If states survive according to their capacity to both “accumulate and legitimate,” and if this capacity is dependent on and mediated by historical relationships forged between and among interested individuals and groups, then 1953 was a watershed in the history of colonial Malawi. This was so not simply because the Central African Federation, established in that year, called into question the future of the historical compromises and accommodations on which colonial rule rested; but also because the “politics of respectability” practiced up to that point had proven inadequate to prevent its imposition. This fractured the coalitions and alliances that had made the colonial system workable and set the terms of political protest. Its aftershocks, the riots and “disturbances” of the dry season of 1953, arose from long-standing, deeply felt popular grievances that assumed greater acuteness in a straitened political climate. Nevertheless, most African politicians in the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) shied away from linking its politics to mass violence, even while the colonial state held the NAC and the non-cooperation campaign launched in May 1953 largely responsible for the violence. Because they attributed a wide array of evils (land hunger, “illegitimate” leadership, agricultural and natural resource rules, the thangata system) to federation, the fiery speeches of Congressmen and chiefs were considered direct catalysts for violence. There is some evidence suggesting that rioters thought so too.