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| Columns |
| D.D. Phiri Column |
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by
Desmond Dudwa Phiri, 27 February 2007
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01:37:41
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The synods, public records
In recent issues of Weekend Nation personalities from several denominations responded to invitations to comment on the feud between the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) synods of Livingstonia and Nkhoma.
Most members of the public knew about the dispute over boundaries only recently though the dispute had been in existence for half a century, according to Livingstonia sources.
What is the historical and theological relationship between the three synods—Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia? People generally know Martin Luther King as the man who in the 15th and 16th centuries launched the Protestant branch of Christianity. But there were other reformers among them a French priest Jean Calvin known in English as John Kelvin.
Calvin left France and settled in Geneva, Switzerland. His teachings appealed to some Dutch people of the Netherlands who founded the Dutch Reformed Church. Calvin also appealed to Scots who were led by John Knox who founded the Church of Scotland. Thus the Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of Scotland were both offshoots of Calvin’s Geneva church.
The greatest of the pioneer missionaries in Malawi was Dr Robert Laws of Livingstonia. While struggling to establish his own Free Church he assisted the main or established Church of Scotland in Blantyre and the Dutch Reformed Church at Mvera in Dowa.
Dr Laws was good at befriending the most powerful chiefs of the time. First he befriended the Yao Chief Mponda who allowed him to start a pilot mission station at Cape Maclear in Mangochi. He then befriended the Maseko Ngoni Chief Chikuse who allowed him to build a station at Livulezi in Ntcheu.
He went northwards and obtained promises from Chief Chiwere of Dowa and Chief Mwase of Kasungu. Finally, Laws reached the grand potentate of the north M’mbelwa I who, according to the missionaries, dominated an area of 30,000 square miles. It is this latter part and what is north eastern Zambia which interested Dr Laws most.
Towards the end of the 1880s some students at the university of Stellenbosch, Cape Province in South Africa were keen to start their own missions north of that country, say in the Transvaal. Dr Laws persuaded them instead to come to Malawi and establish the Dutch Reformed Church Mission (DRCM) in what is now the Central Region.
Laws then handed Cape Maclear in Mangochi, Livulezi in Ntcheu and Chilanga in Kasungu to DRCM. The two missionary societies—the DRCM and the Church of Scotland—made demarcations between them on linguistic grounds.
When the descendent of the DRCM, Nkhoma Synod, decided to push into the non-Chichewa speaking areas of the North it was entering the grounds that the missionaries had assigned to Livingstonia. It was as if Nkhoma was playing the game of the camel and the man in the tent. It is like inviting somebody to cultivate part of your land but after sometimes he or she, without your permission, cultivates even that part which you reserved for yourself. Is this not unbrotherly?
Since Nkhoma Synod has decided to retreat from those places Livingstonia Synod claims to be its sphere of influence, we must congratulate it. Religious leaders are the salt of the earth. Remember, when the Reformation started, it was followed by religious wars. Quarrels within or between religions affect the peace and politics of a country.
For this reason, an amicable settlement of the rift between the synods is of national interest. To say that because Chichewa is now widely understood, Nkhoma Synod is right to send preachers into the North misses the point. What creed is Nkhoma to preach there that is not already being preached by the Livingstonia Synod? What creed is Livingstonia going to preach in Lilongwe that Nkhoma is not already preaching there? Are we not here seeing lebensraum?
We appreciate the frustrations that the Livingstonia Synod has suffered all these 50 years but peace settlement is better than endless feud. Therefore, if Nkhoma has truly given up its prayer houses north of the traditional demarcation, Livingstonia should also give up its plans to occupy the Central Region. Blessed are the peacemakers.
The preservation of a nation’s history through books and buildings is a task that must be performed with care and conviction.
I am informed that some of the buildings that the Department of Antiquities declared as national monuments are in a terrible state of disrepair. Will the authorities concerned please go and check up?
During our struggles against the Federation, a London-published magazine we loved so much was called East Africa and Rhodesia. The magazine informed us what Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and our British friends were saying or doing in Britain to defeat the diabolic scheme.
During the 1970s whenever I went to the National Archives in Zomba I used to browse through copies of East Africa and Rhodesia. When I went there last year, only one copy of this magazine was available. Heaps of the rest had disappeared. No one of the officials could say what had happened to them or to the ChiNyanja dictionary which a German missionary had compiled with the help of Malawian ex-slaves in Mombasa round about 1850.
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