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Fallacious Accusation of Hastings K Banda 39

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control of the Federation in the hands of competent and responsible people.”
After declaring that the following that had been achieved by certain nationalists
was “quite fantastic,” Wightwick disparagingly speculated on Banda’s ‘origins
and background’ at some length:

“I listened on the wireless to a certain Dr Banda the other day talking,
and I was astonished to hear how bad his English was and how bad his
English accent was; and yet I am told that this man is supposed to be a
native of Nyasaland, that he has lived in England for a very long period
of years, that he left Nyasaland when he was some 13 years of age. Now,
I find it extremely difficult to believe that a man who left Nyasaland at
13 years of age is unable to speak his native language if he is a Nyasa. I
equally find it extremely difficult to believe that a man who spent so long
in England still speaks English with such a very marked African accent,
if he has not got an African language. It is so curious that I begin to
wonder whether perhaps this man is a Nyasa. Perhaps he is completely
bogus. Perhaps he does not come from Nyasaland at all. Perhaps he is
a West African for all we know. What enquiry has there been into this
man’s life? Who knows anything about him? I think that before we
accept these people at face value a very close enquiry should be made
into what they are. The mere fact that he speaks English so badly makes
me extremely suspicious. He speaks some Native language, but it is quite
obviously not that of the Nyasas. I would be interested to know what it
is – because I find it extremely difficult to believe that that man does not
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speak a Native language of some sort.”

Wightwick’s claim was so audacious and poorly substantiated that it
generated little to no attention in the debate that followed. There does not appear
to be any record of any of Wightwick’s parliamentary colleagues agreeing with
the claim, nor does Wightwick seem to have repeated it elsewhere. Banda had
long been a known quantity to more informed Federal politicians, making it
difficult to take the MP’s charges seriously. Roy Welensky first met Banda in
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England in 1946, the same year the latter co-edited a book on Chichewa culture.
Banda had actively campaigned against the creation of the Federation from the
earliest signs that its inception was on the horizon. In 1949 he co-authored a

13 Debates of the Federal Assembly, April 13, 1960, column 671.
14 Ibid., columns 695-696.
15 Welensky, 4000 Days, 49; The book was Our African Way of Life by John
Kambalame, EP Chidzalo, JWM Chadangalara: Essays Presented Under the
Prize Scheme of the International African Institute for the Period 1943-1944,
eds. Cullen Young and Hastings Banda (London: Lutterworth Press, 1946.)