Part 16 (2/2)
PETERKINS, E. C. A prominent Lilongwe-based European businessman and politician, Peterkins was United Federal Party (UFP) and later Nyasaland Const.i.tutional Party member of Parliament until 1961. Peterkins had many business interests, including, in the 1940s and 1950s, a directors.h.i.+p of the Nyasaland Times and a shop in Lilongwe.
PHAIYA, THADEUS THOMAS. Born at Kapeni village in Mulanje district in 1946, he attended Mulanje Primary School and Blantyre Secondary School before going to the Polytechnic in Blantyre, where he obtained a diploma in business studies. Prior to being nominated to Parliament in 1973, he worked for the Reserve Bank and for the Malawi Development Corporation (MDC). Subsequently, he served in the Ministries of Trade, Industry, and Tourism; Health; and Local Government. Phaiya was briefly southern regional secretary of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). He left active politics in the late 1970s.
PHALOMBE. This is the name of the district north of Mulanje and southeast of Zomba. Inhabited mostly by Lomwe and Yao peoples, the district was, until the late 1990s, part of Mulanje district. Located in the fertile and wet plains, it is one of the most densely populated areas of Malawi.
PHELPS STOKES COMMISSION. In 1919, the Phelps Stokes Fund, an American charitable foundation, appointed a commission to investigate and report on the state of education in Africa. Led by Thomas Jesse Jones, a noted specialist on black American education at Hampton Inst.i.tute, Virginia, the commission included American and British missionaries and Dr. James Kwegyir Aggrey, a leading educationist from the Gold Coast. Although it spent most of its time in South and West Africa, the commission also surveyed the situation in Nyasaland. The commission recommended the broadening of African education beyond the evangelistic approach, which had been so dominant in the continent. Accepting the fact that Christian missions would continue to play a major role in education, the commission recommended that training in agriculture should occupy a prominent place on school syllabi. It also strongly urged colonial governments to involve themselves in educational matters, especially in coordinating policy and in providing the much needed financial a.s.sistance.
In 1924, another Phelps Stokes Commission visited Nyasaland, among other countries in east, central, and southern Africa. It was partly in response to this commission's proposals and those of the Advisory Committee on African Education in Tropical Africa that the Nyasaland government established the Department of Education in 1926. In pursuit of some of the recommendations of the Phelps Stokes Commission, the Jeanes Fund of the United States funded educational centers where community work was emphasized, and among such inst.i.tutions was the Jeanes Training Centre at Domasi in Zomba district.
PHILLIPS, HENRY ELLIS ISIDORE (19142004). The last financial secretary of the colonial government of Nyasaland and first minister of finance in the African-dominated government that followed the general elections of 1961, Henry Phillips was born in England and educated at University College, London. He served in World War II, becoming a prisoner in j.a.panese camps. In 1946, he joined the Colonial Administrative Service and was posted to Nyasaland, where he became first the a.s.sistant district commissioner and then district commissioner of Karonga district. Two years later, Phillips was transferred to the secretariat in Zomba, and from 1953 to 1957, he was seconded to the Treasury of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury (Harare). On his return to Nyasaland, he became financial secretary, holding the position until 1961 when he was appointed minister of finance. Phillips was knighted in 1964, the year he also retired to England. He became managing director of the Development Corporation of the Standard Bank, a position that ensured his continued link with Malawi. Later (198388) he became a member of the board of the National Bank in Malawi, which gave him the opportunity to be a regular visitor to Malawi, where he had remained in close contact with President Hastings Banda.
PHIRI, DESMOND DUDWA (1930 ). Educationist, writer, historian, and businessman and public intellectual, Phiri was born in Mzimba district and educated at Loudon and Livingstonia Mission schools and at Blantyre Secondary School. He completed his education by correspondence, earning a BA and a postgraduate qualification in economic and social administration from the University of London. He worked in East Africa before joining the administrative division of the Malawi government, was briefly a diplomat, and, upon his retirement, established the Aggrey Memorial Correspondence School. Phiri is the author of numerous books in his ”Malawians to Remember” series, including Inkosi Gomani II (1973), James Frederick Sangala (1974), Charles Chidongo Chinula (1975), and John Chilembwe (1975, revised in 1999). He has also written From Nguni to Ngoni: A History of the Ngoni Exodus from Zululand to Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia (1982), History of Malawi from the Earliest Times to the Year 1915 (2004), and Let Us Fight for Africa: A Play Based on the John Chilembwe Rising of 1915 (2008).
PHIRI, HANOCK MSOKERA (1884?). Religious leader, teacher, uncle, and close friend of former President Hastings Banda, Hanock Phiri was born near Kasungu around 1884 and educated at the Overtoun Inst.i.tution where Dr. Robert Laws baptized him into Christianity. Phiri taught at Livingstonia Mission schools in Kasungu, including Chilanga where Hastings Banda was one of his pupils. He was in his mid-20s when he became Banda's teacher. Early in 1924, he left for Southern Rhodesia, working in Hartley, where he was joined by Banda about two years later. Early in 1917, the two embarked on a journey that would take them to Natal, where they briefly worked at a coal mine near Dundee before proceeding to Johannesburg. Phiri and Banda worked at the Wit.w.a.tersrand Deep Mine on the periphery of Boksburg. Sometime in 1918, Phiri left for Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, to teach at the Paris Evangelical Mission school there. In 1922, Banda requested his uncle to return to South Africa to work toward a leaders.h.i.+p position in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church that Banda had joined earlier. In late 1923, Phiri was ordained as minister of the AME church, and in 1924 both attended the AME conference. By the end of that year, Phiri returned to Nyasaland to head mission operations of the church near Kasungu. Soon Phiri had established a network of schools subsidized partly by South African church funds.
PHOKA. This is the name of the indigenous inhabitants of the Nyika plateau and the surrounding areas, including the highland region north of the Henga Valley up to, and encompa.s.sing, Khondowe. In precolonial times, they were widely famous as iron smiths, their hoes being popular well beyond modern Malawi.
PHOYA, HENRY DUNCAN (1966 ). Lawyer and one of Malawi's prominent politicians to emerge in the early 2000s, Duncan Phoya, grandson of J. D. Phoya, a prominent political activist in the 1950s and 1960s and a former mayor of Blantyre, was educated at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, where he graduated with a bachelor of law degree in 1992. He joined the government legal service, but within a few months left to work for the renowned Blantyre-based firm Wilson and Morgan. Five years later, he established his own law firm. One of the United Democratic Front's legal advisors, he became a member of its executive committee in 2002 and, in that same year, Bakili Muluzi appointed him as minister of justice. In 2003, he became minister of privatization and, in the general elections of 2004, he won the Blantyre Rural East const.i.tuency and was reappointed as minister of justice and const.i.tutional affairs.
Phoya joined Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika's new Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2005. In 2006, he was transferred to the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Surveys but, in 2007, he returned to the Ministry of Justice and Const.i.tutional Affairs. Although he retained his seat in May 2009, President Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika did not appoint him to the cabinet. However, as a member of the National a.s.sembly and as the director of legal affairs in the DPP, he continued to be prominent in Malawi politics.
PHWEZI EDUCATION FOUNDATION. Based at Phwezi in Rumphi district, this inst.i.tution was established in the early 1980s when Denis Nkwazi and Morton Chipimpha Mughogho, among others, sought the means of building an independent school to enable primary school children not selected to the mainstream secondary school system to continue with their educations. With German financial support, they started an education foundation with which to fulfill this objective. The foundation bought the buildings at the main camp of the firm, which had just constructed the Chiweta Road that links Mzuzu and the Karonga and northern Rumphi lakesh.o.r.es. Located on the northern banks of the South Rukuru River in the southern section of the Henga Valley, the camp, consisting of modern accommodations and offices, was turned into the Phwezi Secondary School, one section for girls and the other for boys, each with a headmaster. Mughogho became the head of the foundation as well as the overall princ.i.p.al of the school. Later, the foundation added a technical college to the school.
Many board members of the Phwezi Foundation and those on its faculty were former civil servants, politicians, and teachers who at one point had fallen out of favor with the government and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and, in some cases, had served periods in detention without trial. In 1991 and 1992, Phwezi became one of the centers of the underground movement to inst.i.tute political reform, and most people a.s.sociated with the foundation became active in the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD). Mughogho became the national chairman and Nkwazi the national treasurer.
PINTO, MAJOR SERPA. In 1889, this Portuguese army officer and traveler led an expedition into the s.h.i.+re Valley, ostensibly to undertake a scientific inquiry of the Lake Malawi region. Portuguese designs over the region were common knowledge in European diplomatic circles: for some time, they had attempted to involve themselves in inter-African affairs, especially those of the Kololo, some of whom were not on particularly good terms with the British, especially those in the African Lakes Company. The Portuguese had also already tried to establish working relations with the Yao in the Upper s.h.i.+re. For the British, the Serpa Pinto expedition, which in reality was military in nature, was evidence of the Portuguese determination to proclaim jurisdiction over the s.h.i.+re Highlands and the s.h.i.+re Valley. The British in the area and most of the Kololo chiefs reconciled their differences and opposed the Portuguese plans. Partly influenced by strong Scottish opinion, the British government under Lord Salisbury reacted to the expedition by declaring British Protectorate status over the southern Lake Malawi area.
PLAINFIELD INDUSTRIAL MISSION. This was the original name of the Malamulo Mission in Thyolo when it was first established by Joseph Booth after his return from the United States in July 1899. During his stay in the United States that year, Booth had become a member of the Plainfield Seventh-Day Baptist Church in New Jersey, and when the National Baptist Convention appointed him as head of a mission it wanted to start in the Lake Malawi region, Booth named it after his U.S. congregation. In 1901, Booth seriously considered selling Plainfield to African Americans for purposes of turning it into a settlement for people of African origin who wanted to return home to Africa. However, in 1902, the mission settlement was sold to the Seventh-Day Adventists who renamed it Malamulo, turning it into the main center of the Lake Malawi region.
POLICE. From the 1890s to the end of the World War I, there was no real police force in Nyasaland. District collectors, as the district administrators were called then, used uniformed and armed messengers to enforce law; these messengers were not trained, were undisciplined, and tended to demand favors such as food, chickens, and even women. A response to this situation was a 1909 ordinance that stipulated harsh punishment for unruly policemen. In 1899, the first actual policemen, two in number, were employed by the town of Blantyre, and their main duty was to patrol markets and to oversee laborers working on roads. Serious proposals for a properly structured police force were made in the prewar period, a step reinforced by the Chilembwe uprising of 1915. However, it was only in 192021 that elements of a police department began to appear.
In 1920, Major Francis Stephens was appointed chief commissioner of police, and he set about establis.h.i.+ng a territory-wide force and, in October of the following year, the Nyasaland Police Ordinance was signed by the governor, Sir George Smith, marking the official birth of the Nyasaland Police Department. With headquarters in Zomba, the department initially comprised a chief commissioner and his support staff and four stations in Zomba, Blantyre, Mulanje, and Fort Johnston. For transport, this force of less than 100 relied on a fleet of four bicycles. Among their duties were recovery of World War I rifles, registration of bicycles, vehicles, and firearms, and supervision in prisons and criminal investigations. In districts where the department was not present, the earlier system of law enforcement continued. A specific criminal investigation department was added in 1922 and, in the 1930s, the force became responsible for immigration duties. Also in the 1930s, more outstations were established, and the ranks of a.s.sistant inspector and subinspector were created, the former rank being occupied by Indians, the latter by Africans. By the end of the 1930s, stations were set up as far north as Karonga but, except for Lilongwe, district commissioners acted as officers in charge of the stations in their districts.
At the beginning of World War II, the security branch, the Political Intelligence Bureau, was added to the force, and in the late 1940s radio communications became part of the department's apparatus. Although during the war, there was a special prison police, the general police and the King's African Rifles (KAR) had to be called in to the central prison in Zomba to quell a riot of prisoners in 1949. By 1952, the force had stations and posts in most parts of the central and northern provinces, and its total complement was at 705.
The events of the 1950s had a major impact on the reorganization of the police. In 1953, riots concerning land and tax and also a.s.sociated with the imposition of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland took place in Thyolo, Mulanje, Ntcheu, Zomba, and Port Herald. More policemen were recruited, and more permanent housing was built for them on most stations. Equally significant was the creation of the antiriot police, consisting mainly of ex-soldiers and older policemen. In the following year, it came to be called the Police Mobile Force (PMF), which had 250 men, divided into platoons of 36; each platoon was headed by a European officer who had served in the British police or had recently worked in Malaya during the state of emergency in that colony. Some of the European officers were recruited from the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia, where racial att.i.tudes toward black peoples were particularly bad, and this tended to influence the officers' dealings with the men under their charge and with the African population in Nyasaland. The PMF was very much involved in dealing with riots during the 1959 State of Emergency, which led to the Devlin Commission, and they were noted as particularly harsh in their approach to rioters. Also, in the initial stages of the State of Emergency, the governor, Sir Robert Armitage, requested and received the a.s.sistance of contingents of police from Tanganyika and the two Rhodesias.
Following the State of Emergency in 1959, the police force expanded further. A two boat marine division was established on Lake Malawi, and a small air wing was also created. More people were recruited into the general police and the PMF, so that by 1960 the total complement was 225 officers and 2,604 men. That year the Police Training College moved from Zomba to the premises of the Artisan Training School in Kanjedza, Limbe. In addition, the Political Intelligence Bureau changed its name to the Special Branch, and as African political activity increased, this division increased its personnel and its surveillance duties. Until the early 1960s, the highest rank an African could expect to occupy was a.s.sistant and subinspector. The only exception was Mateyu Numero, who in 1958 became a.s.sistant superintendent when he took over the heads.h.i.+p of the Police Band from an Indian officer; Numero had just completed a course at the British Army's Royal Military School of Music. In 1959, Thomas Gombera achieved the distinction of being the first Malawian in the operations division to attain the rank of inspector of the police force. From the early 1970s, a three months' in-service course for noncommissioned officers was inst.i.tuted at the police school to enable Africanization to take place. Among such officers were Mac Kamwana, who in 1971 became the first Malawian head of the police force.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the police continued to Africanize, expand, and modernize. All wings of the force were headed by Malawians, the communication systems were updated, the headquarters was moved to the new capital city, Lilongwe, and a new division was created. Called the eastern division, it covered Zomba, Machinga, and Mangochi districts. In 197576, hundreds of Malawians suffered indiscriminate and arbitrary political detentions to the extent that even the new prisons at Mikuyu and Mpyupyu were filled. It was discovered that a.s.sistant Commissioner Martin Focus Gwede, then head of the police intelligence wing, the Special Branch, had misused his authority, partly to a.s.sist the political ambitions of his friend Albert Muwalo-Nqumayo, at the time minister of state in the office of the president, a position that included security responsibilities. In 1983, the police were also implicated in the Mwanza accident, in which three cabinet ministers and a member of Parliament were killed.
Kamwana, whose post had been redesignated inspector general, retired in 1986 and was succeeded by his deputy L. Ngwata, who served for only eight months before being replaced by Elliot Mbedza, previously head of the PMF division. A year later, he retired and was replaced by Milward Namasani, whose main experience was in the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). In 1990, Macwilliams Lunguzi, head of the Special Branch, became the new inspector general, a position he held until 1994 when the United Democratic Front (UDF) government recalled former a.s.sistant Commissioner Chikhosa from retirement to lead the Malawi police. Chikhosa served for over two years and was replaced by Kennedy Chirambo, who in January 2000 retired on health grounds and was succeeded by a new inspector general. Since then there have been five inspectors generals: Joseph Iron (20015), Joseph Thyolani (2005), Mary Nagwale (20056), Oliver k.u.mbambe (20059), Peter Mukhito (2009 ), formerly commander of the presidential guard.
During the tension leading to political reforms, the police had to deal with many delicate situations, including an incident in May 1992 when they fired at strikers (see BANDA, HASTINGS KAMUZU). Otherwise, both under the Bakili Muluzi and the Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika's governments, the Malawi police has continued with the British tradition of walking the beat unarmed, the baton stick being their main weapon. However, with the rise in violent robberies, occasioned by poverty, disparities in wealth, and a wide circulation of firearms, including the AK47, it has become the practice to arm some of them, especially at night. Also, in the 2000s, the PMF are sent to deal with violent robbers.
POLITICAL DISSIDENTS. During the leaders.h.i.+p of Dr. Hastings Banda, the term political dissident referred generally to people who had fallen out of favor with the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and its government, especially after the Cabinet Crisis of 1964. Many such people were forced into exile, mainly to Zambia and Tanzania; those who were studying abroad during the crisis and openly supported, or were perceived to agree with, the rebelling ministers in Congress also came to be regarded as dissidents. Within Malawi there would occur waves of imprisonments without trials for people reported to be in touch or in sympathy with exiles abroad. Government intelligence services infiltrated dissident organizations in exile and are credited with the murder of people, including Attati Mpakati and Mkwapatila Mhango.
POLITICAL PARTIES. In the period leading to the first general elections in 1961, there were many parties in Malawi (then Nyasaland): the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), representing the majority of Africans, stood for majority rule; the United Federal Party (UFP) fought for the status quo, including the continuation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland; after the dissolution of the Federation, the UFP in Nyasaland changed to the Nyasaland Const.i.tutional Party; the Congress Liberation Party was led by Thamar D. T. Banda, former president general of the National African Congress (NAC). Other parties were the Christian Social Democratic Party of Chester Katsonga and the National Liberation Democratic Party led by Clement k.u.mbikano, who had briefly been president of the Nyasaland branch of the Central African Party that Garfield Todd established after he split from the UFP and which had its main base in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Sometime after Raban Pemba Ndovi was expelled from his position in the MCP, he formed the Convention of African National Union, but with little support, the party was short-lived.
Following the Cabinet Crisis of 1964, the MCP national convention adopted the one-party status for the Republic of Malawi, which meant that from 1965 onward, no other political organization would be allowed in the country. In the meantime, the politicians forced into exile formed their own parties. Henry Chipembere's party was called the Pan-African Democratic Party of Malawi, and Kanyama Chiume formed the Congress for the Second Republic. Orton Chirwa established the Malawi Freedom Movement (MAFREMO); Attati Mpakati led the Socialist League of Malawi (LESOMA), and after his a.s.sa.s.sination, Grey Kamuyambeni became the leader. Other parties in exile were Harry Bwanausi's United Democratic Movement (UMD) and Akogo Kanyaya's Malawi Democratic Union (UDM).
With the exception of the Pan-African Democratic Party, which virtually ended with the death of its founder in 1975, all the parties previously based outside Malawi took part in the general elections of 1994. They did not do well compared with the United Democratic Front (UDF), the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), the Malawi Democratic Party (DP), and the Malawi Congress Party, the first three having been established in 1992. Since then, other political parties have been formed: the United Party (UP), which Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika led briefly in the 1990s, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Eston Kakhome, and Rev. Daniel K. Mnkhumbwe's Congress for National Unity (CONU).
In the period leading to the 2004 general and presidential elections, two new political parties joined the contest for district and national offices, and they were Brown Mpinganjira's National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Mgwirizano coalition. In 2005, Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which in 2009 won the presidential elections as well as the majority seats in the National a.s.sembly. Other political parties active in 2011 were the DPP, UDF, MCP, AFORD, MDP, Republican Party (RP), People's Transformation Party (PETRA), Maravi People's Party, Malawi for Unity and Development, and the People's Development Movement (PDM). A common aspect of all the political parties is a lack of major ideological differences. Another similarity is that the major parties tend to have strong regional or ethnic bases: the MCP has most of its members.h.i.+p in the central region, UDF and the DPP in the south, the PDM and AFORD in the north. The smaller political parties have scattered and difficult to identify members.h.i.+ps.
In 2011, two new political parties were formed. The first one was the People's Development Movement (PDM), headed by Harry Mkandawire, a former senior official of the DPP, which seemed to have a mainly northern base. On the other hand, although Joyce Banda's People's Party aimed at a national members.h.i.+p, it appeared to be, initially at least, a largely southern-based organization.
POPULATION. The population of Malawi has been increasing since 1960 when it was 3.5 million and, by the late 1970s, it had grown to 5.5 million. In 1990, it was over 8 million with 5.3 million under the age of 16. In 1998, it had risen to about 9.9 million, and the breakdown was: 014 years: 46 percent (male 2,210,871; female 2,190,564); 1564 years: 51 percent (male 2,430,178; female 2,250,608); 65 years and over: 3 percent (male 109,010; female 147,850). According to the census of 2008, the population increased to 13,066,320.
With the rate of population outstripping real economic growth, the standard of living became more depressed, resources more strained, and the shortage of land more apparent. The presence of a million Mozambican refugees in Malawi between the mid-1980s and 1994 exacerbated an economy already in crisis. The population density doubled between 1966 and 1987 from 43 persons per square kilometer in 1966 to 59 persons per square kilometer in 1977, and to 85 persons per square kilometer in 1987. In 1998, it was 105 persons per square kilometer, rising to 139 in 2008. Regionally, it was 185 for the south, 154 for the center, and 62 for the north. Less than 50 percent of the total land is arable and usable by the 86 percent rural population.
According to the 2008 Population and Housing Census, Malawi's population rose by 32 percent from about 9.9 million 10 years earlier to 13,066,320, an increase of 2.8 percent per annum, which is higher than the 2.0 percent in the 198798 decade. The 2008 census indicates that the regional distribution of the population was as follows: the south, 45 percent, and 42 and 13 for the center and the north, respectively. At 95 males per 100 females, the gender ratio has not changed much from 1966 when it was 90 per 100. In 1977, it was 93 per 100 and in 1987 and 1998 it was 94 per 100 and 96 per 100, respectively. The 2008 census survey also shows that although the majority of Malawians still live in rural areas, the urban population had gone from approximately 850,000 in 1987 to 1.4 million and 2.0 million in 1998 and 2008, respectively.
The birth rate has been decreasing since 2003 when it was 44.7 per 1,000. In 2008, it was 41.5, and it was estimated it would be at 41.3 in 2010. The death rate has also decreased during this period. In 2003, it was 22.64 per 1,000, and in 2008 it dropped to 17.89 and was expected to fall further to 13.69 per 1000 in 2010. Despite the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, life expectancy has also improved from 37.9 years in 2003 to 50.9 in 2009. See also WOMEN.
POTTERY. See NKOPE BAY; NKUDZI BAY; PREHISTORY.
PREHISTORY. This is the period of Malawi history when neither oral traditions nor written sources exist. The only dependable evidence is archaeological in nature, and according to this source, the early Stone Age peoples inhabiting Malawi were hunter-gatherers who lived along the lakesh.o.r.e and in the river valleys. More environmentally adaptable, the later Stone Age humans moved throughout the country, evidently preferring the uplands. Artifacts, such as sc.r.a.pers, lunates, trapeziums, and back blades, of these humans are found in nearly all of Malawi. In addition to these microliths, some bored stones and polished axes have also been recovered. The men and women of this age who occupied rock shelters and caves were also artists who left geometric and schematic style rock paintings.
Based on the latest archaeological research, carried out most seriously and systematically since the 1960s, the Iron Age began in Malawi about 200 A.D. Migrants, perhaps Bantu-speaking, who had knowledge of iron-working, pottery, and agriculture probably entered the country from an area to the west and settled rapidly by the lakesh.o.r.e. Although the intruders were culturally superior to the later Stone Age residents, the two apparently coexisted in the region.
In southern Malawi the pottery style uncovered has been named Nkope ware. The presumably quiet life near Nkope Bay allowed these people time to produce large numbers of decoratively rimmed bowls. A related pottery style, called Mwabulambo, after a site in Karonga district, is commonly uncovered in northern Malawi. Mwabulambo pots were wide rimmed and undecorated. Sometime during the 10th to 14th centuries, another type of pottery appeared. Called Kapeni ware, it is thinner than Nkope and contains grooves and incisions unlike the earlier pottery.
The migration of the Maravi peoples in the 15th to 16th centuries can be substantiated by oral tradition as well as by the recovery of Mawudzu pots made by the Maravi. The pottery is noticeably thinner and more decorative with chevrons, crosshatching, or herringbones. This ware was produced throughout the period of the Maravi empire into the late 18th century when new settlers effected additional cultural change. Succeeding in this southern lake region were the Bisa known for their Nkudzi pottery. They interacted with the Nyanja inhabitants, but their cultural influence was followed by that of the Ngoni and Yao immigrants. Thereafter pottery may be termed modern and no longer Iron Age. See also NKUDZI BAY.
PRENTICE, GEORGE. When Dr. Robert Laws went to Khondowe to establish the new headquarters of the Livingstonia Mission in 1892, George Prentice, also a Scotsman, arrived at Bandawe to take over the heads.h.i.+p of the mission station. A keen doctor, Prentice built the first obstetrics and gynecological ward in the country, and upon his transfer to Kasungu where he established the Chilanga Mission in 1900, he became very active in medical work, establis.h.i.+ng numerous rural health centers in the district. He is also noted as having been in the forefront in the fight against sleeping sickness, which broke out in the LuangwaKasungu, Nkhotakota, and south Mzimba region after 1910, and continued to be a problem in the 1920s. Prentice baptized Hastings Banda at Chilanga, where the latter was a student between 1908 and 1914. In 1917, Prentice volunteered for the war, returning to Kasungu two years later. In 1924, he returned to Scotland.
PRESIDENT. The president of Malawi is the head of state, head of government, and commander in chief of the armed forces. Although Hastings Banda was declared life president in 1971, resulting in no presidential elections until 1994, the Const.i.tution of 1994 stipulates that a president must serve for a five-year term and not for more than two terms. Therefore, presidential elections have taken place
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