Thamar Dillon Thomas Banda ("TDT") was a politician in Nyasaland in the years prior to independence.
[1] TDT Banda was a Tonga born in Nkhata Bay on the shores of Lake Nyasa in around 1910.
[2] He had spent most if not all of the 1940s abroad in Southern Rhodesia before returning to Nyasaland, when he joined the Nkhata Bay branch of NAC.
[4] Sangala, Mumba and their associates had a vision of the NAC becoming "the mouthpiece of the Africans", cooperating with the government and other colonial bodies "in any matters necessary to speed up the progress of Nyasaland".
The women were arrested after demonstrating, chanting: Sangala was not an accomplished public speaker, while TDT was in his element at rallies.
According to Henry Chipembere, his "habit of yelling and performing acrobatics on the platform earned him the nickname wakufuntha (the insane one)".
TDT had been forced to resign on charges of misappropriating funds, and Hastings Banda was elected President of the NAC in his place.