One of the most economically backward districts in Malawi is Dowa. This is so despite the district boasting a number of very proficient business people. In short, Dowa – and I would hasten to add Malawi – is a district/country full of ironies.
A Dowa native called Mr Kondowe partly owns the Kang’ombe building which towers above all buildings in its vicinity at the City Centre in Lilongwe. Only the newly constructed 5 Star Hotel located about 300 metres away is taller. Mpico may hold the majority shareholding in Kang’ombe building but initially, the project was Mr Kondowe’s brainchild.
Mr Kondowe also owns a hotel called Kalikuti (where is it?) located in Biwi township. A fellow Dowa business magnate, Mr Chimbeleko (deceased) attempted to answer this question by constructing a leisure centre at Mponela and calling it Kalipena (it is somewhere).
Yet another interesting character from Dowa is Napoleon Dzombe. He owns an internationally recognised agricultural school right at his village in the district. I am told sometimes he hires lecturers from Bunda College of Agriculture to deliver lessons at his school. Mr Dzombe is also the proprietor of Blessings Hospital at Lumbadzi
Recently, Mr Dzombe has been dreaming big. He has gone into the reserve of the likes of Tiny Roland by embarking on sugar production. His Mtalimanja project located in Nkhotakota will be the first local competitor to Illovo sugar. Apart from sugar, Mr Dzombe has plans to go into production of biofuels soon.
I can mention other Dowa people like the late Mr Chibwana (proprietor of Mfitiidzafanso business chain) or Mr Kadzako but I want to focus on a much less known historical figure called Msyamboza.
At the end of the 19th century, Msyamboza, a relation of Dzoole, set up his village at Chibanzi, to the east of what is today known as Mponela. At that time, Mponela was non-existent. As a young man he demonstrated his immense skills in hunting and in administration.
Equipped with a gun which he had acquired from the Arab slave traders, he almost single-handedly defeated Chiwere Ndhlovu’s impi, earning himself the nick name “Kanyamula” (the Carrier) because the heads of the dead Ngoni soldiers were carried on people’s heads back to Chibanzi village.
What is perhaps more interesting is that Msyamboza, urged by nobody but himself, undertook a trip on foot to Bandawe after learning that white missionaries were running schools there. He wanted to meet them and ask them to come to Chibanzi to establish a school in his village, albeit not for himself. He knew that he had gone past school going age himself but hoped the young people from his village would benefit from the facility.
On reaching Bandawe, he was told that he need not have walked that long distance because, just a few kilometres from Chibanzi, Dutch Reformed missionaries, under Rev Robert Blake, were establishing a mission station and a school at Msitu-wa-Nthulu on the foot of Kongwe Mountain.
Upon his return from Bandawe, Msyamboza did not hesitate to go to Kongwe to meet Robert Blake. The missionary was both surprised and impressed that for the first time a native had asked him for a school. Blake promised that he would send somebody to Chibanzi to establish a church and a school. Msyamboza was also told that he should consider becoming a Christian. There was one hurdle in the process of Msyamboza becoming a Christian, namely that he had a bevy of 25 wives, which did not go along with the new faith. However, several years later, he made a public announcement atop a termite mound that he had decided to divorce all his wives. This led to his being baptised in or around 1906 at a ceremony attended by missionaries from Kongwe and Mvera.
Perhaps inspired by Msyamboza’s pioneering work in education, a Presbyterian minister, also from Dowa, called Aimala Ndiwo later established his own school at Namwiri in the district.
Probably Msyamboza’s greatest prowess was in agriculture. Without the help of politicians or extension workers and indeed without education, Msyamboza embarked on crude irrigation at Chibanzi, growing such crops as maize, onions and wheat. He used to sell his wheat to white missionaries and administrators at Nkhotakota, Dowa, Mvera, Malirana in Dedza and right into Mozambique. Today, we are dreaming of one day turning Malawi into a producing and exporting country. Msyamboza achieved it 100 years ago.
The tragedy for Dowa and for Malawi is that nobody followed up Msyamboza. There has been no deliberate effort to find out how he did what he did and what could be done to improve on what he achieved. Apart from one S. J. Nthara who published a book on Msyamboza, nobody else has researched into this Dowa gem of yesteryear. Our students today don’t know anything about him or about any of our local heroes. They know more about Vasco da Gama than about Msyamboza, more about Marco Polo than about Zintonga Gomani of Ntcheu and, yes, more about Christopher Columbus (Jamaican reggae icon, late Peter Tosh OM used to call him Christ’ief Come-to-Rob-Us) than about the” boy who harnessed the wind”, William Kamkwamba of Kasungu. Shame!