The most unforgettable person I ever met (3); Dr Hastings Banda.

I first met the Ngwazi Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Lion of Malawi, Life President of the Mighty Malawi Congress Party, Life-President of Malawi, in 1961 before he acquired that impressive list of titles. He was then Minster of lots of things but in reality he was the Prime Minister in waiting in the run-up to Independence.

‘Charisma’ is a word that could have been specially coined for him. You could feel the static when he entered a room.

He was not just small; he was tiny. He dressed immaculately in a three-piece example of Saville Row’s finest, a homburg hat, and carrying a fly-whisk of a hyena’s tail. This has a particular status in African folklore although I never found out what it was, although I gather that if you flicked it at someone it had the same effect as on a fly.

Part of my job was to attend his ceremonial functions and to be present when he departed on foreign visits and on his return. They would entail arriving 3 hours early, listening to a 2 hour speech and then returning home for a much needed cold beer or six and a shower. Standing out in the sun for that length of time dressed in suit, collar and tie did wonders for the thirst.

His lengthy speeches had to be translated; he had forgotten his mother tongue after more than 40 years away in the US and Britain.

On one occasion I had to go to Sanjika Place in Blantyre to present him with a pedigree Afrikander bull-calf. We led it around the gardens, me towering over him, and he kept up a stream of amusing conversation. His garden parties were exactly like those at Buckingham Place, except Her Maj only serves tea, and the Ngwazi most certainly did not, although I have a feeling that he was tee-total; I certainly never saw him have a drink. Quite nice to be quaffing cold Carlsberg listening to the band of the Malawi Rifles (KAR) playing ‘Sussex by the Sea’!

His regime was authoritarian, but largely free of corruption, a situation almost unique in Africa at that time. Law and order was strictly maintained. There was little serious crime. A good friend was the local police chief. I was having a beer with him one evening and he seemed not to be his usual cheery self. He then told me that he had been called out to investigate a murder, the first in his 26 years of police duty. True there was a great deal of petty theft, as to be expected in a very poor country, but, for example, I never heard of a car theft in my many years of working in Malawi.

The old man considered that Africans were like children, needing discipline and firm guidance. As an Elder of the Church of Scotland he exhibited a puritanical streak, banning flared jeans, short skirts, long hair and other manifestations of decadence. A good way of getting through Customs quickly was to leave a copy of ‘Playboy’ in your case. Once they had confiscated that – to be sold on, no doubt for the equivalent of a day’s pay – they were content.

His senior personal staff were all English. The Head of the Presidential Household was an ex-RN officer, but the guy with the best job was a good friend who was responsible for maintaining and driving the Rolls Royces, 1950’s transport for the Colonial Governor.

One of his amazing contributions was the creation of Kamuzu Academy deep in the bush near Kasungu. The siting was deliberate; being miles from anywhere there are no fleshly distractions for the pupils It is a replica English public school that teaches classics, he believing this to be the finest academic discipline for public service. All the school-masters were from English public schools. The library (the only place that stocked the many banned books, like Das Kapital, could be read) was an exact replica of the Library of Congress.

It provides for English GCSE O and A levels.

I have visited it many times. The only entrance requirement is talent, and entry is by competitive examination. The Ngwazi would pay the fees of poor pupils.

He made pretty well the same Xmas broadcast every year in which he said that his aim was to ensure that every Malawian family had a roof over its heads, a chicken in the pot and did not go about ‘nakked’. In his time this was largely achieved but population growth and political corruption since has undermined it. There was a National Tree Planting day when every gamily was obliged to plant one tree, and he would carry out an aerial inspection of the whole country once a year to ensure that fields were being properly cultivated.

The dark side was God help you if you showed any sign of political dissent.