9 - Du's Challenge: Car Accident as Metaphor for Political Violence

Summary

“Rumour is not the truth. Truth comes from above; rumour comes from below.”

President Paul Biya of Cameroon

The Malawi Congress Party was a necessity born out of the State of Emergency that proscribed the Nyasaland African Congress. Between August 1959 and April 1960, the MCP grew into a mass party fueled by youthful enthusiasm and the vindication provided by the Devlin Report. With the release of Dr. Banda in April, the party and the nationalist movement took a critical turn. Kanyama Chiume, Dr. Banda, and others transformed the MCP into a political machine directly linked to the personality and authority of its leader. By 1962, Banda's MCP had seized control of the Legislative Council and secured Nyasaland's right to secede from the federation. Banda's methods, on the other hand, had come to be questioned by some of his closest associates. According to Henry Phillips, the European finance secretary under Armitage (and, for a time, finance minister under Banda), Banda had secured the promise of secession in November of 1962 but delayed the announcement until just before Christmas. “He had accomplished this,” recalled Phillips, “in quiet negotiation and not across a conference table.” He went on to recall Banda saying that while the fact that this was not decided at the formal November talks with Butler might have worried “my boys … it did not worry me. Fortunately for me, people in this country take the attitude that the doctor knows best.”