Reaching the heights

In developed countries such as Britain, United States of America, Canada and countries in continental Europe, the writing and reading of biographies of achievers is very popular. You visit bookshops and you find biographies of all types of celebrities.

Already, in some of our bookshops you will see biographies of statesmen such as Barrack Obama and his wife, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and others.

Why do people read biographies so keenly? Biographies are a source of insights on visionary or great achievers. People who love history read both history books and stories of their country’s great men and women. You cannot read a biography of Winston Churchill without at the same time reading both world wars. You cannot read the biographies of Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere without finding out histories of their African countries.

Biographies are read also by those who want to learn how other people achieved greatness. In a nutshell, they learn, according to the American poet H. W. Longfellow that:

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight

But they while their companions slept

Were toiling upward in the night.

Here is the point. We see people in great positions, some have prospered, they are continuously in the news whereas we are not there. Before they reached such position of eminence, they toiled in obscurity.

Everyone who wants to achieve something in life should read biographies particularly of those who have achieved greatness in the field he is interested. If you want to become an author read biographies of great writers such as Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka or William Shakespeare. You will be surprised but also encouraged to learn that these people knew moments of defeat and disappointment before success shone on their faces.

True greatness does not come easily. People who have achieved greatness were not necessarily born with exceptional intelligence. What we learn from biographies is that they had powers of dedication to their chosen chief objectives in life.

The writing of biographies is not very popular in Malawi, certainly not among members of the Malawi Writers’ Union (Mawu) who usually write short stories and novellas. Writing biographies is a craft that requires urgent attention. Time will bury memories of great people who have existed among us, unless their lives and deeds are preserved through biographies.

We must thank Professor George Shepperson of Edinburgh University for the biography Independent African on the life and work of John Chilembwe. Without this book, our knowledge of our second greatest man would have been very vague. Young men of my generation had heard whispers of Chilembwe’s uprising but in vague terms. His men had killed Captain Maguire and many Indian soldiers who had gone to capture his fort.

But from Independent African, we have learned that Chilembwe was no tribal figure but a nationalist, if not a pan-Africanist. That is why a sequel to Independent African, written by DD Phiri is titled Let Us Die for Africa and the play based on Chilembwe’s life is titled Let Us Fight for Africa. The books are still in stock at Central Bookshop and Central Africana in Blantyre.

People who have not read these books still have incorrect ideas about John Chilembwe. They do not know that he was a crusader against child marriages which we are still talking about today and that he was a great advocate of girls’ education and women empowerment. Letters he was writing to his supporters have been reproduced in Independent African and Let Us Die for Africa.

At different times, three men have visited me saying Chilembwe does not deserve the honour he is given. How can a pastor behead a man, put the head on the bench and preach? I have told them go and read biographies. What happened on the day of the uprising was an isolated incident in his life.

Chilembwe was an educationist and a man of God. It was from his Providence Industrial Mission (PIM) that Central Africa had its first African doctor, Dr Daniel Malikebu.