Elizabeth Schmidt recently wrote that the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain in Guinea was able to lead that colony to independence because, even though its leadership was drawn from the western educated elite, the “non-literate masses” drove “the nationalist agenda.” This would eventually be true for the NAC in colonial Malawi, but it did not start out as a mass party. Rather it was transformed into one through struggle. Those who formed the Nyasaland African Congress in 1944 were drawn from the ranks of relative privilege derived from hereditary status, access to mission education, or, like Charles Chinula, Chief Mwase Kasungu, and Levi Mumba, both. They were the “new men,” members of a growing “accumulating class” born of the colonial economy, and Congress's early agenda emphasized and reflected their aims and aspirations. It would take an internal scandal and a territorial crisis born of white settler nationalism to push Congress's focus away from a narrow elitism toward a more populist, mass-based agenda. The story of how and why this occurred begins with the formation of Congress in 1944.

Much has been made of the role of Livingstonia Mission graduates such as Levi Mumba and Charles Chinula in the beginnings of “modern” politics in colonial Malawi, but the Congress of 1944 to 1950 was as much a product of the commercial south as of the “enlightened” north of missions and labor migrants.