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This article assesses representations of imprisonment without trial and inmates' torture in three novels depicting severely repressive, murderous regimes—Malawi's under Hastings Banda, Ethiopia's under the Derg, and Kenya's under colonial and successive post-colonial rulers. In The Detainee (Kayira 1974), the narrative of a naïve, apolitical villager's unjust detention highlights unrestrained power abuse through minions and gradually uncovers atrocities. Under the Lion's Gaze (Mengiste 2010) depicts several visceral, appalling scenes of torture as a technique of intimidation. Dust (Owuor 2014) has fewer, but harrowingly intense scenes of pain infliction on prisoners as a political tool to silence opposition. All three texts establish their importance as archival evaluations of under-reported regimes, African literary artworks, and morally responsible evocations of undeserved suffering, communicating effectively with both local and international readerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically discusses transformation of language policy during the democratization of Malawi since the year of political change, 1994. After 30 years of autocratic one-party rule, winds of democratic change that were blowing across Africa in the 1990s did not spare Malawi. In 1993, a national referendum went in favour of the adoption of a multiparty system of government. In the following year, 1994, President Hastings Kamuzu Banda and his Malawi Congress Party lost power through the ballot box. Since then, Malawi has had successive democratically elected governments. The current paper critically considers what has changed in language policy and what has not changed. We focus on language policy in the following domains: mass media, primary school education, and the legislature. The most transformed domain has been the national radio station which transformed from a two language policy to a seven languages policy. The primary education sector and the legislature have remained untransformed in terms of their language policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Jack Mapanje's and Steve Chimombo's contestations of the constitution and monumentalisation of nationalist public memories of former and first president of Malawi, Dr H.K. Banda. After more than a decade since the end of his rule as life president in 1994 and his demise in 1997, the Malawi government has constituted and monumentalised memories of Banda in Malawi through a monumental mausoleum on his grave and a statue in the capital city, Lilongwe. While others have hailed these monuments as fitting tributes for the 'founding father' and 'nationalist hero' of the nation, Mapanje and Chimombo contest such public monumentalisation of Banda's reign in Malawi in their poetry, suggesting that Banda was a dictator undeserving of such posthumous memorialisation. They also suggest that the narratives constituted in the monuments do not represent the interests of the victims of his dictatorship. This article argues that such contestations challenge the constitution of nationalist memories of postcolonial African nations through leaders who instituted totalitarian rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]