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Shepperson Memorial

THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF CHIRADZULO DISTRICT, MALAWI

Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
Introduction
1
I first read Professor George Shepperson’s book, Independent African when I
was a first-year undergraduate student at Chancellor College, University of Malawi.
The book is about the January 1915 revolt against colonial rule by the Reverend John
Chilembwe, Malawi’s first freedom fighter, one who is still revered by Malawians.
Reading Independent African brought to my mind vivid memories of my first ten
years of life. Like members of Chilembwe’s congregation, I was raised on a
European-owned plantation called Gala Estate, located between Namadzi and
Thondwe on the Zomba-Blantyre road, where thangata and child labor were
practiced. The plantation grew a plant called tung, from which tung oil was produced.
Besides adults, it also employed children as young as six or seven years old to work
from 6.00 AM to noon as pickers of ripe tung pods. The plantation was not far from
A.L. Bruce’s Estates, which William Jervis Livingstone, who bore the brunt of
Chilembwe’s revolt, managed. I first heard of John Chilembwe from my father when
we were still at Gala Estate. He was reminiscing about the past with one of his
friends, a sign that more than 40 years later, people still viewed Chilembwe and the
revolt with awe. There were many Malawians who believed that Chilembwe was
neither captured nor killed by government forces.
As a young college student, reading a book on a history that I believed I
already knew a little something about gave me some confidence. I strove to impress
my professors that I was a good student of history. As it turned out, however, I
became an archaeologist, and I have devoted my life to studying prehistory, which is
why in this short paper, I summarize my research findings about the people who came
to Chiradzulo before Chilembwe’s ancestors settled at and around Mbombwe, where
Chilembwe established his headquarters.

The People of the Area
Chilembwe was a Yao by ethnicity. The Yao, who, on their arrival in southern
Malawi, were notorious for their involvement in the slave trade came from northern
Mozambique. They began to settle in southern Malawi before the mid nineteenth
century. When Dr. David Livingstone explored Malawi in the 1850s, and when
missionaries of the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) established their
short-lived settlement at Magomero, located between Gala Estate and Mbombwe, the
2
Yao were already in the area. They were raiding the indigenous Nyanja for sale to
Swahili/Arab slave traders along the Indian Ocean coast.
The Nyanja and the Lhomwe are the other major ethnic groups in southern
Malawi. The Lhomwe were relatively recent arrivals, having settled there after the
Yao had already arrived. The Nyanja arrived way back in antiquity and so they claim
3
to be the owners of the Land. Oral traditions of the Yao support this Nyanja claim.
Their date of arrival can only be determined by archaeological research. Currently,
five archaeological sites have been excavated in Chiradzulo district. They include
three Late Stone Age (LSA) rockshelter sites and two Iron Age (IA) open sites. Two
of the rockshelters are located at Malowa and Midima hills, respectively. The third is

1 Shepperson G & Price T. 1958. Independent African: John Chilembwe and the origins, setting and
significance of the Nyasaland native rising. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2 White L. 1990. Magomero: Portrait of an African village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3 Oral traditions, Chief Kapeni from Blantyre district. Recorded by Yusuf M. Juwayeyi, November 12, 1974; Oral
Traditions, acting Chief Mlumbe from Zomba district. Recorded by Yusuf M. Juwayeyi, November 18, 1974.
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