Until the day he died last week, Johannesburg was Dr Hastings Banda’s second African home. Timothy Walker traces his state visit to South Africa during the winter of 1971
Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who died on November 25 at the Garden City Clinic, was no stranger to Johannesburg. He first arrived on the Rand in 1918 to look for work on the mines, and it was in Johannesburg that he obtained his first passport, which gave his year of birth as 1906.
His death certificate, issued last week, gave his age as 99, which means the Johannesburg magistrate who guessed his age in 1918 was out by eight years. Banda later admitted: “I was young, but I looked younger.”
While working at Boksburg as a mines clerk, Banda took evening classes at Crown Mines where Edith Beatrice Masinga was one of his teachers.
Masinga was the daughter of JT Gomedi, one of the founders of the African National Congress, and was born on October 9 1886.
According to Masinga’s daughter Tutsi, who lives in Orlando West: “Dr Banda was younger than my mother. I remember she told me he was a keen student of English at evening classes and he dutifully sent money to his people at home in Kasungu [Malawi].”
Soon after becoming president of Malawi in 1964, Banda decided to adopt close links with South Africa. He promoted a policy which he himself dubbed “Contact and Dialogue”, and for which he became known as the “Odd Man Out” in African politics.
Banda once told a senior expatriate in Malawi: “Some Afrikaners have never spent more than 20 minutes in the company of an African. They have lived in Africa for 300 years and they are unlikely to change now unless they can be shown that they can get on with African people. That is what we can do for them.”
For their part, the South African government was keen to have links with independent Africa and invited Banda on a state visit in 1971. The South African authorities were determined to make the visit a success and decided to find Edith Masinga.
Prime minister John Vorster’s office contacted the Chamber of Mines which in turn contacted the Johannesburg municipal offices and finally two officials were sent from the housing department to try and locate Edith Masinga somewhere in Soweto.
When they arrived at her home Masinga was in the kitchen and her daughter Tutsi informed her that two white men in uniform wanted to see her. As she had recently been widowed, she imagined that they had come to evict her from the property and she vowed to fight. “Open the door, let them come, I’m going nowhere.”
Tutsi Masinga let them in and offered them a seat. “They suggested a cup of tea and some of the nice smelling cakes being prepared in the kitchen” she recalled. Then they asked Edith Masinga if she knew anyone outside the country, anyone famous, and she replied: “I once had a son who grew up under my hands, Walter Hastings Banda.”
The officials, clearly pleased they had found her, informed her that: “Dr Banda said he won’t come to South Africa until he knows you’re still alive.”
A senior Malawian civil servant, John Ngwiri, travelled to South Africa in advance to ensure that the preparations for the visit were in order.
He was dismayed to find that no Africans had been invited to the state banquet and invitations were duly sent to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Chief Kaiser Matanzima and Francis Mucube, a senior Sowetan council member, among others.
Ngwiri then went to meet Edith Masinga in Soweto. He was shocked to see that she had an outside lavatory and asked her what she did when it was raining. He then gave her R500 and told her to buy a dress and a pair of shoes, and be ready on the following Monday at 4pm. Her destination was to be a surprise.
Banda landed at Waterkloof Air Base at 2pm on August 16 1971. He was greeted by the then state president Jim Fouche, a 21-gun salute, full military honours and a fly past by South African Airforce jets.
Excited crowds lined the streets wherever Banda went. At the President Hotel, Johannesburg, where the entourage was to be put up, the waiting crowd was entertained by a local character who carried a placard stating “I’m Frank Banda”, wore a skirt and waved a fly-whisk.
That evening Vorster hosted a banquet. At the appointed hour, two cars had travelled to Soweto to collect Masinga and then taken her to the President Hotel where she lined up to greet Banda.
When Banda caught sight of her, he left the procession making its way along the red carpet and greeted her with an embrace, exclaiming: “She’s my mother!”
He was clearly delighted to meet up with a woman he had not seen for more than 40 years. During that interlude, Banda had studied medicine in the United States and Scotland and worked as a doctor in England and Ghana before becoming president of Malawi.
The following day Banda’s entourage – which included Cecilia Kadzamira, John Ngwiri and Malawian ministers Aleke Banda and John Tembo – flew to Cape Town.
In the afternoon Banda gave a lecture to students and lecturers at the University of Stellenbosch. It was the first time a head of state from an independent African country had addressed a gathering in South Africa.
In his speech Banda stated that he saw it as part of his task to act as a bridge between the races in Southern Africa. “That is why you see me here in your country. There is a future in Africa for all of us, for the majority and the various minorities.”
He told the gathering that in his own lifetime there had been a softening in relations between Arabs and Africans, and the same could happen between Africans and Europeans.
He related how the late president Gamal Nasser of Egypt had embraced him and called him brother – something his grandfather would not have liked at all. He appealed to the young people in the audience not to be trapped by their own fears in their treatment of Africans. The speech was greeted with a standing ovation and a rendition of Lank sal Hy Lewe (Long may He Live).
On the second day of his visit, Banda paid a sentimental journey to Delmore Station on the East Rand, the nearest railway station to where he was once employed in his youth.
Later that day he addressed a gathering of 5 000 Malawian miners at Carletonville. He was so impressed by the Malawi bunting with which the stadium was decked for the occasion that he asked to meet the man who was responsible and promptly gave him a fly-whisk.
On August 19, Banda visited Soweto. Large crowds came out to cheer him. His welcome at the headquarters of the Urban African School of Soweto was described as frenzied.
Banda was met by the Soweto council’s chair, Mucube, and leading councillors. Banda then entered the council chamber and gave an address in which he stated: “I do not like this system of apartheid. But I prefer to talk.”
He went on to say that to isolate South Africa also meant isolating and boycotting “you my people, you my children, the Zulus, the Xhosas, the Amachangani and the Vendas. Other African leaders told me that if I came here I would be killed, you my people would throw stones on me. But if I die here, killed by those children, I would be happy. But I know that the children are not going to harm me. Instead, they are my protectors.”
Two helicopters landed at the council ground to take Banda and his entourage to Pretoria for a meeting with Vorster, for which they were late.
That evening Banda hosted a banquet, in honour of Fouche. It was one of the most multi-racial gatherings South Africa had ever seen.
All-in-all, the visit lasted four days and attracted international media attention.
The Economist commented that: “In those few days, Dr Banda did more to dent the attitudes of apartheid than anything else that has happened in the 23 years of Nationalist rule.”
The Sunday Times of Johannesburg described the visit as “a flamboyant page in South Africa’s history”.
The Cape Times commented that: “South Africans of all persuasions will take a little time to sort out exactly what happened to this country during the state visit. Undoubtedly, something big happened, and things will never be quite the same again.
“For those who remember, too well, how the government refuses to attend diplomatic and other occasions where there are non-whites present, there is the spectacle of multi- racial wining and dining at Dr Banda’s banquet, where the prime minister of South Africa sat, relaxed and amiable, between two elegant African women MPs.
“This visit has helped to soften racial attitudes and to illuminate the absurdities of separation for the sake of separation.”
Following Banda’s visit to South Africa, a house was built for Edith Masinga in Pimville, Soweto, at a cost of R42 000. The house was a three-bedroomed townhouse of the type built for Malawian civil servants in the new capital Lilongwe.
Masinga moved to her new home in 1972 and lived there for some time before returning to her old home, where she died in 1991.
In March 1992, Banda was admitted to the Garden City Clinic where he underwent surgery for a sub-neural haematoma. He was guarded by a white South African policeman who refused to let Tutsi Masinga pay him a visit.
Such tales perhaps seem far away from the new South Africa of today, yet it is only 30 years ago that Banda played his part, in his way, to forge change in Africa.
It was in Johannesburg that Banda spent his formative years, adopted the name Hastings and made his mark on African history.
It is, therefore, somewhat fitting that, although a confirmed Malawian nationalist and an Anglophile, he spent the last days of his long life in Johannesburg, his African home from home.
— Timothy Walker is a writer and photographer whose biography on Dr Hastings Banda will be published next year