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David Rubadiri (1930–2018) was a Malawian poet, scholar, and diplomat whose life and writing exemplify the intellectual energy of post-colonial Africa.
Rubadiri was born on July 19, 1930, in Liuli, on the shores of Lake Malawi. He received his early education at King’s College, Budo in Uganda. He later studied at Makerere University, where he emerged as a prominent voice of the Makerere School, a generation that helped shape modern African literature. His academic training continued in the United Kingdom at the University of Bristol and King’s College, Cambridge.
He is best known for the poem “An African Thunderstorm,” an evocative work that uses the imagery of an approaching storm to explore colonial disruption, communal anxiety, and cultural resilience. Beyond poetry, he authored the novel No Bride Price and the play Come to Tea; this demonstrates his versatile engagement with African social realities across genres.
As an academic, Rubadiri taught at the University of Nairobi and the University of Botswana before returning to Malawi to serve as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malawi. He also played a significant diplomatic role as Malawi’s first ambassador to the United Nations. His principled opposition to the authoritarian regime of Hastings Banda forced him into exile for nearly three decades.
Rubadiri died on September 15, 2018, at the age of 88, at Mzuzu Central Hospital in Malawi, following complications from a blood clot after a period of illness.
He is remembered as a foundational voice in East African poetry and a key contributor to African literary modernism.
Poems of David Rubadiri
Stanley Meets Mutesa
Such a time of it they had; The heat of the day The chill of the night And the mosquitoes that followed. Such was the time and They bound for a kingdom.
“Stanley Meets Mutesa” by David Rubadiri narrates the journey of Henry Stanley (born John Rowlands), one of the British explorers who worked for the colonisation of some African countries and their annexation to the British Empire, to the land of King Mutesa of Buganda. It not only echoes in part “The Journey of the Magi” by T. S. Eliot but also resembles it in terms of plot design.
An African Thunderstorm
From the west
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning
Sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing.
“An African Thunderstorm” by David Rubadiri vividly describes the sudden arrival and violent impact of a thunderstorm on a rural African village. The poem also reads as an allegory of colonial intrusion into African societies. It presents the storm as a force of chaos, fear, and disruption, wherein it is a metaphor for colonial intrusion, an overwhelming external power that unsettles communal life and exposes its fragility.
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