Rose Lomathinda Chibambo (8 September 1928 – 12 January 2016) was a prominent politician in the British Protectorate of Nyasaland in the years leading up to independence as the state of Malawi in 1964, and immediately after.

[1] Her fellow freedom fighters, including Hastings Banda were arrested earlier, on the morning of 3 March when governor Robert Armitage declared a state of emergency.

Rose Lomathinda Chibambo (Ziba maiden name) was born in Kafukule, Mzimba District to a Tumbuka family [2] on 8 September 1928 when Nyasaland was still a protectorate under British colonial rule.

[3] Her husband was the son of the Reverend Yesaya Chibambo, one of the first Africans in the protectorate to be ordained as a Christian minister.

She decided that women should be more involved in the struggle, and began to organize her friends in Zomba, mostly the wives of civil servants.

[6] In Blantyre, she joined forces with Vera Chirwa to form the Nyasaland African Women's League, closely associated with the NAC.

[4] At 30 March 1956 annual general meeting in Blantyre the delegates from Johannesburg supported her position on non-co-operation with the Federal government, although she had been pessimistic that they would be given a hearing.

[10] In 1956, Rose Chibambo organised a group of women to protest when the NAC president James Frederick Sangala and secretary T.D.T.

Her group was arrested and fined after they travelled by bus to the High Court in Zomba singing: In a 1999 interview, Rose described the use of song at the women's meetings.

She said "In most cases, our singing, like in the woman's league, we would take some of the songs sung in the villages, then we put in political words to suit the occasion...

[12] In July 1958, Dr. Hastings Banda was elected President of the Congress, and began to tour the country speaking out for independence.

[13] With growing tension between the NAC and the colonial authorities, in a January 1959 Congress meeting it was agreed that if Banda was arrested or deported a general strike would be called.

Rose Chibambo would become a member of a four-person executive committee to conduct the affairs of the congress in Banda's absence.

[15] In April 1959, Jet magazine reported: "The top woman leader of the outlawed African National Congress, Mrs. Rose Chibambo, 29, who was arrested after giving birth to her fifth child, has taken the infant with her to jail".

Rose Chibambo won the Mzimba North seat in the 1964 elections and was made Parliamentary Secretary for Community and Social Development.

[26] In 2009 the President Bingu wa Mutharika met Rose Chibambo and honoured her, naming a street in Mzuzu City after her.