Background
He was born on September 1917, son of a Presbyterian minister at Chibambo village in Chief Mtwalo's area of the Mzimba district in the north.
He was born on September 1917, son of a Presbyterian minister at Chibambo village in Chief Mtwalo's area of the Mzimba district in the north.
Educated at Ekwendeni Primary School and at Livingstonia Secondary School where he obtained his School Leaving Certificate. Afterwards he took a commercial course at Livingstonia and joined the Nyasaland Tobacco Board in 1939.
He switched to the civil service later that year, starting as a clerk in the District Commissioner’s Office at Lilongwe. For a time he was chief clerk at Fort Manning, then in 1948 he was posted again to Lilongwe. Because his increasing political activities embarrassed the District Commissioner’s Office, he was posted to Zomba in 1953. But his continued outspoken opposition to the establishment of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland landed him in prison later that year with a 15 months’ sentence.
Freed from prison, Chibambo was confined from 1954 to 1959 to restricted residence at Nsanje in the south about 10 miles from the Mozambique border. He had to report to the police at dusk and dawn and was banned from employment in any government concern. These restrictions ended on March 3, 1959, when he was arrested in the nationalist round-up under the state of emergency.
He was flown to Khami prison in Rhodesia then transferred to Maran- dellas prison before going back to the Kanjedza Detention Centre in Malawi. He was one of the “camp finalists”, having to wait until September 1960 for his release.
As soon as he was back in the north he was elected North Region chairman of the Malawi Congress Party. In 1961 he was elected for Mzimba North and in March 1963 he became Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Housing.
Dr Hastings Banda appointed him Minister for the Northern Region in the cabinet formed immediately after independence in July 1964. Then in September 1964 he became Minister of Works, Development and Housing. Two years later he was switched to be Minister of Health. In November 1967 he was transferred back to his first post, Minister for the Northern Region, where his influence and prestige remain as high as ever.
One of the senior statesmen among Dr Hastings Banda’s “boys” chosen to serve in the cabinet since independence on July 6, 1964. Cautious, careful man, well-trained in administration and widely respected, not only in the north as a northerner, but in the south, too. An effective speaker, easily accessible to the public. Chibambo is not a man of burning ambition ever watchful of rivals. His strength is the loyalty he commands throughout the north.