Blantyre & the Southern Region

The southern lakeshore and the Shire valley have long been farmed, and in the nineteenth century they lay on the routes by which slaves and ivory were carried to the Indian Ocean coast. Yao chiefs, who moved in from what is now Mozambique, became powerful traders along the lake's southern end and adopted Islam from their Swahili partners. David Livingstone travelled up the Shire in 1859, and his reports brought Scottish missionaries: the Free Church's first Livingstonia mission was set up at Cape Maclear in 1875, and the Church of Scotland founded Blantyre, named after Livingstone's birthplace, in 1876.

The African Lakes Company made Blantyre its trading base, and Zomba became the seat of the British protectorate in the 1890s. European planters took land in the Shire Highlands for coffee, then tobacco and tea, relying on tenant labour, and Lomwe migrants from Mozambique came to work the estates. In 1915 John Chilembwe, a Baptist minister trained in the United States, led an uprising from his church at Mbombwe against the estate system and wartime recruitment; it was crushed and he was killed, but he is now a national hero.

Zomba remained the capital until Hastings Banda moved it to Lilongwe in 1975, and Blantyre stayed the country's business centre. Since democracy returned in 1994, the south has produced several presidents, including Bakili Muluzi, Malawi's first Muslim president, and the Lomwe brothers Bingu and Peter Mutharika from Thyolo. Cyclone Freddy in 2023 killed more than a thousand people in Malawi, with Blantyre hardest hit and Phalombe, Mulanje, Chikwawa and Nsanje also badly affected.

The south is an ethnically mixed region. The Yao of Mangochi, Machinga and the lake's southern shores are largely Muslim, and mosques, Friday prayers and Islamic schools are part of lakeshore life, and Ramadan and Eid shape the calendar. The Lomwe, prominent in Mulanje, Thyolo and Zomba, moved in from Mozambique from the late nineteenth century. The Mang'anja and Sena live in the lower Shire valley, and Chichewa is the common language of the cities.

Blantyre is the home of Malawi's established churches: the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian's Blantyre Synod, Catholic parishes and a flourishing range of Pentecostal congregations. Malawian music, heard in Blantyre's bars and clubs, mixes local styles with influences brought back by migrant workers from South Africa. Zomba is Malawi's intellectual town, home to Chancellor College of the University of Malawi.

About 7.8 million people live in the Southern Region, the largest share of any region. Blantyre, with about 800,000 people, is Malawi's commercial and industrial city, joined to its neighbour Limbe along a busy corridor; Zomba is the old capital, and Mangochi, Liwonde, Balaka, Mulanje and Nsanje are the other main towns.

The south is Malawi's tea country. Estates in Thyolo and Mulanje have grown tea for more than a century, and the Illovo sugar estate at Nchalo is the main employer in the lower Shire valley. Blantyre has breweries, manufacturing and the headquarters of many of Malawi's banks and companies. Smallholders farm small plots across the Shire Highlands.

Daily life in Blantyre runs from crowded minibus stages at dawn to the markets at Limbe and the city centre, while tea pickers work the estates from early morning. The legacy of Cyclone Freddy, deforestation on the hills, frequent flooding in the lower Shire and the rising cost of living are the pressing issues.

Nsima of maize flour with ndiwo, a relish of beans, leaves, fish or meat, is the daily meal here as elsewhere, but the south's lake and rivers add variety. At Mangochi and Cape Maclear, chambo tilapia is grilled or fried whole and usipa, the lake's tiny silver fish, is sun-dried on the beaches.

The Shire Highlands grow much of Malawi's tea, on estates around Thyolo and Mulanje planted since the early twentieth century. The Zomba Plateau is known for its trout farm and for strawberries and other berries grown for local sale. Roasted maize is a street snack in Blantyre.

Blantyre is home to Malawi's Carlsberg brewery, which produces the country's familiar "Green" lager, and to production of chibuku, the commercial sorghum beer. Thobwa, a sweet, lightly fermented maize drink, is made in the villages.

Blantyre's sights are its mission history: the Church of St Michael and All Angels, built of local brick between 1888 and 1891 to the design of a missionary with no formal architectural training, and Mandala House, the African Lakes Company's old headquarters. Zomba, an hour north, keeps colonial buildings and a large market below the Zomba Plateau, where a road climbs through pine forest to the Mulunguzi dam, waterfalls and viewpoints. Southeast of Blantyre, Mount Mulanje rises from the tea estates of Thyolo and Mulanje to Sapitwa peak, with multi-day hikes between mountain huts, waterfalls and pools, and the endemic Mulanje cedar.

The lake's southern end is anchored by Cape Maclear and Lake Malawi National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site protecting the shore and islands around the Nankumba peninsula, where snorkellers and divers see hundreds of species of cichlid; the graves of the early missionaries lie near the village of Chembe. Mangochi, on the Shire River near the lake's southern end, has the Lake Malawi Museum.

Down the Shire, Liwonde National Park, a major safari park, is managed by African Parks, with boat trips among hippos, crocodiles and elephants and reintroduced black rhino, lion and cheetah. Further south, in the hot lower valley, Majete Wildlife Reserve has been restocked since 2003 and now holds the Big Five, and Lengwe National Park and the Elephant Marsh lie near the Mozambican border.