Why separate holidays for Chilembwe and Martyrs?

Honourable Folks, a younger friend asked me on Wednesday why we commemorate Martyr’s Day on 3rd March and Chilembwe Day on January 15? “Wasn’t Chilembwe a martyr as well?” the friend asked.

Neither my 30 years in active journalism nor the quality-time I spent with some of the country’s best history teachers in secondary school and the university prior to that prepared me for the question.

I simply don’t have an explanation for the apparent duplication in the commemoration of martyrdom for political sovereignty and human dignity, do you?

Suffice it to say for all the 30 years we were under Kamuzu Banda, there was no Chilembwe Day. Only March 3 was set aside as Martyrs Day.

The day itself was carefully chosen to train the light on the sacrifice Kamuzu himself made for our freedom. It was on March 3, 1959 when the State of Emergency was declared in Nyasaland, which gave agents of the federal government powers to restrict the movement of or assembling into groups by the natives.

They also had powers to arrest and throw into detention those suspected to cause trouble for the government in Zomba. With the special given powers, they generously used handcuffs and guns to arrest or kill natives who posed a danger to the status quo by agitating for self-determination.

Kamuzu himself was arrested under the State of Emergency and detained for nearly a year at Gweru Prison in Southern Rhodesia. The MCP propaganda machine wanted that fact cast in iron and magnified a hundred times over in the memory of every Malawian.

In that construct, the Chilembwe uprising was acknowledged as the genesis of our struggle for freedom, culminating in the 1953 riots in protest against the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland then climaxing in 1959 when, under the “wise, dynamic and pragmatic leadership” of Kamuzu, the martyrs stood up to gun-toting soldiers and the police until Malawi attained self-rule in 1963.

I remember vividly how MCP used its Youth League to unleash terror on anyone perceived to commemorate Martyrs Day with relaxed solemnity. There was simply to be no work of any kind–not even washing nappies. No laughter, no games, no entertainment.

On the radio (there were no TVs and the only radio station, MBC, had one channel) it was solemn music and spirituals, spiced with reminiscences of remnants of the State of Emergency, from morning to close down at midnight.

Of course, in the afternoon of March 3, many families across the country would gather around their radios to listen to a Chichewa play called ‘Adeferanji?’ That’s when the story of John Chilembwe was told as part of the Martyrs Day commemoration.

The punchline was, of course prophetic albeit fictitious. An exhausted Chilembwe, on the run from law-enforcers, tells a sympathetic woman as sounds of guns get louder (signifying his pursuers are closing in): “Let me die but there’s someone coming after me who will defeat them (the white oppressors) with words only.”

In that scheme of things, Chilembwe was like John the Baptist, who came to clear the path for the Ngwazi, who destroyed the federation simply by declaring: “Kwacha!”

That kind of yarn couldn’t last beyond the one-party era. Bakili Muluzi assumed power in 1994, much of what was meant to immortalise Kamuzu—names of bridges, roads, a stadium and airport—was changed.

Martyr’s Day was retained but another public holiday was created for January 15,  Chilembwe Day. Why? No official explanation, thank you, suffice it to say both Kamuzu and Chilembwe are also on our banknotes and the Zomba-Limbe Road is now named after Chilembwe.

Holidays are damn expensive to the economy. They make us sit in the sun playing the guitar like a lazy grasshopper when we should be breaking sweat to generate wealth. Those that must work on public holiday earn twice as much. Should we really allow a president to create a public holiday simply by finger-clicking?

Are we respecting Chilembwe and other martyrs more by having more than one public holiday in their honour? My take is that one public holiday is enough. We can honour the memory of our martyrs better by working much harder to make Malawi a better country.