Msyamboza to be honoured this Sunday
The concern that Malawi rarely honours its historical figures will, at least, be eased this Sunday as Chibanzi Village in Dowa celebrates the heroic deeds of Andrew Murray Msyamboza (1830-1926), the founder of the village.
Msyamboza was a 19th century modernist who, utilising his innate reformist ideas, did not just set up a village in Chibanzi, East of what is Mponela today, but also inspired communities, through lobbying for a church and a school, to get educated, be prayerful and also practise modern irrigation agriculture.
Eighty-seven years since his death, the Chibanzi Community of Traditional Authority (T/A) Msakambewa will be wild with celebrations in honour of the man who, without politicians, extension workers and education, embarked on crude irrigation at the village, growing such crops as maize, onions and wheat.
He used to sell his wheat to white missionaries and administrators at Nkhotakota, Dowa, Mvera, Malirana in Dedza and right into Mozambique.
According to the Reverend Winston Kawale, one of the members of the organising committee of the function, the celebrations aims at challenging Malawians to rethink the country’s church history.
“We want our church history to be rewritten. It only talks about white missionaries. It does not include dedicated Malawians such as Msyamboza who worked so hard to spread the Church to various corners,” said Mwale, former general secretary of Nkhoma CCAP Synod, now senior lecturer at Mzuzu University.
A biography written by Samuel Nthara records that Msyamboza, in 1894, voluntarily walked to Bandawe in Nkhata Bay to ask the Reverend Robert Laws, a pioneer missionary of the CCAP Livingstonia Synod, to establish a school at Chibanzi.
Nthara said astonished by the request, Laws directed Msyamboza to visit the Reverend Robert Blake who had established a Nkhoma Synod mission at Kongwe in Dowa.
“Although Kongwe was indeed very close to Chibanzi, Msyamboza had not heard about the establishment of Kongwe Mission. Upon visiting Robert Blake at Kongwe, Msyamboza demanded that a school be opened at Chibanzi. Robert Blake agreed and established a primary school and the church in 1895 at Chibanzi,” writes Nthara.
“One of the activities during the celebration is renaming the secondary school. It will from Sunday be called Andrew Murray Msyamboza Secondary School,” he said.
People will also have a chance to visit his grave.
