Political prisoners of Zomba
In the mid-1970s onwards in Zomba Prison or Mikuyu, Sam Mpasu found himself in the company of ex-pillars of society in and outside politics. They included Alex Nyasulu, Gomile Kuntumanji, Machipisa Munthali, Albert Muwalo Nqumayo, Focus Gwede and Richard Sembereka.
Mpasu tells stories about these people and himself in his autobiography titled Political Prisoner 3/75. This second edition is a microcosm of the scary side of the Kamuzu/MCP era. If most people had foreseen that soon after independence they would be subjected to the humiliations, inhumanities and degradations which Mpasu and his fellow inmates went through during the two years he was detained in Zomba Prison and on the Mikuyu Prison farm, would they have welcomed the return of Dr Kamuzu Banda in 1958?
Having gone through the 158 page book that dwells on two years, we wonder what we would learn if Machipisa Munthali, who was imprisoned for 27 years, had left behind his own autobiography.
Mpasu was one of the first students of the University of Malawi. He specialised in the study of English and economics. On January 31 1969, he was returned unopposed to be the chairperson of the students union, the returning officer being the professor of history B. Pachai.
In those days, there were more managerial or administrative jobs than graduates looking for them. Mpasu picked up a civil service job and was soon sent to the diplomatic service in Germany and later Ethiopia, where he met a beautiful Ethiopian girl. They fell in love and later got married in Malawi.
While he was in the diplomatic service, he decided to pass his spare time by writing a novel. When the Censorship Board in Limbe saw the manuscript, it got furious. From that moment, Mpasu’s agonies started. The novel, titled Nobody’s Friend, made reference to a president who was assassinated. The Censorship Board and the police assumed that he insinuated the President of Malawi.
He was then posted back home on attachment to the Viphya Pulpwood Project, whose offices were in Development House in Blantyre. One day, a smartly dressed man with three shabby men came at the office and picked him. They took him to Zomba where he was interrogated by the most dreaded special branch police officer, Focus Gwede.
“Yes, my friend. Why are you here?” Gwede asked: “Who appointed you to the diplomatic service?”
Mpasu responded bravely, and warned Gwede that one day he might not be in that chair. It was a prophetic utterance.
He was forced to undress, take off his shoes and wear tattered clothes. His old blanket served as a mattress, a cover and so on. The food was horrible. He ate porridge without a spoon.
Men like Gwede and Nqumayo, who were widely detested, now found themselves among people they had sent to prison, including Mpasu.
One of these men of special interest to me was Winston Sweetman Kumwenda, popularly known as Yandoda. He had been one of the most senior police officers and would have been the first Malawian head of the police service. There in prison, he lamented that while he had been killing people on orders or to please Dr Banda, now the same Dr Banda had turned against him. He spoke of how he had difficulty begging Weston Chisiza and then eventually threw him into the Shire River. Kumwenda and Chisiza, a trade unionist, had been schoolmates at Ekwendeni Secondary School and both were from Mzimba. Later, he had travelled to Dar es Salaam to try and kill Henry Chipembere, but his attempts were foiled.
The book Political Prisoner 3/75 is remarkably well written. Mpasu is a past master of press writing and is completely at ease with his English. You would not think it is his second language if you did not know him.
In the introduction to the second edition, Mpasu regrets that there are no biographies of leaders in our bookshops. This is true but not because none have been written, but because when published they seldom last more than the first edition. In the early 1970s, I wrote five biographies under the common title of Malawians to Remember, beginning with Inkosi Gomani II of Ntcheu and ending with John Chilembwe. Chiume and Chipembere left behind autobiographies, half finished in the case of Chipembere. When are those who were closest to Dr Banda going to write or sponsor the writing of his biography?
On page xiii, Mpasu says our children do not know General Graciano Matewere and George Joffu. The book History of Malawi Volume II ends with a list of 20 pioneer Malawian achievers which includes Matewere and Joffu. It is part of the two volume History of Malawi which starts with the age of the Akafula and closes with the year 2009 when Bingu wa Mutharika won a landslide only to proceed to an anticlimax of popularity.
The problem in Malawi is official attitude or that of gatekeepers to the works of talented Malawians. They have ignored or rejected books by Malawians yet ministries of education in foreign countries have put those books on the prescribed list.
