Resolved: ‘Let These People Be Cast Out of Human Society!’

THAT is essentially what the 1972 Malawi Congress Party’s Annual Convention resolved regarding Jehovah’s witnesses in that land.

Meeting in the capital, Zomba, at the Catholic Secondary School, the party delegates on September 16 adopted a series of resolutions. We here quote from the MANA Daily Digest, issued by the Malawi government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcast, dated September 18, 1972. Page 17 shows that the party delegates went on record as having:

“(a) Deplored the fact that certain fanatical religious sects which operated like the banned Jehova[h]’s Witnesses sect, hindered both the political and economic development in the country.

“(b) Resolved that all the members of these fanatical religious sects employed in commerce and industry should be dismissed forthwith, and that any commercial or industrial concern that does not comply with this resolution should have its license cancelled.

“(c) Resolved that all the members of these fanatical religious sects employed by the Government should be dismissed forthwith and that any member of these sects who is self-employed, either in business or farming, have his business or farming activities discouraged.

“(d) Resolved that all the members of these sects who live in the villages should be chased away from there, and appealed to the Government to give maximum possible protection to members of the party who deal with the adherents to these sects.”

In reality, the only ones affected by these resolutions were Jehovah’s witnesses. No other religious group in Malawi suffered as they did.

What, actually, were those resolutions saying? In so many words they said that Jehovah’s witnesses in Malawi should not be allowed to have gainful employment​—of any kind, anywhere. They should not even be allowed to raise food to sustain themselves. And they should be driven away from the villages. What would this leave them?

The only thing left for them would be to live as wild animals do in the forests and bush, as outcasts from human society.

But is not that just our interpretation? Are these resolutions not meant to be mere expressions of condemnation without the real intent of depriving fellow humans of the very essentials of life?

The facts show that these words were understood by those hearing them as a sentence of utter banishment on Jehovah’s witnesses, virtually a death sentence.

Consider some of the ways in which those who were “self-employed, either in business or farming,” were “discouraged” in their activities.

Malawi Businessmen Ruined

● B. Lameck Chirwa, a Malawi businessman and one of Jehovah’s witnesses, returned to Malawi from a Christian assembly in Salisbury, Rhodesia, and found his fleshly brother, Beneya, unconscious. His brother, a grocery-store owner, had been severely beaten by members of the Youth League for being a Witness. After five hours his brother revived and was taken to the hospital, where he spent three days.

But a member of the Youth League had seen Lameck aiding his brother and soon League members came to his shop in Zingwangwa. He was questioned about having a party membership card. His failure to produce one resulted in their closing up his house and his store, locking him out. They then made him go to Limbe, where he had a clothing store, operated by his wife. When she expressed the same conscientious stand as to a political card, they closed this store also. When Lameck decided to go to the Secretary-General of the Malawi Congress Party, Aleke Banda, about the closures, he found that the Youth League members had let the air out of his tires and taken his car keys. Government officials interviewed gave him absolutely no hope of any favorable action​—unless Lameck purchased a party card. His bank account, like that of all other known Witnesses, was frozen. Finally he was able to cash an insurance policy and take a plane from Malawi to Rhodesia, leaving behind buildings, furniture, stocks of clothing and store equipment, a seven-ton truck and an automobile. The total value was $121,800. He had been in business since 1959. Now all was gone.

● Another Witness and Malawi businessman, named Chinondo, operated the Modern Driving School in Malawi’s major city, Blantyre. His fleet of cars was confiscated. Later he saw them parked outside the Southern Regional Office of the M.C.P.

● William McLuckie, sixty-four years old, had lived in Malawi for nearly forty years. He owned a curio shop in Blantyre. Besides having 11 persons in his immediate employ, he regularly bought curios from 120 Malawi carvers, family heads. McLuckie estimated that from 600 to 700 persons depended on this business for income. Because of being a Witness he was taken to court and given forty-eight hours to leave the country. About a day after his expulsion his wife and three children were given twenty-four hours to leave.

● Some lost more than their businesses, however. The Rhodesian Sunday Mail of October 1, 1972, states that a “prominent Malawi businessman” was “beaten to death.” He was M. L. Chirwa, a Blantyre grocery- and bottle-store owner. Reporting the same incident, The Rhodesia Herald says: “So far no official action has been taken on the death of Mr. Chirwa.”

‘Let Them Be Dismissed Forthwith’

The resolution to drive all employed Witnesses from their jobs was equally no mere threat.

● M. R. Kalitera had worked for the post office since 1949. After twenty-three years of service he was now dismissed without pay or pension benefits.

● Witness Kadewere worked for the Ministry of Health as an inspector touring different clinics. He had been trained in the United States. On going to his home in Zomba, he found that his fields of maize (corn) were being divided up among members of the Youth League. Returning to Blantyre, he found that he had been dismissed from his employment. Witness Kadewere is the father of nine children.

● William Nsangwe passed the Intermediate Examination of the Chartered Institute for Secretaries and worked for five years at City Hall, Blantyre. When difficulties for the Witnesses began, the Town Clerk called Nsangwe to his office and questioned him. He was then interviewed by the Mayor. In both cases when efforts were made to get him to buy or accept a party card he refused on conscientious grounds. Told to ‘go and speak to his wife and mother and father about the matter,’ he replied that ‘this was a matter of his own faith, not dependent on father and mother or wife.’ He was dismissed. His wife Joy, a graduate of the University of Malawi and a schoolteacher, was also dismissed, as was fellow graduate and teacher Venencia Kabwira, a Witness.

What was true of government employees was true of those who worked for private firms.

● W. Lusangazi had worked for Mandala Motors Limited in Blantyre for over ten years. He was dismissed, as was Widdas Madona, who had worked for the same number of years for Horace Hickling Limited, Blantyre. Witness Lihoma worked for United Transport Limited for fifteen years. He, too, was dismissed.

A number of employers vigorously protested the compulsion brought on them to dismiss their Witness employees.

● A Blantyre firm of solicitors even took the matter to the President himself, seeking​—unsuccessfully—​to avoid losing two of their most trusted employees, Luwisi Kumbemba and L. D. Khokwa. (Khokwa’s wife, a schoolteacher, also lost her government post.)

● The Indian proprietor of a clothing company in Blantyre returned from a trip to find that the employee to whom he entrusted oversight of his firm in his absence had been forcibly dismissed. The employee was a Witness, Skennard Mitengo. The owner declared that he was closing the firm, Crescent Clothing Company, since he said he could not operate without this valued employee’s services. It was expected that a company owned by certain government officials, the Press Trading Limited, would take over the company.

These are but a few cases from an exhaustive list of Witnesses who were put out of work. As far as is known, no Witness in the entire country is presently employed. But the campaign did not stop here.

Fundamental Needs of Life Denied

Malawi is an agricultural country, not an industrial land. The vast majority of its people live by farming, working hereditary tracts of land from their small villages. Most of Jehovah’s witnesses in Malawi were in this situation. Like all humans they need such basics as food, water, clothing and shelter. Yet a concerted effort was made to deny them even these.

● At Supuni, Chikwawa area, all the Witnesses had their gardens taken from them and they were even prevented from drawing water at the local well. To get water they had to go to the river four miles away!

Literally thousands of homes were burned or pulled down. Just in Jali Village alone, in the Zomba area, forty houses belonging to Witnesses were destroyed by fire.

● From the far south of the country, the Chiromo area, comes this report: “In the districts of Chiromo, Bangula and Nguluwe, all the houses of the brothers and all their possessions have been destroyed by Young Pioneers. All the brothers and sisters from Chamera Village have been scattered and are in the bush. All their possessions have been destroyed.”

● From Gorden Village near Zomba: “All houses belonging to brothers and sisters pulled down. All their food and possessions taken by local Chiefs. All brothers and sisters have fled this village.”

As one report sums up the housing situation: “This is the story of many families of Jehovah’s witnesses. Women and children sleeping outside. Some of them sleep at railway stations. Some at bus stations, or wherever they can get a place where they will not be molested.”

● At a village in the Blantyre area, Witness Mazongoza, a sixty-year-old widow, was approached by members of the Youth League who asked her to buy a political card. She refused on conscientious grounds. Over a period of one week, from September 24 to September 30, they killed her chickens, one by one, and when she still refused, they killed her goats, one by one. These were her only possessions. They then threatened her own life, causing her to flee the village.

Many reports are very brief, yet, to one knowing the circumstances of Malawi, they speak volumes.

Typically they speak of ‘doors and windows (“6 panes each”) being smashed or taken.’ This may sound like a strange thing to emphasize. But in the villages of Malawi, most homes are made of mud walls and thatched roofs. If one has a door or window, this is the most valuable part of the whole structure.

Similarly report after report tells of the destruction or theft of such things as ‘3 sleeping mats, 3 blankets, 2 chairs, 1 table, 1 tablecloth, 2 neckties, 8 bags of shelled groundnuts (peanuts), 1 storehouse of unshelled groundnuts.’ Again, to those living in industrial lands this may seem like a very minor loss. But to those who lost them this may represent the entire furnishings of their small home, and the loss of the one crop they depended on to bring a little money. That ‘1 tablecloth’ may have been the one item the Witness housewife had to brighten her home.

Sometimes it was a bicycle, a radio or a sewing machine (for example, “1 hand-operated sewing machine”) taken from them. But the loss of a bicycle for them is equal to the loss of an automobile for people in other lands. Any one of these items may represent the equivalent of several months’ earnings or may have taken a year or more of farming and saving to obtain.

A report directly from the Sinda Misale camp in Zambia says of the thousands of Witness refugees there:

“Cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs and goats have all been taken away from the brothers. Large numbers have had their clothes and covering taken away from them so that what they have is just what is on their bodies. One of the sisters failed to enter the refugee camp because she was naked, stripped naked by the M.C.P. youths. Other sisters in the camp had to send her something to put on before she could enter. Practically all the brothers that have fled from Malawi have nothing that they left behind. In other words, they have no material possessions to which to return.”

Can treatment like that now documented possibly be justified? Consider the charges made against the Witnesses in Malawi and then judge for yourself.