JOHN CHILEMBWE’S INFLUENCE AND THE 1915 UPRISING
Born around 1871 in Chiradzulu district in the village known as Mbombwe in south-east of Nyasaland ( now Malawi), John Chilembwe received his early education at a Church of Scotland Mission and later met Joseph Booth, a radical Baptist Missionary who ran the Zambezi Industrial Mission. Booth’s teachings towards race attracted Chilembwe’s eagerness to get more knowledge from him. With supervision from Booth, he managed to secure a place at a theological college in Virginia, United States of America. While in the USA, he was influenced by the writings of abolitionist John Brown and Booker T. Washington who was an advocate of equal human rights for all.
Chilembwe returned to Nyasaland in 1900 where he founded his own independent church known as Providence Industrial Mission (PIM). He also took the responsibility of teaching natives and he was able to instill literacy skills in about 900 individuals in total. The colonialists saw him as a threat to their administration and this resulted in conflicts and clashes. As a result in 1912, he became more radical and he had a vision of liberating Africa and eliminate the colonial rule in Nyasaland once and for all.
In November 1913, employees of the local A. L. Bruce Estates burnt down churches that Chilembwe and his followers had built. Additionally, Thangata system of labour was unbearable. This made him to become more determined than before. In 1914, he preached more militant sermons, often referring to Old Testament themes, concentrating on such aspects of the Israelites' escape from slavery in Egypt. The same year, World War 1 broke out and the colonialists started to recruit natives to act as porters and front-line fighters. They were treated harshly and often worked under poor conditions. Chilembwe opposed the recruitment of his people to fight what he considered to be a war totally unconnected to them and he wrote a letter to The Nyasaland Times expressing his concerns.
Here is part of the letter : "As I hear that, war has broken out between you and other nations, only white men, I request, therefore, not to recruit more of my countrymen, my brothers who do not know the cause of your fight, who indeed, have nothing to do with it ... It is better to recruit white planters, traders, missionaries and other white settlers in the country, who are, indeed, of much value and who also know the cause of this war and have something to do with it."
Preparations for the uprising had begun by the end of 1914. He started to organize his militia and wide support from natives. During the night of Saturday 23rd January, 1915, the protesters met at the church in Mbombwe, where Chilembwe gave a speech stressing that none of them should expect to survive the paybacks that would follow the revolt but that the uprising would draw greater attention to their conditions and destabilize the colonial system.
They attacked and killed William Jervis Livingstone, manager of A. L. Bruce Plantations at Magomero. They cut off his head and it was taken and displayed at the Providence Industrial Mission headquarters. On 26th January, his men attacked a Catholic Mission at Nguludi belonging to Father Swelsen. Father Swelsen was wounded in the fighting and the church was burnt down.
These series of attacks put them in the spotlight which got the attention of Nyasaland government. As a result, they sent troops and police to hunt them down. The troops demolished the Providence Industrial Mission church. Many rebels were captured and killed while others including Chilembwe escaped and headed towards the neighbouring Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) to seek refuge. On 3rd February, Chilembwe was intercepted by a patrol of Nyasaland police and shot dead near Mlanje (now Mulanje).
His life is celebrated annually on 15th January and he is regarded as a great hero in the history of Malawi.