Lupenga Mphande during praise poetry field research in South Africa, June 2002. Credit: Allan Coleman via Lupenga Mphande
In 1969, 18-year-old Lupenga Mphande was arrested for the first time in Malawi.
As an active protester against oppressive governments in Malawi and South Africa, Mphande would not find himself in a cell for the last time. In fact, he completed his bachelor’s program at the University of Malawi between protests and jail time.
“It was a commute between prison and the classroom, which is not a pleasant thing to do,” Mphande said.
Beyond active protesting, Mphande was generally vocal about his thoughts, often facing backlash for sharing his opinions in student magazines and newspapers at his university, speaking to a British journalist and founding the Malawi Writers’ group in 1969.
Mphande said the group was a forum for young writers to exchange their literary works and offer critiques.
“It inevitably strayed into political discussions, and when the police caught wind of that, that was another area that used to get me into trouble,” Mphande said.
Despite pushback from the law, Mphande persisted and continued to speak up for what he believed in. As he continued his activism in England and the United States, he said he developed a passion for education and teaching people about the social and political issues in the world around them.
In his 78 years, Mphande has lived and learned in Africa, Great Britain and the United States, all while fighting for social justice along the way through direct action and literary works, before becoming the director of the African Languages Program at Ohio State in 1989 — a position he held for 36 years.
Today, Mphande said he sees parallels between his past in South Africa and the United States’ current political administration, which is currently cutting diversity, equity and inclusion programs nationwide. In addition, he said he has concerns about the nation’s current relationship with South Africa.
Mphande was born in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa, in 1947. From 1964-94, the country was under the rule of then-President Hastings Banda, who Mphande described as a dictator.
Banda’s time as president was also during South Africa’s apartheid. It was around this time a young Mphande began protesting against both his country’s dictator and apartheid in the South.
Banda became president in 1966, during which he ruled over a one-party system. In 1971, Banda declared himself “president for life,” according to the Associated Press. During the three decades he governed Malawi, Banda maintained “open and formal ties with apartheid-ruled South Africa and Israel,” while “thousands of political opponents were killed, tortured, jailed without trial or hounded into exile” under his rule.
This was also when Mphande’s arrests began, which continued through his time completing a bachelor’s program in English literature and history of international relations.
“I was viewed as an enemy, because [Banda] was one of the very few African leaders who agreed with the apartheid system,” Mphande said.
Mphande went on to study in England, where he got his master’s degree in applied linguistics at the University of Lancaster in 1979. However, Mphande still fought against apartheid from across the pond by connecting with exiled South African activists who had fled to Britain.
In 1983, Mphande returned to Malawi, where Banda was cracking down on protesters. Then, as Mphande tried to leave the country, he was involved in a car crash, which he personally suspects wasn’t an accident.
The accident caused the death of one of his colleagues and left Mphande himself with broken knees and ribs.
“I had to leave the country on a stretcher,” Mphande said.
In 1985, he came to the United States, determined to earn a Ph.D. in applied linguistics at the University of Texas. There, he discovered the United States had its own share of racial disparities.
During that time, Mphande said he saw the way citizens in Africa and the United States alike can be controlled or misled by a lack of education.
“The oppressive, colonizing powers took advantage of people who were ignorant, so that they could easily sell their distorted philosophies to try and convince Africans that they are inherently inferior,” he said.
Mphande said he wanted to teach people more about global politics and culture, which is what led him to become an educator.
Mphande came to Ohio State in 1989, where he found a Black Studies Department with the potential to grow.
Mphande helped to develop courses within the department that focused on Africa. He said he believes in the importance of teaching African history and languages, and when he first began, Swahili was the only African language available at Ohio State. Now, he’s helped add seven more, including Hausa, Shona, Somali, Swahili, Twi, Yoruba and Zulu.
“When I came here, the only course I could identify at Ohio State that directly related to Africa was a course in geography, so nothing about the people and culture,” Mphande said. “I was interested in having much more robust studies that would include African countries.”
Simone Drake, vice chair of the African American and African Studies Department and professor of English, said Mphande changed the way Black studies was taught, bringing together the history of Black people from African countries and the United States.
“Sometimes, there’s sort of a divide between African American studies and African studies,” Drake said. “[Mphande] seemed really invested in bridging that divide.”
Mphane has also worked to expand the university’s study abroad programs to include South Africa and Zuluand, now working as the director of the study abroad programs to Southern Africa.
Dawn Chisebe, a previous student of Mphande’s and professor of African studies at Ohio Wesleyan University, said Mphande’s work through study abroad programs empowers students’ education and gives them opportunities to expand their worldview — something she said she experienced when she met the first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, with Mphande.
“When [students] are learning from him, they’re learning from someone who is a primary source,” Chisebe said. “He lives and breathes what he teaches.”
In the early 1990s, Mphande spoke out against the disproportionate number of Black soldiers being sent to Iraq, for which he suffered backlash — even being called racist himself.
The Gulf War began in 1990, in which United States troops fought against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command website. Mphande held panels with other professors at New Salem Baptist Church discussing their thoughts on the war and the role of Black soldiers. In 1991, a story about one of these panels was published in The Lantern. Additionally, a letter which called Mphande and two other professors, Professor Horace Newsum and Professor William Nelson, racists, was published in a subsequent edition.
In 1992, as one of the first Black families to move into a Hilliard, Ohio, neighborhood, Mphande’s home was set on fire by white supremacists. In 1996, his car was vandalized with racial slurs and references to hate groups.
Throughout this time, Mphande wrote poetry. He said he started writing in high school, but eventually published four volumes of his work since 1998.
Mphande has also won various literary and arts awards and been featured in multiple poetry collections, textbooks and journals, including The Kenyon Review.
“I write a lot about issues that have to do with the sanctity of life, preservation of the environment, social interactions [and] the fact that everything is interrelated,” Mphande said.
His background in political activism, education, travel and art has given Mphande a unique perspective on modern politics, he said.
“In Zulu, Africa, we have a saying that says ‘I am because we are,’” Mphande said. “In other words, a human being is not an island. You exist because others exist. So, you have always got to be mindful of others, because you have a common destiny.”
Chisebe said Mphande is a true interdisciplinary scholar, and she encourages her own students to seek him out for guidance, which she said he still offers her to this day.
“He is a linguist, a poet, a literary scholar, a historian and someone who has always fought for what is good and just in the world,” Chisbe said.
Drake said Mphande’s global political activism is part of what makes him a distinct and exemplary educator and activist.
“He has been a professor who has been committed to community-engaged work, which is something that you don’t have to do as a professor,” Drake said. “It’s a choice.”
Reflecting on present-day activism on Ohio State’s campus, Mphande said he remembers the feeling of being a young protester. He said students and young people are idealistic and dream about the future in a way that makes protesting and activism particularly effective.
“That’s what is behind most of the young protesters — an expression of what they want tomorrow,” said Mphande. “A student means an idealist. They have their dreams, which is what the idealism is.”
When it comes to today’s political landscape, Mphande said he connects his past activism against the War in Iraq to current rollbacks on DEI.
“The decision to send those people to war should be as broadly based as possible, which means it has to be inclusive,” Mphande said. “This team that is making decisions, should it not be diversified and include all faces of society?”
Mphande said he is also concerned about lasting political and race-relation issues within the United States and Africa. Mphande said the lingering effects of South African apartheid mean there are still wealth and land disparities between white and Black citizens in South Africa.
President Donald Trump and South African-born Elon Musk oppose the South African government’s efforts to decrease this land disparity, calling it “racist” and “hateful” to the white “ethnic minority” in the Feb. 7 executive order “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa.”
Mphande said he believes this attitude is a display of white supremacy, as it’s a way to keep Black South Africans oppressed and continue the apartheid that was supposed to have ended long ago.
“Apartheid ended on the books, but in practice, you still have this separation of white city and Black ghetto,” Mphande said.
Though Mphande sees these glaring issues within the current political landscape, he doesn’t feel completely discouraged, as he said he recognizes the power of protest and revolution.
“Dreams should be about improvement, about having a better tomorrow — that this ought to work tomorrow,” Mphande said. “[Students] are the ones at the height of it. You are making decisions now, but that’s what you want. So, what decisions are you going to make for us?”
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