Jack Mapanje
Jack Mapanje (born 25 March 1944) is a Malawian writer and poet. He was the head of English at the Chancellor College, the main campus of the University of Malawi before being imprisoned in 1987 for his collection Of Chameleons and Gods, which indirectly criticized the administration of President Hastings Banda. He was released in 1991 and emigrated to the UK, where he worked as a teacher. Background The child of Nyanja and Yao parents, John Alfred Clement ("Jack") Mapanje was born in Kadango Village, Mangochi District, Malawi. He received his BA in education from the University of London and worked for a time as a lecturer in Malawi before returning to the UK to study linguistics at University College, London in the early 1980s. He subsequently became head of the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Malawi. Imprisonment During the rule of President Hastings Banda, Mapanje was jailed without charge in 1987, apparently for publishing his poem collection Of Chameleons and Gods. The collection obliquely criticized Banda's government, and the "chameleon" of the title refers to the disguise of personal voice Mapanje deemed necessary in order to mount a criticism of the politics at the time.