This is the only way to show the whitemen, that the way they are treating our men and women was most bad and we have determined to strike a first and a last blow and then we will all die by the heavy storm of the whiteman's army. The whitemen will then think, after we are dead, that the way they are treating our people is bad, and they might change to the better for our people.
― Chilembwe's sermon at the beginning of the uprising.
John Nkologo Chilembwe (c. June 1871 - 3 February 1915) was a Baptist preacher and revolutionary from Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi) who was an early figure in resistance to European colonialism in Africa. Opposing the poor treatment of African labourers on European-owned plantations and advocating for the political emancipation of Africans, Chilembwe was the ringleader of an unsuccessful 1915 uprising against British colonial rule during the First World War. He is nationally celebrated in Malawi as a hero of independence and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January.
Biography[]
Chilembwe's parentage is a matter of dispute, although some sources state that he was born in Sangano sometime around June 1871. He appears to have converted to Christianity around 1890. In 1892, he became a house servant of Joseph Booth, a radical Baptist missionary, and was exposed to his at the time radical ideas of racial equality, influencing him against the British colonial occupiers who controlled Nyasaland.
In 1897, Booth and Chilembwe travelled to the United States, where Chilembwe studied African-American history at the Virginia Theological Seminary and read the works of John Brown, Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, which further influenced his anti-colonialist ideology. He returned to Nyasaland in 1900 after being ordained as a Baptist minister and spent twelve years preaching African advancement through self-respect, education, hard work and personal responsibility. He initially avoided directly criticizing the colonial authorities; however, by 1913, he had begun explicitly preaching against colonial abuses. One of his main targets was A.L. Bruce estates, one of the largest owners of agricultural estates in Nyasaland, which exploited local tenancy systems and colonial taxation to keep a tenant workforce of several thousand African labourers. One of A.L. Bruce's biggest plantations, the Livingstone Bruce plantation at Magomero, was notorious for its poor working conditions and brutal treatment of labourers, who were regularly beaten by overseers and underpaid. Chilembwe's animosity with the Livingstone Bruce plantation grew when in November 1913 plantation manager William Jervis Livingstone ordered one of his churches burned down for being built on plantation land.
The final straw for Chilembwe came in 1914 when, with the outbreak of the First World War, the British began conscripting thousands of Nyasaland natives to fight the Germans in East Africa. Chilembwe wrote an impassioned letter against the war to the Nyasaland Times after a number of Nyasaland Africans were killed in a battle at Karonga, but wartime censors prevented the letter from being published. By December 1914 British colonial authorities viewed Chilembwe and his followers as a threat to their rule and began planning to deport them to Mauritius. However, the censoring of his letter had convinced Chilembwe that he would have to take direct action against the colonial oppressors and he and his leading followers began planning an armed uprising to overturn colonial rule, or at least scare the British authorities enough that they improved conditions for the Africans. Chilembwe formed close ties with Filipo Chinyama in Ncheu, who agreed to mobilize his followers to support Chilembwe. The news of his upcoming deportation may have somehow been leaked to the plotters, prompting them to bring their uprising forwards.
On the night of 23 January 1915, Chilembwe's followers met at his church in Mbombwe, where Chilembwe gave a speech stressing that most of them would likely not survive the revolt but that the uprising would draw greater attention to their conditions and destabilise the colonial system. He then dispatched a contingent of rebels to nearby Blantyre and Limbe, where most of the colonists lived, in the hope of capturing the African Lakes Company's store of firearms. Another group was sent to attack the Livingstone Bruce plantation, and a messenger was dispatched to Ncheu to alert Chinyama that the uprising had begun and he should mobilize his forces. Chilembwe also sent a letter to German East Africa asking for German support in driving the British out of Nyasaland, but the message was intercepted.
The main action of the uprising was the attack on the Livingstone Bruce plantation. William Jervis Livingstone was killed and decapitated by the rebels while more attacked the plantation-owned village of Mwanje, where they killed estate officials Donald MacCormick and Robert Ferguson and one native servant who had helped hold them off. Two Mauser rifles were captured. The white women and children living in Mwanje were rounded up, but all were later released unharmed as Chilembwe had ordered his men not to harm women or children. Two white colonists managed to escape from Mwanje and raised the alarm about the uprising, but the spread of the news was delayed when Chilembwe’s men cut the phone lines. Meanwhile, the attack on the African Lakes Company store was repulsed, but not before the rebels managed to seize five rifles with ammunition.
The following day, Chilembwe gave a sermon to his followers with Livingstone’s severed head displayed prominently. However, events soon began to turn against him as the promised uprising in Ncheu failed to materialize and British troops were deployed against him. A rebel ambush near Mbombwe on 24 January briefly turned back the colonial forces, but two days later they managed to launch a successful assault which forced Chilembwe and his followers to retreat. Chilembwe attempted to flee to Mozambique in disguise as a civilian, but was tracked down by a government militia and shot dead on 3 February.