Rachel Kachaje

Rachel Kachaje (5 May 1958 – 3 September 2020) was a Malawian disability activist. She became Malawi's minister for disability in 2013.

Life Kachaje was born in 1958 in Linga Village in Kasungu District. She lost her ability to walk when she was three due to polio. Her parents could not afford a wheelchair so she was carried to Kanjedza Primary School by her mother or one of her seven siblings. Her father worked for the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation and her mother brewed Kachasu.

She attended Chichiri Secondary in Blantyre after mobility issues meant that she could not exploit the place she had won at HHI Secondary School. At one point she was nearly drowned after she set out to pull herself across a river using the remains of a washed away bridge. She missed out on receiving an honorary degree from Stellenbosch University that was scheduled for December 2020. That years virtual Afrinead conference was dedicated to her memory.

Personal life She married Gibson Kachaje from Nsalu in Lilongwe in 1986.