Memoir and rememory: remembering Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Jack Mapanje’s And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper attempts a rememory of the personhood and politics of Malawi’s foremost leader, nationalist and dictator, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who ruled Malawi for three decades, from 1964 to 1994. The study is necessitated by the avalanche of critiques in Malawian literature which testify to the fact that for more than two decades after Banda’s reign, Malawi and its politics continue to be haunted by the ghosts of the Banda dictatorship. The study adopts the postcolonial memory methodologies, alongside Toni Morrison’s concept of re-memory, to palimpsestically retrieve the zeitgeist of the Banda days as detained in Mapanje’s And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night. The analysis of the memoir reconstructs the various dimensions of dictatorial tendencies and traits that characterised Malawian politics and social life. These traits include arbitrary arrest and detention of perceived political enemies, the proscription of the press and creative outputs through the Censorship Board and extra-judicial killings. These recollections are meant to serve as a precautionary measure to preclude the gradual rise of neo-dictatorship in post-Banda Malawi.