The African Union (AU) on Sunday postponed its ceremony to honour former presidents, the late Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the late Bingu wa Mutharika, alongside a galaxy of African liberators for the role they played in ushering independence across the African continent.
Other Malawians on the list were the country’s first female Cabinet minister Rose Chibambo and the Reverend John Chilembwe (deceased), a western educated Baptist minister who led an unsuccessful revolt against British rule in Nyasaland in 1915.
Chilembwe was considered one of the region’s first nationalists.
Malawians attending the AU summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said the ceremony was postponed to a date to be announced.
A source said most of the African heroes to be honoured were dead.
Banda, who died in 1997, was leader of Malawi and its predecessor State, Nyasaland, from 1961 to 1994. After receiving much of his education overseas, he returned home to speak against colonialism and advocate for independence.
Of the list from Malawi only Chibambo, 84, a prominent politician in the British Protectorate of Nyasaland in the years leading up to independence as the State of Malawi in 1964, and immediately after, is alive.
Banda’s immediate successor in May 1994, Bakili Muluzi, who was invited to the ceremony marking the golden jubilee of the AU and its forerunner the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), failed to travel due to accommodation logistics, he said.
Africans from the five regions of the continent and the diaspora as well as guests from around the world converged on Saturday at the headquarters of the AU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the OAU now the AU, established on May 25 1963, in the same city.
The celebration featured intellectual debates on the theme “Pan Africanism and African Renaissance”, followed by a cultural evening in the presence of current and former Heads of State on the continent as well as former Secretary Generals of the OAU and former chairpersons of the AU.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was among the guests.
Former President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, who was present at the signing of the OAU Charter in 1963, animated the cultural evening with a message to the new generation of leaders and a song in honour of women.
