Operation Sunrise was the name given to a police and military action conducted by the authorities in the Central African protectorate of Nyasaland (now known as Malawi) which started on 3 March 1959, initially to detain and intern 350 individuals who were considered a potential threat to law and order in anticipation of the declaration of a State of Emergency. Although it is sometimes considered to involve only the incidents of 3 March, the Devlin Commission report is clear that it was one of two distinct operations by the security forces, reinforced from outside Nyasaland, involving the arrest and detention members of the Nyasaland African Congress. It involved not only those members of Congress initially arrested, but others arrested and detained without trial in the course of the emergency. The operation was described in some detail in the Devlin Commission report (Colonial Office Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, HMSO, London, 1959) and that account has been amplified by Colonial Office documents not made available to the Devlin Commission.
Background
There had been some sporadic unrest in Nyasaland in the early 1950s, most recently in 1953 when unrest among African tenants of the British Central Africa Company led to the "Cholo riots", and after Nyasaland was forced into the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively) against the wishes of the Nyasaland people, by a campaign of non-violent resistance initiated by the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC). The Cholo riots were more serious: attempts by the British Central Africa Company to increase the rents of tenants, and evict those who resisted this, led to many local people in the Cholo (now Thyolo) District refusing to pay taxes or attend courts, and to riots breaking in August 1953, resulting in eleven dead and seventy-two injured.
However the NAC campaign against Federation was abandoned in early 1954 and the party lost much of its support and, following the Cholo riots, the Nyasaland government agreed to purchase land in Cholo District from the company for resettlement. The protectorate was relatively quiet until, in early 1957, the Nyasaland African Congress revived under a number of young activists, including Henry Chipembere, Kanyama Chiume and the brothers Dunduzu Chisiza and Yatuta Chisiza, who organised Congress as a mass political party and created support for Hastings Banda, a long-term expatriate who had campaigned against Federation, to return to Nyasaland as party leader. The activities of these young activists as they toured the protectorate led to unrest including demonstrations and the intimidation of opponents.
On 6 July 1958, Hastings Banda returned to Nyasaland at the invitation of the activists to lead a movement against Federation and towards independence. Banda, together with some of these lieutenants, toured the country rousing support and the disturbances continued. At the end of 1958, Banda and other NAC leaders attended an All-African People's Conference in Accra, in recently-independent Ghana, and they returned to Nyasaland determined to press for constitutional change. When the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was set up in 1953, provision had been made for the Federal constitution to be reviewed in 1960, including a review of which territories it would include, and Banda wanted to ensure African, and hopefully Congress, majorities on the Nyasaland bodies that would take part in this review. However, when Banda presented the Congress proposals to the governor, Sir Robert Armitage that would have led to withdrawal from the Federation, Armitage refused to accept them, although Banda continued discussions with the governor and leading officials on proposed constitutional changes.
When talks ended in stalemate at the start of January 1959, Chipembere and Chiume led calls to intensify the protest campaign. Their programme proposed disobedience to colonial laws and demonstrations which would lead to arrests, to be followed by protests in favour of those arrested and further arrests of protesters, and the intimidation of, and sometimes assaults on, police and government workers trying to enforce the laws, in an escalatory cycle designed to cause chaos. The disturbances particularly affected four heavily populated districts in the south of the protectorate, including the two largest towns and, by mid-February, Armitage considered that the situation was serious enough to prepare for a State of Emergency throughout Nyasaland.