On the 13th October 2018, a seminar on the cabinet crisis of 1964 and October 1967 Mwanza war was held at Gymkhana club in Zomba.
It was attended by scholars from the University of Malawi, officials from the Malawi Defense Forces, historians, social commentators, family members of the victims of the cabinet crisis and the war, Frank Jiya the only surviving ‘rebel’ of the war, Major General Buxtoni Namwali who participated in the war on the side of Malawi Defense Forces, Al Osman a journalist who covered the war for the Times newspaper.
The Mwanza ‘war’ broke out in October 1967 in Malawi’s Southern district of Mwanza (about 300 km from capital city of Lilongwe) between Malawi’ security forces on one front and an armed group of 17 under the umbrella of Ufulu Umodzi Malawi Party (UUMA) led by Malawi’s former Home Affairs Minister Yatuta Chisiza on the opposite front.
It was during this ‘war’ that Yatuta Chisiza and his lieutenant Lutengano Mwahimba were shot dead while 5 of their compatriots escaped successfully to Zambia as one committed suicide when 9 had been captured alive, later tried at the high and supreme courts in Blantyre, hanged (except one among them who became a state witness) and finally buried in unmarked graves in Zomba in 1969.
Throughout Dr. Banda regime and up to now, the accounts of the October 1967 Mwanza ‘war’ have been discussed with a bias towards the official narrative given by the one party state of Dr. Banda.
Below are some of the papers/presentations which were delivered at the seminar:
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