Part 16 (1/2)

NYASULU, PADDY. One of the founders of the African National Church, Nyasulu, a Henga, worked as a teacher and storekeeper for the Livingstonia Mission before becoming a government clerk. A church elder, Nyasulu was excommunicated because of polygamy and, with Simon Mkandawire and Robert Sambo Mhango and others, started the African National Church in 1927. The new church's main departure from the Church of Scotland was that it permitted alcohol use and polygamy. Most of its adherents were drawn from the latter church and from people who had been unable to join mainstream churches because of the prohibition of alcohol and polygamy.

NYAU. Much a.s.sociated with Chewa and Mang'anja societies, many people view nyau simply as a fierce looking cult of men who wear masks of animals to keep their ident.i.ties hidden during dance performances known as gule wamkulu (the great dance). In actuality, nyau is a serious aspect of Chewa/Mang'anja culture and history and is full of religious ideas relating to the genesis of the world and humankind and to the evolution of indigenous social and political inst.i.tutions. Chewa/Mang'anja myths of origins state that before the invention of fire, a harmonious relations.h.i.+p existed between human beings, animals, and spirits. In this context, the nyau, as other religious practices, attempts to reestablish that close linkage. The animal masks and the spirits that they represent have to been seen in this setting. The nyau dance is performed as part of the rites of pa.s.sage relating to birth, female and male initiation, and death.

As secret societies nyau have, over the centuries, resisted any intrusion by alien inst.i.tutions, in particular by the Christian missionaries who found the male behavior both noisy and obscene. To its followers, the nyau cult has religious and social significance and it reflects and supports traditional society. Unlike the territorial cult, M'bona, the nyau cult interests have been at the village level and have not played any nationalist role, except in parts of the central region, where it was used to intimidate people into maintaining their loyalty to the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). Throughout Dr. Hastings Banda's presidency, censored versions of nyau dancers were featured at Independence Day celebrations on 6 July and at MCP public rallies whenever he visited central Malawi.

NYERERE, JULIUS KAMBARAGE (19221999). One of the most respected statesmen in Africa, Julius Nyerere was president of Tanganyika from 1963 to 1964 and of Tanzania from 1964 to 1985, when he retired. Committed to the eradication of settler colonialism in Southern Africa, Nyerere a.s.sisted African liberation movements in establis.h.i.+ng majority governments in that region. This was contrary to President Hastings Banda's foreign policy, which stood for dialogue with white-ruled southern Africa. This factor, in addition to the fact that Tanzania hosted many Malawian political exiles, led to tension between it and Malawi in the period 196485. Nyerere died in a London hospital on 14 October 1999.

NYIHA. This is the name of the people and language of the inhabitants of Kameme in the northwestern section of Chitipa district, in the Chisenga-Ibuluma area of the district, in Mbozi district of Tanzania, and in parts of northeastern Zambia. The language is very closely related to that of the Lambya. Historians are of the opinion that the latter people are an offshoot of the Nyiha.

NYIKA PLATEAU. Located in northern Malawi and shared by three districts, Chitipa, Karonga, and Rumphi, and with Zambia for part of its western border, Nyika plateau is considered one of the most scenic areas of southern Africa. With a temperature rarely above 70F, it is also the most expansive and highest plateau range in Malawi, covering an area of about 900 square miles and with an elevation ranging between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, at Nganda, the summit. The forests on its slopes have increasingly given way to brachystegia woodland, and the main plateau is mostly montage gra.s.sland inters.p.a.ced by patches of forests and pine plantations. Other flora include many species of orchids, some specific to the area, and a variety of wild flowers. Nyika is also home to numerous species of animals: bushbuck, reedbuck, warthog, duiker, eland, blue monkey, and on the slopes, elephant and buffalo; lions and cheetah are occasionally seen in the area. The plateau is particularly known for its large population of zebra and for having the largest concentration of leopards in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Nyika is also home to diverse species of birds and has become a favorite area for bird watchers. The dams and numerous perennial streams are populated with trout, making the plateau particularly attractive to anglers.

The indigenous inhabitants of the plateau are the Phoka, and in the past they were famous ironsmiths. Archaeological work carried out in the area, especially at Fingira and Chowo, show human settlement and activity dating to between 175 BCE and 120 BCE. In 1965, Nyika became a national park, and many of its human inhabitants were relocated elsewhere. Thirteen years later, the park was expanded, making it the largest such facility in Malawi. The park's main camp is at Chelinda, from which visitors can walk or drive to many corners of the plateau. The Zambian part of the plateau also has a camp, located near the Chowo forest.

Nyika has always fascinated Europeans since it was first visited by Richard Crawshay of the British colonial administration, but it was the writer Laurens van der Post who popularized it in his Adventure into the Interior (1951).

NYIRENDA, BAZAAR. Longtime Malawi Congress Party (MCP) treasurer for the north, member of Parliament for Mzimba East, Bazaar Nyirenda was one of the diehard supporters of Dr. Hastings Banda. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, this prominent Mzuzu-based businessman held important positions within the ruling party and was known as a fearless, and at times, ruthless organizer. Since 1994, he has been retired from politics, concentrating on his business interests.

NYIRENDA, ROBERT DONALD GWEBE (19282008). First secretary manager of the Kilupula Rice Growers Co-operative Union (KRGCU), Nyirenda, son of Robert Gwebe Nyirenda, was educated at Livingstonia and in Tabora Secondary School, Tanganyika, where he was a schoolmate and friend of William M. Kanyama Chiume. For a brief period, he studied at Makerere University College, Uganda, and in 1953 became the founding secretary manager of the KRGCU, leaving the position three years later and devoting most of his time to politics. An ambitious, widely read, and articulate person, he became a member of the Northern Provincial Council and an active supporter of the Nyasaland African Congress. In 1959, he was detained briefly, and he spent a significant part of the 1960s working in Tanganyika before returning to Malawi where he gained employment with British American Tobacco in Blantyre. From 1974 to 1977, he was in prison for unspecified political reasons. He lived in Blantyre for some years before retiring to Karonga.

NYIRENDA, ROBERT GWEBE. Born in Karonga, Gwebe Nyirenda, maternal uncle of Kenneth Kaunda, was educated locally before going to the Overtoun Inst.i.tute, Khondowe, where he completed a teachers course. He worked as a teacher and then served the Nyasaland and Tanganyika governments as an interpreter and clerk. In 1912, Nyirenda was one of the founders of the North Nyasa Native a.s.sociation, the first political and welfare organization to be formed in Nyasaland (see AFRICAN WELFARE a.s.sOCIATIONS). Within Karonga district, he was regarded as an influential person, a close friend, and an advisor of Kyungu Peter Mwakasungula. Gwebe Nyirenda died at Kasoba, Karonga, in the 1960s.

NYIRENDA, SAULOS (c. 18701925). Author and historian of the Tumbuka-speaking peoples, Nyirenda was born in Mhuju in modern Rumphi district, and was nine years old when the Henga-Kamanga rebelled from the Ngoni and sought refuge in the Karonga lakesh.o.r.e (see GONDWE, KANYOLI). He was educated at Karonga and the Overtoun Inst.i.tution and was a teacher in Karonga until 1904, when he became a telegraphist for the Africa Trans-Continental Telegraph Company. Nyirenda witnessed the Arab-Swahili War of 188795 (see MLOZI BIN KAZBADEMA), which he described in his History of the Tumbuka-Henga People translated from ciTumbuka to English by Dr. Meredith Sanderson and published posthumously in Bantu Studies in 1931.

NYIRENDA, TOMO (1890s1926). Probably born in the last decade of the 19th century in northern Malawi, Nyirenda was a Henga, one of the numerous Tumbuka-speaking groups in the area. After attending school at Khondowe, he went to Northern Rhodesia to seek employment. His first position was in Broken Hill where he worked as a cook. He then moved to the Jessie Mines in Mkus.h.i.+ where, in February 1925, he met Gabriel Phiri, another Nyasaland labor migrant, who converted him to the Watch Tower Society. Nyirenda turned to preaching the message of the society, and this led to his arrest and imprisonment. Released on a technicality, he resumed preaching in April that year but, this time, he not only spread the message, baptized, and appealed to sorcerers, he widened his mission to detect them. As he became more famous, he was invited by Chief Shaiwila of the Lala to baptize him, his family, and his subjects and to identify and kill all the witches in his area. Impressed by his success, Shaiwila and his people began to regard Tomo Nyirenda as a prophet and savior, and they conferred upon him the designation Mwana Lesa, that is Son of G.o.d.

His preaching began to a.s.sume a political tone in the sense that he also prophesied the coming of the Americans who would liberate the Africans from the Europeans, whose property would then be shared by his followers. His message also included the ending of taxation. In June 1925, he went to Ndola where he killed six sorcerers before crossing the border into Katanga, Belgian Congo. There he continued with his ”witch” finding, killing about 170 suspected sorcerers, an act that led Belgian officials to seek his arrest. Nyirenda fled back to Northern Rhodesia and, in September, was arrested by the police in Petauke district. In 1926, he and Chief Shaiwila were tried for two days and condemned to death.

NYONDO, JAMES MBOWE (1968 ). James Nyondo stood as an independent candidate in the 2009 Malawi presidential elections. Although Chitipa is his home district, Nyondo was born in 1968 in Zambia where his father, Barnet, worked at the time. In 1988, he entered the bachelor of arts degree program at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, and a year later was admitted to the college's law school but, with a few other students, was expelled for political activism during the waning years of Dr. Hastings Banda's government. He lived in exile in Swaziland and worked in South Africa for some time, where he completed his legal studies at the University of South Africa. Later he studied for a business degree at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The basis of his support in his quest for the presidency in 20089 was a quasi-religious organization, the Servants of the Nation (SON). In the presidential elections, Nyondo secured 27,328 votes, representing 0.61 percent of the total votes cast.

NYONDO, SAMSON MBOBE. The Mwaulambya (king of the Lambya) from 1940 to 1975, was a primary schoolteacher before his installation to the Lambya throne in 1940. Known as a progressive ruler and in the 1940s recognized by the colonial administrators as an independent-minded and bright ruler, Samson Nyondo encouraged the expansion of Western education in his area, a.s.sisting Eneah Mulaga and Aram Mwenisongole in establis.h.i.+ng the first full primary school in Chitipa district. In 1959, the colonial government deposed the Mwaulambya because he sided with the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) but he was re-installed in 1961. In 1975, the Hastings Banda government removed him from office. A few years later, the Lambya king makers installed Redson Nyondo as the new Mwaulambya. Samson Nyondo died in the early 1980s.

NZAMA. Located in the area of Njobvuyalema, one of the subordinates of the Gomanis, this is the site of the first mission station in the Lake Malawi area of the Montfort order of the Catholic Church. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Father Pierre Bourget, the Montforts arrived at Nzama on 25 July 1901, and, as their first accommodation, they used a small farm house previously owned by a French planter. They began to learn ciMang'anja (Chewa), the local language, translated the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Sign of the Cross into the language, and in February 1902 started a school. In December 1904, five nuns belonging to the Congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom arrived at Nzama to help expand the work of the priests. The relations between Njobvuyalema and the Catholic missionaries were generally cordial, except in 1903 when they accused him and his subordinate at Nzama of administering mwabvi (poison ordeal). The priests reported the matter to the colonial government, which p.r.o.nounced the defendants guilty and imprisoned them at Liwonde for nine months. On his return from prison in March 1904, Njobvuyalema and the missionaries repaired their relations and proceeded to cooperate.

NZIMA, MUNENE. Munene was one of the wives of Zw.a.n.gendaba, and mother of Mhlahlo Jere, the first M'mbelwa. Zw.a.n.gendaba's promotion of Munene as the inkosikazi (great wife) was controversial because the position had long been jointly held by Lompetu and her sister, Soseya, both daughters of Zwide. At some stage, Lompetu's house was suspected of trying to poison Zw.a.n.gendaba, leading to the demotion of the sisters and the promotion of Munene; Soseya bore a child, Ntuto, also known as Mpezeni. The joint inkozikazis.h.i.+p had become necessary because Lompetu was unable to have children and therefore could not produce an heir to Zw.a.n.gendaba.

NZUNDA, MATEMBO (1955?2000). Former member of Parliament for Chitipa North and cabinet minister from 1994 to 1999, Nzunda was born in Ulambya, Chitipa district. He was educated at Chaminade Secondary School before proceeding to Chancellor College, graduating with a law degree. After studying for a master's degree in law at the University of London, he returned to teach at Chancellor College, University of Malawi. In the late 1980s, he completed studies at Cambridge University for which he was awarded a PhD in commercial law. Nzunda was one of the first activists to advocate for political change in Malawi and, as a result, he was subjected to numerous police investigations including a brief detention. In 1992, he was part of the legal team defending Chakufwa Chihana and when the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) Party came into being, Nzunda became an advisor to its leaders.h.i.+p. In 1994, he took leave of absence from his university job and successfully contested for the Chitipa North const.i.tuency. Later that year, he was one of the AFORD members appointed to the United Democratic Front (UDF)led government, and, when that arrangement ended two years later, Nzunda refused to leave the government. For this, he was expelled from AFORD, and in 1999, unsuccessfully stood as a UDF partybacked independent candidate; that same year he was appointed as clerk of the Lilongwe city a.s.sembly. He died on 10 January 2000.

O.

OBLATES OF THE HOLY FAMILY. This Catholic order of brothers was the first religious community to be established for men in Malawi. Founded in 1928 and based at Nankhunda Seminary, the congregation had an unstable beginning because most of the brothers had left the order for different occupations. As time progressed, the Oblates became the foundation of an African clergy in the Catholic Church, especially in southern Malawi.

OPERATION BWEZANI. Operation Bwezani or ”Operation Return Back” refers to the Malawi army's attack on all the major Malawi Young Pioneer (MYP) installations in Malawi on 4 December 1993, in an attempt to disarm and weaken this wing of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). The matter of the stockpile of armory under the Young Pioneers had been a great concern to the army, and in the period leading to the referendum in May 1993 and to the elections in the following year, opposition groups, through the National Consultative Council, had demanded that the powers of the Young Pioneers be greatly diminished.

On 1 December 1993, two soldiers stationed at the Moyale barracks in Mzuzu were shot by the Young Pioneers after a heated argument at a tavern. Junior officers and the men at all three army barracks wanted to get revenge for the deaths of the soldiers and were even more incensed by an apparent lack of support from the higher command, which wanted the matter to be settled quietly. On 1 December, the middle ranks, junior officers, and men mounted an attack on all princ.i.p.al MYP bases, the heaviest a.s.saults being on the Kamuzu Inst.i.tute of Youth and Youth House, the national headquarters of the organization. Aiming to completely incapacitate the MYP, the soldiers used helicopter guns.h.i.+ps and automatic weapons to demolish these buildings. The national headquarters of the MCP in Lilongwe was also bombed and razed to the ground, ostensibly because it was suspected of storing some Young Pioneers' arms. Senior MYP officers were arrested but some escaped to the bush; their houses were attacked, and their property was taken. The government saved the situation by receiving a delegation of soldiers and conceding to their demands, including the immediate retirement of the three most senior officers: General Yohane, commander of the army; General Manyozo, the deputy commanding officer; and General Liabunya, chief of military intelligence. The latter was particularly a.s.sociated with the MCP, making him a target of many junior officers.

On 7 December, President Hastings Banda, after recently having brain surgery, broadcast a conciliatory message requesting the nation to have faith in the government and thanking the soldiers for their willingness to return to their bases. He also announced the appointment of a retired general, Winnifred Mponela, as minister of defense, a position only Banda himself had held since independence. The situation calmed and the process of disarming the MYP continued in a more orderly manner. In the meantime, an estimated 2,000 Young Pioneers who had fled to Mozambique became a concern of the Malawi opposition parties, which feared they could be used to destabilize the country in the period leading to the first general elections in the country. The Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) government also worried that this group of Young Pioneers might link with the Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana (RENAMO) and cause even bigger problems for the former Portuguese colony. Many of the ”rebels” slipped back into Malawi and returned to their homes where they lived quietly.

OPERATION SUNRISE. In the early morning hours of 3 March 1959, Nyasaland's governor, Sir Robert Armitage, decreed that a State of Emergency existed in Malawi, allegedly because the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) had entered upon a course of violence and had plotted the murder of all white residents of the colony. Troops were ordered to round up hundreds of active and senior members of Congress, including Dr. Hastings Banda, Henry Chipembere, and Dunduzu and Yatuta Chisiza. The government sent Banda and his three lieutenants to Gwelo (Gweru) prison in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Other senior Congress leaders were sent to Khami prison, Southern Rhodesia, and 1,500 more members were placed in detention, mostly at Kanjedza in Limbe. During the emergency, nearly 50 Africans were killed, 21 at Nkhata Bay alone; the NAC was banned and property destroyed; no Europeans died. The official inquiry into this event (see DEVLIN COMMISSION) showed that both the police and the King's African Rifles (KAR) had exceeded their authority and had deliberately attacked and mistreated many Congress members.

ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY (OAU). Formed in 1963 as an a.s.sociation of independent African states, the OAU was the culmination of the Pan-Africanist movement, which had among its long-term aims the establishment of a united African government structure. First on its immediate agenda was to hasten the process of decolonization by giving practical a.s.sistance to the nationalist movements, especially those in the white settler states: Mozambique, Angola, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, and Guinea Bissau. OAU strategies included ostracizing these states, but President Hastings Banda argued that Malawi could not go along with this approach because economic necessity dictated that it maintain close cooperation with white-ruled southern Africa. In 1966, the OAU resolved to break diplomatic relations with Great Britain over the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of Southern Rhodesia. Malawi abstained in the OAU vote on this matter and did the same when the United Nations (UN) pa.s.sed resolutions requesting Britain to use force against the rogue regime. Banda viewed OAU boycotts of, and political pressure on, white-ruled states as a waste of time, arguing that such tactics were ineffective and only served to thwart Malawi's development. Although he maintained the Malawi mission at the OAU, he stopped attending OAU heads of state summits, leaving his cabinet ministers to represent him. On the contrary, the United Democratic Front (UDF) government played an active role in OAU affairs, and President Bakili Muluzi personally led Malawi delegations to all important conferences that required his presence. In 2002, the OAU became the African Union (AU). See also FOREIGN POLICY.

ORMSBY-GORE COMMISSION. Chaired by William Ormsby-Gore, later Lord Harlech, the commission was established in 1924 to advise on the advantages of a closer a.s.sociation between the British colonies in East Africa and those in Central Africa. An undersecretary for the colonies at the time, Ormsby-Gore visited all the colonies concerned, and his commission recommended that the infrastructure in the region be improved first before looking into the matter of the union of the colonies. With regard to Nyasaland, the commission took particular interest in the land question, especially the position of Africans on European estates, including those in North Nyasa district where the British South Africa Company (BSAC) held large tracts of land. The Ormsby-Gore Commission expressed concern that such land problems had not been resolved, pointing out, among other things, the importance of promoting African agricultural development, which he viewed as a solution to the matter of labor migration from Nyasaland, itself a consequence of poor economic opportunities in the colony. Convinced that agricultural production would flourish if both Africans and Europeans could be a.s.sured of better export facilities, the commission recommended that a rail line be built from northern Lake Nyasa to connect with the Central Railway of Tanganyika, whose princ.i.p.al port was at Dar-es-Salaam. Ormsby-Gore went on to become secretary for the colonies (193638) and British high commissioner in South Africa (194144).

OSMAN, ALAUDIN. Press officer for President Bakili Muluzi since 1994, Alaudin Osman was educated at Chichiri secondary school, Limbe, and worked as an information a.s.sistant in Blantyre before joining the Times of Malawi in the mid-1960s. In the early 1970s, he was appointed editor of the newspaper, becoming the first Malawian to occupy this position. A short while later, he went to Botswana where he worked for a privately owned newspaper. In the early 1990s, he returned to Malawi, and in 1992, he founded the Malawi Financial Post, the first alternative paper to the Malawi Daily Times and the Malawi News, both of which were linked to the government and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). The Financial Post played a leading role as an advocate for political reform in Malawi. Active in the campaign for multiparty democracy in the early 1990s, Osman allied himself with the United Democratic Party (UDF), and when Bakili Muluzi became president in 1994, he appointed Osman as his chief press officer, a position he held until the early 2000s when he went into private business as a managing director of his Blantyre-based Capital Radio FM.

OURY, LIBERT. Belgian-born investor, owner of Portuguese East Africabased business concerns, including the Mozambique Company and the Beira Works Ltd., Oury was instrumental in the construction of the Trans-Zambezia Railway from Beira to which the s.h.i.+re Highlands Railway, completed in 1913, would be linked. Using his London contacts such as Sir Alfred Sharpe, Oury persuaded the British government to back his railway project, debentures of which would be guaranteed by the Nyasaland government. Economically very weak, the colonial administration in Nyasaland would spend much of its meager revenue servicing a venture that had been forced upon it by the imperial authorities.

OVERTOUN INSt.i.tUTION. Located at Khondowe, established in November 1894, and named after Lord Overtoun (John Campbell White), one of the Scottish businessmen who supported the Livingstonia Mission financially, the inst.i.tution grew to be the leading educational and vocational training center in South Central Africa. It produced teachers, clergymen, bookkeepers, masons, joiners, medical a.s.sistants, and many other skilled personnel, all of whom would occupy key positions in many parts of the wider southern African region. Dr. Robert Laws headed the inst.i.tution from its foundation to 1927, when he retired to Scotland.

P.

PACHAI, BRIDGLAL. Founding head of the Department of History at the University of Malawi, Pachai was born in 1929 in Ladysmith, South Africa, where he trained as a teacher and studied by correspondence for his BA, MA, and PhD, becoming the first person of Indian origin to be awarded a doctorate degree in history by a South African university. He taught at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and in 1965 was appointed as senior lecturer and head of the Department of History at the University of Malawi, becoming a full professor three years later. In 1971 and 1972, Pachai broadcast a series of talks covering a wide range of topics on the history of Malawi, and in this way, he helped to popularize the study of history in the country, particularly since chiChewa translations were also broadcast on Radio Malawi. The talks were published as Malawi History of the Nation (1973). Pachai published many books on Malawian and South African history, including The Early History of Malawi (ed., 1972), Land and Politics in Malawi (1975), and The South African Indian Question (1971).

In 1975, Pachai left Malawi for Canada where he held appointments at Dalhousie University and St. Mary's University, both in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1978, he went to the University of Sokoto (now renamed Usman dan Fodio University) where he became dean of the faculty of arts. In the mid-1980s, he returned to Canada where he became the director of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, Westphal, Halifax County, until 1989 when he was appointed as the director of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. Bridglal Pachai is a recipient of Canada's highest medal, the Order of Canada, awarded for his work in human rights in Canada.

PAOLUCCI, AUGUSTO. With Ippolito Lamagna, Augusto Paolucci was the first Italian to establish business in the Lake Malawi region. Arriving in the s.h.i.+re Highlands in the 1890s, Paolucci and Lamagna, like many Europeans entering the area at the time, became traders and effectively land speculators, buying hundreds of acres of land. Ultimately, Paolucci owned a store in Blantyre in which he sold a variety of items, including cigars, kitchenware, and alcoholic beverages, such as wine, brandy, and whiskey. He even tried to import camels to help solve the perennial transport problem in the colony. As more Indian traders established their own retail shops, Paolucci was edged out, and by 1904 he left the colony.

PASELI BROTHERS BAND. Formed by two brothers, Bari and Smart, whose popular Banjo and acoustic guitar music featured regularly on the radio stations of the Central African Broadcasting Services and its successor, the Federal Broadcasting Corporation. Born and raised in Mlumbe's area in Zomba district in the 1940s and 1950s, the brothers worked in Southern Rhodesia and, at that stage, their music reflected the life of Malawian migrant laborers. Typical of such songs are ”Ndifera moyenda” (I have died in my travels/migrations) and ”Kwathu nkutali” (Our home is far). Easily their most popular composition is ”Napolo,” which laments the wrath of the cyclone, Napolo, the most catastrophic in Zomba and in particular their home area of Mlumbe. The music of the Paseli Brothers remains popular today, and it has influenced a generation of Malawian banjo and guitar players. Once back in Nyasaland, Bari Paseli worked for the United Transport Company as a bus driver until the 1970s when he died.

PASHANE, MAXWELL KATAYENI (19421995). Minister of education (198687) and administrative secretary of the Malawi Congress Party (198791), Maxwell Pashane was born in Mchinji district and educated at Zomba Catholic Secondary School and at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, where he graduated in 1969 with a BA in geography. He taught at Bwaila Secondary School in Lilongwe and later became headmaster of the inst.i.tution. He was promoted to the inspectorate division at the Ministry of Education headquarters, rising to the position of chief inspector of schools. In 1986, Pashane was nominated as a member of Parliament for Mchinji and was appointed minister of education. Within 18 months, he was transferred to the heads.h.i.+p of the ruling party's secretariat, an office that carried the cabinet ministerial designation of minister without portfolio. In the early 1990s, he left active politics on health grounds and died shortly thereafter.

Pa.s.sFIELD, BARON (18591947). Formerly known as Sidney James Webb, this social activist and historian was in the Labour government's cabinet as minister for the colonies from 1929 to 1931, and for a brief period (192930) also held the portfolio for Dominions. In the former capacity, Lord Pa.s.sfield issued his famous ”Memorandum on Native Policy in East Africa,” reaffirming the principle of trustees.h.i.+p and paramountcy of African interests in that region, as declared by the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re in 1923. The Pa.s.sfield Memorandum, published in June 1930, extended the doctrine to Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, a development that upset the European settlers in the two countries and in Southern Rhodesia because their long-term ambition was to establish a closer union of the three British possessions. The Pa.s.sfield Memorandum also stated that equal opportunity should be granted to everyone in the acquisition of Crown lands in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, and in connection with this, Pa.s.sfield advised that reasonable credit and lease terms be made more readily available to Africans. Lord Pa.s.sfield also directed that development must occupy a central position in the policies of the two colonial governments, and for Nyasaland, he argued that the future of the country lay in the contributions of the larger and longer established European agricultural firms and the African cultivator rather than the recently arrived small European settler farmer whom he regarded as being too dependent on government a.s.sistance.

PATEL, ROLF. In the early 1990s, this Limbe- and Thyolo-based businessman was a leading advocate in the political reform movement, becoming a founding member of the United Democratic Front (UDF). In 1994, he was elected to the Parliament and was appointed to the cabinet but, within two years, he disagreed with the party leaders.h.i.+p and founded his own political organization, the People's Democratic Party. Some months before the general elections of 1999, Patel returned to the UDF, and not long afterward, he retired from active politics.

PEARCE, FRANCIS BARROW (18661926). A captain in the Central African Rifles, renamed King's African Rifles (KAR), Pearce was appointed a.s.sistant deputy commissioner and vice consul in 1900 and in 1903 and 1911 served as acting governor of Nyasaland. As an officer in the KAR, Pearce took part in campaigns against African communities resisting British rule. In 1902, he commanded a contingent to Chintheche district where the Tonga, supported by the Scottish missionaries at Bandawe, refused to pay the recently inst.i.tuted hut tax of six s.h.i.+llings. Promoted to the rank of major, Pearce was acting governor in 1903 when he tried to solve the problem of land that Africans were facing because of the proliferation of European estates. With little support from his superiors, his attempts failed. When Sir Alfred Sharpe was on leave in 1907, Pearce once more was acting governor; in 1913, he served in a similar capacity, and, as in 1903, he attempted to tackle the land issue, this time unsuccessfully initiating legislation aimed at preventing Africans on private estates from being turned into serfs. Pearce would hold senior government positions elsewhere in Africa, including Zanzibar (191322).

PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY. See PATEL, ROLF.

PEOPLE'S PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT. See BANDA, ALEKE KADONOMPHANI; MGWIRIZANO.