I write to support all those who are appalled at the impending risk of destruction of the Lake Malawi National Park-due to the proposed water development project by the Southern Region Water Board. I am a Malawian archaeologist, and a former Commissioner for Culture in the Malawi Government. I and various international archaeologists have carried out archaeological research in the southern Lake Malawi area. This area contains the largest concentration of Early and Late Iron Age Archaeological sites of any area in Malawi. It has yielded the oldest (early third century AD) settlements of the earliest agriculturists in the country. One of the settlements was at Nkope, where a type of pottery that archaeologists call Nkope was recovered and Carbon-14 dated to 320 AD. The Nkope site and Nkope pottery are known all over the world. By the ninth century AD, agriculturists in the area began to make Namaso pottery, first recovered at the site of Namaso. While Nkope pottery spread throughout southern and central Malawi, Namaso pottery is unique to the southern Lake Malawi area and it is that uniqueness that made it well known in all of southern Africa. Between the 12th and the fourteenth century, the ancestors of the Chewa people began to arrive in the area and introduced Mawudzu pottery, first recovered at Mawudzu hill, also located in the area. The latest of the Iron Age Malawi potteries is a type of pottery called Nkudzi (misspelt for Nkhudzi) pottery first excavated by British Archaeologist, Ray Inskeep at Nkhudzi Bay also in the area. In short, the area has one of the longest Iron Age pottery sequences known in southern Africa.

Why does the area contain such a rich archaeological heritage? You just have to look at the map of eastern Africa and the position of Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika and Victoria, and read the history of Iron Age migrations of the people who speak Bantu languages from northwest Africa to central, eastern and southern Africa. Malawi is one of two natural roads to reach southern Africa. The other was the eastern side of Lake Malawi. That is why variants of Nkope pottery reached as far south as Zimbabwe.

What do we conclude from this? The abundance of archaeological sites and recent economic developments in the area including the current proposed water development is an indication that the southern Lake Malawi area has always attracted settlers and visitors. In modern times, it has become the biggest tourist destination in the country, and the Lake Malawi National Park and the lake itself are the area’s most conspicuous tourist attractions.

I fear that this project will destroy known and yet to be discovered archaeological sites in this UNESCO inscribed and protected national park. The project should not be allowed to proceed at its current proposed location. There is no shortage of places in the area where this project can be relocated to without disturbing this world heritage site.

Yusuf M. Juwayeyi, PhD.

Professor of Archaeology,

Long Island University, Brooklynn New York.