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 a list, originally prepared in June, of those to be arrested if a State of Emergency were declared. The Colonial Office's rejection of Armitage's very limited proposals for reform and, from late October, increasingly aggressive Congress demonstrations directed against Europeans and Asians and intimidation of African opponents increased tensions. At the end of 1958, Banda and other Congress leader attended an All-African People's Conference in Accra, in recently-independent Ghana and they returned to Nyasaland determined to press for constitutional change When the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was set up in 1953, provision had been made for the Federal constitution