Renowned author Ndongolera Mwangupili was recently elected Malawi Union of Academic and Non-Fiction Authors (Muana) president. He leads the association backed by a rich publication profile which has seen him publish a number of books. Our News Analyst BRIAN ITAI caught up with hi, to reflect on the work in leading Muana. Experts:
Q. Who is Ndongolera Mwangupili?
A. I am a poet, writer, scholar and culturalist. I am the author of Fragments of my Broken Voice, a poetry book; Sons of the Hills, a novel, and A Gift to the People: Sr. Beatrice Chipeta’s Legacy, a biography.
These are some of the books published as I haven’t included the anthologies I have edited. Some of which are used in Malawi secondary school curriculum.
My works also appear in Southern Humanities Review, Florilege and several other international journals. Other works have been widely anthologised four including in The Caine Prize for African Writing 2024: Midnight in the Morgue and Other Stories and Beneath Humanity: Contemporary Short Stories From Malawi by Acin, just to mention two of several anthologies my works appear in.
is crucial. | Courtesy of
Mwangupili
In 2025, I was awarded the Honorary Fellow in Writing (HFW) by the University of Iowa in the USA after participating in their International Writing Programme (IWP). I work for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology as a principal quality assurance officer in the Northern Education Division.
This is my public life. In my private life, I am a married man, born in an extended family of Mwangupili Kayira from Mwanjabala Village in Karonga.
Q. For how long have you been in the literary industry?
A. I always consider this a difficult question as it forgets what nurtured me to be who I am as a writer. To begin with, my two villages, paternal and maternal. Mwanjabala is my paternal home. It is well known for mapenenga ya nkhombo and whenever I went home I would join in the last line to learn to dance mapenenga. Mbiliyaluta Boma is well known dancing group that now it is even invited to national functions.
Kashata is my maternal village. It is well known for saza la mapenenga. My uncles were great dancers and I could join to learn to dance saza. Now in my father’s house, when aunts (father’s sisters) and uncles (mother’s brothers) came, we always assembled around them in the evening to listen to vidokoni(folktales).
We had no TV then in the 1980s. Little did I know this was developing me into a storyteller. When I started living with my brother in 1990, my sister in-law, a nurse by profession, was a great reader of novels, she still reads. I always read the books she brought in the house. Ludlum was her favourite then.
Then we could go to Kamuzu Institute of Sports in Lilongwe and Chenda Hall in Mzuzu to watch Du Chisiza Junior, Kwathu Drama Group and others. For me to know that I am a writer was when I went to St Patrick’s Seminary to begin Form One.
My English teacher, Mr Mike Nyoni whom interestingly I later got to know he was a chemist, read my poem and sent it to Malawi News. There I started sending my poems to newspapers. And while in form Four in 1997 I won Green Poetry Competition organised by WASI Magazine in collaboration with some organisation that promoted protection of environment.
The award ceremony had to come to Mzuzu as the best poem was from Rumphi. The rector sent me and my classmate Sam Ng’oma [he is a priest now]. The same year a play written by a student went to national finals of ATEM Drama Festival. It was titled Thunderous Consequences.
I became a prolific contributor to newspapers in Malawi. Notable engagement in those early days was my involvement in the Crossingborder Project of the British Council with mentors from the UK. That was in 2004 for six months.
Q. You have recently been appointed Muana president, was it a deserved call?
A: I wouldn’t say it is a deserved call. It is a service. I have been part of Muana from its formation and growth. The membership noted I would be the right candidate to lead the organisation guided by the membership aspirations and the organisation’s constitution and strategic plan.
When I was secretary general I wrote a paper about strategic alliance in writer’s union with Muana as a case study. After presenting the paper at a Pan-African Writers’ Symposium in Kampala [Uganda] in 2016, it was published in a book of the conference proceedings as a book chapter. In it I articulated aspirations of Muana. All this directs to the shared vision of Muana membership to see their organisation reach its desired heights.
Q. What are your immediate plans in your new role?
A. Muana is an organisation that represents academic and nonfiction authors. That should be well understood and continue to operate in that lane as per the objectives outlined in the constitution. We need book publications, a journal, conferences and a local residency. This would fully promote writing in Malawi. Then we should strive to be self-reliant. We should have an office, a house that can house our activities. Such ambitious aspirations can only be achieved through the collective effort of the membership.
Q. How crucial is the organisation?
A. Perhaps, we should understand how crucial writing is to a society. It defines who we are. Civilisations develop through literature. Now when we talk of academic and nonfiction writing is what directly informs a society, its education and its policies. Unfortunately, we never take writing seriously. Countries that are driven by informed decisions from a body of knowledge of its books grow to be the power among other nations. Muana as an organisation stands to promote such writers and their literature. We also stand to inform the nation of the existence of such knowledge in Malawi. Since academic and nonfiction writers are seldom known and respected, we stand to protect their works locally and internationally and make it visible.
