When Dr. Kamuzu Banda attended the historic All-African Peoples Conference in Accra from 8 to 13 December 1958, he was not the only participant from Nyasaland. Among the many figures drawn from across the African continent and beyond was a lesser-known but intellectually formidable young man from Nyasaland: *Mahoma Mwaungulu*, then aged 26.
Mahoma Mwaungulu would later become one of the internationally recognized Marxist thinkers and political activists to emerge from Malawi. At the time of the 1958 conference, he had been residing in Ghana for four years. He had also enrolled at the prestigious Accra Academy for his secondary school education where he was an active member of the *Kwame Nkrumah’s National Association of Socialist Students’ Organisation*.
It was during his time in Ghana that Mahoma Mwaungulu first met Dr. Kamuzu Banda, who was then based in Kumasi, before his historic return to Nyasaland on 6 July 1958.
Following his completion of secondary school, Mahoma Mwaungulu began working in Accra at the *Bureau for African Affairs, a critical hub for Pan-African political activities led by the eminent intellectual **George Padmore*. Assigned to the Bureau’s East African section, Mahoma Mwaungulu quickly became immersed in the ideological and practical work of the broader Pan-African liberation struggle.
In 1959, George Padmore recommended Mahoma Mwaungulu for a scholarship in East Germany. As a result, Mahoma Mwaungulu enrolled at Karl Marx University to study Economics in 1960. Upon completing his studies, he returned to Malawi in September 1964, making him one of a very small number of Malawians at the time to hold a master’s degree—or its equivalent.
However, his return to Malawi coincided with the cabinet crisis which compelled him to go into exile by the end of 1964.
In October 1967, he enrolled for a PhD programme in Economics at the University of Economics in East Germany. This made him one of the earliest Malawians to embark on doctoral studies in Europe or North America during the 1960s. Although he worked on his PhD thesis for six years, he ultimately did not complete it.
A noteworthy moment in his political journey came in 1966, when he met the iconic Latin American revolutionary *Ernesto “Che” Guevara* in Dar es Salaam. This encounter further underlined Mahoma Mwaungulu’s place within a transnational network of revolutionaries, marxist/socialist intellectuals, and anti-imperialist activists.
More about the life, thought, and activism of Mahoma Mwaungulu—are elaborated in an upcoming book by Lost History Foundation on the Mwanza War of October 1967. The book manuscript is currently in its final stages of review by the publisher.
Sources:
1. Mulugeta, D. (2025). Continental pan-Africanism: the first all-African people’s conference and the struggle for Africa’s independence. Critical African Studies, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2024.2443407
2. Philip Short (1974). Banda. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
3. Pampuch, S. (2024). Exiled in East Germany: Life Stories of Malawian and South African Freedom Fighters During the Cold War.
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