Livingstonia in the history of Malawi (I)

Since the advent of multi-party politics at the beginning of the 1990s, perhaps no religious denomination has exposed itself to the ire and abuse of people in high places as the Livingstonia Synod. This is said without forgetting the calumny that was heaped on the Catholic Church in Malawi when its bishops issued a pastoral letter in 1992 pleading for freedom and justice for the people of Malawi.

In this article, I intend to give an outline history of the predecessor of the Livingstonia Synod, the Free Church of Scotland. A fuller account of all missionary activities in Malawi is given in History of Malawi volumes 1 and 2. The account given here has been necessitated by the apparent unpopularity of the Livingstonia Synod in some quarters in Malawi. Hopefully the account will help some people to appreciate the positive things Livingstonia did in the history of this country, and for those who are running the affairs of Livingstonia today to engage in reflection on what they are doing currently. Are they building on the work and achievements of the pioneer missionaries?

Continuous missionary influence in Malawi started in 1875 when Dr Robert Laws, leader of the Free Church Mission, set up a temporary mission on a spot in Mangochi which he and others named Cape Maclear. In 1876, Laws assisted Henry Henderson of the established Church of Scotland to start a mission centre near the river Mudi in the land of Chief Kapeni. That spot became the beginning of the city of Blantyre, the oldest town in what used to be called British Central Africa.

Laws was mostly interested in going to those parts of Central Africa where Dr Livingstone had spent his last days exploring. Hence from Mangochi, Laws begun trekking northwards. He visited Chief Chikuse of the Maseko Ngoni, Chief Chiwere of Dowa who had just rebelled from Chief M’mbelwa of the Mazongendawa (not Jere) Ngoni, and Chief Mwase of Kasungu, at that time the most respected Chewa chief. All these chiefs promised him they would welcome his mission and schools.

He then settled at Bandawe in Nkhata Bay at first and finally at Khondowe. This was in a remote part of the country. Most other Europeans were sitting in the southern part of the country. They called it Dead North. But Laws, as he said, did not come to Africa to play the gentleman but to engage in all types of activity: spiritual and temporary, regardless of whether other whites were already working there.

For the next 50 years or so, representatives of other missionary societies would visit the North and then leave, never to return. It was too remote for them. The Free Church of Scotland planted schools in every major village from Kasungu to Karonga, from Nkhata Bay to Lundazi in eastern Zambia. And what was the result?

At the end of Chapter 18 of From Iron Age to Independence by D.E. Needham and other Zimabwean histories, we read that The Northern Province of Malawi became the most educationally advanced in the whole of central Africa.

The best known alumni of Livingstonia and its mission stations were Clement Kadalie from Nkhata Bay who founded the first trade union in South Africa in 1919 and became one of the most popular leaders that country produced in the period up to his death in 1951. The other product of Livingstonia was Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who needs no introduction.

But the more enduring aspect of the missionary was printed material. As far as I know, Dr Laws was the first missionary to translate a portion of the New Testament into chiNyanja and to develop the script. He did this also for the Tonga, Tumbuka, Ngonde speaking parts of the North, except Ngoniland where education was introduced in the Zulu language. Books had to be imported from South Africa.

Livingstonia missionaries encouraged Africans to write essays on tribal histories and cultures. They put the essays into an anthology called Midauke, formed out of the Ngoni word Undabuke, meaning the source. They encouraged Africans to compose hymns in their mother tongues. The most prolific were Mawelera Tembo who composed in Ngoni (Zulu), Peter Zimema Thole who composed both in Ngoni and Tumbuka, and Charles Chinula who composed only in Tumbuka.

The missionaries, especially Dr Donald Fraser and Thomas Cullen Young, compiled material on the histories of all the tribes of the North and wrote books which are very good resource materials. Young, while doing inspection tours of schools in Kasungu, learned Chichewa and later translated the biography of Msyamboza by J.S. Nthala and a group of essays by Chewa and Nyanja authors jointly with Dr Banda and published them as Our African Way of Life.

When other missionary societies started entering the North, they found it literate.

Next, we will read about what the Livingstonia Synod is doing and must be doing.

To be continued…