John Chilembwe’s War

Author(s): Melvin E. Page

Source: The Society of Malawi Journal , 2022, Vol. 75, No. 1 (2022), pp. 3-17
Published by: Society of Malawi - Historical and Scientific

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 Society of Malawi Journal

John Chilembwe’s War:

King’s African Rifles Askari Recall a Colonial Crisis
(Part One)
Melvin E. Page

For more than sixty years, at least since the 1958 publication of Independent
African, John Chilembwe’s rebellion in Nyasaland has been a touchstone in the
understanding of anti-colonial violence in Africa.1 More recently historian Edmund
Yorke has, in fact, highlighted the ‘spectre of a second Chilembwe’ which haunted
colonial officials in Northern Rhodesia.2 Indeed, the British Colonial Office3 was so
concerned that shortly after Chilembwe’s revolt was quashed they sanctioned formation
of a Commission of Inquiry which obtained many testimonies concerning the affair. A
comprehensive collection of those accounts, drawn from the archival record and
recently published as Voices from the Chilembwe Rising, surprisingly includes just one
testimony of a colonial askari, former King’s African Rifles and later police Sergeant
Nkwande. Yet as his testimony makes clear, from its inception the now famous ‘Rising’,
as it became known in the context of British colonialism, was referred to by many
Africans simply as ‘John Chilembwe’s War’.4 And even a decade afterwards, his
followers remembered him ‘as our brave Christian soldier John Chilembwe’;5 though
perhaps some spoke metaphorically, at least one of them mentioned his effort ‘to defend
his part … [with] his rifle’.6

1
George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Independent Africa: John Chilembwe and the Nyasaland Rising of
1915 (Edinburgh: University Press, 1958). A very few years later, Endre Sik’s avowedly Marxist The History of
Black Africa (translated by Sándor Simon) featured four pages, including photographs, on ‘Nyasaland: The
Chilembwe Revolt,’ describing it as ‘one of the first anti-imperialist actions in the African countryside’;
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1966), 50.
2
Edmund Yorke, ‘The Spectre of a Second Chilembwe: Government, Missions, and Social Control in Wartime
Northern Rhodesia, 1914-1918’, Journal of African History 31(1990): 373-391.
3
John McCracken, ed. Voices from the Chilembwe Rising Sources of African History (Oxford: University Press,
2015), 73. Despite Sergeant Nkwande’s testimony and that of others reproduced here, it seems likely Professor
Shepperson might not fully agree with such a characterisation, preferring instead to highlight the role of ‘those
who assisted him’ in rebellion, as well as the apparent ‘contradictions in his character’, contrasting Chilembwe’s
early pacifism with his later embrace of violence; see the videotape of George Shepperson, pre-recorded
opening address to the 2015 Chilembwe Revisited Symposium at the University of Edinburgh, February 2015,
recorded by David Stuart-Mogg, https://www.youtube.com /channel/UCe5xeLSpEJkAbAzWC5uO3Lw;
accessed 19 Sep 2020.
4
John McCracken, ed. Voices from the Chilembwe Rising Sources of African History (Oxford: University Press,
2015), 73. Despite Sergeant Nkwande’s testimony and that of others reproduced here, it seems likely Professor
Shepperson might not fully agree with such a characterisation, preferring instead to highlight the role of ‘those
who assisted him’ in rebellion, as well as the apparent ‘contradictions in his character’, contrasting Chilembwe’s
early pacifism with his later embrace of violence; see the videotape of George Shepperson, pre-recorded
opening address to the 2015 Chilembwe Revisited Symposium at the University of Edinburgh, February 2015,
recorded by David Stuart-Mogg, https://www.youtube.com /channel/UCe5xeLSpEJkAbAzWC5uO3Lw;
accessed 19 Sep 2020.
5
J. B. C. Lawrence to I. M. Lawrence, 18 September 1924, quoted in ‘Précis on Isa Macdonald Lawrence’, in
Acting Commissioner of Police to Acting Chief Secretary, 29 January 1927, copy in Malawi National Archives
file S 2/50/23.
6
Wallace Kampingo. a convicted Chilembwe co-conspirator in an undated letter to I. M. Lawrence (smuggled
out of Zomba prison); quoted in Abiola Ade Lipede, ‘Pan Africanism in Southern Africa, 1900-1960’, Ph.D.
thesis, University of York, 1990, p. 342, http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9774/1/ 276514.pdf; accessed 5 October
2020.

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 John Chilembwe’s War

Despite research efforts to access oral histories of the rebellion, results have
proven somewhat elusive since ‘very few of the incidents of the Chilembwe rising can
be learned by questioning the old people in the villages’ in and around its Chiradzulu
epicentre. In fact, during the early 1980s Landeg White discovered ‘the accounts of the
Chilembwe rising which have persisted in the villages emphasize the disturbance of
harmony and … do their best to minimise conflict.
They are women’s accounts’.7

It is unsurprising; therefore, few African recollections of that tumultuous time

reflect the historical experience of either Chilembwe’s ‘Freedom Army’8—which ‘was
an all-male affair’9—or Nyasaland’s exclusively male colonial military, despite
members of the K.A.R. being involved in supressing the uprising.
The seventeen oral history transcripts included here are an attempt to correct that
glaring lacuna in the evidence, as well as an effort to present the perspectives of
askari—men trained to deal with violent encounters—concerning a most exceptional
use of violence against their own colonial overlords. Reminiscences of these Malawian
K.A.R. veterans (sixteen Malawian askari and one long-serving British officer) were
obtained in the 1970s as part of a larger ‘recovery history’10 project concerning the
impact of the colonial military on Malawian societies. With support from the University
of Malawi and the Malawi Army, my research assistants and I began recording these
conversations at two Old Soldiers’ Memorial Homes; subsequently, I arranged for
additional interviews in areas of the country where military recruitment had been
especially concentrated.11
While it is true that soldiers everywhere swap stories of their lives—and the Old
Soldiers Home in Zomba, where the majority of these testimonies were collected,
offered ample opportunities to do so—I’m convinced that milieu served much more as
a reservoir of memory rather than a source of contamination or consolidation of
remembered accounts. Indeed, the great variety of these recollections affirms such a
view.12

7
Landeg White, Magomero: Portrait of an African Village (Cambridge: University Press, 1987), 156. In
addition to White’s interviews, others have been recorded by the Zomba History Project of Chancellor College
as well as a few collected by other historians. While many of these oral histories have been cited in numerous
publications few, if any, transcripts have yet been published. Moreover, so far as I am aware, none have been
explicitly identified as being obtained from Malawian soldiers.
8
D. D. Phiri, John Chilembwe (Lilongwe: Longman Malawi, 1976), 65. Phiri also interviewed Rev. Wylie
Chigamba who—in his own published account—refers to Chilembwe’s ‘Christian Army’ which ‘fought hard
but was defeated’; ‘Fight for Freedom’, 7.
9
White, Magomero, 156. Indeed, Phiri’s meticulously gathered evidence suggests ‘it had not been Chilembwe’s
idea to involve women in the agonies of war and blood’ at all; John Chilembwe, 81. This conclusion lends
credence to White’s assessment of the local accounts he collected.
10
Regarding this oral history approach, see Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London: Routledge, 2010): 5-6.
11
I wish to acknowledge a deep intellectual debt to my research assistants, and especially Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
who began this investigation with me. For details regarding collection of these interviews, see Melvin E. Page,
The Chiwaya War: Malawians and the First World War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 235-246. The
complete transcripts of all seventeen interviews excerpted here, along with nearly 130 others, appear in the two
volumes of Chiwaya War Voices: Malawian Oral Histories of the Great War in Africa (Rickmansworth: The
Great War in Africa Association/TSL Publications, 2021).
12
This possibility—of providing an environment especially conducive for the preservation of particular
memories—is discussed by historian Carolyn Hamilton, ‘“Living by Fluidity”: Oral Histories, Material

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 Society of Malawi Journal

Of nearly two hundred total interviews collected for the project, half were from
men who had undergone askari training; the seventeen included here are the most
detailed and significant comments made by veterans regarding John Chilembwe’s War.
One was recorded in English, the remainder in local languages and rendered in English
transcripts by native speakers involved in the interviewing. I have extracted and very
slightly edited portions of the much longer interview transcripts, carefully preserving
all mentions of Chilembwe and his rebellion by each of these soldiers. Great care was
taken in this process. The language has not been ‘smoothed out and standardized’, and
I’ve taken pains to preserve the original syntax of the transcripts as I received them.
Nonetheless, I readily ‘accept that there can only be a semblance of similarity—a
verisimilitude—between the narrative as told and the narrative as written down’ in these
transcripts.13 While perhaps not an ideal option, as I have previously written, working
from carefully curated transcripts offers a reasonable compromise in the process of
accessing significant historical evidence.14
Obtained from both participants and observers years later, these accounts also
come with the usual caution of having been preserved through more than fifty years of
cultural accumulation.
Yet these askari recollections also benefit from being preserved in the frequently
more disciplined minds of trained former soldiers. Such an argument does not render
their historical accounts fully factual but is rather a factor to consider when assessing
their reliability. Without a doubt, some of these memories will likely be judged wanting
in terms of precise accuracy, at least as measured against other aspects of the extant
historical record. At the same time, they also add an especially valuable dimension to
that same accumulating corpus of evidence.15 Certainly, these testimonies make clear
that news of John Chilembwe’s War spread widely in East and Central Africa. Kazibule
Dabi, among the most unusual veterans interviewed, heard of it after he had begun his
First World War service with the German East African Schutztruppe. From his
somewhat removed perspective in a colonial territory north of Nyasaland, ‘all we heard
was that John Chilembwe was an African and that he was fighting the British people’.
Perhaps most significant, however, was Dabi’s recollection that ‘the Germans heard it
and told us that the British had started to fight with their own Africans, so we advanced
… to fight the British.’
However, after going into battle he was soon captured and subsequently agreed
to join the K.A.R., finishing the war in British service!16 In Nyasaland itself news of the
rebellion quickly circulated, with British colonists making no effort to conceal the

Custodies and the Politics of Archiving’, in Carolyn Hamilton, et al, eds. 209-228, Refiguring the Archive
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2002).
13
Abrams, Oral History Theory, 12-13.
14
Melvin E. Page and Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing About History, 9th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2015),
69.
15
Offering new African evidence regarding Chilembwe and his rebellion is particularly significant, given the
critique by American radical Black Studies scholar, Cedric Robinson, who framed Shepperson’s analysis as
insufficiently authentic, faulting his reliance on ‘distant and often hostile primary sources’ too far removed from
the African realities of Chilembwe’s life; ‘Notes toward a “Native” Theory of History’, Review (Fernand
Braudel Center) 4, 1(1980): 71.
16
Kazibule Dabi, interview 31, conducted 15 September 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the
Old Soldiers Home, Zomba. His experience of switching loyalties was not unique; see Page, Chiwaya War, 32-
33, 73.

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 John Chilembwe’s War

reports. A year before he freely enlisted in the K.A.R., Tamani Njala recalled ‘I was at
Mr. [A. J.] Tennett's place in Thyolo [Mangunda Estate], working. Mr. Tennett said …
those who wanted to work should remain, because he was going to Chilembwe's War.
So he went; and we remained’.17 Thus Njala wasn’t among the several soldiers who
had—as did former K.A.R. Sergeant Nkwande in testimony given to the original
Commission of Inquiry—specific memories of actually engaging in military or police
operations against the rebels. However, Yosefe Chikoti, was one of that number.
Chikoti had joined the K.A.R. years before the events and was already deployed to
Karonga when news of Chilembwe’s actions reached that northern outpost. He clearly
recalls being ordered to make the exhausting journey southward with his K.A.R.
company to join in the military response to the rebellion.18 While his recollection that
subsequently ‘we fought him at his house’ may not be precisely accurate, he is correct
that Chilembwe ‘had run away’ by the time his unit arrived in Chiradzulu.19 His fellow
long-serving askari Jonathan Phiri joined him on that emergency deployment,
remembering that once they had left Karonga boma ‘the steamer Guendolen came about
midnight and we were told to get on board to go to Chiradzulu where John Chilembwe
had killed three white men’. He also shared a common sentiment among the askari:
‘We did not care about his being a fellow African. All we cared for was our jobs and
the money we received’.20
Alufeyo Banda, whose memories are also included here, is more likely to have been
among the K.A.R. troops initially confronting Chilembwe and his followers. Though a
young, newly enlisted eighteen-year-old volunteer from Chinteche, Banda distinctly
remembered ‘I was sent to fight him’ despite being uncertain about Chilembwe’s
motives. Along with fellow newly enlisted K.A.R. askari, he was hastily ordered from
training in Zomba to duty in apprehending Chilembwe and his rebels.21 As he was
among ‘a number of newly raised native recruits of doubtful loyalty’, Banda and the
other askari trainees were issued ‘only a few rounds at a time’ for use in their weapons.
And within the emergency force of which they were a part, ‘the whole of the Europeans
acted as ammunition guards’ since it was assumed ‘the one officer in charge could
exercise no effective control’.22 In fact, the raw recruits ‘took the brunt of the fighting,
including being ambushed’ by the Freedom Army23 which ‘inflicted heavy casualties
and drove’ the KAR recruits and local volunteers back ‘until they ran for
reinforcements’.24 After Captain L. E. L. Triscott reorganized his hastily mobilized
askari and the European volunteers supporting them, the combined force marched on

17
Tamani Njala, interview 19, conducted 22 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldiers Home, Zomba.
18
After traveling south by lake steamer to Fort Johnston, Chikoti and his fellow askari, ‘dragging their seven-
pounder gun over a distance of eighty-six miles’, remarkably ‘reached Zomba in forty-seven hours’; Shepperson
and Price, Independent African, 310.
19
Yosefe Chikoti, interview 18, conducted 22 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
20
Jonathan Phiri, interview 23, conducted 5 September 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Soloman Liwewe at the
Old Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
21
Alufeyo Banda, interview 133, conducted 8 September 1973 by C. M. Manda in Sanga Village, Traditional
Authority Mankhambira, Nkhata Bay District.
22
L. S. Norman, ‘Rebellion’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 230(1931): 868.
23
Roland A. Hill, ‘A.G.S. Nyasaland 1915: The Chilembwe Rising’, Orders and Medals 28, 4(1989): 251.
24
Chigamba, ‘Fight for Freedom’, 6.

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 Society of Malawi Journal

towards Chilembwe’s compound, eventually catching sight of him entering a house in

Michezime village.
‘We saw him at his house’, Banda remembered, ‘but just within a minute he was
25
gone’. Their quarry had spotted the soldiers arriving and ‘left by the back door’. Thus,
avoiding capture, ‘Chilembwe had escaped into the bush opposite’ the house.26
Years later another former askari interviewed for this project, Tabulo Nkwanda
(apparently not a close relative of the aforementioned Sergeant), claimed he had been
present during the chase for the rebel leader, saw Chilembwe captured, and then ‘they
brought him back to Zomba.’ The latter claim is clearly at variance with much of the
other evidence describing the rebel leader’s demise.27 Tabulo Nkwanda’s full story,
however, is much more fascinating! Not yet having actually enlisted in the K.A.R., he
was among the ‘tatterdemalion collection of native allies’28 initially dragooned into
service by local European volunteers and put to task chasing Chilembwe and his small
Freedom Army.
He recalled that ‘one night, we just heard that John Chilembwe had started a
war,’ vividly describing Europeans coming to his home that night and demanding his
service: ‘They gave us swords which we connected to sticks, put on our shoulders.’29
Though almost farcical, Nkwanda’s recollection matches the otherwise nonsensical
madness of the moment described by one of those European volunteers who helped
collect ‘a couple of dozen trustworthy natives whom one of our number quickly licked
into shape,’ arming them with ‘anything in fact that could be found, some only with
spears and axes.’ That volunteer, prominent local planter L. S. Norman, described the
group with some assurance: ‘Though clad in a varied assortment of rags, they marched,
arms at the shoulder, behind their commander as proudly as a platoon of guards.’
Thus—despite actually being an ‘untrained rabble lacking cohesion, leadership,
discipline and everything that goes to make a military force’— the impromptu gaggle
trooping off to quash the rebellion ‘presented a somewhat formidable appearance as it
trailed through the bush’.30 However, other European volunteers saw a more frenetic
scene, as did Harry Petherbridge who described how the ‘little Commando … trekked
all through the rebel’s country round about’ for several days, looting and pillaging with
some abandon.31 Though perhaps not truly confident himself, Tabulo Nkwanda
remembered his experience as just such a moment; ‘we were marching in the middle
while the soldiers marching on our sides’. The net result was perhaps predictable: ‘we
just captured anybody. There was chaos in their land, so action was needed.’32 That part
of his recollection matches some of Petherbridge’s observations and corresponds to the
account of World War Two veteran Titus Chimwere who as a boy met many refugees
fleeing from soldiers in the aftermath of Chilembwe’s War.

25
Alufeyo Banda, interview 133.
26
D. D. Phiri, John Chilembwe, 88.
27
See David T. Stuart-Mogg, ‘The Identification of John Chilembwe’s Body and its Secret Burial’, Society of
Malawi Journal 68(2008): 42-50.
28
Shepperson and Price, Independent African, 310.
29
Tabulo Nkwanda, interview 17, conducted 22 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
30
Norman, ‘Rebellion’, 870-871.
31
Harry Petherbridge letter. D.T. Stuart-Mogg collection; his observations clearly reference South African
historical precedents.
32
Tabulo Nkwanda, interview 17.

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 John Chilembwe’s War

‘They used to come to my village’ he recalled vividly, describing how after

escaping they ‘hid themselves and my mother used to cook pumpkins and go to give
them.’
Titus also remembered the stories they told him, of how ‘they escaped from
soldiers … shooting at them.’33 And Mwachande Makupete, whose home also was in
Chiradzulu, confirmed that before he became an askari in 1916, he and his family ‘just
heard of [Chilembwe’s War and] … we too were running away’.34
Unlike the more open approach of some British settlers, such as A. J. Tennett
from whom Tamani Njala first heard of Chilembwe’s War, K.A.R. officers likely kept
reports of events on a need-to-know basis among their troops. ‘We heard that Chilembwe had
provoked a war’ askari Belo Kaponya admitted, ‘but we did not understand it
properly.’35 Widespread circulation of the news in African communities though did not
seem to hamper recruitment. The news reached Efraim Mangani ‘that there was war in
Karonga. That was the time when we came to enlist [at Zomba]. We just heard that John
Chilembwe was making another war. But nobody from here helped him. We just left this place
and went to Karonga.’36 Even learning about the defeat of Chilembwe’s Freedom Army did not
deter Dafter Mangomo in the slightest. ‘I came to join the K.A.R. a day after the
Chilembwe War was over’ he proudly recalled when asked when he had become a
soldier.37
Two other First World War veterans remembered parallel experiences when
asked about John Chilembwe. Issa Lipende, a Yao soldier, quickly recalled that one day
‘we were told to “fall in” … and asked whether there were any among us who were
Lomwe’.
Though surprised, Lipende said that ‘without hesitation those who were Lomwe
answered.’
Only then ‘they were told that Chilembwe had begun war in Nyasaland.’38
Nothing further seems to have come of that unusual inquisition at the time,
although the motivation was clear to another askari, a Lomwe himself. Khobviwa Juwa
was serving at Karonga when Protectorate officials ordered a K.A.R. response force
quickly moved south to counter the rebels. He immediately understood that his officers
‘could not include a Nguru [Lomwe] in the battalion [only a double company] that came

33
Testimony of K.A.R. Warrant Office Titus Chimwere, quoted in Page, ‘John Chilembwe and Juma
Chimwere’, 27.
34
Mwachande Makupete, interview 6, conducted 10 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the
Old Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
35
Belo Kaponya, interview 29, conducted 14 September 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
36
Efraim Mangani, interview 4, conducted 10 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
37
Dafter Mangomo, interview 8, conducted 11 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
38
Issa Lipende, interview 170, conducted 14 September 1973 by Sigele Chilole at Mangochi Boma [District
Headquarters].

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 Society of Malawi Journal

to fight John Chilembwe’39 as ‘the Lomwes dominated the privates’ thus making up the
bulk of the Freedom Army.40
Other veteran askari whose service often began as late as the Second World War,
also added valuable historical recollections of Chilembwe’s War. Gilbert Jumbe related
how, long before his K.A.R. service, he had been captured and taken to Zomba during
the military operations conducted by Yosefe Chiwoti and his company once they arrived
from Karonga. Captured and taken into custody, ‘they discharged me and others, saying
that we were very young’, Jumbe recalled; the authorities told him ‘I could not have
been in the John Chilembwe war’. Why he and his father were caught up in the
operation, Jumbe could not say, pleading ‘I was very young, so that I can't remember’
all the details from that time.41
Another World War Two veteran who was also a boy at the time of Chilembwe’s
War, Mereka Awonenji, was adamant about how he avoided becoming associated with
the rebels. ‘I myself had some holes made in my ears’, he remembered, recalling his
youth in Dedza, ‘so that we the Ngonis should be recognized easily’. Although such a
cultural marker was not uncommon, he explained that on this occasion it was part of a
concerted effort aimed at keeping his fellow Ngoni more easily distinguishable from
Chilembwe’s followers ‘so that we should not be arrested and killed’.42
Only one of the askari interviewed appeared, at least in retrospect, to be a
Chilembwe sympathizer. Sam Kamanga was forthright, remembering when news of
John Chilembwe’s War reached his Second Battalion on wartime deployment in Kenya
‘we wished that John Chilembwe defeated the British’. Nonetheless, learning ‘that he
lost to the cruel British people,’ Kamanga was not moved to have joined the rebellion.43
Indeed, there is nothing in any of these interviews to challenge Shepperson and Price’s
substantive conclusion that
‘Chilembwe … could not hope for any mutiny amongst the native soldiers of the
Protectorate.’44

39
Khobviwa Juwa, interview 32, conducted 18 September 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the
Old Soldier’s Home, Zomba. The complicated history of Lomwe identity in Malawi is dealt with by Landeg
White, ‘”Tribes” and the Aftermath of the Chilembwe Rising,’ African Affairs 83(1984): 511-541.
40
D.D. Phiri, John Chilembwe, 65. Regarding ethnic identity within the Nyasaland K.A.R., see Risto Marjomaa,
‘The Martial Spirit: Yao Soldiers in British Service in Nyasaland (Malawi), 1895-1939’. The Journal of African
History 44, 3 (2003): 413-32
41
Gilbert Jumbe, interview 52, conducted 5 January 1973 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
42
Mereka Awonenji, interview 56, conducted 5 January 1973 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba. Mr. Awonenji appears to have grafted a contemporary context onto a common cultural
practice: at age six or seven, as their first permanent teeth appeared, Ngoni boys frequently had their ear lobes
pierced, both an early ‘test of courage and a symbol of Ngoni identity’; Flordeliz T. Bugarin, ‘Constructing an
Archaeology of Children: Studying Children and Child Material Culture from the African Past’, Archeological
Papers of the American Anthropological Association 15(2005): 20. Burgarin’s reassessment is drawn from
Margaret Read’s earlier anthropological conclusions in Children of their Fathers: Growing Up among the Ngoni
of Nyasaland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 88-91. Rumors circulating among the Ngoni in central
Nyasaland after the rebels’ defeat—that the colonial government was encouraging ear piercing as a means of
ethnic identification—lends credence to Awonenji’s recollections; see Ian Linden, with Jane Linden, Catholics,
Peasants, and Chewa Resistance in Nyasaland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 100.
43
Sam Kamanga, interview 107, conducted by C. M. Manda, 4 August 1973 in Chirungulu Village, Traditional
Authority Fukamapiri, Nkhata Bay District.
44
Shepperson and Price, Independent African, 297.

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 John Chilembwe’s War

In fact, one of these former askari, Disi Katita, had a diametrically opposing
view. ‘Chilembwe was bad’ was his explicit assessment, insisting metaphorically that
‘he wanted us to go back to the old way of life putting on bark cloth.’45
The key theme emerging from these seventeen oral historical accounts is that
while most askari understood Chilembwe was ‘playing with fire’, as RSM Juma
Chimwere put it to his son Titus,46 the general impression among the troops—and which
many veterans conveyed to a respected British officer—was that when ‘looking at it in
that context where they were involved in a war’ with the German Schutztruppe, John
Chilembwe’s War was ‘a trivial affair’.47 Such an assessment seems borne out by
Jonathan Phiri’s admission that once John Chilembwe’s War was over ‘we heard
nothing about him’. One of the most lyrically inclined among the askari interviewed,
Mr. Phiri claimed he knew so many songs ‘that I can sing till it gets dark’. Yet when
asked directly, ‘Did you sing a song about John Chilembwe?’ his reply was swift and
direct: ‘No we did not’. 48 This admission is particularly telling as Malawian soldiers—
justly famous for ‘the power and the poetry’ of their lyrical expression49—made little
attempt no memorialize John Chilembwe’s efforts in one of their songs.
The preservation of these seventeen interviews, though, should make clear that
Malawian askari did in fact recall this important chapter in their military service as well
as their nation’s history.50 Yet even as men trained in the arts of war, they were
sufficiently disciplined to resist any temptations to follow Chilembwe’s frustrations and
turn their military abilities against the colonial power which had subjugated their
peoples.

Askari Interviews
All interviews cited above are listed here using, in order, their original record
numbers to retain continuity with their citation elsewhere. Every reference to John
Chilembwe from each interview is included, with contextualized responses, using
ellipses ( … ) to note deletions, as well as bracketed and footnoted (with an asterisk)
emendations.

Interview 4
name: Efraim Mangani

45
Disi Katita, interview 25, conducted 13 August 1972 by Melvin E. Page and Yusuf Juwayeyi at the Old
Soldier’s Home, Zomba.
46
Quoted in Page, ‘John Chilembwe and Juma Chimwere’, 25.
47
John Faithful, interview 59, conducted 12 January 1973 by Melvin E. Page at his home, Zomba. Given the
relative paucity of oral histories from K.A.R. askari, I include this transcript as other scholars have confidently
relied on ‘the image their commanding officers had of them’ and their views; Marjomaa, ‘Martial Spirit’, 413.
48
Jonathan Phiri, interview 23. None of the other askari interviewees offered any lyrical expressions—scathing or supportive—
of Chilembwe.
49
George Shepperson, ‘Malawi and the Poetry of Two World Wars’, Society of Malawi Journal 43, 2(1990): 16.
Also see Melvin E. Page, ‘A Continuing Legacy of Song: From Asilikali Lyrics into Malawian Culture’, Society
of Malawi Journal 73, 1(2020): 21-35.
50
In a major oversight, Timothy Lovering’s otherwise sweeping survey of Africans in Malawi’s colonial
military only briefly mentions Chilembwe’s concerns about such service while ignoring the place of K.A.R.
askari in understanding such a significant domestic conflict; Timothy J. Lovering, “Authority and Identity:
Malawian Soldiers in Britain’s Colonial Army:1891-1964” (PhD Thesis, University of Sterling, 2002),
especially 291, https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/handle/1893/1966?mode=full#.YA2xExZOmUk, accessed 24 January
2021.

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 Society of Malawi Journal

date: 10 August 1972

language: Chichewa
translator: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
place: Old Soldier’s Memorial Home, Zomba
Q: How did you join the K.A.R.?
A: We heard that the government was employing soldiers in Zomba, we decided to go
and enlist. …
Q: What made you join the K.A.R.?
A: Poverty. Nothing else but poverty. When I heard that they were paying a good sum
of money I decided to come, without bothering about death. ….
Q: When you joined the K.A.R., had John Chilembwe‘s war broken out?
A: Yes, it had already broken out. …
Q: Would it have made any difference to you if you had joined John Chilembwe and not
the K.A.R?
A: We just heard that John Chilembwe had started fighting, and that there was war in
Karonga. That was the time when we came to enlist.
Q: Who was fighting in Karonga?
A: The Germans.
Q: What about John Chilembwe’s war, what was it for?
A: We just heard that John Chilembwe was making another war. But nobody from here helped
him. We just left this place and went to Karonga.
Q: Were you given any special instructions when marching to the war?
A: Yes, we were told to be courageous, and that our main task was to shoot at the enemy.

Interview 6
name: Mwachande Makupete
date: 10 August 1972
language: Chichewa
translator: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
place: Old Soldier’s Memorial Home, Zomba
Q: Do you remember when you came to join the K.A.R.?
A: In 1916. … I joined the K.A.R. because I was a poor man. When I realized that the
K.A.R. was paying about £l. ls. 4d. I decided to come to enlist.
Q: Were you working in Chiradzulu at this time?
A: No, I was not working, I was just staying at home. …
Q: Do you remember when you married?
A: I was betrothed at the time of the war of John Chilembwe, at the end of 1914, or the
beginning of 1915. When I came here in 1916, I spent one year before going to war, I
spent
one year at the war. … It ended in 1919, then I got married. I called her here to join me.
Q: Is that the same girl you were betrothed to before you went to the war?
A: Yes, she was very young … but she died in 1967. …
Q: Had you been to school before you joined the K.A.R.?
A: No, I have never been to school, even now. I can’t write.
Q: Where did John Chilembwe’s War take place?
A: John Chilembwe is said to have killed Mr. [William Jervis] Livingstone at

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 John Chilembwe’s War

Magomero. We just heard of it,

Q: Were you in Chiradzulu at that time?
A: Yes, we too were running away. …
Q: When did you retire?
A: In 1929.
Q: Did you go home to Chiradzulu any time between 1918—1929?
A: Yes, I went.
Q: How were you received at home?
A: They felt that I was lucky because I fought in the war and came out of it alive. They
also felt that since I was back, I would help them in many things.

Interview 8
name: Dafter Mangomo
date: 11 August 1972
language: Chichewa
translator: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
place: Old Soldier’s Memorial Home, Zomba
Q: How did you come to join the K.A.R.?
A: In 1914, because of poverty in the villages, Europeans were paying us only three
shillings a month. We heard that people were being enlisted as soldiers in Zomba, so
we came to Zomba, and we were enlisted.
Q: From whom did you hear that soldiers were enlisted in Zomba?
A: There is a District Commissioner in Chiradzulu. He was the one who sent messages
we should go to enlist as soldiers. …
Q: Tell me how you heard from the D.C.?
A: My father had been a soldier.
Q: Where?
A: Here in Zomba but not in the 1914 war. It was an earlier war, … in Somaliland.
Q: Now tell me how you heard the new from the D.C.
A: Now, when we saw that we were paid only three shillings a month, I decided to go
to join the K.A.R. alone. So, I came here to enlist.
Q: How many people from your village came to join the K.A.R.?
A: Five people. …
Q: What do you know about John Chilembwe?
A: We were [living] near his home. I came to join the K.A.R. a day after the Chilembwe
war was over.
Q: Do you know why he was fighting?
A: No, I don't know the reasons. We just heard that there was war and that his church
had been pulled down.
Q: That was before you went to war?
A: Yes. And even before I came here to Zomba.
Q: Did you ever go to Chilembwe's Church?
A: No.
Q: What was the difference between the war in Karonga and Chilembwe’s war?
A: Chilembwe’s war was only for two days, and it was over.
Q: Were they using guns?

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 Society of Malawi Journal

A: I am not sure if he had any guns.

Interview 17
name: Tebulo Nkwana
date: 22 August 1972
language: Chichewa
translator: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
place: Old Soldier’s Memorial Home, Zomba.
Q: When did you say you joined the K.A.R.?
A: 1914.
Q: Did you leave in the same year for Nairobi?
A: Yes. …
Q: Did you not hear of John Chilembwe when you were there?
A: About John Chilembwe? That was before I went to the war.
Q: Tell me what happened?
A: Well, we were just staying in the villages. One might, we just heard that John
Chilembwe had started a war. They had burnt down his bell. The Europeans came to
our home, and asked me and another man, and we came to the K.A.R. They gave us
swords which we connected to sticks, put on our shoulders. We were marching in the
middle while the soldiers march[ed] on our sides. We marched to Namadzi and
Magomero. We heard that a European had been killed. We lived in tobacco barns. We
used to go into the area, the whole of Chiradzulu until we got to Phalombe. After that
we left. There was a certain man, Mr. [J.C.] Casson. He was looking after this black
country [as Superintendent of Native Affairs]. Now Livingstone, used to say that the
whites should kill all the Africans up to Zomba. But Mr. Casson objected to this. ‘You
don't kill everybody for a fault done by one man.’
Q: Why did Chilembwe do that?
A: I don't know very well because it started suddenly. Maybe it was due to the high-
sounding bell.
Q: How many people did you capture?
A: Many. Women, pregnant women. They were punished, made to run for long
distances as punishment. Men were executed in the open near the hospital in the
afternoons. We could see them doing it.
Q: How many people were executed?
A: I don't know. I did not even know the people.
Q: How did you know who to capture? I mean how did you know that such and such
was in Chilembwe’s group?
A: We were right in the land. We just captured anybody. There was chaos in their land,
so action was needed.
Q: Did the people in authority try to separate the guilty ones from the innocent?
A: Yes.
Q: How did they do it?
A: No, I don't know. Don't ask me that.
Q: Who commanded you to go there?
A: The Europeans.
Q: What about when marching to Chilembwe' s area?

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 John Chilembwe’s War

A: The Europeans.
Q: Were there no Africans?
A: The Africans were the soldiers. I have told you that we were marching in the middle
and the soldiers were on our sides.
Q: I thought you had joined the K.A.R. at that time?
A: No, I had not yet joined the K.A.R. by the time of John Chilembwe.
Q: How did they choose you to go there to look for the wrong doers when you were not
yet a soldier?
A: No, I don’t know. Maybe it’s according to the laws. They asked our D.C. [District
Commissioner], who asked us to do the job.
Q: Did they give you any uniform?
A: No, they did not.
Q: Did they pay you?
A: Yes.
Q: How much were you paid?
A: We received £4 each.
Q: For how long did you stay on that job?
A: Well, about one month.
Q: Why did the government ask people from your home to help?
A: That I don't know because that is a government.
Q: But do you know why the government sent you to arrest Chilembwe?
A: No, we did not.
Q: Did they force you to go there, or you did it on your own will?
A: No, they said that they wanted young men. So, the chiefs selected us, and we came
here.
Q: Did you join the K.A.R. because of this incident or you would have joined the K.A.R.
in any case?
A: I would have joined the K.A.R. without the Chilembwe incident.
Q: For how long did you stay at home after this incident before joining the K.A.R.?
A: No, I have forgotten.
Q: Did you arrest Chilembwe himself?
A: He had already been captured.
Q: Did you see him captured?
A: Yes.
Q: Did they bring him to Zomba?
A: Yes, they brought him to Zomba.
Q: What happened when he was brought here?
A: No, I don’t know what happened after that.
Q: What happened to the people once they were captured?
A: They were brought here. I don’t know what the government said to them.
Q: Since this happened a long time ago, what are your feelings about John Chilembwe
now?
A: Nothing at all.
Q: Do you now know what went wrong with John Chilembwe?
A: Yes, because in those days he wanted to find peace with his Church. But the
Europeans did not want them. They felt that he would be better than them.

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 Society of Malawi Journal

Q: If it were now, would you have gone to capture Chilembwe’s followers?

A: Now, I am old now.
Q: No, I mean even in those days if you had known that the Europeans were being
jealous of Chilembwe, would you have gone to arrest his followers?
A: According to the laws. …
Q: Now, let’s go back to John Chilembwe’ s time, when you were going to arrest him,
were you marching as properly as soldiers do?
A: No, we just walked anyhow. There was no one to command left, right left, right.
Q: Were you accompanied by soldiers when going there?
A: Yes.
Q: When you reached Chilembwe’s place, did you find some more soldiers there?
A: Yes, yes.
Q: Did they arrest any people then?
A: No, no.
Q: When you got there, what was the reaction of the villagers?
A: They were afraid of us. When we captured the people, we sent them to the boma.
And the boma sent the people here. There were no cars at that time. Some people ran
away.
Q: As soon as you came back from this trip, were you not told or asked to join the K.A.R.
right away?
A: No, they did not ask us.
Q: Why?
A: I don't know.
Q: Had you already thought of joining the K.A.R. at that time?
A: No, because at that time, I was rather ignorant.
Q: Where did you go when you came back from this raid?
A: I went home to stay.

Interview 18
name: Yosefe Chikoti
date: 22 August 1972
language: Chichewa
translator: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
place: Old Soldier’s Memorial Home, Zomba
[As Mr. Chikoti was nearly deaf, his friend, Mereka Awonenji, joined the conversation
to ensure he clearly understood the questions.]
Q: Do you remember your K.A.R. number?
A: Yes, 4163. [Confirmed in Malawi Army records.]
Q: Where were you when you heard about the war?
A: I was in this country at that time. I married just near here.
Q: So, you come from the Portuguese territory?
A: Yes, at Mpanyira in the Portuguese territory. …
Q: What made you join the K.A.R.?
A: Poverty, I had no money. …
Q: Do you remember when you joined the K.A.R.?
A: 1900. I drilled with the Hindus [Sikhs]; that was 1900, when I joined the K.A.R.

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 John Chilembwe’s War

Q: What things did you do between 1900 and 1914?

A: There was nothing special at that time. We just dug in our gardens without knowing
there would be any war. … We were just drilling.
Q: Did you fight any war before 1914?
A: I don't know the year when we started the German war, but I know that we spent five
years in the bush. …
Q: Tell me anything you can remember about the war?
A: We fought at Karonga, then we went to Malangali; when fighting we used to look
for ourselves in the bush that is all.
Q: Did you fight in the Second World War?
A: I fought in 1914. The other one was when we returned from Karonga to chase John
Chilembwe.
Q: Which way did you take when going to John Chilembwe’s place?
A: We travelled through the main road to his house. We fought him at his house. Three
of our people were killed.
Q: Did you find John Chilembwe at his house?
A: He run away, and Malikebu* too.
Q: What did you do when you found that he had run away?
A: When he had run away, and after three of our people had been killed, we came back
to Zomba.
Q: Were the people who went to fight John Chilembwe ordinary people or soldiers?
A: The people we were fighting there were ordinary villagers, the Nguru [Lomwe].
Q: I mean did soldiers or ordinary people go there to fight John Chilembwe?
A: Only one platoon [a full company] went there.
Q: What about the three people who were killed, were they soldiers?
A: A corporal was killed.
Q: What were you doing with the people since John Chilembwe had run away?
A: Those were the people we were fighting with. He left the guns in their hands.
Q: Did they all have guns?
A: Chilembwe was the owner of the guns. When he run away, he left them.
Q: Weren't there some other people who went with them, but who were not soldiers?
A: There were people, including the mtengatenga [carriers].
Q: Were the mtengatenga people going with them to fight Chilembwe or when they were
going to fight in the big war?
A: When we were going to K
Q: Now, who accompanied you to the Chilembwe War?
A: Only one platoon [company] went there, that is all.
Q: What did they do when they discovered that John Chilembwe was not there?
A: Then they said the war was over, but three of our soldiers were killed. We came back
to Zomba.
Q: How did the three soldiers die?
A: The guns of John Chilembwe.
Q: [Mr. Awonenji] Who fired the guns? Was it John Chilembwe?

*
Dr. Daniel Malekebu studied at Chilembwe’s Providence Industrial Mission, but left for South Africa in 1907,
later going to the United States for further education, including a medical degree. He re-established the P.I.M. in
1926.

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 Society of Malawi Journal

A: The villagers. They were his soldiers.

Interview 19

name: Tamani Njala

date: 22 August 1972
language: Chichewa
translator: Yusuf M. Juwayeyi
place: Old Soldier’s Memorial Home, Zomba
Q: Where do you come from?
A: Nambeya, T.A. Chikelu, Kasupe.
Q: When did you join the K.A.R.?
A: In December, 1916 [Later says January 1916, but Malawi Army records have
February 1916].
Q: What made you join the K.A.R.?
A: I was poor. …
Q: Tell me all you remember about John Chilembwe?
A: At that time I was at Mr. [A. J.] Tennett's place in Thyolo [Mangunda Estate],
working. Mr. Tennett said that those who did not want to work should go home. Those
who wanted to work should remain because he was going to Chilembwe's War. So he
went; and we remained. Then we heard that Chilembwe had run away. Then K.A.R.
soldiers went to Chilembwe's place and burnt down houses. Chilembwe himself ran
away. There would be an animal foot, then a man's foot in the trail which he used. Many
people were arrested and brought to Zomba. People were executed near the hospital in
bunches of ten. Mr. [Alexander Livingstone] Bruce said all the people from Namadzi
should be killed. But another white man Mr. Casson [Superintendent of Native Affirms]
objected to that. He said that ‘you have provoked Chilembwe. You told him to burn
down his bell’. This resulted in the death of Livingstone.

(To be concluded in Volume 75.2.)

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