Date Of Article: 3/17/2003
To Print This Story Goto File > Print
<<Back
Mapanje not bitter
By: Aubrey Mchulu
Malawi’s internationally acclaimed poet Jack Mapanje said last week he is not bitter for being arrested under the former president Kamuzu Banda’s regime without being given reasons. Mapanje, who was released on May 22, 1991 after spending “three years, seven months, 16 days and more than 12 hours” at Mikuyu Prison in Zomba, recalled during a reading session of his poetry in Blantyre that police officers who arrested him simply said he was not on their wanted list and that his arrest was “a directive from above”. He said he was released by then Police Inspector General the late Mac William Lunguzi who told him that “it has pleased His Excellency the Life President” to have Mapanje released. He said one police officer hinted to him during his arrest that “someone at the University [of Malawi]” had engineered his arrest. “But I don’t feel bitter after all this,” said the self-exiled Mapanje, drawing applause from his audience. “I have forgiven them all, but some people don’t deserve being forgiven because when they say or do things they say or do which harm others they don’t imagine they are killing a fellow human being.” Mapanje kept the audience on its toes with his moving readings of poetry starting with Epitaph for a Mad Friend followed by The First Train to Liverpool in which he compares experiences on the local train from Limbe to Balaka then When the Shire Valley Dries up Patiently where he wondered whether starving Malawians in mid 1980s really needed free television from Japan or food. The UK-based Mapanje, who has won international awards, the latest being the 2002 Fonlon-Nichols Award, also read Skipping Without Ropes based on his experiences at Mikuyu and the Chichewa version of the popular Of Chameleons and Gods which was banned in Malawi ostensibly because it criticised the then one-party dictatorship. Responding to a question on whether his prison experience invigorated his writing skills, Mapanje said it did and also that he became very religious because the Holy Bible was the only literature allowed for inmates. There were three bibles for 90 political detainees then, he recalled, drawing more rounds of applause. Mapanje’s trip has been sponsored by the British Council and he has read his poetry in Lilongwe, Chancellor College’s Great Hall in Zomba and Old Mutual Auditorium, French Cultural Centre in Blantyre and in Mzuzu, according to British Council Director Richard Weyers. Mapanje is currently a professorial research fellow in the School of English at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.
<<Back
© 2001-2002 Nation Publications Limited, All Rights Reserved