1. WASKAMUZU BANDA AN AMERICAN IMPOSTOR?
Why did dict r atoKamuzu Banda, who died November 25, 1997,
never speak Malawi’s local languages? Who really was Banda,
Malawi’s former president? When asked for thoughts on the departed
deposit, former South Africa’s president Nelson Mandela
acknowledged that Banda did not ``have a very good reputation``
because of his support for the old apartheid regime in South Africa.
But, he added, Banda had redeemed himself through his subsequent
generosity, personally sending him a large sum of money following
his release from prison, without even his asking.
But the identity issue academics have been debating is of 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 November 25,1997?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,
``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 some in Ghana-his mother’s ancestral home, before
traveling 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 well paid ever since, but every once in
awhile 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 into vernacular