Mail & Guardian reporters
The death of former Malawian president Kamuzu Banda invites the following question: who was he really?
President Nelson Mandela seemed in two minds this week. Asked for thoughts on the departed despot, he acknowledged that Banda did not “have a very good reputation” because of his support of the old apartheid regime, but then had redeemed himself through his subsequent generosity, personally sending him a large sum of money following his release from prison -without his even asking. And then when he did ask for contributions on behalf of the African National Congress, Banda had “responded magnificently”.
But the identity issue academics have been debating is of a different nature.
It seems the old dictator may not have been the man he appeared to be. There has been a story circulating for decades in Malawi that Kamuzu Banda died young, while a medical student. And that an American medical student who had befriended him had taken his place. Who died in the Garden City Clinic this week? Was it Kamuzu Banda, or Richard Armstrong?
In the 1996 book Postcolonial Identities in Africa, edited by Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger, the issue is addressed, though left unresolved, in the chapter entitled, Between God and Kamuzu.
According to the counter-biography of Banda, he and Armstrong met as medical students, and spent hours talking and sharing the stories of their lives. Banda became seriously ill and died before completing his studies.
Armstrong departed for Africa and spent some time in Ghana – his mother’s ancestral home – before travelling to Nyasaland, as Malawi was then known.
“In order to succeed, he had to reveal his identity to a small band of collaborators … With their help he bought relatives in Kasungu District. These relatives have been kept well paid ever since, but every once in a while one of them has been detained in order to deter others from revealing the truth,” the book claims.
When Banda returned to Malawi in 1958, he confounded his closest friends by refusing to eat nsima, the staple food of the country. He persisted in speaking only English, with an interpreter translating his messages into vernacular languages.
He “lived like a white man”, his nationalist comrade Kanyama Chiume recalled, insisting on moving into an area declared white residential and never giving up his famous costume of a three-piece suit, black homburg hat, beige raincoat and brown leather gloves.
But whoever ruled Malawi for 30 years, Armstrong or Banda, it was a brutal and isolated dictatorship in which thousands of political opponents were killed, tortured, jailed without trial and hounded into exile.
Banda amassed enormous personal wealth during his reign, building a vast financial empire in an otherwise impoverished nation.
He declared Malawi a one-party state in 1966 and in 1971 made himself president for life.
Malawi was the only independent African nation to foster open and friendly ties with the apartheid government in South Africa.
His age, like his real identity, was under constant question. Some of the obituaries published this week say he was 95, others say 99. For many years, it was a criminal offence to discuss his age in Malawi.
But whichever version of Banda’s life story you choose to believe, both recount his past as a “father and founder” of the Malawian nation.
The official version depicts a hard-working man, imbued with ancient Chewa wisdom, who was called to lead the struggle for independence. The other version depicts a stranger of mixed parentage who, after failing to realise his medical ambitions abroad, conquered a country through careful planning.