Flax Katoba Musopole information

Flax Katoba Musopole (1918 - 1989) was a radical and militant African nationalist in late colonial Malawi, who was imprisoned after conducting a campaign of sabotage and intimidation for several months in the north of the country in 1959. After Malawi's independence, he became a member of the Malawi parliament and an advocate of the authoritarian and centralising policies of its first President, Hastings Banda. He was rewarded with posts as a junior minister and in Malawi’s diplomatic service, but retired from politics in 1969, spending the rest of his life in relative obscurity.

Musopole was born in the Northern Province of what was then Nyasaland. He went to South Africa as a labour migrant in the 1940s, and became radicalised there, forging links to the South African Communist Party. He returned to Nyasaland in 1955 and began a campaign against colonialism and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland that capitalised on existing popular discontent with colonial agricultural measures, developing a radical, peasant-based anti-government movement in the north of the country. Musopole promoted mass membership of the Nyasaland African Congress throughout the Northern Province and organised boycotts of the agricultural regulations. In February 1959, he led a campaign designed to paralyse colonial rule in Northern Province through unauthorised demonstrations and clashes with police. These disturbances were one of the triggers for the declaration of a State of emergency in March 1959, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of most Nyasaland African Congress leaders. However, Musopole and a number of his followers evaded arrest and conducted an armed campaign against the security forces until his capture in Tanganyika in August 1959. He was convicted of sedition and imprisoned for two years.

After his release from prison, he was elected to the Malawi Parliament in 1964. At the time of the Cabinet Crisis of 1964 in Malawi, he supported President Hastings Banda against the ministers, many from the Northern Region, who sought to restrict Banda’s power. He was subsequently appointed as a junior minister and, in 1967, was assigned to the Malawian mission to the United Nations. After two years, Musopole was sent to the Malawi Labour Office in Botswana and soon after, he returned to Malawi, left politics and became a businessman in his home district of Chitipa.