| Paternity row soils Kamuzu’s legacy | Send to a friend |
| Thursday, 29 July 2010 22:52 |
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Malawi first President Hastings Kamuzu Banda lived a life of mystery. He never declared his wife publicly, never paraded any of his offspring, and went to the grave in 1997 an enigma, with doubts that he ever had a wife or even sired a child. However, in an abrupt twist of history, a man called Jim Jumani Johansson (below) has come in the open, asking the government — through an application for a change of name — to be recognised as Kamuzu Banda’s son. In his application, the 37-year-old Johansson wants to change his name to Jim Jumani Immanuel Masauko Kamuzu Banda, and claims this will be for the good of his late father and his family. Kamuzu Banda served as Malawi’s first president from 1964 to 1994, when the country embraced multiparty democracy, but details about his private life are not known, and are, at best, sketchy. Jumani’s claim has spurred a frenzy in Malawi, where a property dispute filed by Banda’s long-time companion Cecilia Kadzamira is still in court. A number of people say Jumani may be a legitimate son of the fallen president, while others dismiss him as a gold-digger out to inherit Kamuzu’s vast estate. Among those dismissing this claim is Jumani’s own biological mother, Merriam Kaunda-Johansson, Miss Malawi in 1976. “It is important to note that I am the biological mother to Jumani. I gave birth to this child and what he is saying is not true,” she says. “His biological father is Muhammad Jogee, (a Malawian of Indian descent and a chartered accountant who moved to England years ago). I told him of his biological father when he was a little boy. I even gave Jim his father’s telephone number. If you saw him, you would agree he looks like him,” said Kaunda-Johansson. But this dismissal of the paternity claims have angered Jumani even more, and he has retaliated by saying Ms Kaunda-Johansson might not be his true mother but somebody paid to peddle the lie and conceal the truth. “I now question whether this woman, who raised me, is indeed my mother. She raised me like a dog. She is not my mother but somebody paid to conceal the truth,” he is quoted as saying. Speaking on behalf of the Kamuzu family, Jane Dzanjalimodzi, who is niece to Kamuzu, said she knows Johansson well, and confirms that his father was an Indian. “Let him go for DNA test, his father was Indian. He is coloured, Kamuzu was not a coloured and we don’t have coloureds in our family,” she said. The enigmatic Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s independence icon, was educated in several Western universities and was as an acclaimed medical doctor. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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