Freedom Fighter and Other Stories

By Winston McCalla

Freedom Fighter

This short story is a fictional depiction of how young freedom fighters in Malawi exalted Hastings Banda, an older and more experienced man, almost into a messianic position in order to gain the peoples support. The story shows how Banda (the character Khumbo Bomani in the story) began to believe in his own legend and to exercise absolute power, despotically curtailing the very freedoms the independence movement had fought to establish.

Meeting at Mount Mlanje

David Mitchell is the Attorney General in Nyasaland. Urbane and sophisticated, yet full of sensibilities and ideas, he appeals strongly to District Commissioner Kevin OBriens wife Mary, and he wants to appeal to her. He convinces the idealistic Mary that the British presence in Nyasaland is benign and that any perceived superiority to the natives is a mere pose on the part of the British.

The Collector

Anil Patel is a modern man, Trinidadian by birth and Indian by heritage. He and his wife Dhara agree to have a modern marriage in that they only want one child and they both want the freedom to pursue their careers.

The General

Born of Chinese parents in Jamaica, young David Lee is sent to China to connect with his village and his Chinese heritage. However, while he is there he is swept up into the war between Chiang Kaisheks Kuomintang and the Red Army. The ideals of Communism appeal to him, and he joins up with Mao on the Long March.


Waiting for the End

John Evans from St. Kitts-Nevis finds navigating white society difficult. He travels in sophisticated circles because of his Ph.D., but he knows that there are still many barriers in black-white relations, the foremost being sexual. He is careful and circumspect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481700283

Winston McCalla

Winston McCalla was born in Jamaica and educated in England and Australia. He worked in Malawi both pre and post independence and has lived and worked in Jamaica, Canada and Belizr. He has travelled extensively in Africa, North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean. He is an Attorney at law specializing in environmental law. He just previously published poetry and academic works.

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© 2013 by Winston McCalla. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/17/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4817-0029-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-0028-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923831

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Freedom Fighter

Meeting At Mount Mlanje

The Collector

The General

Waiting For The End

About The Author

FREEDOM FIGHTER

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Godfrey Chabwera’s name meant he has arrived at last. His mother had told him that his name meant that someday he would become a true man. In her words, that meant being a person of principle and integrity.

Your thoughts, words, and deeds have to come together and be as one, she had told him. It takes great courage.

He had contemplated his mother’s words many times and wondered when or if he would arrive at last. Perhaps he already had and simply did not know it.

Chabwera was sitting in a conference led by the man Chabwera himself had helped to put behind the podium, through unremitting effort. Chabwera had tirelessly promoted Khumbo Bomani with speeches, flyers, one-one-one conversations, rallies, and in publications. He was one of the main reasons Bomani stood at microphone now. Yet Chabwera did not like the way the man at the podium was acting. He was beginning to wonder if he had been mistaken in working so hard to make the imperious Bomani the head of the congress. Bomani was acting more like a medieval king than a statesman of a newly minted democracy, and Chabwera did not like it at all.

The position at the podium rightly belonged to Chabwera’s friend Wakuda Mtima; at least that was Chabwera’s opinion. Mtima was the most passionate, the most committed, the hardest working of them all in the cause of independence. Yet Mtima had sacrificed himself to put Bomani in place and power. Like Chabwera, Mtima was young, and he realized he did not have the credibility of the older Bomani. Also, the impatience of youth had too often convulsed the passionate Mtima with anger and suffused his speeches with hatred for his oppressors that made more moderate people shy away. He was not a good public representative of the movement for the very reason that he was an excellent catalyst of it—a firebrand good at barricading the streets and setting fires and giving speeches hotter than the fires, but not the man to establish a reasoned and respectable government in place of all they were rebelling against. Everyone knew that Mtima was the kind of person who would pummel his way to the destination point of freedom, burn and freight-train the way there—but he could not be the face of independence. Someone more diplomatic, more of a politician, and—Chabwera had to face it—someone less rawly honest than Mtima had to lead now.

This was why Chabwera and Mtima had maneuvered Bomani into a position of leadership. Bomani was two decades older than they were. His air of substance and success, his grey-grizzled hair, the way he carried himself, and even his middle-aged man’s paunch gave Bomani a magisterial air. Bomani looked like a statesman, and his words and emotions were measured and cadenced. He was an excellent face for the independence movement, and Chabwera, Mtima, and other young firebrands had built Bomani up to be almost a god in the eyes of the people in order to garner their unflagging support for him and their cause. Bomani was their deliverer, organizers and agitators like Chabwera and Mtima told the people. Bomani had all the answers; he was the embodiment of the nation’s desire to be free of colonial rule. They had cast Bomani in an almost messianic role, and it looked like the man was beginning to believe in the legend of himself that they had propagated.

Recently Bomani had declared himself chairman for life. This had caused great uneasiness. The rest of them wanted democracy, voting, position papers, editorials, and debates. They hoped to have a voice in their own futures and a voice in the future of their country. They wanted all the people to have a voice. Yet Bomani seemed to be working to suppress free expression. He had maneuvered several dissident newspapers into closing down their presses. Even in this assembly, which was supposed to work together on policy, Bomani’s private thugs were lined up against the walls, billy clubs at the ready, guns in holsters, uniformed and looking authoritative. They appeared to be an unspoken threat to anyone who dissented too much and attendees at the assembly had continuously given them nervous and uncertain glances as if wondering how far Bomani would go in his grab for power.

We made you, Chabwera’s mind cried out as Bomani and his bullies intimidated speaker after speaker with their implicit threats. We created you, and this is the thanks we get! The intimidation had been so complete that finally, anyone who rose to speak took care to preface his remarks with fulsome praise of Bomani. No one asked any hardball questions, no one raised significant points. Bomani basked in the praise and the lulling reassurance that he must be doing his job well, even perfectly, as no one challenged him. Chabwera was growing more and more disgusted by the minute. This assembly was becoming meaningless.

We made you and you are unmaking the freedom we fought to deliver. You have become the only voice allowed to be heard, Chabwera thought resentfully.

For a moment Chabwera thought he was going to choke or vomit on the bile in his throat. Had they suffered so long under colonial oppression, only to have it replaced with a new oppression perpetrated against them by their own kind? Even under the colonial power, a person was not afraid to speak. The British had their principles at least and you could usually get them to admit to them and adhere to them. The British had consciences and they believed in the rule of law and something intangible called fair play that at times could supersede their racism and sense of superiority to his people. Had they won independence from one oppressor only to set up another—who was, in some ways, worse?

Ruefully, Chabwera thought about George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm. In it, the animals on a British farm revolted against their human masters and tried to establish a democracy where all animals were equal and had equal voices, only to have the pigs of the farm cleverly harness all the power until the humble animals were more oppressed than they ever had been under their drunken and cruel human master. It was a chilling thought.

As far as Chabwera could see, Bomani ruled by whim and caprice and his own personal likes and dislikes coupled with an increasing moodiness. There was no rule of law, no fair play, no orderliness. There was just Bomani’s personality and where you stood personally with him—and that could change any day, any hour, any minute. It