Dear Diary,
Greetings f rom the Munda wa Chitedze Fa rm wh e re we relocated from the hustle and bustle of your city. From here, we celebrate the life of John Chilembwe, our mythical leader of the struggle against colonisation.
We don’t buy your notion that Chilembwe started the struggle way too early. He should have let the British develop the country first. Wait a minute, who said as a nation we have to delegate another nation to develop our nation for us?
Chilembwe was not wrong to strike that blow and die. If at all they came to develop us, why were they oppressing us since 1891 when we became the king’s colony?
Think of it. Chilembwe’s nemes is Wi l l iam Jar vi s Livingstone was a benefactor of the missionary we so revere, David Livingstone. What then made a descendant of our dear Livingstone to think the God Africans were serving was less than his?
Dear Diary, excuse me for being emotional, but then everything about freedom is wrapped in emotions. An old American army ballad has been turned into a saying popularised by General Douglas MacArthur: “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”. Way back, at the farm we employed a guard who was a typical soldier who was fading away, having fought in the Second World War. At the farm, this story told us so many stories about his exploits at Kobbe in Kenya, in Burma and Singapore. It was his exploits in Japan that touched me most. “The war in Japan was really ruthless. One Japanese soldier could have different weapons and you would think there was a battalion ahead. There was heat. There was sweat. There was blood and there was dust. At one point, Japanese soldiers ambushed us from nowhere. They fired at us. Tinafapo anthu 11,” this soldier said. You could laugh. But, who doesn’t want to be a martyr? Who doesn’t want the world to say: “There is no greater love than this, than for one to die for his beloved.” These thoughts, Dear Diary, engulfed the Farm on Thursday as we recalled how three native soldiers of the King’s African Rifles Naluso, Useni and Kaduya shot dead Chilembwe as he was about to f lee to Mozambique. Chilembwe struck the blow on January 23 and was killed on February 3! Martyrdom is great. By the way, shall we ever have a day to remember those who died in the fight for democracy? We have a day for those who died in the World Wars, John Chilembwe and his colleagues but nothing for the Matenje and Gadama’s of this world! That as it may be, we hear there are squabbles over who is the true Chilembwe descendants. On the one hand, there are those from Mkwaila Village in Chiradzulu which was Chilembwe’s homestead. On the other hand, there is another group from Chikapa and Mpelule Villages in Zomba who say they are the true heirs. What i s most queer is that both families have their own way of telling the Chilembwe story. In Zomba, two Chilembwe sisters, Lena and Lise were interred. Also buried there was Chilembwe’s cook, Isaac Chambo and the revolutionary’s mother Nyangu. In Chiradzulu, the story is that Chilembwe had one sister, Njinjiwa. Here, government constructed her tombostone and that of Nyangu. Confused? Don’t be. John Chilembwe’s mother Nyangu has two burial places, if the oral history is anything to go by! Mind you, al l that is coming when Chilembwe’s body is speculated to have been buried somewhere in the Esperanza Estate in Mulanje. Dear Diar y, with the mentality we have, we are waiting for a day when our colonisers will lead the research teams to excavate Esperanza to find Chilembwe’s mandible and skull. We are waiting for them to track the real descendants of Chilembwe and avoid all the hullabaloo. With history and heritage departments at some of our universities, we can’t trace our so-called national hero and his lineage? But we at the farm care ver y little about history: That study of events that happened, w r i t ten by someone who was never there.
