Who Is Dunduzu Chisiza?
BY: DRAXON MALOYA
Dunduzu Chisiza was born in Florence Bay, now Chiweta or Chitimba in Karonga District of Malawi on 8 August 1930.
He was the youngest and eleventh child of Kaluli Chisiza, a Group Village headman and Farmer.
He was educated at Uliwa Junior Primary school and later to the rough equivalent of sixth grade level, as a boarder at Livingstonia.
He left school in 1949 having failed the Nyasaland standard VI examination. He worked as a clerk in the records of the Tanganyika now Tanzania Police in 1949 and later for four years and continued his education at Aggrey Memorial School in Uganda where he joined and became Secretary of the Nyasaland Students Association centred at Makerere College supporting himself with odd jobs.
At this time he became adherent of the Bahai Faith.
He obtained his Cambridge Overseas School Certificate from Aggrey Memorial School in 1953 and returned to Nyasaland before going to work as a clerk/interpreter in the Indian High Commission in Salisbury now Harare, Zimbabwe.
While there, he joined the Mashonaland Branch of the Nyasaland African Congress.
He went to England to study economics, sociology and political science at Fircroft College in Birmingham, where he began corresponding with Dr Kamuzu Banda.
He met with Dr Banda in person in 1957 together with Chipembere and Chief Kuntaja where they met with colonial secretary Lennox Boyd, to discuss a new constitution for Nyasaland.
On August 1 1958 he was nominated as Secretary General of the Malawi Congress Party and worked tirelessly to promote Dr Banda’s image.
Dunduzu Chisiza died on the night of Monday 3 September 1962, while driving back to Zomba from Blantyre and his cream-coloured Mercedes Benz was found in a stream bed beside a bridge at Thondwe, on the road to Zomba.
He left a wife and three sons. One, Du Chisiza Jnr, was born subsequent to his death and became one of Malawi’s prominent playwrights.
