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Fallacious Accusation of Hastings K Banda 37

were so flimsy that the incident appears to have slipped out of the historical record,
aside from a cursory sentence in Philip Short’s comprehensive, but dated
2
biography of Banda. The implications of a subsequent rumour that circulated in
the final stages of Banda’s Presidency, that the original Banda passed away while
living in the United States and had his identity assumed by a black American,
3
Richard Armstrong, has received marginally more attention.
However, the allegations and the responses to them that percolated for
several months in the mid-1960 highlights the extent to which the white politicians
of the era struggled to adjust to a period of dynamic change. The defence of Banda
by Zimbabwean nationalists points to a time when Banda was a respected and
inspirational anti-colonial leader. It also demonstrates the extent to which pan-
African solidarity dissipated in the decades after independence amidst political
infighting. Most egregiously, in neighbouring Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, that
country’s founding father, was declared stateless in 1999 because his parents
hailed from Malawi.
4
Banda’s political activities unnerved Federal authorities from the
moment he returned to Nyasaland to assume the leadership of the Nyasaland
African Congress on July 6, 1958; after forty-three years abroad in South Africa,
the USA, UK, and Ghana. In the course of this sojourn he became a medical
5
doctor and attained educational qualifications that far surpassed those of the then
Federal Prime Minister, Roy Welensky, who had dropped out of school at the age
6
of 14.
Following a brief visit back to Ghana that December to attend the All-
African People’s Conference, Banda delivered a particularly incendiary speech in
a Salisbury township while awaiting his connecting flight to Blantyre. 7 The

2 Philip Short, Banda (London: Routledge, 1974), 140.
3 Farai Sevenzo, “Bedtime for Banda,” Transition, No. 85 (2000), 27; Harri
Englund, “Between God and Kamuzu: The Transition to Multi-party Politics in
Central Malawi.” In Postcolonial Identities in Africa, eds. Richard Werbner and
Terence Ranger, 111-112. London: Zed Books, 1996.
4 “Founder of Zambia Is Declared Stateless in High Court Ruling.” New York
Times, April 1, 1999.
5 Hastings K. Banda, “Return to Nyasaland,” Africa Today, Vol. 7, No. 4 (June
1960), 9.
6 Roy Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days: The Life and Death of the Federation
of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London: Collins, 1964), 14.
7 Clyde Sanger, Central African Emergency (London: Heinemann, 1960), 243-
244; Robert Rotberg, The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The Making of
Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966),
293.