Nyasaland African Congress NAC was banned. On 3 March, Banda, along with hundreds of other Africans, was arrested in the course of "Operation Sunrise". The NAC was succeeded by the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), led from prison by Hastings Banda. The British came to accept that independence was inevitable. Hastings Banda was released in 1960 and allowed to return to prepare for elections. In 1961 the MCP overwhelmingly won the first elections held under universal suffrage, and in 1963 the country gained self governance followed by independence the next year with the new name of Malawi. Sources Nyasaland African Congress The Nyasaland African
Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) not only those members of Congress initially arrested, but others arrested and detained without trial in the course of the emergency. The operation was described in some detail in the Devlin Commission report (Colonial Office Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, HMSO, London, 1959) and that account has been amplified by Colonial Office documents not made available to the Devlin Commission. There had been some sporadic unrest in Nyasaland in the early 1950s, most recently in 1953 when unrest among African tenants of the British Central Africa Company led to the "Cholo riots", and after Nyasaland was forced into