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Abstract
This article explores the influence of Mau Mau and of the counter-insurgency strategies devised by the British in Kenya on the state of emergency declared in Nyasaland in March 1959. It focuses on the hitherto largely undisclosed history of Malawian detainees both in Gwelo and Marandellas prisons in Southern Rhodesia and in Kanjedza camp near Blantyre, where conditions were notably more severe. The Kenyan influence was particularly evident in the Pinney Plan of April 1959 which was predicated on the need for detainees to be ‘rehabilitated’ (cleansed of their mistaken beliefs) through a combination of hard work and confession. This assessment, however, was challenged in the Colonial Office partly as a result of the Hola Camp massacre in Kenya but also because of the publicity given to the mistreatment of detainees in Kanjedza. The extreme brutality of the early weeks was largely abandoned; at the same time detainees took control of much of the internal workings of Kanjedza. Much remains to be studied concerning the social profile of the detainees and the world they made for themselves in the camps. What is clear is both the extensive influence of Kenya on colonial strategies during Nyasaland's state of emergency and also the fundamental differences in approach and outcome that ultimately separated the two territories from each other. Also apparent is the fact that, following independence, some nationalists used their experience of detention under the British as a benchmark in demanding that a new generation of detainees should be treated with even greater brutality.
Notes
1 C. Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York, Henry Holt, 2006), p. 351. Other studies of detainees and detention camps in colonial Africa include J. Alexander, ‘Political Prisoners’ Memoirs in Zimbabwe: Narratives of Self and Nation', Cultural and Social History, 5, 4 (2008), pp. 395–409 and D. Peterson, ‘The Intellectual Lives of Mau Mau Detainees’, Journal of African History, 49 (2008), pp. 73–91. For a useful introduction to colonial penitentiary models of incarceration see F. Bernault (ed.), A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2003). A valuable analysis that relates the Nyasaland Emergency to emergencies elsewhere is J. Darwin, ‘The Central African Emergency, 1959’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21, 3 (1993), pp. 217–234.
*This is a revised version of a paper originally delivered at the conference on the 1959 Nyasaland State of Emergency, Zomba, July 2009. I would like to thank Jocelyn Alexander for valuable suggestions regarding additional sources.
2 The articles in the Borthwick Institute are drawn from the African collection donated by T.O. Kellock, one of the lawyers, along with D. Foot, who represented the Nyasaland African Congress in its dealings with the Devlin Commission. Kellock's papers on Nyasaland are listed under DEV (for Devlin Commission). His other papers, mainly on South Africa, are listed under KE (Kellock Papers).
3 Quoted in L. James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (London, Abacus, 1995), p. 611.
4 C. Sanger, Central African Emergency (London, William Heinemann, 1960), p. 208.
5 Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], CO 1015/1518, Quoted in Nyasaland Intelligence Report, June 1958.
6 PRO, CO 1015/1749, Extract from Gwelo Times, 31 October 1958.
7 See, for example, Rhodes House Library [RHL], Devlin Commission Papers, Box 9. Note on 2nd Sergeant Stanley Gondwe, Nyasaland Police, who had written letters describing the security forces in these terms.
8 PRO, CO 1015/1748, Nyasaland Intelligence Report, November 1957.
9 These and other figures on the number of detainees in Kenya are drawn from D. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 5 and 356. Elkins, using different criteria, argues that the numbers were significantly larger.
10 Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, pp. 192–232, 310–53.
11 PRO, CO 1015/1606, J.C. Morgan, Draft memo entitled, ‘Nyasaland: Problem at the End of 1958’, 2 January 1959.
12 PRO, CO 1015/1606, J.C. Morgan, Draft memo entitled, ‘Nyasaland: Problem at the End of 1958’, 2 January 1959
13 Quoted in C. Baker, Retreat from Empire: Sir Robert Armitage in Africa and Cyprus (London, Tauris Academic Studies, 1998), p. 219.
14 PRO, CO 1015/1519, Armitage to Gorell Barnes, 20 January 1950.
15 PRO, CO 1015/1515, Armitage to Colonial Secretary, 2 March 1959.
16 PRO, CO 1015/1515, Armitage to Colonial Secretary, 4 March 1959,. My thanks to Professor Wiseman Chirwa for the revised figure of those killed at Nkhata Bay. The best and most detailed published account of Operation Sunrise and the events leading up to it remains Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (the Devlin Report), Cmnd. 814 (HMSO, London, 1959). See also C. Baker, State of Emergency: Crisis in Central Africa, Nyasaland 1959–1960 (London, Tauris Academic Studies, 1997).
17 A detailed, moving description of her arrest was given by Rose Chibambo at the State of Emergency Conference, Zomba, 27 July 2009.
18 PRO, CO 1015/1495, Nyasaland Operations Committee, Operation Instruction No. 3/59, 13 April 1959.
19 PRO, CO 1015/1518, Brief for the visit of Governors of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to the Colonial Office, week beginning 8 November 1959; PRO, CO 1015/1906, Armitage to Secretary of State, 16 December 1959. It should be noted that a further 105 members of the Nyasaland African Congress were detained in Southern Rhodesia. See T. Ranger, ‘Memories of an Emergency’, paper delivered at the conference on the 50th Anniversary of the Nyasaland State of Emergency, Chancellor College, Zomba, 27–28 July 2009.
20 PRO, DO 35/7477, Armitage to Colonial Secretary, 30 May 1960, 11 June 1960.
21 C. Baker, Revolt of the Ministers: the Malawi Cabinet Crisis, 1964–1965 (London, I.B. Tauris, 2001), pp. 23–4.
22 M[alawi] N[ational] A[rchives], Acc. 167/KCP/1, K. Chakalipe Phiri, Autobiography, 1989.
23 Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, pp. 36–42, p. 196.
24 C. Baker, Chipembere: The Missing Years (Zomba, Kachere Series, 2008), p. 24; N. Munger, Touched by Africa (Pasadena, Castle Press, 1983), pp. 258–9; ‘Dr Hastings Banda Face to Face with John Freeman, 22 April 1960’, transcript from BBC interview.
25 Question by Mr Callaghan to the Secretary of State for Colonies, Hansard Debates, 1 December 1960.
26 Banda, speech in Nyasaland Parliament, 27 October 1964.
27 Compared with his fellow inmates at Gwelo, Francis Kapombe Nyasulu is the invisible man of Malawian nationalism. An active militant, he joined Chipembere on 29 June 1958 in searching the plane at Chileka airport on which Dr Banda had been expected to make his return to his homeland. Later he was Banda's driver on his tour of the Northern Province in 1958. According to Banda, he and Yatuta Chisiza were regarded by the authorities as ‘the most dangerous’ of all the nationalists. Some time after his release, he was made chief representative of the MCP in Salisbury from where he was deported in 1961. He should not be confused, as does Baker, Revolt of the Ministers, pp. 170, 369, with A.M. Nyasulu, the first Malawian Speaker of the National Assembly and later Minister of Natural Resources.
28 Baker, Revolt of the Ministers, p. 10.
29 P. Mackay, We Have Tomorrow (Norwich, Michael Russell, 2008), p. 48.
30 G. Shepperson, ‘Africans Studied in Prison’, The Scotsman, 17 November 1960.
31 J.R.T. Wood, The Welensky Papers (Durban, Graham Publishing, 1983), pp. 737–8. Wood somewhat disingenuously claims that the recording was made by the British South Africa Police ‘unbeknown to the Federal authorities’. But as Gwelo was a Federal Prison staffed by Federal employees this appears very unlikely.
32 PRO, CO 1015/2438, G.S. Jones to W.B.L. Monson, 16 March 1960.
33 Mackay, We Have Tomorrow, p. 45.
34 Banda, Speech, Proceedings of the Nyasaland Legislative Assembly, 6–8 March 1963.
35 PRO, CO 1015/2233, Report of Discussions with Dr Banda by C.W. Footman, 6 January 1960; PRO, CO 1015/2438, G.S. Jones to W.B.L. Monson, 16 March 1960.
36 See photograph between pages 132 and 133, in C. Baker, State of Emergency.
37 PRO, CO 1015/2097, Armitage to Secretary of State, 9 June 1959.
38 PRO, CO 1015/1515, Speech by Lennox-Boyd in the House of Commons, 3 March 1959.
39 RHL Devlin Papers, Box 9, W.O.P. Hodder, ‘Report on Interrogations in the Khami Prison, Bulawayo from 4–9 March 1959’, 11 March 1959.
40 Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, p. 80.
41 The son of a Chagga mother and Malawian father, Karua grew up in Moshi where he developed a passion for all aspects of modern technology. In 1957 he came to Blantyre at the invitation of Kanyama Chiume and quickly made himself invaluable to Congress, driving and mending cars, operating a newly-purchased loudspeaker system and using a cine camera to make films, including one of the meeting on 25 January. Shortly after his arrest he volunteered to give information, subsequently recanted, not just on the ‘bush meeting’ but also on Dunduzu Chisiza's visit to Northern Rhodesia late in January 1959 (Karua was the driver) to co-ordinate action with nationalist leaders from the other two Central African territories.
42 M. Nyagumbo, With the People (London, Allison & Busby, 1980), p. 125.
43 Baker, State of Emergency, p. 165.
44 Nyagumbo, With the People, p. 126.
47 Mackay, We Have Tomorrow, pp. 45–46.
45 MNA, Acc. 167/KCP/1, K. Chakalipe Phiri, ‘Autobiography, 1989’.
46 Mackay, We Have Tomorrow, p. 46.
48 PRO, CO 1015/2233, ‘Report of Discussions with Dr Banda by C.W. Footman’, 6 January 1960.
49 PRO, CO 1015/2097, Armitage to Secretary of State, 9 June 1960; Statement made by Major John Willey, 6 May 1959, B[orthwick] I[nstitute], DEV, Box 2.
50 Armitage to Secretary of State, 9 June 1960, Ibid.
51 Statement by Charles Evans, 5 May 1959, BI, DEV, Box 2. It should be noted that Edward Mwasi, who was detained for several months in Kanjedza, regarded Evans as ‘not harsh’ in comparison with one of the other European warders, probably Southwood. Mwasi wrote of Evans: ‘When I was released, I met him at the Hotel Chisakalime and I offered him a drink. He used to act as Father Christmas at Kandodo shop during Christmas’. E. Mwasi, ‘Reminiscences of My Detention’, Society of Malawi Journal, 59, 2 (2006), p. 46.
52 Statement by Charles Albert Buteux, 4 May 1959, BI, DEV, Box 2.
53 Statement by B.A.G. Hamilton, 5 May 1959, BI, DEV, Box 2.
54 Statement by Willey, 6 May 1959, BI DEV, Box 2.
55 Statements of 14 Malawian detainees, 30 April–7 May 1959, BI, DEV, Box 2; Mwasi, ‘Reminiscences of My Detention’, pp. 40–9.
56 Mwasi, ‘Reminiscences’, pp. 43–44.
57 ‘Kanjedza’, Dissent, 4 June 1959, p. 9. Terence Ranger provides an eye-witness account of the background to this article's publication in Dissent in his paper, ‘Memories of an Emergency’, delivered at the conference on the 50th Anniversary of the Nyasaland State of Emergency, Chancellor College, Zomba, 27–28 July 2009.
58 Statement by Ronald Chiuta, 30 April 1959, BI DEV, Box 2.
59 Statement by Willard Gomani, 30 April 1959, ibid.
60 Statement by Samson Saluzika, 30 April 1959, ibid.
61 Statements by Chipo Somanje and Wellington Paseli, 4 May 1959, ibid.
62 Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, pp. 129–30; Statements by Harrison Sillya and Julliao Yobi, 30 April 1959.
63 PRO, CO 1015/1839, Armitage to Morgan, 18 April 1959.
64 PRO, CO 1015/1905, J.C. Pinney, ‘A System for Holding, Rehabilitation and Release of Detainees in Nyasaland’, received in Colonial Office, 28 May 1959.
65 The literature on Hola and its repercussions is extensive. See particularly C.G. Rosberg and J. Nottingham, The Myth of “Mau Mau”: Nationalism in Kenya (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), pp. 342–47; Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, pp. 344–53.
66 PRO, CO 1015/1494, Nyasaland Operations Committee, Instructions No. 2/1959, 7 March 1959.
67 Pinney, ‘System for the Holding, Rehabilitation and Release of Detainees in Nyasaland’.
68 PRO, CO 1015/1905, Armitage to Morgan, 9 June 1959.
69 PRO, CO 1015/1905, Note by J.C. Morgan, 29 May 1959.
70 PRO, CO 1015/1905, E.J. Theunissen, ‘Directive – Holding, Rehabilitation and Release of Detainees’, 6 June 1959.
72 PRO, CO 1015/2097, Lord Shawcross to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1 June 1950.
71 PRO, CO 1015/1518, Dingle Foot to Armitage, 19 May 1959.
73 See PRO, CO 1015/1905 for a copy of Dissent, 4 June 1959. For greater detail see Ranger, ‘Memories of an Emergency’.
74 Manchester Guardian, 16 June 1959; Questions by Fenner Brockway and Irene White to Colonial Secretary, Hansard, 7 July 1959.
75 Lennox-Boyd, Hansard, 7 July 1959.
76 PRO, CO 1015/1905. Note by J.C. Morgan, 17 June 1959.
77 Armitage to Secretary of State, 7 November 1959; ‘Lack of Consideration Shown to Kanjedza visitors’, Tsopano, December 1959, pp. 7–8. By this time the physical appearance of Kanjedza had been transformed by the erection around the floodlit perimeter of the camp of twelve wooden towers manned by armed guards.
78 PRO, CO 1015/1518, Nyasaland Intelligence Report for May 1959.
79 PRO, DO 35/746, R.H.C. Steed, ‘Detainees Still Loyal to Dr Banda’, Daily Telegraph, 7 December 1959.
80 PRO, CO 1015/2625, Armitage to Secretary of State, 1 June 1960.
81 PRO, CO 1015/2510, Paper on ‘Re-instatement of Detainees to Normal Life’ contained in Peter Youens to W.B.L. Monson, 4 March 1960.
82 A.C. Ross, Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi (Blantyre, Kachere, 1996), p. 11. Ross's claim is based on his personal observation as one of the two CCAP chaplains who regularly visited Kanjedza from September 1959, and in consequence must be taken seriously. However, his assertion that out of 1,000 detainees, ‘approximately seven hundred of these men and two of the women were members of the Church of Central African Presbyterian’ cannot be correct. No women and not more than 400 men were held at Kanjedza at this time.
83 In his memoir, With the People, p. 125, the veteran Zimbabwean nationalist, Maurice Nyagumbo, noted his amazement that in June 1959 seven of the Nyasa detainees in Khami were graduates. Only one of the Zimbabwean detainees had a degree.
84 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, p. 291.
85 For a pioneering study of executions in Malawi see Stacey Hynd, ‘Decorum or Deterrence? The Politics of Execution in Malawi, 1915–1966’, Cultural and Social History, 5, 4 (2008), pp. 437–48.
86 J. McCracken, ‘Authority and Legitimacy in Malawi: Policing and Politics in a Colonial State’, in D.M. Anderson and D. Killingray (eds), Policing and Decolonization (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 174–9. For the role of Malawian soldiers in the Emergency see T.J. Lovering, ‘Authority and Identity: Malawian Soldiers in Britain's Colonial Army, 1891–1964’, Ph.D., University of Stirling, 2002, pp. 266–68, 292–96.
87 See J. McCracken, ‘Church and State in Malawi: The Role of the Scottish Presbyterian Missions, 1875–1965’, in H.B. Hansen and M. Twaddle (eds), Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World (Oxford, James Currey, 2002), pp. 182–88; J. Lewis, ‘“Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Mau Mau”: The British Popular Press and the Demoralization of Empire’, in E.S. Atieno Odhiambo and J. Lonsdale (eds), Mau Mau and Nationhood (Oxford, James Currey, 2003), pp. 227–50.
93 Speech by H.B. Kanchowa, 24 October 1964, Ibid., p. 242.
88 The allegation is made in fictional form in D. Caute, The Decline of the West (London, André Deutsch, 1968). For a pioneering account of the employment of torture by sections of the French army in Algeria see A. Horne, A Savage War of Peace (London, Macmillan, 1977), pp. 195–207.
89 Dissent, 6 August 1960, quoted in Ranger, ‘Memories’.
90 For a chilling analysis of the treatment of detainees in Mugabe's Zimbabwe see J. Alexander, ‘The Political Imaginaries and Social Lives of Political Prisoners in Post-2000 Zimbabwe’, JSAS, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 483–503.
91 Speeches by Chakuamba and Chibambo, 24 October 1964, Malawi Parliament Debates, First Session, pp. 244–47.
92 Speech by E.Z. Banda, Malawi Parliament Debates, p. 242.
94 Speech by D. M. Mkandawire, 26 January 1965, Ibid., p. 460.
95 Speech by Dr Banda, 26 January 1965, Ibid., p. 499.
96 Cole to Commonwealth Relations Office, 23 March 1965, photocopy in York Conference Papers. See also G. Ndomondo and C. Baker, The Life of George Ndomondo (Lewes, Malawi Association for Christian Support, 2008).
97 In contrast to the situation in 1959–60 when the colonial authorities issued detailed figures on the numbers detained, no information on detainee numbers was ever provided by Banda's government. Short, Banda, p. 256, estimates for the 1960s and 1970s that the number of detainees at any one time was never more than about 400. Africa Watch, Where Silence Rules: The Suppression of Dissent in Malawi (London, 1990), pp. 12, 23, suggests that up to 1,000 of Chipembere's supporters were detained following his insurrection and that ‘many hundreds’ were held during the late 1960s and early 1970s, though the number fell to ‘many dozens’ in the 1980s. In contrast, see, J. Lwanda, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi (Glasgow, Dudu Nsomba Publications, 1993), p. 160, who asserts that over 5,000 of Banda's opponents were detained in 1965, including at least ten named individuals from his own village and that numbers remained high thereafter.