Kungoni Cultural Centre: A proud home of culture
A visit to Dedza District cannot be complete without stopping over at the Kungoni Cultural Centre.
Founded in 1976, the centre is a home of history, tradition and art. Situated at Mua, it has a cultural museum, art gallery, showroom, carving centre and cultural library, among others.
These are open to anyone. However, it is not easy for people to think of visiting places simply to appreciate art. It is for this reason that founder of the centre, Father Claude Boucher, locally known as Chisale, decided to introduce the Kungoni Cultural Festival to attract people from across the country to visit the place.
This is an annual festival which took place last Saturday. The event is held on the first Saturday of August and is open to people across the country. This year’s festival was the 12th edition.
For the first time the festival registered the largest turn up of both patrons and acts. According to the festival’s organiser, Robert Kalindiza, this year’s festival attracted over 40 acts. These were poems, stage plays, traditional music and dances.
Kalindiza called it a successful and historical festival ever.
“We are calling it a historical festival because of the success the festival registered. We had the highest number which is more than double the figures we have had in the previous festivals. We also witnessed a big crowd that came to watch the performances and the group included people from outside Malawi,” he said.
Kalindiza said the festival started in the morning with a one and a half hours mass celebrated by Fr. Boucher and other priests. Later in the day, they held traditional dances such as chisamba, gule wamkulu, beni, chimtali and kazukuta. The festival also exposed some unpopular dances such as kambelemende and maundi.
But why is the festival significant?
Kalindiza said Kungoni Cultural Festival lives to promote and preserve the cultures of Malawi. He said due to westernisation, many countries in Africa are losing their cultures to the foreign ones. He said Malawi is a victim and through the festival, many traditions have been preserved.
He added that the other objective is to promote tourism. Through the museum and the art gallery, many tourists have visited the place.
Building the future is a challenge in Malawi, but Kalindiza says Kungoni plans to develop more tourist attraction services.
However, at stake is the festival. Kalindiza says his office always struggles to hold the festival because of lack of funds to pay performers at the festival. He says they need about K1 million to hold the event, hence are calling for support from the corporate world to help them hold the next festival.
