The forename "Masokwa" is not given in many sources, but may have been added in childhood following the death of a prominent relative, and this and the additional surname "Achirwa" otherwise "Chirwa" are frequently omitted, so he is generally known as Elliot Kenan Kamwana.
[5] Immediately after leaving Livingstonia, Kamwana intended to travel to South Africa for work, but an outbreak of smallpox in Southern Rhodesia forced him to delay his journey until 1902.
[8][9] He subsequently returned to the Nkhata Bay area of northern Nyasaland in late 1908, where the appearance in August 1907 of a comet, minor earthquakes and, just before his arrival, an outbreak of smallpox were apocalyptic signs that set the stage for Kamwana's ministry.
[12] At first, the colonial authorities considered this as a purely church issue, until the missionaries represented to the governor that Kamwana’s millennial doctrine that all government but Christ’s would cease was seditious, and he was arrested after six months of preaching in April 1909.
[15] The governor therefore decided to detain him in the Mulanje district of southern Nyasaland where he could be kept under observation and where the local people spoke a language dissimilar to his Tonga mother tongue.
[23] In exile he continued to disseminate millenarian teachings, writing apocalyptic letters to his followers[24] in Central South East Africa in the style of John of Patmos.