‘The General from Fort Hill’: Katoba Flax Musopole’s Role as an Anti-Colonial Activist and Politician in Malawi

Abstract

This article discusses the life and times of Katoba Flax Musopole, an anti-colonial politician, leftist and rare committed atheist in a predominantly religious Malawi. It examines him in the context of the many ‘transnational’ Malawians whose activism was rooted in the intellectual influences to which they were exposed during periods of work and study abroad. Following many years living and working in South Africa, Musopole returned to Nyasaland, where he became a local organiser. His prominence and notoriety increasing during the state of emergency in 1959. A study of Musopole gives us the opportunity to understand more fully the nature of problems that rural small-scale farming communities had to contend with under colonial rule and the manner in which they mobilised their reaction in the post-Second World War era. In this regard, the article highlights the significance of local organisation in the process that led to decolonisation. Musopole’s career in post-colonial Malawi also shows how some independent-minded people fared in the evolving single-party system that was to become a dominant feature of the country under the presidency of Hastings Kamuzu Banda.