Existentialists in Malawi

The term existentialism may call to mind smoke-filled French coffee houses and over-educated intellectuals. But humanities scholar Damazio Mfune-Mwanjakwa argues that Malawian parables, songs, and other “lore” created mainly by “ordinary” people without college educations also reflect existential thought.

Mfune-Mwanjakwa writes that existentialism as formulated by Europeans like Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre is concerned with the individual human’s freedom to choose a path in life. In this view, people create meaning through their own actions but face inevitable suffering due to the unpredictability of life and the burden of choosing.

Aspects of existentialism can also be found in much older sources revered in European intellectual traditions, such as the biblical books of Ecclesiastes and Job and the thinking of Greek Cynics such as Diogenes.

Mfune-Mwanjakwa writes that numerous proverbs in languages spoken in Malawi, such as Chichewa (Chinyanja), point to the uncertainty of life: “the course of life is as unpredictable as the weather,” “a parent does not choose what sort of child to give birth to nor what such a child will turn out to be,” and “no one knows who will die first and when,” for example. Others reflect on the inevitably of life’s end (“death does not first knock before coming in”) or the preciousness of a person’s brief time on Earth (“all else depends on being alive.”)

For another approach to existentialist ideas, Mfune-Mwanjakwa examines popular Malawian songs from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. “Ndikakwela pa Phiri la Mulanje” by Diamond Kudzala uses the courses of the Ruo and Phalombe Rivers as a metaphor for the narrator’s sense of being adrift and experiencing suicidal despair after facing many difficulties in life.

“Ndili ndekha” by Mike Kamwendo is told from the perspective of an elderly person living in a rural community who is abandoned by his neighbors after losing his physical strength.

“Much as he appears to be stoical about all this, the uncommon pathos with which he puts this development across points to the deep hurt he feels,” Mfune-Mwanjakwa writes.

The narrator of Gidess Chalamanda’s song “Ndimalota” describes his fear of losing his father and becoming untethered from the world, while Kalimba’s “A Song Worth Singing” reflects on becoming a widow.

Singer Billy Kaunda is particularly drawn to existentialist themes such as the value of self-knowledge and conscious choices in how to live. While his songs often draw on biblical concepts and other religious themes, Mfune-Mwanjakwa argues that this should not be viewed as excluding him from the label of existentialism, since “themes of human exploitation and alienation, the finality of death and the loss it leaves behind, as well as the vanity of life predominate in his music.”

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