Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) Operation Sunrise was the name given to a police and military action conducted by the authorities in the Central African protectorate of Nyasaland (now known as Malawi) which started on the 3rd March 1959, initially to detain and intern 350 individuals who were considered a potential threat to law and order. Although it is sometimes considered to involve only the incidents of 3rd March, the Devlin Commission report is clear that it was one of two distinct operations by the security forces, reinforced from outside Nyasaland, involving the arrest and detention members of the Nyasaland African Congress,
Nyasaland Southern Rhodesia led to a Royal Commission on future association between Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, or all three territories. Despite almost unanimous African opposition to amalgamation with Southern Rhodesia, the Bledisloe Commission report of 1939 did not entirely rule-out some form of association in the future, provided Southern Rhodesian forms of racial discrimination were not applied north of the Zambezi. The danger of Southern Rhodesian rule made African demands for political rights more urgent, and in 1944 various local Voluntary Associations united as the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC). One of its first demands was to have