The Lion of Kasoba
The three young men pushed mightily and the engine roared to life. “The lion of Kasoba is back.” Kapote laughed and off we 3 geriatrics rolled to start this next phase of our adventure. Kapote has a lovely sense of humour. He is 71 years old and a patriarch in Karonga society. The Lion is a 1988 Toyota Land Cruiser and our transport of choice for the work on our book for this trip. The battery needs to be replaced so for the moment the truck needs at least 3 able bodies to push it enough to start. And I am a 67 year old Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder senior who instead of retiring into a rocking chair is running back and forth to Malawi. We are trying to record and document the history of people who suffered under the 30 year dictatorship of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
This part of my life has a very different flavour. I am out of the family and business mode and into working with my old comrade and his old truck, the Lion of Kasoba. He bought the old Land Cruiser from the Norwegian ambassador in Zimbabwe when he was the Malawi High Commissioner there in the mid90s. The Lion was already 8 or 9 years old then and now it has attained a good 25 years of age. It has been used off and on over the last few years but for most of the last 3 years, it has earned a well deserved rest in the back yard of Kapote's house in Kasoba waiting for a little investment to get it back on the road.
We were getting frustrated with the pace of the writing project being limited by my meagre resources so Kapote called on his friendship with the Norwegians once again and applied to the embassy for a small grant to help with transport and accommodation for a month or more so we could really push this writing project forward. Instead of an expensive car hire we are rehabilitating the Lion.
We started talking about this history in 2009 but really got going in February of 2010 when I interviewed him for about 3 days on the history of Lesoma. We mostly sat on the empty terrasse of the Safari Hotel Annex and talked while the goats and birds provided background sound effects. I transcribed the whole discourse over the next couple of months in Canada and sent it back for his friend and confidant Winston Mwagomba to read over with him.
Who is Archibald Kapote Mwakasungura? We met in Lisbon in 1977 at an international conference organised by the World Peace Council to commemorate the first anniversary of the Soweto uprising. When Nellie and I left Malawi for the safety of Zambia in 1976, I was already aware of the existence of Lesoma. In my year of development studies at the University of Ottawa, I had read a piece about their formation in the Review of African Political Economy and had seen an essay written by Kapote Mwaksungura critical of the HKB alliance with the World Bank.
In Lusaka, I got in touch with Attati Mpakati who had just arrived to become a lecturer at the UN Institute for Namibia. He was the National Chairman of Lesoma and even though the UN gave him diplomatic status in Zambia, the Zambian authorities warned him that they could not guarantee his security, because even in Lusaka the Malawi Special Branch and Young Pioneer operatives were omnipresent. For his own safety, he moved to newly independent Mozambique to work at Eduardo Mondlane university, but the forces of Banda's darkness finally killed him in Zimbabwe. However the contact had been made and soon enough some of the Lesoma cadres came forward to introduce themselves. I never wrote down their names, but we would help type up their newsletter, Kuchanso, and run them off on our Gestetner. When the call came from the World Peace Council to attend the anniversary commemoration of the Soweto uprising, Lesoma wanted to send Kapote from Dar es Salaam and they raised funds from their members in Zambia to help pay for the ticket. In those days currency controls were very strict and so they paid our office in Zambian Kwacha and I asked Kleist Sykes in the Dar CUSO office to release the equivalent amount in Tanzanian shillings to cover the ticket.
Nellie and I had worked for 2 turbulent years with CUSO in Malawi and Zambia and were due for our home visit to Canada, so I decided to leave early and attend the Lisbon conference as part of my mandate to provide development education around the issues of apartheid and struggle in southern Africa. As a result, Kapote and I spent the better part of a week together at the Penta Hotel, in Lisbon and very quickly found a real political kinship based on many common interests. We were both decidedly left, anti-imperialist and panAfricanists.
For the next two years of work in Zambia, we kept in touch via the Lesoma comrades in Lusaka or whenever I would get up to Dar es Salaam. He was good friends and a home boy with my Tanzanian & Malawian friends there, including the journalists Reg Mhango and Ulli Mwambulukutu even though they came from different sides of the Malawi / Tanzanian border.
Kapote tells his story through the chapter on Lesoma and through his own life story as they appear in this book. I have nothing to add except that the many people we interviewed all treated him with great respect and honoured him for what he had accomplished in exile. Many people have commented about his leadership skills and the democratic way he guided Lesoma as Secretary General as well as the way his house was open to all in need. The Ombudswoman, Tujilani Chizumila remarked that she feels closer to the friends who grew up together in exile in Dar than she does to many of the family members who remained behind in Malawi. “We supported each other like family.” Kapote was a large factor in making that spirit come alive.
Doug's story is an eclectic mix of family, work and activism in many forms. In many ways it is as though I have several lives running in parallel universes. First came my commitment to making the world a better place for the downtrodden and marginalised people. I went as a CUSO teacher to Mitundu Day Secondary School in 1968 as part of that quest. Then came my family with my marriage to Nellie Saka and the arrival of our little bundle of happiness, Chimwemwe. The activism, family and work came together with my CUSO assignment in Lusaka. There we expanded our brood to four. We worked as a couple with the ANC, SWAPO, ZAPU and ZANU as well as Lesoma to support their struggles for justice and promote their message to the people of Canada from just before the Soweto uprising of 1976 until 1979 just before the peace talks that led to Zimbabwian independence. By then the family needs required a return to Canada and another new life and new work. We have been in Montreal since 1979 and our four have given us nine grandchildren. I worked at Vanier College as an educator, or learning specialist and was also a union militant representing first the support staff and later the professionals. I was also active in the Peace Movement, the anti-apartheid movement, housing and food cooperatives, multicultural forums, the New Democratic Party and so on. Upon my retirement, from paid employment one of my goals was to write down some of the history I have been witness to.
Kapote and I had crossed paths once in 1996 when I visited him in exile again, but this time as the Malawian High Commissioner to Zimbabwe. I was doing my research for my Masters degree in Sociology and when he heard I was in town he sent his driver to bring me to the High Commissioners residence for supper. 'Golden exile' as he called it.
Then we met once again in Kasoba in 2008. and slowly the idea for this project has been coming together.
The three young men pushed mightily and the engine roared to life. “The lion of Kasoba is back.” Kapote laughed and off we 3 geriatrics rolled to start this next phase of our adventure. Kapote has a lovely sense of humour. He is 71 years old and a patriarch in Karonga society. The Lion is a 1988 Toyota Land Cruiser and our transport of choice for the work on our book for this trip. The battery needs to be replaced so for the moment the truck needs at least 3 able bodies to push it enough to start. And I am a 67 year old Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder senior who instead of retiring into a rocking chair is running back and forth to Malawi. We are trying to record and document the history of people who suffered under the 30 year dictatorship of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
This part of my life has a very different flavour. I am out of the family and business mode and into working with my old comrade and his old truck, the Lion of Kasoba. He bought the old Land Cruiser from the Norwegian ambassador in Zimbabwe when he was the Malawi High Commissioner there in the mid90s. The Lion was already 8 or 9 years old then and now it has attained a good 25 years of age. It has been used off and on over the last few years but for most of the last 3 years, it has earned a well deserved rest in the back yard of Kapote's house in Kasoba waiting for a little investment to get it back on the road.
We were getting frustrated with the pace of the writing project being limited by my meagre resources so Kapote called on his friendship with the Norwegians once again and applied to the embassy for a small grant to help with transport and accommodation for a month or more so we could really push this writing project forward. Instead of an expensive car hire we are rehabilitating the Lion.
We started talking about this history in 2009 but really got going in February of 2010 when I interviewed him for about 3 days on the history of Lesoma. We mostly sat on the empty terrasse of the Safari Hotel Annex and talked while the goats and birds provided background sound effects. I transcribed the whole discourse over the next couple of months in Canada and sent it back for his friend and confidant Winston Mwagomba to read over with him.
Who is Archibald Kapote Mwakasungura? We met in Lisbon in 1977 at an international conference organised by the World Peace Council to commemorate the first anniversary of the Soweto uprising. When Nellie and I left Malawi for the safety of Zambia in 1976, I was already aware of the existence of Lesoma. In my year of development studies at the University of Ottawa, I had read a piece about their formation in the Review of African Political Economy and had seen an essay written by Kapote Mwaksungura critical of the HKB alliance with the World Bank.
In Lusaka, I got in touch with Attati Mpakati who had just arrived to become a lecturer at the UN Institute for Namibia. He was the National Chairman of Lesoma and even though the UN gave him diplomatic status in Zambia, the Zambian authorities warned him that they could not guarantee his security, because even in Lusaka the Malawi Special Branch and Young Pioneer operatives were omnipresent. For his own safety, he moved to newly independent Mozambique to work at Eduardo Mondlane university, but the forces of Banda's darkness finally killed him in Zimbabwe. However the contact had been made and soon enough some of the Lesoma cadres came forward to introduce themselves. I never wrote down their names, but we would help type up their newsletter, Kuchanso, and run them off on our Gestetner. When the call came from the World Peace Council to attend the anniversary commemoration of the Soweto uprising, Lesoma wanted to send Kapote from Dar es Salaam and they raised funds from their members in Zambia to help pay for the ticket. In those days currency controls were very strict and so they paid our office in Zambian Kwacha and I asked Kleist Sykes in the Dar CUSO office to release the equivalent amount in Tanzanian shillings to cover the ticket.
Nellie and I had worked for 2 turbulent years with CUSO in Malawi and Zambia and were due for our home visit to Canada, so I decided to leave early and attend the Lisbon conference as part of my mandate to provide development education around the issues of apartheid and struggle in southern Africa. As a result, Kapote and I spent the better part of a week together at the Penta Hotel, in Lisbon and very quickly found a real political kinship based on many common interests. We were both decidedly left, anti-imperialist and panAfricanists.
For the next two years of work in Zambia, we kept in touch via the Lesoma comrades in Lusaka or whenever I would get up to Dar es Salaam. He was good friends and a home boy with my Tanzanian & Malawian friends there, including the journalists Reg Mhango and Ulli Mwambulukutu even though they came from different sides of the Malawi / Tanzanian border.
Kapote tells his story through the chapter on Lesoma and through his own life story as they appear in this book. I have nothing to add except that the many people we interviewed all treated him with great respect and honoured him for what he had accomplished in exile. Many people have commented about his leadership skills and the democratic way he guided Lesoma as Secretary General as well as the way his house was open to all in need. The Ombudswoman, Tujilani Chizumila remarked that she feels closer to the friends who grew up together in exile in Dar than she does to many of the family members who remained behind in Malawi. “We supported each other like family.” Kapote was a large factor in making that spirit come alive.
Doug's story is an eclectic mix of family, work and activism in many forms. In many ways it is as though I have several lives running in parallel universes. First came my commitment to making the world a better place for the downtrodden and marginalised people. I went as a CUSO teacher to Mitundu Day Secondary School in 1968 as part of that quest. Then came my family with my marriage to Nellie Saka and the arrival of our little bundle of happiness, Chimwemwe. The activism, family and work came together with my CUSO assignment in Lusaka. There we expanded our brood to four. We worked as a couple with the ANC, SWAPO, ZAPU and ZANU as well as Lesoma to support their struggles for justice and promote their message to the people of Canada from just before the Soweto uprising of 1976 until 1979 just before the peace talks that led to Zimbabwian independence. By then the family needs required a return to Canada and another new life and new work. We have been in Montreal since 1979 and our four have given us nine grandchildren. I worked at Vanier College as an educator, or learning specialist and was also a union militant representing first the support staff and later the professionals. I was also active in the Peace Movement, the anti-apartheid movement, housing and food cooperatives, multicultural forums, the New Democratic Party and so on. Upon my retirement, from paid employment one of my goals was to write down some of the history I have been witness to.
Kapote and I had crossed paths once in 1996 when I visited him in exile again, but this time as the Malawian High Commissioner to Zimbabwe. I was doing my research for my Masters degree in Sociology and when he heard I was in town he sent his driver to bring me to the High Commissioners residence for supper. 'Golden exile' as he called it.
Then we met once again in Kasoba in 2008. and slowly the idea for this project has been coming together.
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