Nyasaland Emergency 1959 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 arrested on 3 March. Many other Africans were jailed for offences related to the Emergency, including rioting and
Nyasaland Emergency 1959 Nyasaland through a lack of political judgement, including a failure to understand nationalism in either dependency. McCracken also considers Armitage had failed to control a political crisis in Cyprus, so was determined not to fail again in Nyasaland, and that, by October 1959, the contempt he expressed for African political aspirations, even in official correspondence, amounted to racial paranoia. McCracken also suggests that Baker's underlying aim was to “set the record straight” by restoring the reputation of Nyasaland's colonial officials of the 1950s and 1960s, while attacking African nationalists and their sympathisers. Like Macmillan, he notes Baker's reliance on official