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Shepperson Memorial

equally important, as a model of how to write. Again, like the other articles revisited
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here, “Nyasaland and the millennium” sparked the interest of many future scholars.
Two of the original members of the history department who were to play a
central role in planning its future and in designing history courses were Roderick
Macdonald and Roger K Tangri, both of whom were connected with Edinburgh
University and Professor George Shepperson. Macdonald was his research student
working on his doctoral thesis on the history of education in colonial Malawi and,
within this framework, he was interested in establishing the role of the evolution of
the mission educated elites. To this extent, his research interweaved with Tangri’s
who had just completed a Master of Social Science degree in political Science at
Edinburgh, his thesis being on race relations in colonial Kenya, and was about to
embark on research on the development of nationalism in Malawi. In a manner, the
two were developing further the themes that Shepperson had identified in some of his
earlier essays. As they came to establish personal relationships with the still living
Malawian political activists of the 1940s and 1950s, Macdonald and Tangri invited
some of them to the university to talk about their political careers and to interact with
students. Among such were James Sangala and Charles Chinula, both founding
fathers of the Nyasaland African Congress. These occasions were important because
they enabled us students to meet with these distinguished politicians, and they also
fuelled our interest in history and historical research. In addition to this, Tangri,
Macdonald and Pachai initiated a forum at which visiting scholars presented papers,
and students were expected to attend. This was to grow into the weekly history
seminar, a rare one in the university at the time, and one which became famous even
outside Malawi. Every graduating history major had to present a paper based on
original research, and these papers have become a “must read” for any researcher
embarking on work on Malawian history.
On a personal note, I met Professor Shepperson the first time during his visit
to the University of Malawi in 1965. I was with a group of students and, as he passed
near us, he stopped to talk to us for a few minutes. In 1969, he offered me a place at
Edinburgh, but I ended up elsewhere, and I have often wondered what my life would
have been in that institution and city. My first real meeting with him was in May 1971
when, as a doctoral student, I spent some weeks in Edinburgh working mainly at the
National Library of Scotland. My supervisor, Roland Oliver, a contemporary of his,
had advised me to see him before commencing my research in the archives at the
library. Shepperson did not remember the brief 1965 meeting in Malawi. Be that as it
may, without an appointment I knocked at his office door, introduced myself, and
well aware that he was a busy person, I was determined to leave within fifteen
minutes. As it happens, I was there for nearly an hour, the first twenty minutes of
which we spent singing military songs that he had learned from Malawian soldiers
during WWII. I was to meet him again three years later, this time in different
circumstances. Of my three thesis examiners, he was the external one.
In conclusion, Professor George Albert “Sam” Shepperson was deservedly the
doyen of modern Malawi historical studies, and a distinguished scholar of African and
African American history. His legacy cannot be overstated as it is visible through his
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extensive published work, his students, and through innumerable people that either

10 Joseph C. Chakanza, Voices of Preachers in Protest: the Ministry of two Malawian Prophets: Elliot Kamwana
and Wilfred Gudu, Blantyre (Malawi): Christian Literature Association in Malawi, 1998.
11 It should be pointed out that Independent African stimulated many studies on resistance to colonial authority
and, they include T. O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896-7: a Study in African Resistance. London,
Heinemann, 1967; Shula Marks, Reluctant rebellion: The 1906-8 disturbances in Natal, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1970.
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