Age Isn’t a Problem, Malawi Needs to Move Away from Personality Politics

Malawi appears to be living in a never-ending electoral cycle. The local politics is always about the next elections, as much as it is about politicians always positioning themselves for top government and public positions where the bounties of this peaceful country are shared, away from the majority of its citizens who have to grapple with poor public services on a daily basis. If governance was about elections then Malawi could have been doing very well. But governance is about providing public services for all citizens, regardless of their social-political status. This has not been the case in Malawi – governance in Malawi is about those in power and their cronies.

This is why Malawians are increasingly becoming frustrated of the country’s governance systems, which allow for cronyism, nepotism, tribalism and corruption to flourish. The frustrations can be identified through the calls for federal system of government in the immediate aftermath of 2014 elections. When politicians, especially those from Central and Northern regions felt their respective regions had been left out in Peter Mutharika’s cabinet. The whole issue is based on the understanding that those with access to the public pulse will only develop their home areas and most likely that only those in their circles will enjoy the benefits of the land.

No wonder everyone with time and little resources to spare thinks the most viable option is to start their own political party. As it stands Malawi has over 50 registered political parties. Justin Malewezi could be the only former Vice President who does not ‘own’ a political party. The latest political party could be the current Vice President Saulosi Chilima whose breakaway group from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is gaining momentum – at least among few urban elites and frustrated politicians who have fallen out of favour with DPP.

The whole thing has all the hallmarks of corruption. It is only those that are outside Mutharika’s cabinet that have opted to follow Chilima – and the President himself is on record to have admitted that the Chilima follower are a disgruntled bunch who have been left out of public and government positions. The Vice President has decried what he calls “embarrassing levels” of corruption within his government, just when it suited him to do so.

Invaluably, it is the same old politics at play here – if at all, the Chilima camp have emphasised that Chilima at 45 is much energetic and perhaps has fresher ideas than the 77 years old Peter Mutharika. The age argument has got some traction, Nsanje South West MP, Joseph Chidanti Malunga is reportedly seeking to table a motion in parliament to have presidential age limit to 65 years. I agree with Edge Kanyongolo, Chancellor College Constitutional Law expert who told Weekend Nation newspaper that currently there are no convincing reasons to warrant the age limit.

Though a separate issue, I see those arguing for Chilima’s case through his age in the same right. Those making Chilima’s case need to give Malawians convincing reasons – why is he the man to get Malawi out of its economic nightmare, for example. Surely not age alone. Malawi is where it is today not because of aged or old leaders but because it has had a political system that allows for cronyism, nepotism and tribalism, which inevitably leads to corruption.

Malawi needs a system where people follow politicians and political parties because they agree to certain policy ideas and ideologies. As it is, Malawi politics is all about personalities, which is a recipe for all sorts of ills that have trapped this country in grinding poverty. No wonders MPs in Malawi’s part-time parliament would rather ask for boreholes – never mind tap water – than discussing how to sort-out the perennial electricity crisis in the country. Malawi has opposition parties that are forever eager to disagree and talk dawn everything from the government benches yet they cannot even come up with a shadow budget to show what ideas they have. 2019 elections are about the same old personality politics.

Malawi – 56 Years After Dunduzu K. Chisiza’s “Realities of African Independence”

“Vindictiveness directed at the opposition parties has its nemesis when tables are turned – not to mention the adverse effect of the resultant strife on economic development.” Dunduzu Kaluli Chisiza

In his futuristic 1961 book “Realities of African Independence”, Dunduzu Kaluli Chisiza envisioned some of the problems that newly independent African States would face. He mentioned four specific problems: 1) political, 2) leadership, 3) social and 4) economic. The book was entirely set out to discuss problems that independent African countries would have to deal with. I think it is a shame that this book is not a recommended reading in schools and colleges, even more so that the book is currently out of print.

I am saying this because Chisiza’s fears of independent African countries have come to pass, certainly for Malawi. It is through reading this book that one appreciates political and leadership problems faced today, in Malawi and elsewhere on the continent. To make my point, I will concentrate on political and leadership problems that Chisiza identified, in part because I think these two problems are key to socio-political and economic problems that have trapped so many African countries in poverty.

By political problems Chisiza did not mean wars or other forms of insurgency. He meant personalised politics that stifle national development, politics that promote narrow personal interests at the expense of wider national interests. Chisiza argued that at the centre of the political problems was the relationship between government and opposition parties. He noticed that this was “indicated by such symptoms as intolerance on the part of governing parties, a tendency towards ‘strong-man’ governments, indulgence in smear campaigns and political instability.”

Anyone who pays attention to Malawi politics would agree that after 53 years of independence Malawi is still mired in the political mess that Chisiza feared. Party politics is prioritised over governance – it is always a contest between opposition and the incumbency while the rest of the country spectates. The caveat here is that those in the opposition often have no better option either; it is just that it is not they with the public purse at that given time – Malawi is stuck in this political vicious circle.

Within the independent African states, Chisiza feared what he called leadership of “rewarding friends and punishing foes” at the expense of greater public good. He noted:

“It is deplorable for leaders to promote faithful party members into positions for which they have not necessary skill or ability, above the heads of those who posses it. This leads not only to inefficiency but to downright corruption.”

Most of the problems facing Malawi today emanate from party politics Chisiza warned about. Corruption and politics of patronage are a deadly combination because those involved in malpractice, such as corruption do so with impunity – corruption cases like cashgate has taught Malawians this lesson. Politics attract not patriots and people ready to serve their nation but opportunists looking to get closer to power for personal gains.

National events are politicised so the ruling party can benefit from public resources being thrown around for a national event. On its 53^rd independence Malawi government decided to celebrate the anniversary under the theme “thanking God for a season of plenty.” The theme clearly points to the relatively good harvest in the last harvesting season and the ruling party shamelessly makes sure that it takes at least some credit for it, when in fact Malawians should be question whether the issue of food security should remain the defining political issue, 53 years after independence.

There is no space for policy issues; it is always about politics, not governance and not Malawi as a notion but political party. Political party colours are more prominent during national events than the national flag. This is a defining shame of Malawi’s democratic era.

Academic studies with findings unacceptable to the incumbency is met with brutal rejection, indignation and intimidation from the government and ruling party zealots; civil society organisations that dare question the status quo are vilified by the government in equal measure. Every political party in power has its useful youth wing whose duty is not national service but to intimidate opposition and silence critical voices.

Unfortunately, you cannot do away with these problems through the ballot – the solution is not choosing one party or individual over the other. This is because, as Chisiza observed the cause of these problems is the friction between the incumbency and the opposition – elections only means the two opposites swapping sides and the motivation of being in power remains the same: exploiting the public purse. They hold it so dearly that anyone who dare point out flaws in the governance system is seen as a threat.

The political and leadership problems that Chisiza so ably identified have turned Malawi into a corruption heaven where folks prefer to advance narrow self interests than promoting broader national interests; a country where those in the positions of power and their cronies loot from the public coffers with impunity.

Alcohol and Mental Health in Malawi

Sometimes you get a feeling that Malawi is a country in a permanent state of socio-political and economic crisis; from newspaper headlines, political speeches to random chats on social media one wonders how the inhabitants of this peaceful beautiful country get-by day-by-day. The problem is, as I have argued before, because Malawi leaders always opt for quick but temporary fixes for complicated problems that seem popular at the time.

In short, every crisis in Malawi has to address an immediate political concern for the incumbency and that politics do not go beyond the next election day in the end Malawi has become a state of short-term fixes and permanent crises. Malawi needs leaders that are prepared to set aside their political ambitions and make difficult, even unpopular decisions, to lead the country in the right direction – a leader guides the flock and not the other way round.

I reflected on this as I read recent media report that Minister of Industry recently told members of parliament (as a response to a member’s question) that his ministry has shutdown 13 liquor manufacturers whose liquor were packaged in plastic bottles and sachets—in other words cheap, portable and readily available alcoholic drinks on the market.

The MPs’ query about the availability of the said product on the market was based on the fact that liquor, packaged in sachets and plastic bottles is banned in Malawi. According to the report, the minister assured the MP asking the question that the ban is still in force and that the liquor on the market is smuggled into the country. The minister is reported to have said that the basis of banning the alcohol was to “protect children who are future leaders”.

It is true, children, just like all vulnerable people in society have to be protected and one of the government’s foremost prerogatives it to protect its citizens such as these. Yet, by now the government should have known that shutting down liquor manufacturers is not enough because, let us not kid ourselves here, where there’s demand someone will definitely supply, no matter what it takes. In fact, making it illegal only drives the business underground making it hard for the government to monitor or regulate the trade.

The government needs to address the root cause of the problem. This is not easy, but this is why the government needs to make tough, even unpopular decisions to protect its citizens majority of whom are its “future leaders.” One wonders if the government has ever attempted to understand why out of the sudden alcoholic sachets have found a lucrative market among Malawian (mostly urban) youths?

Without understanding this what we are left with are try-and-error “solutions”, which is what is failing like the current ban. It is easy to blame sachets and plastic bottles because these are cheap and readily available for the most youths and poor Malawians; it is easy to discuss, even ban cheap alcohol because those who consume it are mostly visible on the streets – they don’t drive, they can’t afford taxis so they are a “nuisance” to the public but the alcohol problem is beyond sachets and plastic bottles, alcohol is slowly but surely becoming a national crisis in Malawi and this has an impact on the country’s mental health.

World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mental health as: “a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”

WHO’s definition of health, according to its constitution, says: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.””

I am not an expert on mental health issues, but you do not need to be one to know that based on these definitions, mental health is a silent yet a crucial issue in Malawi. Any honest Malawian would agree that these definitions have a reflection on Malawi, as a society. The problem of alcohol, in whatever form the alcohol is sold and consumed, needs to be taken seriously. Malawians cannot afford to play politics of quick fixes to this complex issue – it is a difficult one but no one said having a functioning society should be an easy job.

How Malawi’s Leaders Keep Choosing Optics Over Justice

Malawi’s leaders have perfected the politics of evasion. Faced with complex national problems, they reach for quick fixes that seem decisive but solve nothing, much like bandaging a boil instead of treating the underlying infection. Problems are not confronted; they are wished away. Crisis after crisis, Malawi survives not through resolution but through delay. The result is a country permanently suspended between emergency and exhaustion, always living to fight another day.

Recent events expose this failure with brutal clarity. First came the barbaric killings of people with albinism for their body parts. Then, in the middle of a collapsing economy, the University of Malawi Council announced a steep hike in tuition fees. Predictably, students protested across the university’s four colleges. Predictably, the state responded with force, clashes with police, destruction of property at Chancellor College, and the closure of the campus.

These are very different crises. But the political response to both reveals the same governing instinct: suppress the symptoms, manage the outrage, and move on.

Punishment Without Justice

Public debate on the killings of people with albinism has been reduced to one loud demand: harsher punishment. Calls for the death penalty have dominated social media, rallies, and parliamentary corridors. A ruling party MP, Boni Kalindo, even organised a “naked” protest to pressure Parliament into legislating capital punishment. Parliament responded by amending the Penal Code to impose life imprisonment.

This approach may satisfy public anger, but it is intellectually lazy and politically dishonest. These killings are not acts of madness; they are acts of commerce. People with albinism are murdered because their body parts are believed to have market value in ritual practices. Where there is demand, supply will follow. No sentence, death, or life will stop a trade driven by belief, money, and desperation.

Yet the state refuses to ask the most dangerous question of all: who is buying these body parts? When someone is arrested with bones, the public debates whether the sentence is long enough, not whether the crime was committed, who profits from it, or why these networks remain intact. Anger replaces investigation. Vengeance replaces strategy.

If Malawi were serious about protecting people with albinism, it would focus less on symbolic punishment and more on dismantling the demand side of the trade, through intelligence-led policing, regional investigations, and confronting the political and economic interests that keep these networks alive. But that kind of work is slow, difficult, and politically unrewarding. So it is avoided.

Education as a Privilege, Not a Right

The same cowardice defines the university fees crisis. The standoff between students and the University Council is not fundamentally about MK400,000 versus MK100,000. It is about whether higher education in Malawi is a public good or a private privilege.

Even at lower fees, thousands of students would still be locked out of university because their families are poor. Malawi’s leaders, many of whom benefited from heavily subsidised public education, now preside over a system that quietly excludes the very people it claims to uplift.

This is not a new problem. For years, the media has reported rising dropout rates due to unaffordable fees. Instead of structural reform, the state has offered theatrical interventions: ordering students back to campus, promising temporary funding, and issuing statements. The boil was covered. The infection spread.

Today, the crisis has returned in a new form, more explosive and more violent.

A Crisis of Leadership, Not Events

What links the killings of people with albinism and the university fees standoff is not a coincidence; it is a governance failure. Malawi is ruled by leaders who fear long-term solutions because they do not fit into election cycles. They prefer gestures over justice, punishment over prevention, force over dialogue.

Activism must reject this politics of distraction. Malawi does not lack laws; it lacks courage. It does not lack faith; it lacks accountability. Until the country demands leadership that confronts root causes rather than manages outrage, crises will continue to multiply, and the most vulnerable will continue to pay the price.

Bandaging boils may stop the bleeding for a moment. But untreated infections eventually kill.

Africa Needs a Collective Thinking Space

It has become very common in the increasingly narrow global sphere to hear people correcting one another that Africa is not a country. Indeed, Africa is a continent with 50 plus countries; countries with distinct cultural traditions, regional and national dialects. There are estimated 1,500 – 2,000 languages spoken in Africa. These are important issues if one wants to fully understand Africa, let alone making decisions and/ or conclusion about it.

Yet, as an African from Malawi, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, I understand that apart from the above-pointed issues, there is also a lot that Africans have in common. In fact, the stated issues that make-up African continent are just as true within African countries. My own country, with estimated population of 16 million people has more than 12 tribes and more then 15 languages are spoken. Yet it is called it a country.

I recently reflected on this while attending Re:publica conference in Berlin, Germany along with my fellow African political bloggers, blogging at Africablogging.org and a group of wonderful Africans working with Global Innovation Gathering (GIG). We had fun; even though some of us – Africa Blogging and GIG members were meeting for the first time.

Discussions with these fellow patriotic young Africans over meals and in our hotel rooms for a week we were in Berlin got me thinking: “so Africa is a country after all.” African countries have a lot in common in terms of its socioeconomic and political make-up. I am not just talking about our shared colonial and pre-colonial period but contemporary Africa as well. Today what happens in one African country is most likely to replicate itself elsewhere.

And here is where my general reflection on Re:publica lay. I found the conference a huge collective thinking space where like-minded people converge, not just to share ideas but also to inspire each other. The diversity of a largely nerdy yet sociable group of presenters and participants at the conference was a true reflection of our own group – Africa Blogging and GIG.

Here I realised that the Re:publica-type of gathering is something that Africa needs – in Africa we need what I call “collective thinking space.” Yes, the internet has opened up discursive platforms and spaces such as blogs, Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter etc. These decentralised networks have opened up a useful cross-boarder and trans-national interactions yet we know discussions and reflections on these spaces are very random and often lack focus, something the Re:publica handled extraordinary well.

After all, internet shutdowns are becoming common in Africa. Telecommunication companies in Africa, in pursuit of favourable deals and operating conditions are colluding with African governments, eager to strengthen their hold on power, to shutdown social media whenever they feel their grip on power is threatened.

As pointed out earlier, what happens in one African country is likely to reappear in another country. At the time of writing, Ugandan government was at pains trying to limit social media use in the country as Yoweri Museveni was being sworn in following elections, which the country’s opposition are disputing. This trend was a topic of discussion by members of Africa Blogging at the Re:publica.

Apart from individual presentations, which I hugely benefited from, as a blogger, and an academic, Re:publica has convinced me that as great as the online spaces are, they are insufficient and they are not a substitute to the old-fashioned physical gathering of like minded people determined to get things done. Spaces like Re:publica may just be what young generation of Africa needs, in order to shape its socioeconomic and political feature.

Reading Malawi Politics Through Joyce Banda’s First Hundred Days in Office

President Joyce Banda has just celebrated 100 days in office, a very short period for any tangible assessment on her leadership. And the media analysis of the event reflected this fact – it had very little to say about Banda’s policies other than obvious comparisons with her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika.

Such comparisons are inevitable and of course happen all over the world. Yet in Malawi’s case such limitations also reflects a specific issue: the lack of any significant party policies and ideological fault-lines on the local political landscape. This inevitably leads to personalised politics, and the electorate are forced to try and distinguish between a haze of politicians to determine which way to vote.

Like the two preceding administrations since Malawi’s return to democracy in 1994, the current regime does not really have any policies to speak of. It is difficult if not impossible to see what President Banda’s administration will do next after “correcting” all the wrongs of the Mutharika administration.

A lack of a clear policy line is an enduring feature of Malawi politics, decisions are made on the go. A political party or any candidate in Malawi wins elections without any campaign manifesto where one ought to set out their policies.

It is from this background that the dominating opinion among analysts is that President Banda has the 2014 elections to lose.

The view is that it works to her advantage that she is not a Mutharika and that she managed to distance herself from the Mutharika regime when it lost all popularity – nothing to do with what she will do or will not do for Malawi. In 2004 former president Bakili Muluzi successfully campaigned for Mutharika largely on the grounds that Mutharika was not John Tembo – a remnant of Kamuzu Banda’s 31 years of brutal dictatorship.

Like all the former presidents before her, President Banda has started well. Insofar as praises go, she has had them in abundance, at home and abroad. All this for her reversal of Muthaika’s unpopular and sometimes catastrophic policies that set him at odds with influential donors and the international community in general.

Yet, President Banda has done this by default: she needed to gain the confidence of the donor community in order to revamp a faltering economy she inherited from Mutharika. Credit to her for knowing what was needed, and she has done it with some level of success: fuel queues that epitomised Mutharika’s last months in office have disappeared, electricity outages have somewhat eased and foreign currency is increasingly available via official outlets.

President Banda like anyone in her position would need time and space to adjust, especially that her ascent to the highest office was incidental (not necessarily accidental as she was a vice president). Yet it is also important to remember that president Banda leads her own political party that should have had national policies.

In short, the first 100 days of President Banda have shown that the backbone of the Malawi politics is still intact – politics and the running of government in the country is business as usual. There are more continuities and less change.

Currently, the most visible feature of local politicians are two opposing sudes , fearlessly facing each other: Mutharika’s apologists at one end and Banda’s cheerleaders on the other. Banda has played her cards carefully, nonetheless. She has appointed into her cabinet some of the political heavyweights that would have formed a formidable opposition to her regime. This has severely weakened the opposition.

Apart from Mutharika’s Democractic Progressive Party all the political parties represented in parliament are more or less working with President Banda. In Malawian politics this makes it nearly impossible that all those political parties working with the incumbent will be preparing for the 2014 elections against Banda’s People’s Party. Meanwhile, president Banda has her sights on 2014 elections. While it is not a foregone conclusion, it has to be said that so far President Banda has the 2014 presidential election to lose.