After graduating from college Chiume taught at Alliance Secondary School in Dodoma, Tanganyika. He resigned after the white headmaster insinuated that the presence of a pre-adolescent girl in Chiume's house might create immoral temptations. Chiume was extremely offended by the remark, which further gave him resolve to fight for the dignity of Africans. "I had made up my mind there and then to plunge myself into politics and to help remove the obstacles that lay before Africans who wished to have human dignity. I was determined to try and play my part, however small, to free Mother Africa" (from his autobiography). He then went to study law, on a scholarship, at Ramjas College in Delhi, India. Upon being approached by the Nyasaland African Congress to stand in the country's first general election in 1956, Chiume accepted, and decided not to further pursue his interest in law.