Aleke Banda

Aleke Kadonaphani Banda (born September 19, 1939 in Livingstone , Northern Rhodesia , † April 9, 2010 in Johannesburg ) was a Malawian politician and businessman.

Life

Banda's family comes from Nyassaland , but he attended a mission school in Que Que, South Rhodes, and a secondary school in Bulawayo , which was run by the London Mission Society . Even then, he developed a wide range of activities, such as being in charge of the school magazine, school speaker and in the Christian community. The clearly nationalist Banda - not related to the president of the later Malawi of the same name - was the regional secretary of the Nyassaland African National Congress (NANC) founded in 1944 as a teenager and wrote against a federation of Nyassaland with Northern and Southern Rhodesia. He was arrested in 1959 and spent some time in Blantyre prison in Nyasaland, where he was released because of his youth.

He was detained without charge for twelve years under Malawian President Hastings Banda .

After Hastings Banda's death, he became one of the main characters in the introduction of multi-party democracy. As a member of parliament, he was briefly finance minister in 1997 and then agriculture minister of his country until 2005. The Ministry of Health was also under his control.

Banda was a successful entrepreneur, owning two major publishers, including Nation Publications Limited, and starting Malawi's first daily newspaper, The Malawi News. He died in South Africa, where he was being treated for leukemia , which had caused his withdrawal from active politics.

His son Thoko Banda is also politically active and acts as Malawi's ambassador.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.munzinger.de/search/portrait/Aleke+Banda/0/12270.html
2. ↑ document at umn.edu (English) retrieved on December 7, 2014