Kamuzu Banda’s authority was sorely tested by a cabinet crisis that began in September of 1964. Ministers demanded the immediate Africanization of Malawi’s white-dominated economy and urged Banda to take a hostile stance toward colonialist South Africa and Mozambique (an African province of Portugal). They also questioned Banda’s refusal to recognize Communist China, even though China had offered the impoverished African country first $6 million, then $18 million in sorely needed aid. Most of all, the ministers objected to their own hollow political status; they held no real power against the imposing Banda–a truth the prime minister often emphasized by referring to them as his “boys.”

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