1964 Malawi cabinet crisis

The reasons that the ex-ministers put forward for the confrontation and subsequent resignations were the autocratic attitude of Banda, who failed to consult other ministers and kept power in his own hands, his insistence on maintaining diplomatic relations with South Africa and Portugal and a number of domestic austerity measures.

It is unclear whether the former ministers intended to remove Banda entirely, to reduce his role to that of a non-executive figurehead or simply to force him to recognise collective cabinet responsibility.

As the result of the debate was an overwhelming vote of confidence, Banda declined to reinstate any of the ministers or offer them any other posts, despite the urging of the Governor-General of Malawi, Sir Glyn Jones to compromise.

The principal published works quoted rely on a mixture of documentary sources and interviews with participants, both African and expatriate, and suggest that the crisis arose in a political culture that permitted no dissent, and treated attempts to debate issues as plotting.

[4] Chipembere and Chiume were members of a new generation of pan-Africanist politicians, deeply influenced by Socialist and sometimes Marxist ideas and experiences acquired outside Malawi, who realised the value of a well-organised mass movement.

In preaching defiance of the "stupid Federation", Banda was in tune with the popular mood, but he also defended the chiefs and the rights of the older generation of educated men.

He also appointed four other young radicals to the party's Executive Committee, ignoring older moderates, but made it clear that he regarded his appointees as subordinates, not colleagues.

[10] In the nine months between his return and the declaration of a State of Emergency, Banda combined opposition to Federation with more popular causes, such as the African smallholders' dislike of agricultural practices imposed on them.

Armitage was influenced by reports from police informers, who claimed Congress planned the indiscriminate killing of Europeans and Asians, and of its African opponents, the so-called "murder plot".

[13][14] On 3 March 1959, Armitage declared a State of Emergency over the whole of the protectorate and arrested Banda, other members of the Congress executive committee and over a hundred local party officials.

It found that the declaration of a State of Emergency was necessary to restore order and prevent a descent into anarchy, but it criticised instances of the illegal use of force by the police and troops.

After his release, Chipembere embarked on a series of fiery speeches: the colonial authorities considered these were sufficiently threatening to warrant his arrest, and he was again imprisoned, receiving a three-year sentence in January 1961.

There was a regional shift in support for the MCP: in both the Southern and Central Provinces, people flocked to join the party but, in the north, branches were formed only in a limited number of places.

A timetable for full self-government independence was agreed at a constitutional conference in London in 1962 and the Jones allowed Banda and the MPC ministers and parliamentary secretaries, now seven in total, to initiate policies.

[31] Generally, the MCP ministers were very active in their new roles and, although there was some friction with permanent officials, they were effective [32] Banda, as Minister of Natural Resources (which included farming), introduced three crucial reforms, the abolition of punitive element of conservation practices (although not the conservation measures themselves), the final abolition of thangata through the Africans on Private Estates Act in 1962, and the reform of the marketing of peasant crops.

[34] Soon after the Lancaster House constitutional conference in 1962, Banda made it clear in the Legislative Council that he alone was responsible for making policy, which the ministers were to execute without debate or dissent.

Immediately after this, despite some attacks by MCP militants on Jehovah's Witnesses and members of opposition parties, the situation was generally calm until the pre-independence election campaign began in late 1963.

Firstly, Banda insisted on making all the important decisions relating to the state and the MCP, including nominating all the candidates for election, and he refused to devolve real responsibility to them.

[40][41][42] Secondly, Banda continued diplomatic relations with South Africa and Portugal, but refused to recognise the People's Republic of China or East Germany, despite most ministers' ideological concerns, and contemptuously rejected attempts by Chiume and Yatuta Chisiza to form closer ties with Zambia and Tanganyika.

[43] Since the Cabinet Crisis of 1964, there has been disagreement on the extent to which rivalries within the MCP in the early 1960s reflected generational and ideological tensions between Dr Banda and his younger ministers or regional divisions.

This apparent northern dominance, masked divisions and politicians born in the north pursued various personal and ideological agendas and did not act as a regional bloc.

Resentment of the hold that better-educated northerners had on scarce jobs was used by Banda to assert his authority by playing ministers off against one another, but there is no evidence of him adopting a pro-Chewa, anti-northern stance before the 1964 crisis.

On his return from a visit to Cairo on 26 July, Banda made a public speech threatening ministers; this had the perverse effect of uniting them all, including Chiume.

[46] On 10 August, the ministers attending (Tembo was not present, and Chiume was probably also absent) asked Banda to stop making slighting references to them in speeches and not to hold so many government portfolios himself.

[47] At the cabinet meeting of 26 August 1964, all the ministers present (including to some degree John Tembo) raised their concerns about Banda's failure to Africanise, his relations with Portugal and South Africa and their own ambiguous position.

[56] Tembo and Msonthi, the only two cabinet ministers left, opened the debate by proposing the motion of confidence, but Banda's lengthy speech dominated it.

Chipembere later claimed that an amnesty had been promised for his followers, but many of them were detained and a few continued raids on government targets for some time, leading to retaliatory burning of local villages and the public hanging of one of the leaders in January 1966.

[79] During and after the suppression of Chipembere's armed uprising, several hundred civil servants were sacked, or detained along with other of his supposed supporters, and chiefs suspected of sympathising with him were deposed.

On Christmas Eve 1981, Chirwa, his wife, Vera and their son were abducted from Zambia by Malawian security officials, possibly after being tricked into going to the border area.

[86] After her dismissal as parliamentary secretary and from the Women's League, Rose Chibambo resigned as an MP and joined her husband who was in the district administration of Chiradzulu and later Mwanza, but after threats from MCP members, they both fled to Zambia in early 1965.