Martyrs Day: Time to stop mourning?

 We are here in Nkhata Bay, the headquarters of Tongaland. Everybody we meet here believes so. Slowly, we have also started believing that there is a place in Malawi called Tongaland, just like there are Mzimba, Ungo n i , Tumbuka kingdoms; Lhomwe Belt and Yaoland with their headquarters. That gentleman who said Malawi is a United Nations, United States or a federal State was not wrong, or not very far from the truth.

Yesterday we witnessed the commemoration of Mar tyrs Day; a day when on 3rd March 64 years ago, the British government and its local asrikaris murdered over 30 unarmed men and women simply for demanding Malawi’s freedom and independence. Two of the murdered women were pregnant; which takes the number to plus two.

The events of 3rd March 1954 affected almost all parts of Malawi. People died in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Bwengu and many other areas, but it was at Nkhata Bay that most people were gunned down.

Since Malawi’s independence, 3rd March has been commemorated. Sixty-four years later, some people are asking whether or not we should continue mourning those who died then or we should close the mourning and move to start celebrating the sacrifices of our unsung heroes? After all, for every funeral, there is kusesa or chimeta when the bereaved household is released through the performance of traditional rituals to start afresh.

But for Malawi’s martyrs’ families or households kusesa or chimeta is difficult to perform because despite the Dev l i n Commission of 64 years ago and many other l a ter commis s ions establishing that the killing was callous, p remedi t a ted and unwarranted, no one in Britain has apologised or been reprimanded. No one.

Not even Queen E l izabet h I I , w h o presided the British Empire when the British murdered our people apologised. She went to her grave without ut tering a single word about the murders committed by her government. Even worse, the Malawi government has done not h ing, zero, nil , tha, to compensate the victims’ families. Instead, houses were and are being built for chiefs and women supporting and dancing for the Ngwazi and his successors while the families of our fighters for our political independence are sleeping in rondavels that leak even when it does not rain. Some are finding it hard to live in a country they call theirs.

The fight for compensation has been left to one lawyer. The Malawi government has not been interested. For these families kusesa or chimeta is impossible. Acceptance of the deaths is impossible.

We saw the Vice- President of Malawi and other dignitaries laying wreaths yesterday on graves without human bodies or remains. Why nobody is interested in finding out what happened to the bodies of the people that were buried at Kakumbi only Jah Rastafari can explain.

That the 31-plus two bodies disappeared does not bother government or history researchers. That John Chilembwe’s body also disappeared does not ring a bell about the character of our criminal colonisers.

Until there is total closure; that is when Chilembwe’s burial place is known and when the remains of the 31-plus two murdered at Nkhata Bay are traced, there can be no stop to mourning. Until the families of the martyrs are compensated, there can be no kusesa or chimeta. Until someone in Britain is punished posthumously or until an apology is offered by the British government, there will be no kusesa o r chimeta . T h e mourning must go on until someone sees value in our ancestors’ martyrdom