Malawi at 50: Song & Dance, Tears & Laughter

These students had fun composing songs and dances improptu

In June this year I accompanied a team of educationists visiting a school in the eastern part of Dedza. I observed a Standard 4 Expressive Arts lesson in which students composed and enacted an impromptu song and dance. I would have thought this impossible, but not the students, nor their teacher.

It was clear from the expressions on the students’ faces that they enjoyed the lesson. The absence of a larger social meaning in the activity was more of a fault with the curriculum design than with the teacher’s purpose for the lesson. The lesson had achieved its purpose by giving students an opportunity to express their artistic skills in composing, singing ad dancing.

The children in this school came from a remote  part of Malawi. They were using a powerful medium of expression and knowledge-making. Although such performances of theatre, song and dance have become universal ways of disseminating what has come to be described as “civic education”, they also serve as a way through which communities engage and interact with social change. Communities use such performances to talk to authorities, subvert unequal power relations, and celebrate a vibrance and vitality that is easily missed in the top-down, one-way discourse of officialdom.

While Malawian artists have exploited these forms of expression in music, poetry, film, painting, and pottery, among others, aid workers and government departments have also used these art forms to disseminate civic information and development messages. The comedy duo of Chindime and Samalani  appear at public functions, on TV and in radio sketches to make Malawians laugh while conveying public service messages. Sadly, Samalani, real name Elias Chimbalu, passed away at the end of June. He was aged 40. Chindime ndi Samalani perfected the art of theatre for development in an arena whose other great performers include The Story Workshop, Timveni Arts,  and Theatre for a Change.

The current sensation on the Malawian music front this year has been Lawi. With Francis Phiri as his real name, Lawi adopted his nickname from ‘Malawi’ (Lawi singular, Malawi plural). The genius of Lawi’s music is expressed in the everyday persona whose mass collectivity accumulates into the many flames that shine the Malawian path.

His song Amaona kuchedwa burst onto the scene early this year, and has enjoyed playtime on practically every radio station, entertainment joint, engagement parties and weddings. But it is his other songs that capture the warm heart of Africa that is Malawi in a range of childhood memories, images of the capital city Lilongwe, and the beauty of rural livelihoods. Lawi’s golden voice has charmed the Malawian ear in a way no other musician of his Afro-soul genre has done in recent memory. His is a phenomenal  addition to a tradition trailblazed by Wambali Mkandawire three decades ago.

In poetry, there is a new generation of performers who have taken over the mantle from the generation that fought the one party dictatorship. That generation was represented by scholar poets such as David Rubadiri, Felix Mnthali, Jack Mapanje, Steve Chimombo, Frank Chipasula, among others. They mostly wrote in English and taught in universities. Today the poetry that is telling the Malawian story is in Chichewa, and is performed by young poets. Many of them follow Benedicto Wokomaatani Malunga in intonation and voice deflection, in deference to a poet who pioneered a genre.

As was with the earlier generation, there are still few women poets, but they pack an intellectual punch. Ovixlexla Bunya is a multi-talented artist who dabbles in TV, poetry and is also a student of philosophy. Days before the general elections on 20^th May she released a recorded Chichewa poem that subtly laid bare the shenanigans of the major political parties that were contesting. Titled after a campaign slogan, ‘Dzuka, Malawi, Dzuka’ (Wake up, Malawi, Wake up), it is a rapid-fire narrative crafted in a powerful, moving lexicon that brings sobriety to the inebriation of blind partisanship.

Ovixlexla Bunya, poet, artist, TV personality

Malawian artists tell all. They have seen governments come and go. They have given artistic interpretation to scandal, crime and vice. They will continue reflecting the kind of society Malawi is. They will keep imagining and re-imagining the future. They will tell more Malawian stories through song and dance, tears and laughter. That is why the arts and the humanities need to continue being an integral part of the school curriculum from primary through to university, including teacher education.

* A version of this post first appeared as an article under a different title in The Malawi News of Saturday 26th July, 2014.

University education and the crisis of leadership in Malawi

Upon attaining independence, African countries’ expectations were that universities would be the primary institutions to produce leaders who would propel their countries to prosperity. According to Ghanaian scholar Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr, Africans expected their universities to build capacity “to develop and manage their resources, alleviate the poverty of the majority of their people, and close the gap between them and the developed world.” African countries hoped that universities would achieve these goals by providing a “home-grown leadership in areas in need of rapid material and social development.” The way to think of these goals was through what Sawyerr calls a “developmental university”, an institution of higher learning that was expected to contribute to a country’s development.

Five decades since independence, what have African universities contributed to the leadership of their respective countries? In this article, we will turn this question onto the Malawian leadership landscape and assess the extent to which our universities have produced, or failed to, the kind of leadership Malawians have always desired. Regardless of the fact that none of the four presidents Malawi has had thus far has been a product of a Malawian university, graduates from our institutions of higher learning are in various leadership positions in the public and private sectors. We discuss why the universities have fallen short of expectations, and what solutions are being suggested by some of Africa’s most prominent intellectuals.

Part of the Chancellor College campus, University of Malawi

As far as educating a new generation of Africans, Sawyerr argues that African universities have succeeded in fulfilling some of these expectations. He says had it not been for these universities, it is hard to imagine where African countries would have been today. But while African universities have made remarkable contributions to the addressing of African problems, these institutions have also failed their respective countries, particularly in the area of leadership both in the public sector as well as in the private sector. The causes of the failures are to be found in the political economy of dominant global ideology, within the institutions themselves, and in the political leadership of African countries.

Sawyerr has discussed the failures of the African university in the broader context of the global influence exercised by international financial institutions and their neoliberal prescriptions (“Challenges Facing African Universities: Selected Issues”, African Studies Review, Vol 47 No 1, 2004). He singles out the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s, which he calls the “lost decade,” for causing “enormous social costs, including the deindustrialization of national economies and the substantial loss of national control over economic and social policymaking.

Professor Thandika Mkandawire, a world-renowned Malawian development economist, has also written extensively on this very topic. He has argued that the anti-tertiary education policies that the World Bank adopted, and has since disavowed, robbed African countries of opportunities to educate a professional class of technocrats. The structural problems African economies experience today have their origins in that era of missed opportunities.  

The death of 'Intellectualism' in African universities

In a 2003 lecture given at the University of Nairobi, Professor Ali Mazrui decried the death of “intellectualism” in the African university. He argued that for a university to help develop its society, first the society has to help develop the university. He identified three crucial relationships that mediated the role of the university and its dealings with the wider world: political distance from the state, cultural closeness to the society, and intellectual links to wider scholarly and scientific values. He argued that it was possible for a university to be funded by the state and still maintain its political distance, as is the case in North America, Europe and elsewhere. He cited the example of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki whom he said had surrendered his chancellorship of six public universities.

Mazrui said African universities were “colonial in origin and disproportionately European in traditions,” adding “African universities are the major instruments and vehicles of cultural westernization on the continent.” This was where the African university faced its most formidable challenge in its attempt to be of relevance to its society (“Towards Re-africanizing African Universities: Who Killed Intellectualism in the Post Colonial Era?” Lecture given at the University of Nairobi, published in Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, Vol 2 No 3&4, 2003).

In a more recent lecture, which we discussed at length in The Lamp (September-October 2011), Ugandan intellectual Professor Mahmood Mamdani echoed Mazrui’s characterization of the African university. Mamdani said the Western university system on which African universities modeled themselves was out of touch with African problems. He said the African university did not prepare students for the conditions in which they would work, conditions they would be expected to have a good grasp of if they were to make meaningful contributions to development (“The importance of research in a university”, Pambazuka News, Issue 526, 21^st April, 2011).

Academics versus politicians

But an important factor in the failures of the African university has been the relationship between African academics and African political leadership. In Malawi, the relationship between the University of Malawi (until recently the only university in the country) and Malawi’s political leadership has always been a testy one. Although the establishment of a national university was one of his major dreams upon the attainment of independence, founding president Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda detested a university that exercised intellectual autonomy. In his 2003 book Rethinking Africa’s Globalization: Volume 1: The Intellectual Challenges, Malawian intellectual and economic historian Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has described the brand of African leaders in the mould of Kamuzu Banda as having been “suspicious and dismissive of academics.”

One tragic consequence of this relationship was, argues Zeleza, the reduction of scholarly work to “sycophancy.” Academics competed amongst themselves to outdo each other in singing praises of the political leadership and concocting subversive plots to bring each other down. One Malawian academic who bore the brunt of this brand of politics of destruction was Dr. Jack Mapanje, a leading poet and then chair of the English Department in the 1980s. Mapanje has described, in his 2011 memoir And Crocodiles Are Hungry At Night, the circumstances that led to his betrayal by his superiors at Chancellor College and his detention without trial for three and a half years.

Zeleza points out that the authoritarianism of the state meant that universities were also ran in authoritarian ways. The state appointed senior university administrators who appointed heads of units, who made recommendations for promotions based not on merit but on levels of sycophancy. But Zeleza apportions part of the blame for this state of affairs on the African universities themselves. He writes: “Besotted by opportunism, careerism, parochialism, factionalism, and ideological intolerance, intellectuals have often weakened their collective defense against state assaults.” In the case of Malawi, “intellectuals not only conceded political space to the state, but sometimes assisted in authenticating its authoritarianism.”

The authoritarianism also meant that institutional decisions were top-down rather than democratic, which marred communication, and strained relations between lecturers and university administration. It is in this context that African universities strayed from their missions, and became part of the larger problems that impeded national development. Writes Zeleza: “buildings decayed, libraries and laboratory facilities deteriorated, and the culture of learning and knowledge production degenerated.” This is the history that informed the academic freedom struggle Chancellor College lecturers fought in 2011, and continue to in their rejection of the proposed University of Malawi Act 2012.

In a personal anecdote that illustrates the extent of intellectual degeneration in Malawi, Zeleza writes about visiting Chancellor College in 1996 and discovering that the university bookstore had been closed, and the building was being converted into offices. Close to two decades later, the University of Malawi continues to operate without university bookshops in its constituent colleges. The implication of this situation is a pernicious type of intellectual deprivation that leads to students who graduate from university without adequate preparation for the roles society has carved out for them. Zeleza points out that failure to address problems of intellectual quality in African universities is tantamount to condemning “African students to intellectual backwardness and dependency, both of which constitute a monumental crime against Africa’s development and future.”

The Great Hall, Chancellor College

Do universities’ mission statements matter?

Is it still possible for Malawian universities, public and private, to assume their rightful roles in fulfilling societal expectations and providing for the country a cadre of graduates who can contribute to national development in a more meaningful way? A cursory glance at the mission statements of six public and private Malawian universities reveals a common concern with providing a high quality education that meets the needs of the country.

Malawi’s universities want to “advance knowledge, promote wisdom and understanding and provide services by engaging in teaching and research and by facilitating the dissemination, promotion, and preservation of learning responsive to the needs of Malawi and the world” (University of Malawi). They desire to meet the “technological, social and economic needs of individuals and communities in Malawi,” (Mzuzu University), and to train professionals who manage the country’s agriculture and natural resources (Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources).

They want to “contribute to the integral development of the nation” (Catholic University of Malawi), and to equip graduates “with knowledge, skills and competencies that are necessary for service to God and mankind” (Malawi Adventist University). They aspire to “educate and inspire students to become principled leaders who will transform society for the glory of God” (University of Livingstonia), and to train “competent scholars with relevant skills such as problem solving, decision making, research and analytical skills to contribute towards the improvement of social economic development of the country and beyond” (Exploits University).

Blantyre International University talks of providing “high quality university education for this century,” while Skyway University aims “to provide quality services in a professional and nationally-conscious manner, with integrity within a conducive learning environment.”

Cultivating new leaders

It is one thing for universities to have elaborate visions and impressive mission statements, and another for them to live up to those lofty ambitions. In a paper titled “Learning and Leadership: Exploring the linkages between higher education and developmental leadership,” Laura Brannelly, Laura Lewis and Susy Ndaruhutse of the Developmental Leadership Program (2011) argue that universities cannot adequately prepare leaders if they do not espouse the core principles of leadership in their mission statements, their curricular content and their classroom practices. 

The three authors point out that there is a “symbiotic relationship between higher education and developmental leadership,” and higher education institutions need to be clear about how their aims and objectives can promote good leadership amongst their graduates. Developing the next generation of leaders, argue Branney, Lewis and Ndaruhutse, starts with the types of skills and competencies universities teach and embrace. Teaching methods must demonstrate transformational qualities rather than perpetuate mechanical, top-down transfer of knowledge.

Teachers need to be mentors and role models to their students. Institutions of higher learning themselves need to embrace and practice governance and management models that they teach, as these are the competencies graduates will need to demonstrate as they take up leadership roles. This point was also made by Zeleza who observed that authoritarianism in the state reflected authoritarianism in the university.

Students need to be involved in the institution’s decision making process, habits of practice that good leaders follow. A lot of the vandalism and violence that have come to characterize Malawian secondary schools and universities in recent years stem from a lack of meaningful and democratic involvement of students in decision making.

Passengers no longer

As Malawians debate the legacy left by the pioneering leaders, it will be instructive to keep in mind the plethora of causes that have led to the leadership crisis in the country. Some of these go back to the structures bequeathed to us by colonial history, while some have arisen from the global economic and political structures. The solutions, as suggested by all the scholars discussed in this article, lie in rethinking the governance structure of our universities, the curricula taught in these universities, and the pedagogical methods used.

Mazrui calls for a more Africa-centered curriculum with African languages given a prominent role. He points to the need to recognize African models of knowledge that have the same rigour and depth, outside Western models of science. Sawyerr emphasizes the “primary, irreducible responsibility of the state” in funding and maintaining high standards in the higher education system. Mamdani wants the next generation of African intellectuals to be trained in Africa so as to prepare them for African realities, while Zeleza looks to the “africanization” of global scholarship, and the “globalization” of African scholarship.

Writes Zeleza: “As intellectuals, we must articulate clear agendas for African societies and people, especially as the continent encounters new processes of globalization. These agendas must be rooted in the unfinished tasks of progressive African nationalism—development, democratization, and self-determination . . . Without strong, well-funded universities and research programs, we will continue being passengers.”

Note: This article first appeared in the March-April 2013 issue of The Lamp magazine.

Illusions of elite entitlement: Quota & Malawi’s higher education access woes

[Note: This article appears in the November-December issue of The Lamp Magazine]

Recent media reports indicated that just before the University of Malawi released its selection list for the 2012/2013 academic year in October, the Malawi Government had contemplated ending the quota system of selection into public universities. The reason given was that the quota system was costly. Although the University of Malawi went ahead to base its selection on the quota system, Malawians were left wondering and debating the merits and demerits of the quota system. More importantly, the question on everyone’s mind was why nearly fifty years after independence, Malawi’s flagship university, the University of Malawi, could afford space for only 908 students, out of 102,651 students who sat the 2011 school leaving certificate examination.
 

In order to examine whether or not the quota system is too expensive, and what its merits and demerits might be, we first need to define what we mean by “quota system.” We need to contextualize the quota system’s historical and political meanings and implications for Malawi, and draw comparisons and contrasts with higher education enrollments elsewhere in the world. We will also discuss why the number of students invited to sit the university entrance examination misrepresents the true number of Malawians who qualify for tertiary and university education each year. We will conclude by reflecting on the ill logic of higher education financing in this country, which is responsible for putting Malawi at the bottom of global enrollment tables for percentages of youth eligible for tertiary and university education. 

The ethnic origins of quota

In his remarkable memoir, And the Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night, Malawi’s celebrated poet, Jack Mapanje, recounts an episode from his days at Mikuyu Maximum Security Prison, which points to the origins of the quota system. Mapanje dedicates two chapters to the episode, chapter 41, titled “Northerners as an Excuse,” and chapter 42, “Chirunga Campus Riots.” Chapter 41 talks about how Mikuyu prison played host to Malawi’s hotbed of ethnic sensitivity and antagonism. A new officer-in-charge for the prison, a Mr Mughogho, brings some changes to the prison. The diet has begun to improve, and prisoners can now eat sweet potatoes, among other foods. Then a prisoner, Mbale, escapes, leading to prison conditions being tightened and reversed back to the harsh, punitive atmosphere. 

When some prisoners begin the ethnic blame game about the northerner who escaped, other prisoners point to the improved conditions brought by Mughogho, also a northerner. The discussion continues to the next chapter, where Chancellor College students have rioted, following the November 1988 publication of the Chirunga Newsletter, a student magazine.  An article in the student magazine has described how the chair of the university council was overheard expressing his displeasure at “the large proportion of students from the north who enter the university,” wondering “whether they were admitted on merit or not.” The council chair goes ahead to suggest that a quota system would be introduced at the beginning of the 1987 academic year, in September. Students would now be admitted into the University of Malawi “on the basis of their district and region of birth.”

In this particular form of the quota system, the intent is clear. It is aimed at limiting the number of students from the northern region, who are believed to be disproportionately more than their counterparts in the central and southern regions. At the heart of the quota system debate is the incredibly small number of students who are accorded space in Malawi’s public universities. Malawi ranks bottom in the university-age cohort of young people who are actually enrolled in tertiary education, according to the website nationmaster.com. 

A 2011 survey of 150 countries places Malawi at number 150, with 0.3 percent of young Malawians in the 17-22 year age range actually pursuing tertiary education. In Africa, the highest percentage in 2011 was Libya, ranked 26^th in the world, at 48.8 percent. Malawi’s neighbours did slightly better: Zimbabwe at 3.9 percent, Zambia at 2.5 percent, Tanzania at 0.7 percent, and Mocambique at 0.6 percent.  

Curiously but understandably enough, more heat is created by the debate surrounding the quota issue than on what solutions to pursue to increase access and allow every qualified student a place in a public university or tertiary institution. Efforts by education activists to propose a quota system that uses socio-economic, gender and class indicators do not amount to much. Emotions rule and debates are considered on which side of the quota system and the ethnicity divide the proponent stands.

A “win-win university quota selection system”, as suggested by education policy analyst and scholar-activist Limbani Nsapato, would consider merit on the one hand, and socio-economic factors including gender, disability and poverty, on the other. It would ensure that qualifying students from rural districts of Malawi and from marginalized backgrounds would have an equal chance of being accorded a place in Malawi’s public universities. With the exception of the gender factor, which was taken into consideration in the 2012 selection into the University of Malawi, the type of quota system suggested by Nsapato has never been attempted.

Quota as scapegoat

In its September 8-14, 2012 issue the weekly newspaper Malawi News published on its front page an article titled “How Quota System Died.” Written by Charles Mpaka, the article quoted an official memorandum from Finance Minister Dr. Ken Lipenga to President Joyce Banda, recommending that the quota system be abandoned on the grounds that it was expensive. A close reading of the article, based on the quoted parts, shows that rather than abandoning the quota system, the main issue raised in the memo was reducing government expenditure on public universities. 

On October 4^th the University of Malawi released its 2012 selection list, while the newly instituted Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR), with Bunda College as its biggest constituent college, released its list three days later. Contrary to the reported recommendation to drop the quota system as per the quoted memorandum, the University of Malawi selection list was again based on a quota system.   

The University of Malawi published on its website a statement that said selection had been “done using the equitable access system of admitting candidates into public institutions of higher learning.” The term “equitable access system” is supposed to be a more politically acceptable way of describing what everyone calls “quota.” The statement went further to say:

“Under this arrangement, the top ten qualified candidates from each district were offered places and thereafter, the rest were selected based on merit and the size of the population of the districts they originated from to underscore that higher education, like any other form of development, should be seen to be benefiting the whole country.”

Who qualifies for university: the true numbers

The number of students selected into the University of Malawi for the 2012/2013 academic year is 908. The statement said a total of 8507 candidates sat for the 2012 University Entrance Examinations (UEE). Out of these 6373 candidates passed, representing a 75% pass rate. For LUANAR, which based its selection on the same students who had applied to the University of Malawi, 456 students were admitted. It is important to put these numbers into context. 

The number of students who registered to sit for the 2012 Malawi School Certificate Examination was 130,000, according to spokesperson for Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB), Gerald Chiunda, quoted in a Capital FM Radio online article.  The results are yet to be released, as of writing in mid-October. But the most recent available figures, from 2011, show that 102,651 students sat the examination. Of these, 56,273 passed, representing 54.8 percent pass rate, according Zodiak Broadcasting Station’s website. Ordinarily, passing the school leaving certificate examination ought to qualify one for tertiary or higher education. 

The percentage of Malawian youth who ought to be in tertiary institutions, and are actually doing so is 0.3. It is not difficult to understand why, when you look at the numbers. In the 2011/2012 academic year only 366 students were admitted into Malawi’s second public university, Mzuzu. Of these 254 were males (69%), while 112 females (31%). In the recently released numbers for Malawi’s private and public technical colleges, the Technical, Entrepreneurial, Vocational, Education and Training Authority (TEVETA) received 16,236 applications. In their press release of Saturday October 6^th, TEVETA announced that they had admitted 1,580 students. 

The question of whether or not the quota system is expensive is not at the heart of the matter. The true scandal of Malawi’s higher education system is that almost fifty years after independence, the country is unable to provide the majority of her young people an opportunity to access higher education and thereby contribute to national development. A project at Harvard University that studies higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa observes that no country has ever achieved high levels of development with less than 50 percent enrollment of its university-age population. 

Elite entitlement

The demand for higher education in Malawi has reached insatiable levels, and the country is woefully prepared for this demand. The biggest reason for this is the incomprehensible policy of the government paying for people to go to university even when they can afford it themselves. And there is no requirement for them to repay the investment. The only countries where this happens are the wealthiest ones in the global North. Even then, in countries such as the United States those who qualify for university education but are unable to afford it are given scholarships or loans. 

Student loans are not a perfect solution either. In the United States, millions of students graduate with debt burdens that threaten to bankrupt them for decades. In Britain, tuition fees have tripled, and up to 54,000 potential students who were expected to enter higher education have been unable to enroll. With youth unemployment becoming a global problem, student loans are no longer being seen as a flawless panacea. For Malawi, the solution lies in balancing the lessons from the US, the UK and elsewhere, with the irreversible need to widen access and sustainably finance a growing Malawian higher education system.

In the days following the release of the 2012/2013 selection into the University of Malawi, elite private secondary schools boasted the numbers of students they had managed to send to Malawi’s flagship university. Students whose parents just a few months ago were paying more than K1 million a year for their children to attend elite secondary schools are now going to be paid K320,000 a year to study in Malawi’s public universities. Public universities in Malawi pay students “upkeep monthly allowances of K40,000 per student” according to a recent press release announcing a raise in the allowances from K33,000 last year. 

This is due to the lopsided logic of Malawi’s publically-funded higher education. This emanates from two sources. The first one is well meaning: an obligation to invest in a public good for Malawians who cannot afford to pay for higher education. But the other one is misguided: a sense of elite entitlement. The practice elsewhere in the world is to admit all the students who have qualified for higher education, based on classroom space available. It is up to the students to look for tuition fees. Those able to afford the fees accept the offers and register as students. Those unable to afford the fees apply for the available scholarships or loans, awarded on merit and on need. This is how you grow a university. It is how everyone else in the world has managed to increase access to higher education, whereas we have stagnated.

By admitting students on a non-residential basis and requiring them to pay for accommodation, public universities are taking steps toward widening access. But much more needs to be done. The newly established national council for higher education has its work cut out. As for the ethnic origins of the quota system, the real issue would have been to investigate the factors that lead certain districts and populations to do better than others. There are lessons to be learned from how some parents, communities and social groups encourage excellence in education. The lessons can be used to afford equal opportunities to others so as to level the playing field and provide everyone an equal chance.