62 Facts About Hastings Banda

Hastings Banda was formally appointed Prime Minister of Nyasaland, and led the country to independence in 1964.

Hastings Banda consolidated power and later declared Malawi a one-party state under the Malawi Congress Party.

Hastings Banda generally supported women's rights, improved the country's infrastructure and maintained a good educational system relative to other African countries.

Hastings Banda's rule has been characterised as a "highly repressive autocracy".

Hastings Banda received criticism for maintaining full diplomatic relations with the apartheid government in South Africa.

Hastings Banda ran for president in the democratic elections that followed and was defeated.

Hastings Banda left his village school near Mtunthama for his maternal grandparents' home and attended Chayamba Primary School in Chikondwa.

Hastings Banda took the Christian name of Hastings after being baptised into the Church of Scotland by Dr George Prentice, a Scot, in 1910, naming himself after John Hastings, a Scottish missionary working near his village whom he admired.

Hastings Banda apparently wanted to enroll at the famous Scottish Presbyterian Lovedale Missionary Institute in South Africa but completed his Standard 8 education without studying there.

Hastings Banda studied in the high school section of the Wilberforce Institute, an African American AME college, now known as Central State University, in Wilberforce, Ohio, and graduated in 1928 with a diploma.

Hastings Banda was forced to leave Liverpool when he refused on conscientious grounds to be conscripted as an Army doctor.

Hastings Banda became an elder of a parish in the Church of Scotland.

Hastings Banda was a tenant of Mrs Amy Walton at this time in Alma Place in North Shields and sent a Christmas card to her every year right up until her death in the late-1960s.

Hastings Banda moved to London in 1945, buying a practice in the North London suburb of Harlesden.

Hastings Banda was actively opposed to the efforts of Sir Roy Welensky, a politician in Northern Rhodesia, to form a federation between Southern and Northern Rhodesia with Nyasaland, a move which he feared would result in further deprivation of rights for the Nyasaland blacks.

Hastings Banda went there partly because of a scandal involving his receptionist in Harlesden, Merene French ; despite reports that she became pregnant with his child, this has never been confirmed.

Hastings Banda was cited as co-respondent in the divorce of Mr French and accused of adultery with Mrs French.

Hastings Banda followed Banda to West Africa, but he wanted nothing more to do with her.

Hastings Banda pleaded with him to return to Nyasaland to take up leadership of their cause.

Hastings Banda agreed to return, but asked for some time to sort out a few private matters.

Hastings Banda soon began touring the country, speaking against the Central African Federation, and urging its citizens to become members of the party.

Hastings Banda was received enthusiastically wherever he spoke, and resistance to imperialism among the Malawians became increasingly common.

Hastings Banda was imprisoned in Gwelo in Southern Rhodesia, and leadership of the Malawi Congress Party was temporarily assumed by Orton Chirwa, who was released from prison in August 1959.

Hastings Banda was released from prison in April 1960 and was almost immediately invited to London for talks aimed at bringing about independence.

Several of Hastings Banda's ministers presented him with proposals designed to limit his powers.

Hastings Banda was elected the country's first president for a five-year term; he was the only candidate.

Hastings Banda was mostly viewed externally as a benign, albeit eccentric, leader, an image fostered by his English-style three-piece suits, matching handkerchiefs, walking stick and fly-whisk.

Hastings Banda had invited an "internal debate on pending multiparty democracy" in Malawi.

Angered, Hastings Banda promptly "dissolved cabinet" and announced that parliament would meet immediately.

Hastings Banda ordered a night burial and mandated that the caskets not be opened for a last viewing.

Hastings Banda was one of the few African leaders to support the United States in the Vietnam War, a position he adopted in part due to his hatred of communism.

Hastings Banda responded by accusing other African countries of hypocrisy, saying in a public speech to his parliament: "There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats".

Hastings Banda told them to concentrate on convincing the South African government that apartheid was unnecessary.

Hastings Banda was the only African ruler to establish diplomatic ties with South Africa during apartheid as well as the Portuguese regime in Mozambique.

Hastings Banda went on to blame everything including snails to abort the project.

The quid pro quo was that Hastings Banda had to support South Africa's apartheid policies among fellow African leaders.

The relations between the two governments continued to be cordial after it was revealed that Hastings Banda was secretly helping the ANC during the apartheid era.

Hastings Banda worked against Liberation Front of Mozambique forces in Malawi in continued support of the Portuguese colonial forces.

Hastings Banda successfully gave the Malawi Army and Malawi Young Pioneers opposing missions in Mozambique from 1987 to 1992.

Hastings Banda had the Malawi Army support the Mozambican government, controlled by FRELIMO after the country's independence in 1975, to defend Malawi's interests in Mozambique.

Simultaneously, Hastings Banda used the MYP as couriers and active supporters of the Mozambican National Resistance, which had been fighting against Machel's government since the late 1970s.

Machel issued a dossier to Frontline States with evidence that Hastings Banda was still supporting the insurgents in spite of the 1984 agreement to stop.

Hastings Banda however was trying to keep Malawian interests in the Port of Nacala in Mozambique and did not want to rely on Tanzania and South Africa ports for its imports and exports due to the expense.

Hastings Banda was arrested before he finished his speech at Lilongwe International Airport.

Hastings Banda worked with the newly forming parties and the church, and made no protest when a special assembly stripped him of his title of President for Life, along with most of his powers.

Hastings Banda was roundly defeated by Bakili Muluzi, a Yao from the southern region of the country.

The party Hastings Banda led since taking over from Orton Chirwa in 1960, the Malawi Congress Party, remains a major force in Malawian politics.

In 1995, Hastings Banda was arrested and charged with the murder, ten years previously, of former cabinet colleagues.

Hastings Banda remained quite unrepentant in his opinion of Malawians, calling them "children in politics" and saying they would miss his iron-fisted rule.

Hastings Banda was the subject of an extensive cult of personality.

When Hastings Banda visited a city, a contingent of women were expected to greet him at the airport and dance for him.

Knowledge of pre-Hastings Banda history was discouraged, and many books on these subjects were burned.

Hastings Banda allegedly persecuted some of the northern tribes, banning their language and books as well as teachers from certain tribes.

Early in his rule, Hastings Banda instituted a dress code rooted in his socially conservative predilections.

Hastings Banda explained that these restrictions were not designed to oppress women, but instill respect and dignity for them.

Hastings Banda founded Chitukuko Cha Amai m'Malawi to address the concerns, needs, rights and opportunities for women in Malawi.

In 1964, after serving as a government minister in the colonial administration, Hastings Banda adopted a macroeconomic policy aimed at accelerating economic development for the betterment of Malawians.

Hastings Banda settled on the Rostow model of "catch up" economics, wherein Malawi would vigorously pursue import substitution industrialisation.

Hastings Banda personally founded Kamuzu Academy, a school modeled on Eton, at which Malawian children were taught Latin and Greek by expatriate classics teachers, and disciplined if they were caught speaking Chichewa.

Hastings Banda had no known heirs but had a vast fortune that is run by his family.

Hastings Banda essentially ruled the country with her uncle, John Tembo, during Banda's last years.

Hastings Banda had rejected companionship and marriage and turned his back on the Englishwoman who extramaritally bore his son.