Nyasaland Emergency 1959 sources, including Special Branch reports, and the recollections of expatriates, and the reduction of African leaders to stereotypes. Nyasaland Emergency 1959 The Nyasaland Emergency 1959 was a state of emergency in the protectorate of Nyasaland (now Malawi), which was declared by its governor, Sir Robert Armitage on 3 March 1959 and which ended on 16 June 1960. Under the emergency powers that operated during the Emergency, over 1,300 members or supporters of the Nyasaland African Congress (Congress) were detained without trial, and most of the party's leaders including its president, Dr. Hastings Banda, were imprisoned in Southern Rhodesia after being
Nyasaland Emergency 1959 Armitage was only made aware of the planned action against the SRANC at a meeting of Prime Ministers and governors in Salisbury on 20 February, at which the governor of Northern Rhodesia, Sir Arthur Benson was also put under pressure to act against African anti-Federal parties and declare a State of Emergency in Northern Rhodesia. Benson resisted this pressure, but did place restrictions on 47 Zambian African National Congress activists. Whitehead also wished to take control of security in southern Nyasaland as the price for loaning 900 Southern Rhodesian police to Nyasaland following Armitage's request for police reinforcements: it was