Page 18 - Number 2 2021 Volume 74

6 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

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Uprising of 23 January 1915, ‘Charlie’ and Donald Chilembwe were cared for
by their mother, Ida, until her untimely death during the influenza pandemic of
1918. After that date, according to Dr. Hetherwick of the Blantyre Mission, they
were cared for by their (unidentified) grandmother until her own death in 1922,
leaving ‘Charlie’ and Donald destitute and orphans.
In a letter dated 26 December 1922 to the Governor of Nyasaland Sir
George Smith, seeking funds for the maintenance of the Chilembwe children, the
Principal of the Church of Scotland Mission, Blantyre, Dr. Alexander Hetherwick,
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stated that Chilembwe’s two sons, ‘Charlie’ and Donald, were then aged 17
years and 10 years ‘or thereabouts’ respectively. That could comfortably place the
birthdate of ‘Charlie’, the eldest son, as 1905; the year following John and Ida’s
May 1904 wedding.
After a chequered career seemingly constantly at loggerheads with
employers and authority in general, including an arrest and imprisonment for
assault in 1929, Donald Chilembwe disappears from the radar screen of history in
about 1937. Desmond Phiri shared with me that members of Chilembwe’s
extended family had told him that Donald had migrated to East London in South
Africa. There is also an unsubstantiated claim that he found his way to the U.S.A.
‘Charlie’, however, unlike his brother Donald, led a more settled and
industrious life spending some years as a Native Clerk at The High Court,
Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia [Zambia]. In his later years he was employed by
the Labour Department as a sweeper at the Blantyre boma. He died on 3 May
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1971 at the given age of 65 years.
Given that at the time of her marriage to John Chilembwe Ida was
recorded as a ‘minor’ in the Blantyre marriage register, she would have been less
than 21 years of age.
John would certainly have been well over a decade older than Ida. It is
therefore reasonable to extrapolate that Ida would have likely only been at most
in her mid-30s when she died in the pandemic, only some three years after her
husband’s tragic death.
Ida was a teacher at the Mbombwe day school where she taught sewing
and ‘European’ deportment. It was one of John Chilembwe’s tenets that members
of his church should ‘wear the clothes of civilisation’ and so he viewed that being
able to wear such clothes (largely local European cast-offs, similar being sent from

17 Properly John Chilembwe. Shortly after his father’s death John was dubbed,
alliteratively, ‘Charlie’; by which latter name he was known both officially and
informally until his death. The Administration clearly did not want a second John
Chilembwe on the loose causing possible confusion between the son and his (late)
father.