial point in the commercial life of the country. It is here that most of the cargo from the railway is transferred to lake transport for consignment to the northern parts of Malawi. Similarly, at Chipoka, southbound goods are transferred from boat transport to the railway. See also TRANSPORTATION.

CHIRADZULU. Name of the district northeast and southwest of Blantyre and of Zomba, respectively; it is also the name of the boma, the district headquarters. A subdistrict of Blantyre until the 1950s, Chiradzulu, a densely populated area, was one of the European settler farming regions of the country, greatly affected by land problems and the accompanying labor tenancy, thangata. This was the home of the A. L. Bruce Estates; John Chilembwe's Providence Industrial Mission (PIM) had its headquarters at Mbombwe in the district, which was also the center of the Chilembwe uprising of 1915.

CHIRAMBO, MOSES CHARUWANANGA (19392010). Malawi's first ophthalmologist, Chirambo went to Blantyre and Dedza Secondary Schools and graduated from the University of Alberta Medical School before returning to Malawi in 1969 to join the government medical services. In 1971, he went to Israel's Hada.s.sa-Hebrew University, qualifying as an ophthalmologist two years later. Upon his return to Malawi, he set about improving ophthalmic services at government hospitals by, among other means, improving training at medical auxiliary level. In 1989, he retired from the Ministry of Health as chief ophthalmologist but remained involved in health-related matters in Malawi in different capacities. He continued to direct the South Africa Development Community (SADC) ophthalmologist course at the Malawi College of Health Sciences, was an eye-care consultant for Sight Savers International (UK) for the East, Central, and Southern Africa region, and when the College of Medicine of the University of Malawi opened in the early 1990s, he joined the teaching staff of its ophthalmology postgraduate program. Chirambo was also influential in the founding of the optometry school at Mzuzu University. In 2007, he won Rumphi Central const.i.tuency for the Democratic Progressive Party, retaining it for two years. In June 2009, he joined the cabinet as minister of health. However, in a cabinet reshuffle of 2 August 2010, Chirambo was dropped from the cabinet. On 15 August 2010, he died at a clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa.

CHIRNSIDE, ANDREW. Member of the Royal Geographical Society who on a visit to the Lake Malawi region in 1879, heard of the nature of civil administration adopted by the Church of Scotland Mission at Blantyre and its substations, such as that at Zomba. Since July 1878, the mission had been headed by Rev. Duff Macdonald who, following the original instructions of the Foreign Mission Committee to, inter alia, act as the settlements' magistrate, had presided over indiscipline and unethical behavior on the part of some of his Scottish a.s.sistants. Such behavior included burning of houses of suspected culprits, flogging, and execution of people accused of stealing and murder, respectively. Some of these incidents were reported in great detail by Andrew Chirnside in his The Blantyre Missionaries: Discreditable Disclosures (1880). In response, the Foreign Mission Committee appointed Rev. Dr. Thomas Rankin and Alex Pringle to investigate the allegations, most of which they confirmed to be correct. As a result of the RankinPringle inquiry, Macdonald and two of the artisans, John Buchanan and George Fenwick, were dismissed from the services of the mission.

CHIROMO. This town in the Lower s.h.i.+re, the heartland of cotton production, was the official port of entry into Malawi via river transport, and in 1892 it became an important government station. In 1902, the Foreign Office agreed to build a railway from Blantyre to Chiromo: this became the s.h.i.+re Highlands Railway. In 1977, the rail bridge at Chiromo was reconstructed to allow use for cars and trucks, thus ending the ferry service across the s.h.i.+re River.

CHIRWA, ELIOT MUSOKWA KAMWANA (18721956). Generally known as Eliot Kamwana, both of which were actually first names, Eliot Musokwa Kamwana Chirwa was one of the most colorful and traveled religious leaders in colonial Malawi. Born in about 1872, as his Tonga parents were returning to the lakesh.o.r.e after escaping Ngoni authority, Elliot went to local schools, including Bandawe, before proceeding to the Overtoun Inst.i.tute, Khondowe. He left the latter in 1901, after only three years, and after pa.s.sing the Standard 3 examinations. Dissatisfaction with the church, including delay in baptizing him, seems to have convinced him to leave the Scottish mission and join the Plainfield Seventh-Day Mission (later renamed Malamulo) in Thyolo district where he was baptized in the following year.

Chirwa taught briefly at one of the Seventh-Day Mission schools before going to South Africa, where for three years he worked as a hospital a.s.sistant, at Main Reef Mine, Johannesburg, studied, and preached, mainly to compatriot immigrant workers. In 1907, he joined Joseph Booth at Sea Point, Cape Town, spending most of the time receiving instructions on the Watch Tower teachings of the Pennsylvania pastor Charles Taze Russel. Russel's message emphasized the imminent apocalypse, which would be the final judgment call to heaven to the Kingdom of G.o.d. The teachings were also social and political in nature in that they referred to the rise of the ma.s.ses who would replace injustice with justice. It was the type of message that suited Booth, a recent convert from the Church of Christ, and Kamwana, whose dealings with some Scottish missionaries had not always been pleasant. The message was easy to absorb for most Africans in colonial Africa where the position of nonwhites was that of second-cla.s.s citizens.

In 1908, Kamwana returned to Nkhata Bay where he preached to large audiences and baptized hundreds of people, Tonga, Tumbuka speakers, and Ngoni. He attacked the Church of Scotland missionaries for their policies governing, and methods of, baptism and for charging school fees. He accused the colonial government, which he referred to as Babylon, of injustice and of taxing people, and predicted that Europeans would be forced out, leaving Africans to take control of the affairs of the country. In late 1909, Kamwana was deported to South Africa and, when he returned in the following year, he was confined to Mulanje where the government could watch him closely. Toward the end of 1910, William W. Johnston, a professor from Glasgow, Scotland, sent by the Watch Tower Society to establish and report on the situation of the movement in Nyasaland, took Kamwana to South Africa. However, when the South African authorities refused to allow him to disembark at Durban, he returned to Mozambique where after a month's imprisonment early in 1914, he returned to Mulanje, again to be closely observed by the government.

In 1915, just before the Chilembwe uprising, the government deported Kamwana, his wife, and his close lieutenants and brother Eliot Yohane Chandaka Chirwa, and another confidant, William Mulagha Mwenda, to Mauritius and, after some time, to the Seych.e.l.les. When his wife died on the island, his disciples at home found him another, and sent her to join him in exile. Kamwana remained in the Seych.e.l.les until the occasion of the coronation of King George VI in 1937, when mercy was granted to him and he was allowed to return home, which he did in August of that year. With the aid of his followers, other converts and people such as Charles Domingo, the Watch Tower movement had grown into all parts of the country.

However, within a short time of this hero's return, Kamwana was embroiled in an ideological conflict with his supporters. He now insisted on strict observation of certain limitations, including nonsmoking and no wearing of ornaments such as beads. His proposal to raise church funds through a contribution of one penny upset some of the Watch Tower adherents, and within Nkhata Bay itself some people were displeased by his transferring the movements headquarters from Chirwa in the south to Mdyaka, north of Nchintheche and the Luweya River. All this led to a split in the organization. Those who opposed the move called theirs the Watch Tower Society of Chifira; Kamwana's came to be known as the Watch Tower Healing Mission Society or the Mlonda Healing Mission Society. The major difference with his original organization was belief in spiritual healing, not spirit possession, rather than medicine.

Starved of funds, Kamwana's new center did not develop according to plan. The years of exile seem to have reduced Kamwana's interest in politics, for, increasingly, he talked of differentiating what was for Caesar from that which belonged to G.o.d. Some Watch Tower followers, especially those in the ThyoloMulanje area, were unimpressed by the change in emphasis, and they ignored his plea to adopt the new approach to preaching. By the time he died on 31 July 1956, his political influence had long been superseded by the African Welfare a.s.sociations, the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), and, nearer home, the Atonga Tribal Council. His religious influence was also greatly diminished; it was estimated that he had approximately 4,000 followers.