Henry Masauko Blasius Chipembere - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Chipembere's father, Habil Matthew Chipembere, was a teacher from a prosperous Nyanja family studying for the priesthood in the African Anglican church. Henry Chipembere was born in Kayoyo in Ntchisi (in the Kota Kota district bordering Lake Nyasa). His mother gave him the name "Masauko", which means "suffering" or "troubles", because it had been a difficult pregnancy. He was educated in Nyasaland and later, after some time at Goromonzi secondary school in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), at Fort Hare college in South Africa, from which he graduated in the early 1950s. For a brief period thereafter, he worked in the colonial civil service as District Assistant, serving first at Domasi in the Southern Province, under the District Commissioner, then at Fort Johnston and finally at Dedza in the Central Province.

On December 30, 1954, he attended an informal meeting in Blantyre, Nyasaland, with like-minded young Nyasas, including Kanyama Chiume, who decided to ally themselves with the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), then a rather moribund political organization dominated by an earlier generation demoralized by its failure to prevent the federation, in 1953, of Nyasaland with bordering Southern and Northern Rhodesia.

Six months later, in order to provide a safety valve for African political self-expression, the Nyasaland Secretariat announced that it would increase the number of seats reserved for Africans on the country's Legislative Council from three to five. The African members were to be chosen by provincial councils sitting as electoral colleges. Chipembere resigned his civil service post in order to stand for selection, and in March 1956, aged only 25, he was elected by an overwhelming majority to represent the southern province, along with Chiume for the northern province, Ralph Chinyama, ND Kwenje and Dunstan Chijozi (who was a sympathizer with, but not a member of, the NAC). The Council also included eleven official government members, headed by the Governor, and six non-official European members (so-called unofficials).

Chipembere and Chiume, particularly, electrified the country with their audacious and aggressive participation in the Council. The existing members, mostly European, had conducted proceedings with traditional British decorum and restraint, and presumably expected the new members to behave similarly; but these two asked awkward questions and made radical proposals which unsettled and embarrassed the existing membership. Shortly thereafter, when it was decided to publish transcripts of the Council's proceedings, the resulting publication, Hansard, reportedly became a bestseller, particularly among young Nyasas who were totally unaccustomed to seeing others of their kind challenging authority so openly. Chipembere later said that his behaviour here was inspired by Hastings Kamuzu Banda, whose speeches in London five years earlier against the federation of Nyasaland with Southern and Northern Rhodesia had been similarly daring and inflammatory. In April 1955, at the 11th annual conference of the NAC, Chipembere and Chiume proposed secession from the Federation as official policy.

In November 1956, Chipembere wrote to Dr Banda, then in quasi-retirement in the Gold Coast (later Ghana), asking for his support in getting two African MPs, Manoah Chirwa and Clement Kumbikano, to resign from the Federal Assembly in Rhodesia, something which they had allegedly undertaken to do once they had officially protested against federation in the assembly on Congress's behalf. Chipembere felt that their participation in the Federal Assembly weakened the Nyasas' case for seceding from the Federation, which they had been adamantly and overwhelmingly opposed to in the first place. Banda, who had always regarded participation in the Federal Assembly as a betrayal, temporized and counselled patience, but Chipembere and Chiume nevertheless, on December 31, 1956, put a motion before Congress proposing that Chirwa and Kumbikano should be ordered to step down. In an eleven hour debate, however, their motion was defeated; in part, it is thought, because of the opposition of older members of Congress who regarded Chipembere and Chiume as too young and inexperienced to be taken seriously. It was probably this that determined the younger element to ask Banda, an older and highly respected man who had spent his entire adult life away from his native Nyasaland, to return and lead the campaign for secession (and ultimately independence).

In March 1957, TDT Banda, a leading member of Congress supported by the younger element, went to the Gold Coast to participate in that country's independence celebrations, and while he was there visited Banda in order to try to persuade him. Banda was still reluctant, and two weeks later Chipembere wrote him a letter repeating the request. Later that year, partly in response to further moves by Sir Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the Federation, towards attaining dominion status for the Federation (which would make secession very much harder to achieve), Banda finally agreed to return, on various conditions which essentially gave him autocratic powers in Congress. (Banda also threw his weight behind the demand for the resignation of the two Federal MPs, which happened shortly thereafter).

In June 1958, Chipembere, Dunduzu Chisiza and Chief Kutanja, joined with Banda in meeting the Colonial Secretary, Lennox-Boyd, in London to discuss a new constitution for Nyasaland (one which had already been roundly rejected by Nyasaland's governor, Robert Armitage). Lennox-Boyd ‘took note’ of their views but said he did not think Congress represented Nyasa African opinion.

The following month, on July 6, 1958, Banda returned to Nyasaland after an absence of 42 years. At a meeting of the Congress in Nkhata Bay on August 1, 1958, Banda was named President of the Congress and nominated Chipembere as Treasurer General. The campaign for independence began in earnest.