David Rubadiri

David Rubadiri was a Malawian poet, academic, and diplomat. He was born on July 19, 1930 in Liuli, British Tanganyika (now Tanzania) to Malawian parents. He was educated in Uganda at King’s College, Budo from 1941 to 1950 and at Makerere University in Kampala from 1952 to 1956. After graduating from Makerere University, Rubadiri taught literature, history, and geography at Dedza Secondary School in Malawi before attending King’s College, Cambridge from 1960 to 1962, earning a master’s degree in English literature. He then served as the principal of Soche Hill College in Blantyre, Malawi and was appointed as the first Malawian ambassador to the United States and the United Nations in 1964 after Malawi gained independence from British rule. Rubadiri resigned in 1965 after breaking with President Hastings Banda and was exiled from Malawi, returning to Uganda to teach at Makerere University from 1968 to 1975. He was exiled from Uganda after Idi Amin’s rise to power and fled to Kenya, teaching at the University of Nairobi from 1976 to 1984. In 1984, Rubadiri moved to Botswana to teach at the University of Botswana where he also served as the dean of the Languages and Social Sciences Education Department. After Banda’s defeat in the 1994 Malawian presidential election, Rubadiri returned to Malawi and was reappointed as ambassador to the United Nations. He was named vice-chancellor of the University of Malawi in 2000. Throughout his career, Rubadiri was a prolific writer, publishing his poems in poetry anthologies and literary magazines such as Transition, Black Orpheus and Présence Africaine. He also published a play, Come To Tea, in 1965 and one novel, No Bride Price, in 1967. Rubadiri died on September 15, 2018.