Mahoma Mwakipunda Mwaungulu

Mahoma Mwaungulu (3 January 1932 Tanzania - 2004 Berlin) was a Pan African politician. He was one of the major leaders in the German-African community before and after the reunification of Germany.

Mahoma Mwaungulu, Ian Douglas, and Moses Mensah, members of the Pan African Forum e.V. Berlin, 1999

Biography

Early life and education

Mahoma Mwaungulu was born on 3 January 1932 in the former British colony of Tanganyika, now known as Tanzania, the son of two Ngonde from Nyasaland, now known as Malawi. He carried the traditional hereditary title of Mwakipunda, as a member of the council of nobles responsible for choosing the king of Malawi from among a number of eligible members of traditional royal families.

Mwaungulu became politically active in his student days in Africa. He was imprisoned for a year for being part of a resistance movement in Southern Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe). As a member of the Youth League of the Nyasaland African Congress, he received a recommendation to study in Ghana, and he subsequently crossed the continent on foot from Tanzania to Ghana in order to meet Kwame Nkrumah. He received a stipend to study in the German Democratic Republic, and from 1960-64 he studied economics at Leipzig, at the Karl Marx University. As a student, he remained engaged in African politics and headed the African student party.

Political activity in Africa

After completing his education, he was invited to return to Malawi to work as an economist for the Hastings Banda government. During this time, he was active in the Pan African liberation fight against colonialism. He met Che Guevara during his venture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was later placed under house arrest and the Banda regime planned his murder, but he was able to escape to Tanzania with the aid of friends, and later returned to the East Germany where he settled in 1973.

Community activities in Berlin-Kreuzberg

He worked, taught and held speeches in several circumstances in both the GDR and in the Federal Republic of Germany. He married a German woman, and had three children.

In the late 1980s Mwaungulu became critical of the East German government and moved to West Berlin. There he lived in the multicultural Kreuzberg district and continued working for the integration of Africans and other migrants into German society. In 1997, he co-founded the Pan-African Forum e.V with Wilfred Imoudu, another Pan African intellectual and activist who had studied in the GDR in the 1960s, and was the son of an important Nigerian trade unionist.

Mwaungulu died in 2004 at the age of 72, in the Urban Krankenhaus in Berlin Kreuzberg. During the Berlin Black History Month in 2009, a tribute to his memory was made by school friend and compatriot, Knollys Mwanyongo, and by Wilfred Imoudu.

External links

• Brief history of Africans in Germany Introduction.pdf
• "Partners in International Socialist Solidarity or just Guest workers: Africans in the Former German Democratic Republic (DDR)" - Prof. John W. Long (Chicago) in : Black European Studies in Transnational Perspective - Conference Reader - 2nd International, Interdisciplinary Conference July 27 – 30, 2006 (Berlin, Germany)
• Tribute to M. Mwaungulu at Black History Month 2009, Berlin
• Interview with M. Mwaungulu in: Black People/ Black Berlin, Documentary, Germany 1994 by Fountainhead Tanz Theatre

Further reading

• Pampuch, Sebastian: Afrikanische Migrationserfahrungen mit Zwei Deutschen Staaten. Rekonstruktion Eines Migratorischen Lebensweges über die Grenze Zweier Deutscher Staaten Hinweg. Magisterarbeit, Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 2008
• Theuerkauf, Inger: "Die Schule ist meine Frau. Eine Lebensgeschichte von Mahoma M. Mwaungulu." in: Schmidt, Heike (ed.): Afrika Erinnern - Hauptseminar Mündliche Geschichte. Institut für Afrika- und Asienwissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 2000