The Malawi Congress Party, 1959–1961

The reconstitution of the Nyasaland African Congress from September 1959 as the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) marked the beginnings of a significant shift in the character of Malawian politics. Often regarded as the NAC by another name, the MCP quickly emerged as one of the most popular, dynamic and successful nationalist parties in Africa, infinitely larger than its predecessor, much more consciously ‘traditionalist’ in style, distinctly more illiberal in its attitudes and drawing support from regions into which Congress had barely penetrated. It was also important that while the Nyasaland African Congress was, above all, an anti-colonial protest movement seeking national liberation, which individuals joined often at considerable personal risk, the MCP, following Dr Banda's release from gaol in April 1960, was conceived increasingly as a government in waiting, with considerable powers of patronage from which people disassociated themselves only at their peril.

An element of controversy surrounded the launch of the MCP. Orton Chirwa, its urbane founder, had played an active part the affairs of Congress in the early 1950s when he was financed for a time by a grant from Dr Banda in London. But his involvement in 1953 in the short-lived African Progressive Association had left him distrusted by nationalists, some of whom alleged that the colonial government had arranged his early release from Khami prison in August in the hope that he would guide nationalist sentiment into new and more moderate channels.