A Five meter statue of late Malawi Anti-Colonial hero, Reverend John Chilembwe has been unveiled in Central London's historic Trafalgar Square.
Dubbed as an antelope, the statue will be the square's newest Fourth Plinth which is regarded as one of the world's most famous public art commissions.
Chilembwe's sculpture will be the first of Africa in Trafralgar Square and will be at the famed place up to September, 2024.
The statue has been created by a Malawian artist Samson Kambalu.
Chilembwe is regarded as the country's Independence Hero after in 1915, he introduced a rebellion well known as "Chilembwe uprising" aimed at resisting the British Colonial Rule, but he was killed later.
Source : Dziko FM
John Chilembwe, after being befriended by a local White missionary, Joseph Booth, he was taken to America and enrolled in a Baptist seminary. Soon after qualifying he returned to Africa where he set up his own church and ran a few business ventures on the side. Or maybe it was the other way around. Quite a turnaround. From the likelihood of being a gelded slave in Arabia he was now a Western-educated priest and businessman.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately John’s entrepreneurial talents were, well, African, and within a short time the ventures began to flounder. Being a man ahead of his time he attributed this to the racist behaviour of local Whites against whom he began to harbour deep resentment, to the point of inciting his followers to rise up in rebellion. What the ensuing revolt lacked in military impact was more than compensated by its barbarity.
The first victim was a local planter named Livingstone (any relation to the man who freed the country?) who was hunted down in his house and decapitated in front of his wife and children. Following this John celebrated a religious service in which (having clearly imbibed the finer points of Anglican liturgical practice) the decapitated head, dripping in blood and gore, held centre place on the altar. Spiritually fortified, the blood-crazed savages then set out to find their next victim. Unfortunately the mission post they had targeted had been abandoned with only a sick child and a priest (who had stayed to care for her) remaining. Both were beaten and stabbed mercilessly but miraculously survived.
Despite this stirring revolt against tyranny the local population dashed John’s hopes of a widespread rebellion and in fact turned against him, hunting him down and killing him not long afterwards. His body was left to rot in the jungle.
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