The cabinet crisis

According to older narratives, the lowering of the Union Jack at Rangeley (later Kamuzu) Stadium at midnight on 5 July 1964 marked a watershed, the moment when Malawi became free. Modern historians, more sceptical about what precisely independence entailed, might point to alternative events as marking the key transition: the two-day emergency debate in Parliament on 8–9 September, when Banda won a vote of confidence over his younger cabinet colleagues; Chipembere's failed coup d'état in February 1965, the point at which it became clear that Banda's regime would not be overthrown by force; perhaps even the economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 80s,which brought a lengthy period of economic growth, dating from the 1940s, to an unceremonious halt. Nevertheless, the formal ending of colonial rule was not simply a matter of ceremony. For the great majority of those packed into the stadium, even more for those who attended the many hundreds of village celebrations held a week later, independence meant the culmination of a struggle for liberation, although what that liberation might involve remained to be seen. In his last speech in parliament before independence, Yatuta Chisiza, perhaps the bravest and most generous of all the ministers, put into words what many felt by quoting the poet Langston Hughes: ‘We have tomorrow/Bright before us/Like a flame.’ Yet only three years later, Chisiza was to meet his death while leading a tiny group of guerrillas dedicated to overthrowing Banda by force.