Page 17 - Number 2 2021 Volume 74

Ida Z. Chilembwe – Pioneer Nyasa Feminist 5

attention to Willie Mae Ashley’s biography of Emma B. DeLaney, entitled Far
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from Home , which cites: “One of Chilembwe’s four [my italics] children was
named Emma”. Clearly, further research is required.
It is of interest to note that at Ida’s court appearances before the District
th
th
th
Magistrate, A. M. D. Turnbull, on the 8 , 9 and 24 February 1915 subsequent
to her arrest following the Rising, on the first two occasions court records show
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her name spelt Aida in the transcript, and Ida on the last occasion. Whether the
Aida spelling was the result of a mistaken transliteration occasioned by Ida’s
pronunciation of her name, or whether the clerk recording her testimony saw an
irresistible opportunity to demonstrate his familiarity with Verdi’s famous opera
will never be known.
Given that Ida’s testimony almost entirely comprises a list of
Chilembwe followers that she either admits to, or she denies, having seen at
Chiradzulu in the days before January 23 , it would appear more of a
rd
straightforward interrogation than an investigation into cause and effect. She does,
however, offer that John Chilembwe visited her at night whilst she was in hiding
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at Johnston’s village on the 24 January when he told her he had given a note to
a follower, Joseph Chambo, to hand in at the Chiradzulu boma requesting care be
taken of the PIM women captured. Perhaps in doing so inviting a hoped-for quid
pro quo in recognition of the fact that Chilembwe had given firm instructions that
the European women and children at Magomero should not be harmed during his
followers’ pre-emptive strike almost a week previously. Ida does state during her
th
9 February appearance that: “I do not know why he (Chilembwe) wanted to kill
the white people. I lived quite contentedly. I heard him once complain about the
school being destroyed by Europeans at Namadsi.”
Emma Chilembwe died of unknown causes whilst still a child. The small
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figure standing alongside John Chilembwe in the admirable photograph of the
inauguration of Chilembwe’s church at the PIM in 1913 could very well be Emma.
In any event it would have been sometime just within a year or two of that date
that Emma appears to have died.
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Subsequent to John Chilembwe’s death by shooting on 3 February
1915, by Nyasa police trackers Sergeant Useni and Private Nasulo, whilst in full
flight to escape over the border into Portuguese East Africa in the aftermath of the

14 W. M. Ashley. Far from Home. Fernadina Beach. 1987.
15 Aida is an Arabic female name which translates as ‘visitor’.
16 British Missionary John Chorley, of the Zambezi Industrial Mission, who
preached the first sermon at the inauguration of Chilembwe’s new church in
January 1913, testified that his wife had taken the photograph of himself standing
on the church steps with John Chilembwe on that day, of which he had six dozen
copies printed, as well as of ‘the photograph of the church’.