Hastings Banda - Early Life

Early Life

Kamuzu Banda was born near Kasungu in Malawi (then British Central Africa) to Mphonongo Banda and Akupingamnyama Phiri. His date of birth is unknown, as it took place at a time when there was no birth registration. A biographer, Philip Short, gives February 1898 as the most likely date. His official birthday was 14 May 1906, and this date is documented in some biographical accounts.

The name Kamuzu means "a little root" and was given to him as he was conceived after his mother had been given root herbs by a medicine man to cure infertility. His last name, Banda means "a small hut". He took the Christian name of Hastings after being baptised into the Church of Scotland, naming himself after John Hastings, a Scottish missionary working near his village whom he admired. The prefix Doctor was earned through his education.

Around 1915–16, Banda left home on foot with Hanock Msokera Phiri, an uncle who had been a teacher at the nearby Livingstonia mission school, for Hartley, Southern Rhodesia (now Chegutu, Zimbabwe). In 1917, he left on foot for Johannesburg in South Africa. He worked in various jobs at the Witwatersrand Deep Mine on the Transvaal Reef for several years. During this time, he met Bishop W. T. Vernon of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), who offered to pay his tuition fee at a Methodist school in the United States if he could pay his own passage. In 1925, he left for New York.