BEYOND TODAY: THE DESPOT AND HIS SUNBURN MISTRESS.

Cecilia Kadzamila was not the only woman on record to have had a mysterious relationship with Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s first president and long time dictator. The story of Ms Merene French is even more riveting. Story by RICHARD PENDELBURY 

WHEN the aged Dr Hastings Banda, first President of Malawi and one of Africa’s most ruthless and durable dictators, died three weeks ago, Peter French was moved to search out a bundle of papers from his attic and study their contents for the first time in 20 years.

Among the workaday paraphernalia of his late mother Merene French’s effects, the Suffolk tool-hire manager found a crumpled blue airmail  envelope. Inside was a letter from 40 years ago. It was addressed to Merene and began: ‘Dearest Sweet.’ The note wasn’t from William French, Peter’s father. Rather it was signed: ‘With sweetest love, Hastings.’ For Peter French, the letter has awakened memories and emotions that have lain dormant for many decades.

They encompass an extraordinary, untold story. How, in austere post-war London, a white British wife and mother dumped her emotionally sterile husband to embark on a 16-year love affair with a charismatic black GP whom she helped become a driving force in the anti-colonial movement.

By the time Banda died, at the age of 99, he had become synonymous with synonymous with the worst excesses of Third World despotism. Swiftly dispensing with democracy after Malawi gained independence from Britain, the doctor established a regime in which, it is estimated, hundreds of thousands of supposed critics or opponents were imprisoned, tortured or simply murdered.

On his death Banda was also facing charges of massive corruption, charges of massive corruption, brought after he stepped down from power in his 90s and democracy was restored.

His former mistress Merene French has faded from history. But 50 years ago her son Peter was the juvenile observer to a menage of bedroom hopping, adultery and the End of Empire. It has left him with a unique perspective on Banda, a father figure for much of his childhood.

QUITE why Merene Robbins married Peter’s father William is a mystery, certainly to their only child. In almost everything except their innate intelligence they were hopelessly different.

Merene was a tall, attractive and sensual character, the youngest of 11 children of a Devon cattle  dealer.

She was nursing in London when she met her husband.

A short, bespectacled figure, French was the son of a church elder who became a padre at a seaman’s mission. Brought up in a pit village, he’d won a place at the local grammar school and from there, thanks to his excellence at languages and grinding application, progressed to Leeds University, teacher training college and a post as a London schoolmaster

Yet while he was an inspirational teacher, according to his son, he had an almost complete inability to communicate out side the classroom.

As if to compensate for his silences, William French recorded the minutiae  of his daily life in a journal. While he mostly concerned himself with the weather and expenditure, his later jottings contain more scandalous material.

The Frenches had been married some ten years when Merene met Dr Banda.  Their romance began, like many, during World War II, when Merene’s husband was away. No doubt thanks to his linguistic ability and lack of the more physical martial qualities, William French had been drafted into Army intelligence. The role suited his recessive character perfectly.

Peter had been born in 1940. When the London Blitz started, Merene took her baby to stay with friends in Greenock, near Glasgow. But when her husband’s mother fell ill, the dutiful

daughter-in-law moved to North Shields to lend her support. The old woman’s GP was Dr Banda.

But how did the son of pagan native Africans find himself practising medicine among the Tyneside poor in the Forties?

Banda’s achievement was remarkable. Educated at a Church of Scotland missionary school, he began his odyssey from Nyasaland in south-east Africa to the practice in Northumberland Square by walking 1,000 miles through the bush to South Africa.

His parents thought he’d been eaten by lions. But Banda was heading for Johannesburg, working as he went. While sweeping the floors of a hospital he decided he would become a doctor.

He studied at night school and by saving enough money as an interpreter at a mine, he could afford passage to the U.S. On arrival he applied himself again, becoming the only non-white student at the University of Chicago.

After studying medicine at a  black university in the South, he moved to Scotland, where he gained his Royal College of Physicians

((Note: The Royal College of Physicians of London was the first medical institution in England to receive a Royal Charter. It was founded in 1518 and is one of the most active of all medical professional organisations)).

licence at Edinburgh in the early years of the war. Once qualified, he practised as a GP in Liverpool before moving to North-East England.

How quickly the middle-aged doctor’s friendship with Merene deepened after their meeting in 1944 is not clear. But even before Banda arrived on the scene, the Frenches did not practise a conventional marriage.

‘My father put my mother on a pedestal,’ says their son Peter. ‘He liked other men to admire her and I believe it was an open marriage. He didn’t mind her seeing other men and if she wanted Hastings Banda to make her happy then so be it.

But he never thought it would end in divorce.’

The affidavit William French signed when he finally petitioned for divorce on the grounds of his wife’s adultery deserves to be reprinted almost verbatim.

‘My wife and I were very happy together until I was discharged from the Army on October 12, 1945,’ it began. ‘Just prior to being discharged, my wife had met in North Shields, where she was staying with my mother and my young son, a Dr Hastings Kumuzu Banda, who is an East African, and she had become friendly with him.

‘I had no objections as I thought it was purely a platonic friendship.

‘My wife told me that Dr Banda was buying a practice in Harlesden, which was near our home, and she suggested that we could put him up at our flat while he was settling in the practice and getting a home together.

‘Not suspecting that there was anything between Dr Banda and my wife I consented, and so when I came out of the Army in October 1945 and returned to our flat in Harlesden, Dr Banda was already there.

‘After a few weeks I began to notice that my wife appeared to be fonder of Dr Banda than a platonic relationship would have permitted, so I spoke to her about it and she did admit to me she was in love with him.

‘I thought it was only an infatuation on her part and I frankly did not feel that Dr Banda had any feelings of affection towards my wife, so I didn’t speak to him about it. I reasoned he would soon be leaving our flat and that if I were right in my feelings of infatuation the trouble would pass without having to embarrass him by taxing him with it.

‘I had a number of discussions with my wife about this and eventually, in July 1946, my wife told me that she really was in love with Dr Banda and that she would not sleep with me any more. She took off her wedding ring and refused to wear it any longer.’ SEVERAL months passed and still French refrained from confronting Banda, who continued to live as a ‘paying guest’ in the house.

‘My wife moved into a separate bedroom and, although I was not sure, I felt in my own mind that on occasions she would sleep with Dr Banda,’ French said in the affidavit.

‘I firmly believed that if I took drastic steps it would drive her still further into the arms of Dr Banda, whereas if I was patient I could still win her back to my child and myself. So far as my child is concerned, she was still a good mother, but I wanted a home with my wife and child.

‘I also realised that living in the same house I could easily have ascertained whether she was sleeping with Dr Banda, but didn’t take steps to that end because I felt that I did know for certain that she was committing adultery it would so change the situation, especially in my mind, that there would be an immediate end to all hopes of a reconciliation. While I didn’t know for certain, I could still try to win her back.’ Then came the most unlikely episode, in which William’s weakness and cuckoldry were rubberstamped, his humiliation complete.

Dr Banda bought a large Victorian house in Brondesbury Park

((Note: Brondesbury Park is a leafy and affluent electoral [ward ] in the London Borough of Brent, centred around .It is an undiscovered gem with great open spaces, such as Queens Park & Tiverton Green, yet still close to the centre of , North-West London)),

and he suggested that the Frenches should move in, too, with Merene as housekeeper.

‘My wife was very keen on the idea but I didn’t like it,’ William French recalled. ‘But the more I argued the more my wife insisted upon going and, although I realise now that it was a mistake and that I should have made a break, I felt my only hope was to go with her.’ So the doctor, his mistress, her husband and child set up home together, this time with Banda as master of the house. ‘We all had separate bedrooms, but I still knew that my wife was sleeping with Dr Banda,’ said Mr French.

At the age of six Peter was sent away to prep school in Hertfordshire because his father ‘didn’t want him to be brought up in that atmosphere’.

Mr French made one last pathetic attempt to persuade his wife away from Banda and, having failed, gave up and moved out in early 1949.

‘He went during term time and we never really said goodbye,’ says Peter. ‘So when I came back it was just Mum, the doctor and me.’ Peter French has fond memories of Banda, although the African was hardly more paternal than his real father. ‘He was a strict Victorian figure, very much the head of the household,’ says Peter.

ALTHOUGH he acted as my father, there weren’t any hugs or kisses from him and he was as aloof as most people who’ve got their country’s destiny in mind.’ The potentially scandalous domestic situation never seemed to become a public issue. Nor did the matter of race. Certainly Peter can’t recall suffering as a result.

‘By the age of 12 or so I realised what was happening between my mother and the doctor,’ he recalls.

‘Their shared bedroom was only across the landing from mine and I grew to understand what adults did in bed.

‘But the doctor never came to my school and it wasn’t so unusual after the war for children’s fathers to be absent. And there weren’t any children in the street at home, so I never had any taunts. In any case, it was a time before race was really an issue.’

However, certain proprieties had to be observed. ‘When we were alone together at home my mother called him Hastings.

But when others were present she called him Doctor, as if theirs was purely a business relationship. I always called him Doctor.’

Banda was a good doctor and a popular figure in the district, particularly among his less wealthy patients who often bartered services rather than cash for his consultations. In Harlesden, at least, he’s remembered fondly.

Money was never a problem in the Banda household, as it had been when William French was in charge. Banda’s ‘family’ had the first car in the street. The three would motor out to the country each Sunday. Peter was given train sets and other exotic (for the time) gifts for birthdays and Christmas. ‘I was a spoiled child,’ he admits. ‘Perhaps it was the doctor’s way of buying my approval.’

Merene provided the support that a GP cum statesman-in-waiting requires. ‘She did everything for him,’ says her son. ‘She cooked, cleaned, ran the surgery, paid the bills, helped with patients and taught him the necessary social graces.’

BUT she was also closely involved in his political activities. The home in Brondesbury Park became a focal point for Nyasaland nationalism. Peter remembers tribal chiefs arriving from Africa and being taken by Banda, accompanied by his steps

 to a shop in Edgware Road to buy hats and coats more suitable for a British winter.

Merene even helped draw up the draft Nyasaland (later Malawi) constitution on the dinner table and was present when similar discussions with leaders from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) took place.

On another occasion the former Labour Chancellor Sir Stafford Cripps

((Note:Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer for several years after the Second World War. Early life

Cripps was born in Londo))

and his wife came for lunch. Lady Cripps gave Peter [pounds sterling]5, he remembers.

It was inevitable that Banda would eventually return to Africa.

In July 1953 he did so, selling his practice in London and settling in the Gold Coast. Six months later, Merene followed him, leaving her son behind.

The eccentric William French said his subsequent affidavit: ‘When my wife went to Africa with Dr Banda, I finally realised that all hope of winning her back had gone and I was considerably upset.’

Not as heartbroken as Peter, then aged 13. He says it was a ‘tragic time’ in his life. He remembers seeing his mother off on the Southampton-bound platform of Waterloo station. ‘I was in floods of tears.’ For a while, during his holidays from a Merchant Navy college, he lived with his mother’s sister. Then he had to move into his father’s cramped East End flat, where he slept on a camp bed, far removed from the luxuries of the Banda home.

‘It was a terrible time in my life,’ he says. ‘My father was quite unsuited to bringing up a child.’ Peter didn’t see his mother for the next five years and received a letter only every three months or so.

How could Merene French have abandoned her only child in such a way? Peter says: ‘She felt she had go with Dr Banda. That meant leaving the country, and she couldn’t take me with her. Mum and the doctor planned to marry. I have no doubt that’s what my mother thought at least. And I have no doubt, too, that he used her.’

Indeed, Merene had been useful as an aide de camp to Banda in London. Now, in the colonial Gold Coast, she was useful again, a striking white woman who ‘created wow’, according to her son, among the Africans, in the bush town where Banda settled, and the leaders in Accra who were about to take power from the British. Following independence, she took an active if behind-the-scenes role, being particularly close to several key members of the first black administration.

She was known as A’Dench, an African approximation of Auntie French.

But by this time Banda’s mission (and a spat with the Ghanaian government) had taken him back to his native Nyasaland, thousands of miles to the south-east, leaving his mistress in Ghana.

On his arrival in Nyasaland in July 1958 he fired off a letter to Merene in which there’s strong evidence that an intimacy still existed.

‘Dearest Sweet,’ Banda began.

‘Well, I have been to my birth place. They arranged a mass meeting there to welcome me home last Sunday. I wish you had been there.’ It ended: ‘With sweetest love, Hastings.’ But the affair was on the wane.

Could a white woman really be a suitable first lady of a black African state?

‘I have no doubt she expected to follow him, but it never happened,’ says Peter, who flew out to see his mother in late 1958. He stayed with her for six weeks and Dr Banda was hardly mentioned.

Political unrest was already fermenting in the young country and Merene, perhaps having accepted that her relationship with Banda was over, returned to Britain in 1960.

Initially she settled in London and worked in a public health laboratory.

In 1962, as Banda prepared to take power in an independent Malawi, the distance between the former lovers and Merene’s attempts to close the gap are clear in a letter from Banda.

DEAR Merene,’ he wrote, ‘Thank you very much for your letter. Actually, I never received any of the letters you mention. This is the first letter I have had from you for a very long time. Enclosed is a cheque for [pounds sterling]100. I hope it will help with warm clothes. How is Peter?’ It ends formally: ‘Kindest regards and remember me to Madge. Sincerely yours, Hastings.’

In the final years of her life, Merene French never spoke of her former lover, hardly acknowledging even his occassional appearances on television, dressed in homburg hat, dark suit and clutching his trademark gilded fly swat.

Did she dream of a seat alongside his throne?

Banda brought a degree of prosperity to Malawi. But what did Merene make of his one-party totalitarianism, increasing recourse to the torture, imprisonment and murder of critics? Or his pragmatic links with the apartheid regime in South Africa?

How different from the ideals propounded in her sitting room in London.

Surprisingly perhaps, Peter French has survived his childhood traumas and dislocation. Indeed, he’s been happily married for more than 30 years, and he and his wife, Susan, have seen three sons through university. ‘I wanted to provide them with the family stability that I never had,’ he says.

When his mother died in 1976, Peter sent a letter to the Life President, His Excellency  Hastings Banda, informing him of the fact. He received no reply.

* Research by ROBERT BARRETT.

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