AMBIGUITIES IN THE MALAWIAN POLITICAL TRADITION

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE is to look at the ideological formulations which followed the imposition of European political authority over Malawi (Nyasaland) and the cultural and economic changes which accompanied it, and to try to illustrate the growth through time of a Malawian political culture. Malawian politics has a 'revolutionary tradition' encompassing the Chilembwe revolt of 1915 on the one hand and the period after the Second World War on the other, when politics was dominated by the question of closer association with Southern Rhodesia which provoked a determined, widespread and successful reaction against white political authority. Yet the fact of growing resistance to alien rule is not the only remarkable feature of the colonial period. The depth of Malawian acculturation to the values of their rulers over a period of some seventy years is also clearly of significance. Virtually all political, cultural and economic life involved coming to terms with the white world, to which, in varying degrees, adjustments had to be made. Where men situated themselves between the African past and the white colonial present was basic to the formation of their political attitudes. In Malawi with its history of intense missionary effort and its position on the periphery of white Southern Africa, consideration of the relationship of the tensions of acculturation to the formulation of political attitudes must be an ingredient in the study of political history. It is not unusual for a conquest situation to produce disaffection and a generalized nostaligia for the old order. The old days, however, soon became idealized, with different groups drawing from them, and stressing differing values which were supposed to be inherent in them. To the 'traditional' authorities-chiefs and headmen-the past often meant an idealized stability and a world in which their authority had been firm and unchallenged, whereas the younger intellectuals after the Second World War perceived a past of idealized equality and an authority resting upon mutual consent. Both groups were prepared to base the values of the political future upon the values of the past, though their views of the past did not coincide. The bulk of the political