Early life
Kamuzu Banda was born near Kasungu in Malawi (then British Central Africa) to Mphonongo Banda and his wife Akupingamnyama Phiri. His date of birth is unknown, and as it took place at a time when there was no birth registration, it is impossible to state a precise year. (His biographer, Philip Short, gives February 1898 as the most likely date). His official birthday is stated as May 14, 1906 and this date is contained in some biographical guides. However, his death certificate states him to have been 99 years old and it was rumoured that he was actually 101. There is no proof the report of his age was accurate. He took the Christian name of Hastings after being baptised into the Church of Scotland in around 1905.
Around 1915-16, he left home and went with Hanock Msokera Phiri, an "uncle" who had been a teacher at the nearby Livingstonia mission school, on foot to Hartley in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) and then, in 1917 and again on foot, to 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 Church (AME), who offered to pay his tuition at a Methodist school in America if he could make his own passage. In 1925, he left for New York.
Life abroad (1925195
Banda studied in the high school section of Wilberforce Institute, a black AME college (now
Central State University) in
Wilberforce, Ohio, and graduated in 1928.
With his financial support now ended, Banda earned some money on speaking engagements arranged by the Ghanaian educationalist, Kweyir Aggrey, whom he had met in South Africa. Speaking at a Kiwanis club meeting, he met one Dr Herald, with whose help he enrolled as a premedical student at Indiana University, where he lodged with Mrs W.N. Culmer. At Bloomington, he wrote several essays about his native Chewa tribe for the folklorist
Stith Thompson, who introduced him to
Edward Sapir, an anthropologist at the
University of Chicago, to which, after four semesters, he transferred. During his period here, he collaborated with the anthropologist and linguist, Mark Hanna Watkins, acting as an informant on Chewa culture. In Chicago, he lodged with an African-American, Mrs Corinna Saunders. He majored in history, graduating with a B Phil in 1931. During this time, he enjoyed financial support from a Mrs. Smith, whose husband, Douglas Smith, had made fortunes in patent medicines and in
Pepsodent toothpaste; and also from a member of the Eastman Kodak board. He then, still with financial support from these and other benefactors (including Dr. Walter B. Stephenson of the Delta Electric Company),
studied medicine at Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1937.
In order to practice medicine in territories of the British Empire, however, he was apparently required to get a second medical degree; he attended and graduated from the School of Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of Edinburgh in 1941. His studies there were funded by stipends of
300 pounds per year from the government of Nyasaland (in order to facilitate his return there as a doctor)
and from the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk; neither of these benefactors being aware of the other. (There are conflicting accounts of this, however. He may still have been funded by Mrs Smith).
When he enrolled for courses in tropical diseases in Liverpool, the Nyasaland government terminated his stipend. He was forced to leave Liverpool when he refused on conscientious grounds to be conscripted as an Army doctor. Between
1942 and 1945 he worked as a doctor in North Shields near Newcastle on Tyne. He was a tennant of Mrs Amy Walton at this time in Alma Place in North Shields and sent a Christmas card to her every year right up to her death in the late 1960's. In 1948 he worked as a doctor in
Renfrew. A resident, Bill Johnston remembers the time when, as a lad, Dr. Banda came to his home to see his father who had a nasty boil on the back of his neck. His father was a respected church elder in the town. Dr. Banda took a small bottle from his case, asked for some boiling water and poured some into the bottle. Emptying the water out, he quickly placed the open end on Bills fathers boil where of course it stuck as the steam condensed. With a cry of anguish his father leapt to his feet and chased the doctor round and round the kitchen table with the bottle fastened to his neck. Bill was dumbfounded at hearing his father use language that he had never heard before!
Banda originally worked at a mission for coloured seamen before moving to a general practice in the London suburb of Harlesden. At this time he lodged in a hotel in Paddington run by Mrs Janet Evans. Reportedly, he avoided returning to Nyasaland for fear that his newfound financial resources would be consumed by his extended family back home.
In 1946, at the behest of Chief Mwase of Kasungu, whom he had met in England in 1939, and other politically active Malawians, he represented the Nyasaland African Congress at the fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester. From this time he took an increasingly active interest in his native land, advising the Congress and providing it some financial support. With help from sympathetic British, he also lobbied in London on their behalf. He was actively opposed to the efforts of Sir
Roy Welensky, premier of Southern Rhodesia, to form a federation between Southern and Northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland, a move which he feared would result in further deprivation of rights for the Nyasaland blacks. The (as he famously called it) "stupid" Federation was formed in 1953. It was rumored with some excitement that he would return to Nyasaland in 1951, but in the event he moved instead to the Gold Coast in West Africa.
He may have gone there partly because of a scandal involving his receptionist in Harlesden, a Mrs French: Banda was cited as correspondent in the divorce of Major French and accused of adultery with Mrs French, who went with him to West Africa. (Mrs. French died penniless in 1976). Several influential Congress leaders, including
Henry Chipembere,
Kanyama Chiume,
Dunduzu Chisiza and T.D.T. Banda (no relation) pleaded with him to return to Nyasaland to take up leadership of their cause, and on 6 July 1958 he did eventually return home after an absence of about 42 years. In August, at Nkata Bay, he was acclaimed as the leader of the Congress.
