Born in Usisya Village, Nkhata Bay in 1930, Daih achieved the highest level of education possible at Bandawe Presbyterian Mission School, and trained as a medical assistant for 3 years in Zomba during the 1940s. Raised for most of his life by his mother Maria in Nkhata Bay and highly educated, Daih didn't consider becoming a miner like his father. His son Gilead reflected in June 2014, “he was trained - he had a profession, he was in a class above being a miner.” On completing the course in Zomba, he migrated south to work in Cape Town in 1951, having heard of a job through word of mouth. In contrast to migrants in the 1930s who had to walk to South Africa, by the 1950s the railways had become an easy and affordable means of travelling. Migrants would often travel independently or in small groups of two or three. Whilst his father had walked over 2,000 miles to reach South Africa, Daih travelled on his own by train, using the money his father had sent home to pay for the fare. At the same time though, just like his father, Daih did not have an identification certificate, and instead got a temporary pass once he was in South Africa.
Before travelling south, Daih married Melrin in 1948. Also from Usisya, together the young couple had two children, Mala (born in 1948) and Maina (born in 1950) before Daih left. Melrin came to South Africa in 1952, but did not join Daih in Cape Town. She instead lived with his father Nkhunda in Daveyton, because of the “better family network” and the fact that Cape Town was “a tough place to be”. Gilead and Jegger were born in Daveytown in 1955 and 1958 respectively.
In Cape Town, Daih worked for three years as a hospital lab assistant, periodically returning via train to Malawi. He had a flat of his own in the District 6 area of the city and socialised with other Malawians from Usisya. This self-supporting group included Nebert Thindwa, a shop assistant and Mnkhowo Nyasulu, a labourer, among others. They had all travelled to Cape Town by train, joining others who were already in town. One such individual was the famous trade unionist, Clements Kadalie, who Daih knew personally but, by this point, was also very old. Settled in Cape Town Daih, like many Malawians, became a consistent suit wearer – a tradition he picked up from the hospital. Like his father, Daih would “wear suits all the time”. “They took after the British - the suit and tie, you couldn't go to a meeting without a tie.”
It was whilst in Cape Town that Daih “got a calling” and become a follower of the Watch Tower movement. Converted by an Israeli doctor who worked with him at the hospital Daih became “a firm believer” – much to the consternation of his father. One of his close friends Nebert Thindwa from Usisya, was converted alongside him, but no other Malawians joined them in transferring to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
After 3 years working at the hospital Daih left his job as a medical assistant to concentrate on his church work. Funded by the American Jehovah's Witness Mission in Cape Town, he trained as a missionary for the following 6 years.
Melrin and their children returned to Usisya in 1959, to attain a good education and avoid the crime that was associated with urban living. The young family, with Daih still in Cape Town, lived with Daih’s mother and grandmother in Usisya – and during this period it was the women “who kept the family”.
Living in Apartheid South Africa “was difficult for them - it was difficult for every black person...” Returning to Banda's Malawi however was a “similar situation, but I think living under Hasting's Banda was worse. Here they were living under Apartheid, OK there were restrictions in terms of they couldn't move, they couldn't go to the schools they wanted to, they couldn't go to the same hospitals, but at least they were free to do everything else. In Malawi they couldn't talk, it was a real dictatorship.”
In 1960, Daih returned to Malawi as a Jehovah's Witness missionary. Though the movement “was well established, it was run mainly by Americans at that time, so he was one of perhaps the first indigenous Malawians to be head of the province.” Daih was based in Blantyre at the Jehovah's Witness head quarters run by the long-serving American, Mr Vigo, and was constantly busy translating English works into Tumbuka, preaching, and corresponding across the globe - most notably with Jehovah's Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York where the movement was based.
Though based in Blantyre, Daih “was head of the church in one of the provinces - if you are the head you don't stay in one place. One week you are here, the next you are there, so they move around.” As area supervisor of a province, Daih was known as ‘mtumiki wa dela’, literally translated as someone who serves the region. Gilead reflected that “he was a very good preacher.”
After a number of successful years, Mr Vigo had arranged for Daih “to go to the United States and train in international law, so that when he came back he could be head of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Malawi.” The banning of the movement in 1966 however meant that instead both Daih and Melrin had to flee the country. “They went to Zambia first and then Mozambique. There was actually a whole nation of Jehovah's Witnesses, so they ran into Zambia and stayed in some camps, refugee camps - so he was looking after them in the refugee camps. Later on they came back to Malawi, in 1969 for about a year or so, and then the persecution started again and then they went to Mozambique - again they stayed in refugee camps.”
Jehovah's Witnesses “would be beaten up, killed - it was bad. They had what you call the Youth League, so they had people persecuting people. That time in Malawi it was pretty bad - it required you to be an automatic member of the party. So you know Jehovah's Witnesses don't allow you to associate with politics, so they were seen to be anti-party, that's why they were persecuted.”
“Nobody beat them [Daih or Melrin] as such, but there were times when they would come in and they would herd out all the Jehovah's Witnesses and try and force them to change, to reconvert them to whatever church and if they refused they would put you into the water, into the lake or the river. So there were some bad things that happened.”
“If you learn the old history of Malawi, it was quite bad.” This only ceased when Gilead “was at university at the time, I think around 1978, that's when there was a lot of international pressure on Hastings Banda - you can't treat your people like that, so some people came back.”
Daih and Melrin came back to Malawi in 1980 - having been in Mozambique for a decade. For all this time they were staying in camps, receiving money from Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States.
Daih was a man of the world – “he had got a good outlook of the world - it was beyond the local sphere. He learnt a lot through his travels.” Whilst abroad he learnt to speak Afrikaans and Xhosa.
Nevertheless, local tribal authority remained important to Daih – “people were still organised in terms of the hierarchy of the tribe - in that sense that is how people organise themselves, get in line and set the rules.” The role of chief however, “wasn't for him. When he retired and returned to the village, people tried to make him chief and he said no, he didn't like it. Interestingly though he was still involved in some way, because if people wanted advice they would still come to him for advice, so he was still involved. The other reason is that if you remember, if you are a Jehovah's Witness they renounce what you call the earthly things - like being the tribal chief which is ungodly, if you like.”
In some ways, this was typical of many men of Daih's generation. The emigration of large numbers of men “didn't remove power, but it did remove the best minds so to speak...leaders are people who would have mind to go to South Africa, so it was those natural leaders who went away...it wasn't everyone that left, there were a significant number that stayed behind.”
What were the advantages of South Africa? “It was simple - that was where the better life was. Malawi at the time there was nothing, literally nothing, so there were some people who had been to South Africa earlier, they returned and people could see oh dammit, if you go there oh, ok I'll also go." Wealth was important for "a good living and a good life - higher status as well, if you're wealthy you've got higher status and they could educate their children. My family, they came from missionary schools, my grandfather went to Livingstonia, my father went to Bandawe - so for them that was a tradition too, to be able to afford to send their children to go to school, and the only way they could do that was come here and work." Education "was the only way you could advance yourself - and it wasn't just about knowledge that was a ladder to a better life.”
All Daih’s children were university educated - Gilead went on to university in 1980 training as an engineer, after which he worked for Anglo-American’s sugar plantation in Malawi for 3 years after which he was transferred to work on Anglo’s mining interests in South Africa. Mala is currently an astrophysics lecturer at Imperial College London, both Maina and Jegger live in the US, a doctor and economist respectively.
