Sixty Years This Month Since the Overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.
At the Archives of Howard University, we came across a letter dated 4 April 1968 , written by Emily Maliwa of Malawi to His Excellency Sékou Touré, President of Guinea-Conakry.
At the time of writing, Dr Kwame Nkrumah had been overthrown by a military junta on 24 February 1966 and was residing in exile in Conakry under the protection of President Sékou Touré. Emily Maliwa herself was also in exile in London, pursuing her PhD and Bar at Law studies concurrently. She had fled Malawi in July 1967 following the issuance of a warrant of arrest against her by the Malawi Police.
The paths of President Sékou Touré and Emily Maliwa had crossed nearly a decade earlier. In November 1959, during President Sékou Touré’s visit to Washington, D.C., Emily Maliwa—then an undergraduate student at Howard University—had the opportunity to meet the Guinean leader.
In her letter of 4 April 1968, Emily Maliwa commended President Sékou Touré for granting sanctuary to Dr Nkrumah after his overthrow in February 1966. She observed that this act of solidarity had enabled Dr Kwame Nkrumah “to continue his political mission for the total liberation of African people.” Within the same correspondence, she outlined her own precarious circumstances, having been forced into exile from Malawi, and appealed for assistance from the Government of Guinea.
For further insights, readers may look out for the forthcoming tribute article on Emily Maliwa, recently finalised by the Lost History Foundation (LHF).
But Who Was Emily Maliwa?
Emily Maliwa is regarded as:
- The first woman from Malawi to travel overseas for further studies.
- The first Malawian woman to obtain postgraduate qualifications, including a PhD.
- Malawi’s first legal historian.
- A pioneering gender scholar and women’s rights activist.
She was also among the legal scholars who participated in the February 1994 constitutional deliberations held at Mount Soche Hotel and the Kwacha Conference Centre in Blantyre City (Malawi). These meetings laid important groundwork for the drafting of Malawi’s new republican Constitution.
She did not live long enough to witness the full implementation of the Constitution to which she had contributed. She died on 15 August 1994 in Kanjedza Township, Blantyre, after suffering a severe stroke.
#Lost History Foundation