Slightly over a century ago, Reverend John Chilembwe wrote the King of England to protest involvement of Africans in the First World War, which he felt had nothing to do with the black race. The epitome of Chilembwe\u2019s letter was a question which still haunts our leaders today: \u201cAre there any good prospects for the natives after this war\u201d?
\nChilembwe, the country\u2019s first ever human rights defender, argued that the war would claim lives of his fellow Africans, leading to thousands of widows and fatherless children. Today, Chilembwe\u2019s visionary crusade challenges most self-styled Malawian activists who use their bellies and not their brains.
\nChilembwe forbade his troops from harming white women and children who were rounded up as prisoners of war.
\nHe stood up to defend rights of wife and children to the cruel white settler, William Jarvis Livingstone, when Chilembwe\u2019s army beheaded Livingstone.
\nThe funny part with the issue of Livingstone, who the Nyasas (Malawians) corruptly called Lisitoni or Lisitonya, was that he died a fool\u2019s death just like the Biblical Absalom.
\nThough notorious, Livingstone did not own any estate: he was just a manager at Bruce Estate! Today, every sector of our society has Lisitonyas. They talk too much but do too little or nothing at all. They let others do the donkey work but they get the credit.
\nEven in death, the Lisitonyas try to discriminate against the poor Malawians.
\nPallbearers are forced to perform slow marches while funeral programmes for the oppressed Malawians are hurried as kunja nkwamvula uku (to beat the rains).
\nChilembwe was resolute against tribalism and nepotism, traps most Malawians have fallen into. In their book titled \u201cThe Independent African\u201d George Shepperson and Thomas Price state that Chilembwe fought for the founding of a nation \u201crather than restoring the fortress of tribes.\u201d
\nThis is true because Chilembwe\u2019s uprising enjoyed the support of the Nyasas from all the regions led by their chiefs and leaders of African led churches, the Ethiopian Church, commonly called Mpingo wa Topiya among the Nyasas.
\nHe showed servant leadership when he refused to dine with the oppressors, as our present day Lisitonyas do. It must be appreciated that Chilembwe, John Gray Kufa,
\nDuncan Njilima and others were not direct victims of the oppression.
\nThese were men who had attained the level of education which the white man had. They were not buying groceries through a pigeon-hole as the rest of the Africans did and they had horses and guns just like the whites had. Need I say that they bought and sustained the horses using their hard earned cash and not government or church funds?
\nOn January 14, 1897, Chilembwe teamed up with his spiritual father Joseph Booth,
\nMorrison Malinki and Alexander Dickie to pen Queen Victoria on their plan to uplift the living standards of the Africans. The plan detailed how they wanted to improve education and equality of men through the African leadership.
\nBetween 1894 and 1895, Chilembwe responded to a racist poem by Robert Caldwell, a
\nFellow of the Royal Geographical Society, who argued that blacks deserved to be oppressed as the Bible talked about the sons of Ham and Sheth.
\nThere is nothing that Chilembwe and his men did not do that our Lisitonyas are trying to do. Lord Chief Justice James John Skinner issued a detailed report on pegging salaries in the civil service. Our own, the late Justice Lewis Alexander Chatsika, also elaborated how we could motivate our civil servants. Today, we are still groping in the dark, trying to reform the public sector.
\nThe colonialists advised us to build more technical colleges to plug forex drain.
\nThe American Government even built us The Polytechnic to train tutors for the technical colleges. Instead, our Lisitonyas ran down the technical colleges and are now talking of training Standard Three drop-outs in community colleges.
\nDo we now know why no administration has been keen to locate Chilembwe\u2019s grave at Esperanza in Mulanje?
\nThe Lisitonyas do not want to immortalise Chilembwe because his ideas prick their conscious. Even when we attempt to celebrate Chilembwe\u2019s life and sacrifices at his PIM Mission, the Lisitonyas come and fight each other, injuring us in the process. Despite ruthlessly collecting taxes, Lisitonya is telling Malawians to buy first-line drugs for their chemotherapy, Malawians with albinism are being hunted down like wild pigs, poor but hardworking Malawians fail to be productive because Lisitonya is withholding electricity. As we celebrate the life of Chilembwe on Monday, well-meaning Malawians are still wondering whether there are any good prospects for them after Chilembwe\u2019s sacrifice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slightly over a century ago, Reverend John Chilembwe wrote the King of England to protest involvement of Africans in the First World War, which he felt had nothing to do with the black race. The epitome of Chilembwe\u2019s letter was a question which still haunts our leaders today: \u201cAre there any good prospects for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58968,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58966\/revisions\/58968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}