The ‘Midnight Six’ Should Really Apologize For December 2010

Why are we hearing more apologies for what happened in the late hours following the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika, and not on what happened on 11^th December 2010?

The attempt to subvert the Malawi constitution and prevent Madam Joyce Banda from becoming president after the death of President Mutharika was a frightening prospect alright, but it is the thin end of the wedge. The process that led to that moment started with her expulsion from the party on 11^th December, 2010. As no one needs to be reminded, the expulsion’s most important intent was to keep the Malawi presidency as far away from Madam Joyce Banda as possible, and clear the path for Professor Peter Mutharika. Only, nobody in the hitherto mighty Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) deigned to ask the petty, inconvenient question as to what would happen if, God forbid, the Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika were to become incapacitated before 2014.

Having accomplished the expulsion and cleared the way for the younger Mutharika, the last thing on the minds of the DPP vanguard was President Mutharika failing to make it to 2014. In the event of the unthinkable having happened, isn’t it strange to imagine that the DPP would simply sit quietly and let the very personification of their bitterness, ridicule and contempt, covet the very office they had done everything possible to prevent her from assuming?

In case this sounds like an argument in support of what has been called a de facto coup plot, it is not. Rather it is an argument about how the logic of events from the ousting of Mrs Banda from the DPP to make it easy for Peter Mutharika to become the next president of Malawi makes it implausible to imagine that the DPP would have handled Bingu’s death differently. Not only does the expectation not make sense, it also fails to put the finger on the nerve of the problem.

Blaming the DPP for having plotted to subvert the constitution in those surreal hours and prevent Amayi from taking over is putting the emphasis on the effect, and not on the root cause. What the DPP should really be blamed for is the original sin of what they did to Madam Joyce Banda in 2010. Had it been that Amayi had remained vice president of the DPP all this time, and the DPP attempted to prevent her from taking over after Bingu’s death, then we would have a basis for questioning the attempt to make Peter Mutharika, rather than Joyce Banda, the country’s next president. People seem to forget the events of 11^th December 2010, the genesis of the problem that came to define the last years of the departed president’s rule.

In the same vein, people are also forgetting that despite Bingu’s change of mind in the middle of 2010, he went into the 2009 election campaign convinced that Amayi had the capability, experience, and qualifications to be vice president. With it, the implication that should anything happen to him, she could ably take over and become the next president. He had even made her foreign affairs minister years prior. We know he later changed his mind, after the fact, but as the Chichewa saying goes, Kalulu anamva mawu oyamba, achiwiri anakana. And the constitution seems to agree with that.

Therein lies an important lesson for Malawian political parties and their supporters. Even when ordinary Malawians started wondering if everything was alright with the erstwhile ruling party, there was very little internal dissent. If anything, there were always party supporters willing and ready to defend the DPP’s slide into autocracy. The earliest telltale signs were the manner in which the decree for the re-institution of the quota system was handled, weeks after Bingu’s 2009 re-election. There was an air of deaf finality to it. The president had made up his mind, and he was not going to entertain differing opinions.

Then came the change of the flag. The DPP and its supporters went to the extent of fabricating a survey and parading it as evidence that there was widespread support for the idea of changing the flag. Chiefs were made to stand in front of rolling cameras and had mics thrust to their mouths to speak in support of the flag change. The DPP knew very well that there was very little support for the decision, but it seemed Bingu had made his decision, and he was not going to change his mind, damned what the people thought.

And when the president decided that Mrs. Joyce Banda and Mr. Khumbo Kachali were going to be expelled from the party, it was with the same air of deaf finality to any voices that may have held a different opinion.  The die was cast, and it was downhill for the president and the DPP after that, leading to July 20^th, onward to the PAC call for Bingu’s resignation in March 2012.

The most tragic aspect of all this was how people who knew better chose not to speak out. In the words of the late American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what people remember in the end are “not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” This is not to exonerate enemies and instead crucify friends. It is to exhort people to take courage and speak out when the stakes demand it.

Much of the disgust with the MPs who started jumping the DPP ship hours after the announcement of Bingu’s death has centred around the blatant absence of moral principles. But moral principles operate in the context of the larger moral economy. There is indeed a glaring moral lapse in the behaviour of most politicians, but as long as the Malawian political economy continues to favour appeasement and patronage, politicians will always panic when faced with the imminent demise of their career. It would be a different matter if politicians could lose a seat today and tomorrow find themselves teaching in a university, or running a lucrative column in a newspaper, advising corporations in a think tank, or farming a fertile piece of land.

The so-called “Midnight Six” were up to great mischief on the night of April 5^th, 2012, but it all originated from December 11^th, 2010, the day the DPP announced the axing of Mrs. Joyce Banda from the party. If Malawians need to hear any apologies, they should be on what happened on 11^th December, 2010. Such apologies should be made with the full understanding and acknowledgement of what that move did to the party and to the country, for which the DPP is paying a price today.

To Inspire a Nation in Reboot: Considering President Joyce Banda's Cabinet

Some Malawians have expressed surprise at the early criticism the new cabinet announced by President Joyce Banda on Thursday April 26^th is already receiving. There are sections of Malawian society that have not hidden their great disappointment with the individuals chosen. The number of politicians who have been recycled from the last Mutharika cabinet, and from previous cabinets, is astounding. Out of 21 full ministers (minus the president and her VP), 14 ministers are making a comeback, seven of them from the last cabinet hired by the late Mutharika in September 2012 (Ken Lipenga, Ephrain Chiume, Peter Mwanza, Sidik Mia, John Bande, Daniel Liwimbi, Reen Kachere). 

Six are from recent previous cabinets (Ritchie Muheya, Ken Kandodo), but some of them go back to the Muluzi era before 2004 (Eunice Kazembe, Cassim Chilumpha, Henry Phoya, Uladi Mussa). Ken Lipenga has the distinction of being the only one surviving from Mutharika’s last cabinet, but also going back to the Muluzi era.

The staggering number of recycled ministers is raising the question as to what else these ministers can offer a Malawi that is envisaging itself as a nation in reboot mode. With the exception of a handful, the majority of them were unimpressive in their previous cabinet tenures, so what makes President Joyce Banda think that this time around they can perform? One possible explanation, something Amayi may have thought of, is that of experience. But another explanation could be something I have argued before: the president sets the limits and the atmosphere for ministers’ effectiveness. 

The president determines how vibrant and imaginative, or how dull and insignificant the cabinet can become. To date, none of the presidents the country has been blessed or cursed with, from Kamuzu Banda to Bakili Muluzi to Bingu wa Mutharika, seemed to give their cabinet ministers much leverage in terms of creativity and fresh thinking.

A recent case in point was when it became evident that the ongoing fuel crisis was becoming the norm. The Nation newspaper published a story on 10^th June 2011 in which they quoted then Minister of Energy and Mining, Hon. Grain Malunga, telling Malawians to “get used to the fuel crisis.” A lot of people were angered by those remarks, seeing them as government giving up on a problem that needed an urgent solution. Some called for the minister’s resignation, or even firing. But some observed that it would not make a difference which minister was in the energy portfolio.

In August 2011 Mutharika dissolved his cabinet, and went for three weeks before announcing a new cabinet. Grain Malunga did not retain his portfolio, which instead went to Goodall Gondwe, highly regarded as having engineered Malawi’s record-breaking economic growth rates in Mutharika’s first term.

Nothing improved; if anything, things got worse and showed no signs of abating. As president, Mutharika made clear what his policies were, and left no room for individual ministers to articulate their own visions and strategies for how the country would solve the myriad problems Malawians were grappling with. 

Mutharika had set the limits on how his cabinet ministers would perform. It was the case with Muluzi, and Kamuzu before him. Will Amayi be the first president to break the mould and allow cabinet ministers to showcase their intellectual prowess and visionary acumen? Malawians will not take her word for it; they will judge her based on her deeds.

In their last cabinet assessment in February this year, The Sunday Times gave Madam Joyce Banda a 1 out of 10, the lowest score. The Sunday Times explained that having been expelled from the DPP, she was not performing any Vice Presidential duties, and should have resigned. That is water under the bridge now. 

What would be even more welcome from the Sunday Times would be not only a cabinet assessment after the first six months in office, but also detailed biographical profiles of each minister, as they commence their cabinet tenure. A few of them are well known personalities, but a great many of these ministers have never been profiled in the Malawian media, despite serving as cabinet ministers for several years now. The nation has no clue who they are, what their backgrounds are, what their visions for the country are, and what they hope to accomplish.

Watipaso Mkandawire has suggested on his blog that the ministers “sign a ‘contract’ with Malawians.” He writes: “Ministers should be accountable to Malawians and they should sign a pact that makes them accountable to Malawians. They should tell us what their Ministries will achieve (outcomes and not outputs).” He goes further to suggest that rather than the ubiquitous familiarization tours that ministers start with, they should undergo special training at the Malawi Institute of Management on what being a cabinet minister entails.

If I can add to Wati’s call, the training they undergo should be of high calibre and intellectual rigour, bringing them up to speed on what it means to provide leadership in the 21^st century. They should be required to develop well-researched papers in which they outline what in their informed, considered opinion are the root causes of Malawi’s problems. They should identify the strengths and greatness of Malawi as a nation, and outline how they plan to overcome obstacles in pursuit of the “outcomes” Wati is calling for.  Even more important, they should act on those plans by inspiring Malawians and ensuring greater participation in the nation’s civic life.

It has been claimed in the print media that President Joyce Banda’s cabinet scores highly on “inclusivity” and “reconciliation”. This claim sounds strange as there has been little to no explanation as to the kinds of consultations that were made with the parties from whose ranks some of the ministers have been drawn. The DPP has claimed that they were not approached on having some of their members chosen as cabinet members. 

The UDF says it knew some of its members were going to be included in the cabinet, but no further details have been provided. Dr. Cassim Chilumpha has actually resigned from the UDF, and has joined the People’s Party, as has Henry Phoya, from the MCP. Uladi Mussa has dissolved his entire party and joined in with the People’s Party as well. People are asking what will become of Atupele Muluzi’s presidential ambitions, having accepted a crucial cabinet position. These ministers have been roped in as individuals, rather than as part of a broader agreement with their respective parties.

It may be an inclusive cabinet, but can it be said to promote reconciliation, when there has been no consultation with the party hierarchies? When there are fears that the opposition will be weakened beyond its current morbid state? Both inclusivity and reconciliation are virtues the country solely needs at this juncture. But it will be the capacity of the ministers to inspire the nation and instill a sense of pride in being Malawian, once and for all, that this cabinet should be most closely monitored for.

Bingu's legacy and the political future of Malawi

Bingu's legacy and the political future of Malawi

This post was first published on Ch16, and later republished on the NAI Forum; on Africa at LSE; and in the Pambazuka Newsletter. Click here to read it on Ch16.

Five Questions with Steve Sharra, participant on LSE’s Programme for African Leadership

This interview was done for the London School of Economics' Programme for African Leadership, whose first cohort ran from March 19th to April 4th, 2012, on the LSE campus. The interview was conducted by Syerramia Willoughby, of the LSE. Click to go to the interview.

Killing the Chief to Spite the Village: The Erosion of Traditional Leadership in Modern Malawi

Several traditional leaders in Malawi have lately taken to the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) TV to argue on the president’s behalf about why the Malawian currency, the Malawi Kwacha, must not be devalued. The suggestion to devalue has been prescribed by the International Monetary Fund and Malawi’s bilateral donors, and has been supported by several Malawian economists and pundits. It has been offered as one of the measures necessary to stem economic decline whose most visible effects, among many, are severe fuel shortages and rapidly rising prices of commodities.

The traditional leaders have, in the process, unwittingly drawn attention to a very unflattering opinion in which many Malawians from the educated class hold the chiefs. The first time I noticed the traditional leaders’ foray into the economic theory debate was on Sunday February 19^th when MBCTV rebroadcast a press conference by a group of chiefs. The chiefs said they were reacting to statements made in parliament by some MPs, and to a news article in The Nation of Wednesday February 15^th, written by  Bright Sonani and Edwin Nyirongo, whom they mentioned by name.

I did not hear the remarks uttered in parliament, but I saw the article in question. It was titled “Use of chiefs to fight IMF naïve—opposition” and appeared on page 3. The article reported on various statements made by several opposition legislators and civil society activists. They included former ruling party United Democratic Front’s (UDF) Friday Jumbe, Lington Belekanyama of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), Dan Msowoya of the Alliance for Democracy (Aford), and Martha Kwataine of the Malawi Health Equity Network (MEHN). The article quoted Jumbe as saying the IMF did not force countries to adopt particular policies, and that it was the task of managers of a country’s economy, not chiefs, to talk to the IMF. Belekanyama is reported to have said President Mutharika was “wasting his time talking to people who do not understand the economy,” instead of talking to experts. On his part, Aford’s Msowoya is quoted to have decried the “misinformation of traditional leaders about the economy, politics and social issues in our society.” Martha Kwataine used the same word as Jumbe, “naïve,” in reference to President Mutharika’s resort to chiefs in advancing his “anti-devaluation cause.”

In the intervening days more chiefs have come out to do the president’s bidding, and to also react against the “insults” they have incurred for wading into the political arena. What seems to incense the chiefs most is what they say is their being characterized as ignorant and uneducated. As if to prove otherwise, some of the chiefs take to the mic and speak in English in varying degrees of competence. They argue that they have not been told what opinions to hold over the devaluation debate, as they do not need anybody to tell them what the effects of a further devaluation would be. They have already seen the effects from the August 8, 2011 devaluation. Maize which was selling at K1,000 (US$6) per 50kg bag is now at K3,000 (US$18), and bread and most other things have also gone up. One chief said he was not bothered by the insinuation that chiefs are ignorant and uneducated, while another said chiefs were the bedrock of democracy. Democracy existed in Malawi long before colonial rule, said the chief.

It is common knowledge that chiefs and traditional leaders in Malawian society are widely believed to be “ignorant” and “educated”, particularly by the “educated” and “political” class. In his Sunday Times ‘Muckraking on Sunday’ column on February 19^th, Raphael Tenthani captured this widely-held opinion of chiefs in Malawian society, when he wrote: “. . . there are a number of chiefs who went beyond A.E.I.O.U in school but most of them are humble villagers who use the thumb-print as their signature in order to get their state-funded honorarium. How do they begin to know the politics, the intricacies, let alone the economics of devaluation of a currency?” I am sure Tenthani’s views resonate with a lot of “educated” Malawians. On Monday February 20^th Malawi Institute of Journalism (MIJ) Radio’s regular letter from O’Bwande made sarcastic remarks about chiefs in a similar vein. Several other pundits have added to the onslaught against the chiefs.

It will be naïve to deny that chiefs in Malawi are responsible for the sorry image and character they have crafted for themselves. And the chiefs have made matters worse by being willing accomplices in the president’s campaign to resist calls for devaluation of the kwacha, which many Malawian economists and social justice activists have concluded will be the lesser of two evils.

However it will be even more naïve to see chiefs as solely and wholly responsible for the abuse that has come to characterize their functions. It is the politicians and the educated class that bear the larger part of the blame for what has happened to the structure of the chieftaincy and traditional leadership in Malawi. It is politicians and educated Malawians who willfully led the country on the path that abandoned traditional forms of leadership at independence, and adopted Western models of governance. It is politicians and educated Malawians who have reduced the structures of traditional governance to the moribund, unchanging state they are in today, while strengthening and perfecting the models of governance and leadership we copied and pasted from our colonizers. Structures and institutions can only grow and become better when they are practiced, critiqued, researched on and improved upon. That is what has given Western models the power and global influence they wield. Left and abandoned on the mistaken belief that they are inferior and borrowed ones are superior, traditional structures will decay and become prone to the kind of abuse that has come to characterize the Malawian and African chieftaincy. 

As they spoke in the press conference, the chiefs who chose to speak in English did so as a counter to the cruel and misguided notion of Malawian chiefs and traditional leaders as uneducated people. Many Malawians believe that no one can demonstrate a high level of intellect and education using local languages. No wonder parliament prohibits the use of Malawian languages in an institution that is purported to represent ordinary Malawians. Our private schools prohibit the use of Malawian languages on school premises, allowing only the languages of our former colonizers. Very few Malawians are aware of the linguistic prowess and plasticity of children, who are known to be capable of learning multiple languages in the first twelve years of life. Instead of promoting both English and Malawian languages, the practice has been to think of English as a language with innate, divine qualities of intellectual rigour, believed to be naturally denied to Malawian and African languages.

Again, it is Malawian politicians and the educated class who have advanced this poisonous and dangerous practice, for which the country is paying a high price in the general absence of democratic participation and knowledge production in the majority of the population. It is mostly in formerly colonized countries where only European languages are considered capable of intellectual and scientific rigour. Yet there are millions of people around the world who have mastered profound intellectual and scientific knowledge, and do not speak a word of English or a European language.

Malawi is in dire need of traditional leaders who can demonstrate a profound expertise in traditional governance models while being equally adept at the forms of governance we have borrowed. Malawi needs traditional leaders who can stand up to the machinations of the political leadership while expounding the complexities of traditional models of governance and how they can reshape the country’s political and social structures. Malawian politicians and the educated class will make a lasting contribution to the country’s future if they can stop abusing chiefs, and leave a legacy of wise, educated and sophisticated traditional leaders. 

Teaching peace: educating the educators

My arrival in New Delhi on Friday February 10^th was greeted by two intriguing news stories in the Friday edition of the daily paper The Times of India. One story was on the front page, the other was buried deep inside the paper on page 18. Both stories had eerie connections to why I am visiting India for the next several days. The last time I visited India was in 2009, in Mumbai, for a conference on South-South cooperation with special reference to Africa’s increasing geopolitical importance.

The front page story was about a 15 year-old boy who stabbed his teacher, a 42 year-old woman, killing her on the spot. The story said the teacher talked to the boy’s father about his abysmal performance in Hindi, and the boy was scared he would not be promoted from Class IX to Class X next year. The Saturday edition of The Times of India carried five more stories on the case, one of them again on the front page, detailing further information about the case and what may have triggered this particular type of violence.

The other story that also caught my attention was on page 18, which I was able to locate only because I was biding my time before going to have lunch. It was about 15 students from selected secondary schools and colleges in Pakistan and India who met to talk about their two countries and prospects for peace between them. One student was quoted as saying: "Arms are made to hold each other, not harm each other." It did not bleed, so it did not lead, to paraphrase the quip about the journalistic value judgments that determine what goes on the front page and what gets relegated to an obscure page.

I am in India attending an international conference on Teacher Education for Peace and Harmony. It has been organized by four organizations and institutions, among them the Institute for Advanced Studies in Education based in Sardarshahar, in the state of Rajasthan, and the Global Harmony Association. This is the first time for me to attend a conference solely devoted to the education of teachers and the inculcation of peace and harmony in the curriculum and in the classroom.  I wrote my doctoral dissertation on uMunthu and peace education in Malawian classrooms, so this is a topic I am passionate about. There appear to be two of us from Africa, the other one being Heli Habyarimana, a Rwandan linguist and college lecturer. The ambassador from Djibouti was supposed to make an appearance later in the day, but did not show up.

The speakers who spoke today were inspirational. The first one was a yogi (teacher of yoga), a monk clad in all orange from top to bottom. Somebody sitting next to Heli and I whispered that the yogi was once a university professor of engineering, who left the professorship and took up spiritual teaching. He began his talk with a 3-minute Hindi chant, and spoke half in Hindi and half in English. Evidence that he strides both the intellectual and the spiritual worlds came from his references to quantum theory and relativity, which he said had reshaped human consciousness. He said scientists were now touting Unified Force Theory, which he said Hindus have long taught as the force of karma. Interestingly, I’m sharing my room with another engineer who did a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics, and now teaches yoga, breathing and meditation also, in the United States.

 As the first speaker was chanting at the start of his talk, it made me think about chants in Malawian culture. Other than lullabies, I could not think of a traditional chant that could be said to emanate from a Malawian or African form of spirituality. I have grown up knowing no single form of African spirituality, thanks to Christianity. I also wondered if we had contemporary spiritual leaders immersed in ancient Malawian and African wisdom. In this I can envisage a line of new research that I believe Africans ought to be conducting. I’m familiar with some previous research, most recent being a new book by Dr. Gary Morgan, Director of the Michigan State University Museum, on gule wamkulu, a mask tradition in central Malawi.

Other speakers today included the Bosnia and Herzegovina ambassador to India, the president of the International Association of Educators for World Peace, Professor Charles Mercieca I (he told me he visited Malawi in 1969, before I was born), a member of parliament from Nepal who is also a niece of the president there, the vice chancellor of IASE Deemed University, and a number of other scholars of peace and harmony.

Dr Mercieca, originally from Malta but who has lived ad taught in the United States for 50 years, had a chilling story about what it takes for ordinary, peaceful individuals to commit atrocities. He talked of a woman who once came to a peace march in Alabama and talked about her son. He was a dedicated Christian who prayed every day and would be the last person to hurt another human being. He enrolled in the army and went to fight in the Iraq war. One day he spoke to his mother on the phone about a mission they had just carried out. They were ordered to flush out suspected terrorists in a Baghdad neighborhood. They were instructed to “shoot everything that moves.” By the time the operation was over, they had killed several civilians, including little babies.

A common theme throughout Saturday was that teachers have a central responsibility to teach peace. They spend a considerable amount of time with young people, and most children look up to them as role models. Because peace and harmony are never part of the school curriculum anywhere, education systems around the world graduate young people who have school knowledge, but have no moral values. Several speakers today called for a new type of teacher education that promotes peace. This is the subject of my paper, which draws on Malawian scholarship on uMunthu, and some concepts about teaching that I have been developing since 2004. As I developed the paper over the past few weeks, I read a book by Satish Kumar (2002) titled You are, therefore I am: A declaration of dependence. I was amazed to learn that what I considered to be an exclusively African worldview, uMunthu as the essence of being human by co-existence, was also found in ancient Hindi philosophy, captured in the term "So Hum".

Events of the past three years have generated a lot of questions about how the global economy and political governance have fared over the decades, and how the capitalist system cannot continue in its present format. Three years ago it was mostly Marxist scholars such as Immanuel Wallerstein and David Harvey who used to say this, today it is captains of capital who now see the dead end the system has led the world to. The time is ripe for teacher educators and curriculum theorists to get in on the act and start reimagining a new kind of education to serve a changed world. I hope we can initiate such a discussion in Malawi and in Africa, and join others who are already rethinking educational theory and practice for a better, more peaceful, more just and fairer world. Click for more photos.

Malawi on International Day of Peace: uMunthu, Education and a Global Paradox

On the surface, it would seem paradoxical that while the rest of the world is today celebrating the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, the air in Malawi is thick with fear, anxiety and a premonition for violence. Last evening in Lilongwe, the capital, hundreds of people were out shopping into the night, creating long check-out lines in shops that normally close early, and are usually never crowded. There was absolutely no parking space left at People’s in downtown Old Town. Bread had sold out in most shops, and bakeries had no fresh stocks. People were stocking up, afraid this might be the last shopping for several days. For that was the experience on July 20^th, when major cities and towns were taken over by protests and riots that resulted in massive looting and the killing of 20 unarmed citizens. When civil society leaders organized another protest for August 17^th, cities and towns were again paralyzed, even though no protests took place after a last minute decision to postpone the marches and give a chance to dialogue between civil society and government, mediated by the United Nations.

Despite the appearance of a paradox when a day set aside to celebrate peace is marked by tension and fears of deathly violence, it is in such moments of conflict that peace is better appreciated, and social justice affirmed. The feeling by many people in Malawi is that of a needless crisis being fomented by a leadership that seems more concerned with engineering electoral succession than worrying about the future of the country. There has been a debate about who has caused the crisis, and the culpability of all Malawians in prolonging it. There are aspects of the crisis that are clearly being perpetuated by the conduct of the leadership, but there are also aspects that are a result of complex, asymmetrical and exploitative global structures of governance and lopsided economic interdependence.

It has become cliché in Malawian lore to repeat the maxim about how peace is not only the absence of conflict, but the presence of social justice, or words to that effect. An idea first propagated by the world’s leading peace studies scholar, Johan Galtung, it is taken as common sense, even as the idea of “structural violence”, Galtung’s notion of how injustice resides in social structures, is not as widely understood. Global changes in information consumption and the idealization of government systems have created expectations and aspirations, while exposing structural inequalities not only between nations in the Global North and the Global Southth, but also within nations and their societies. In Malawi, the emergence of a category of a super-rich class is sharply juxtaposed with a majority class whose hopes have remained stagnant for decades, creating what in a recent New York Times op-ed, the Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo aptly described as a resentment-induced rage that has fuelled revolt starting with North Africa, and spreading south of the Sahara. There have been riots in London, protests in Wisconsin and against Wallstreet in New York City, evidence that this resentment is not just a reaction to growing inequality in Africa alone. According to Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, inequality is a corrosive factor in the social well-being of people, and the United States, the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country, is also one of the most unequal.

What is perhaps more paradoxical is what is going on around the world on this day when the world observes the International Day of Peace. In the United States, the southern state of Georgia is today scheduled to execute Troy Davis, who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1989. There has been an international outcry and a growing movement to try and stop the execution, after the real killer confessed to the crime, and several witnesses recanted their testimony. Those protesting the execution have included former US president Jimmy Carter, and former FBI Director William Sessions, according to a New York Times editorial. 

Elsewhere in the world, it has been a week of untold carnage in Yemen where scores of citizens have been brutally murdered by their own government. Fighting is still going on in Libya, weeks after Colonel Ghadafi was ousted in a NATO-led military campaign. At the United Nations in New York, the Palestinians are seeking statehood in the face of threats by the United States to veto the Palestinians’ aspirations for sovereignty and peace. In Afghanistan’s ongoing NATO war against the Taliban, a prominent peace negotiator was assassinated yesterday Tuesday.

The presence of such conflict and violence, death and misery make for a world that is clearly hurting. But it also highlights the efforts of individuals and groups working to find lasting solutions to problems of war and violence, and advocate for a more just and peaceful world order. States define peace as an absence of physical violence and war, but for ordinary people, peace still lacks in other ways that are more structural than physical, more subtle than obvious. Peace scholars refer to the absence of war and physical conflict as “negative peace”, and the presence of social justice as “positive peace.” In thinking about these concepts and how they apply to Malawian and African contexts, I have found the term “uMunthu-peace” to be another concept that adds to the notion that peace is much more than an absence, it is also the presence of other efforts to make the world a better place. The term “uMunthu-peace” derived out of a study in which I followed Malawian school teachers and read Malawian philosophers in an attempt to find an endogenous theory of peace in Malawian and African education systems.

That was in 2004, when two teachers in two rural districts of Malawi told me about how most educational systems are ill-prepared to teach citizens to go beyond classroom knowledge. In the informed views of these two teachers, it was not enough to teach primary school pupils and university students how to calculate complicated mathematical problems and memorize sophisticated formulae. Students needed to also learn what it means to be a good human being concerned with the well-being of others and the upliftment of their community. To date, very few educational systems in any part of the world offer that kind of education. The emphasis, argues Joel Spring (2007) of Queens College, City University of New York, is on “economic growth and the preparation of workers for the world’s labor market.” In his book A New Paradigm for Global School Systems: Education for a Long and Happy Life, Spring proposes a new educational paradigm in which “educational policy is focused on longevity and subjective well-being rather than economic success.”

Kindness, a virtue that adds to a moral code for humanity’s collective wellbeing is considered “subversive of neo-liberal assumptions that place value on utility and cost above other human values,” according to Sue Clegg and Stephen Rowland (2010) of Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of London, respectively. Writing in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, Clegg and Rowland observe that despite being an aspect easily recognized by students in a teacher, kindness is never considered in descriptions of “teaching excellence”, “student satisfaction”, nor “professional values.” This is true of Malawian education and education in most parts of the world. The result is the violent and unjust world we live in, which makes the case for continued efforts by peace activists to raise global consciousness about the possibility of sustainable peace and social justice.

When I first heard that the date for the Malawi protests, in the form of vigils, had been shifted from 17^th September to 21^st, I initially thought it was to do with the 21^st September being International Day of Peace. But the reason was because the 17^th was not ideal for most of the civil society leaders who had other commitments; 21^st September was. The Twitter hashtag that has been used for the campaign since July 20th, #redarmy, reveals no intention of an appeal for peace. Apart from an announced press conference by the UNDP Malawi office, Malawi is not observing the International Day of Peace. Instead, we are observing what was going to be another day of street protests, in the form of vigils, turned into a mass stay-away at the last minute.

Security, and fears of a repeat of July 20^th seem to have been the overriding concern in the decision to move from street protests to what civil society called “Plan B.” While civil society leaders have been imagining the protests as peaceful demonstrations aimed at sending a message of concern to the Malawi leadership about the direction the country is taking, the reaction to the call for protests has betrayed a different understanding of what is being envisioned. A court injunction obtained by “concerned citizens” after the aborted August 17^th protests put a ban on any form of anti-government protests. Shop owners were barricading doors and windows, and people were out en masse shopping late on Tuesday. Most offices announced to employees not to show up for work on Wednesday September 21^st, and to ensure their personal safety. Clearly, where civil society were envisioning peaceful protests, everyone else has been hearing violence, looting, property damage, and deaths.

That is quite an intrigue, something that comes out of events of July 20^th. And it raises some troubling questions. Are Malawians hopelessly incapable of maintaining law and order whenever they decide to exercise a constitutionally-granted right to peaceful demonstrations? What explains the easiness with which peaceful protests turn into violent riots and mass killings? How do we explain the resentment that is clearly simmering just underneath the surface and readily finds an outlet in destroying property and taking lives? Is it impossible to envision a Malawi in which leaders, both in political parties and in civil society, think of the greater good and work to bridge the gaping inequality that is fast characterizing Malawi and the rest of the world?

As an educationist, I always turn to how and what we teach in the schools, for answers to questions like this. Educationists who espouse belief in the singular significance of peace have developed a field of study, called “peace education” at the primary and secondary level, and “peace studies” at the university level. Peace educationists argue that all education ought to be peace education. In my study of prospects for peace education in Malawian schools, since 2004, I have learned, from watching teachers, that it is entirely possible to approach the school curriculum, and day-to-day classroom content, into peace education. I have also learned how peace education and peace studies have been in existence for some decades now, but they are yet to become the staple of educational systems. It is not much wonder to peace educationists that school systems have always produced leaders who resort to war to resolve problems, and who care more about personal power and wealth than about the greater good.

Coincidentally, today, September 21^st, is also Founder’s Day in Ghana, when they celebrate the birthday of Ghana’s founding president, the late Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Africa’s pursuits for peace and independence owe a lot to a vision first stipulated by Kwame Nkrumah, who argued that the independence of Ghana was meaningless unless it was tied to the independence of the rest of the continent. Dr Nkrumah argued more than fifty years ago that on their own, African countries were not economically viable and therefore needed to integrate their systems into a continental society. He also devoted his life to connecting continental Africa with the African Diaspora, and lived a life of testimony to that noble ideal. Subsequent generations of African leaders have been unable to appreciate Dr Nkrumah’s wisdom, and have colluded with forces of imperialism to impoverish ordinary Africans.

It is the disillusionment from that collusion between African leadership and forces of imperialism that lies at the heart of the protest movement in Malawi and elsewhere. As long as educational systems in Africa and around the world continue perpetuating educational policies that ignore larger ideals of uMunthu-peace, social well-being and the greater good, the world will continue the paradox of celebrating peace amidst war, violence and death. 

Their own Worst Enemy? The Paradoxes of African Leadership & the Undermining of the African Cause

Wednesday July 20^th found me at Katoto Teacher Development Centre (TDC), less than a kilometre away from Katoto Freedom Park, ground zero for Mzuzu demonstrations. We had a teacher professional development workshop with 20 educators from Mzuzu City and Mzimba North. Hardly had we started the day when we heard the chants and songs. It was tantalizing.

An hour into our session, one participant apologized for interrupting, saying they had received a phone call. Riots were breaking out in town, vehicles were being overturned and burned, and shops were being looted. I stole a glance at my phone, and people were posting updates on facebook and on Nyasanet directly from the centre of Mzuzu. Soon we started hearing sounds of teargas canisters. Two participants who had gone out to the bathroom came back dabbing wet handkerchiefs to their eyes. The teargas had wafted in our direction. We closed the windows. Dozens of youngsters ran past our training venue. We kept on with our training, constantly peeping through the windows to monitor what was going on outside.

The trickle of people running past our venue started growing in volume. People were now passing by carrying merchandize. A crowd gathered outside nearby, and the teargas shots grew louder. There was no doubt things had turned ugly. Our driver, who had left with the car on some errands, came back on foot. Cars were being targeted, and he nearly got caught up in the mess. He quickly drove into a nearby neighbourhood, asked if he could keep the car inside somebody’s fence, and walked back to the training venue.

The work of Bingu’s hands

We broke off for lunch at 12 noon, and three of us walked toward Katoto Filling Station, which faces Katoto Freedom Park. The filling station, popularly known as Pa Harry (owned by popular local politician Harry Mkandawire), is located on the corner of Mzuzu City’s largest intersection. The three-way traffic lights open the gateway to the lakeshore districts of Rumphi and Karonga, and Chitipa further up in the north. To the east lie Nkhata Bay and the beaches of Lake Malawi, and southward the M1 takes you to the capital city Lilongwe. There were rocks strewn all over the T-junction. A billboard boasting the height of Bingu’s achievements only two years ago had been torched, but you could still read the words: “Let the work of my hands speak for me,” an English translation of a Chichewa saying about how deeds offer better evidence than words. The stark irony was lost on no one. There was a fire, still smoldering in the middle of the intersection.

Now and again crowds surged, running away or towards the northern end of the bus depot. A police land cruiser seemed to be coming from that direction. A vehicle belonging to the National Aids Commission arrived at the Filling Station where we had stopped. Somebody behind me started shouting in a menacing way. He was trying to galvanise others to attack the vehicle. The driver quickly made a u-turn and drove away. Suddenly an army truck appeared from the direction of Moyale Barracks, east of the city. It was full of soldiers, carrying guns. Another one quickly followed, and a third. You could feel the tension go up a notch amongst the crowd. A few people waved at the soldiers.

I was itching to go nearer and take pictures, but I was strongly advised not to. We walked back to our training venue, passing residents of Katoto who had come out of their houses and were thronging the neighbourhood streets. Back at the training venue, we continued with our programme. It was a surreal experience. Here were twenty Malawian educators discussing professional development plans for Malawian schools, with gun shots sounding very close by, and people streaming past the building. Police teargas and live gunshots were still droning when we left Mzuzu and headed for Mzimba Boma as the sun set.

That evening Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) rebroadcast President Bingu wa Mutharika’s televised public lecture from earlier that day, so I had a chance to watch it. Bingu spoke for about 2 hours 15 minutes. On twitter and facebook, the reactions to the lecture were furious. The choice of Wednesday 20 July was clearly meant to not only sabotage the planned demonstrations, but to also cause mayhem and confusion. In that, they succeeded. The government machinery had done everything possible to discredit the planned demonstrations. Tactics used by the MBC bordered on comic relief. On several consecutive days the prime time evening news bulletins carried opinionated claims masquerading as news to the effect that the real aim of the demonstrations was support for homosexuality.

That the government has been scared of a Tunisia-Egypt type revolt has been evident in the way it has reacted to the slightest mention of demonstrations. The academic freedom struggle has its roots in that fear, as does the edict President wa Mutharika issued on March 6, 2011 that anybody wanting to stage a demonstration must first pay 2 million kwacha (approx. US$13,000) to the police as surety against property damage. Such has been the government’s fear of demonstrations that it has gone out of its way to placate a few civil society activists, who have since turned around and now praise government, while ridiculing former civil society colleagues. If events of 20^th and 21^st July look as if they vindicate government’s fears, it is not for its foresight; rather it is for having worked hard toward that fulfillment. The president’s decision to blame the property damage and loss of life on the organizers of the demonstrations leave that in no doubt.

Undermining African renewal

There are two tragedies, here. First are the deaths that have resulted from the demonstrations. Second is the precipice we have gone over, beyond which debate does not seem salvageable. The second tragedy has important implications for the African renewal that President wa Mutharika, and many of his then admirers in Malawi and outside, had hoped his presidency, and his one-year rotating chairpersonship of the African Union, would accomplish. I’ll get to this point in due course.

On Thursday 21^st July the organizers of the demonstrations took out a public service announcement urging a stop to further protests. They said only Wednesday 20^th July was the legitimate date for demonstrations, and a petition had been delivered to the president to that effect. Any further protests after that date were illegal. The president’s lunch hour address to the nation on Thursday 21^st July ended with an invitation to dialogue, having spent much of the address blaming the organizers for having paid demonstrators to loot and damage property. On Friday July 22^nd the president spoke to graduating police cadets at Zomba Police College, and all the pretense for dialogue was gone. He accused the protests organizers of treason, and threatened to “smoke them out.” Offering condolences to the families of those killed in the protests, he read from his prepared remarks, “They have died in vain.”

President Bingu wa Mutharika and leaders like him have always presented for me a particularly difficult dilemma. I have suggested previously that all political leaders are the same, a manifestation of what they perceive to be the imperatives of wielding political power. It is the levels and degrees of civil society activism that explain the differences in the extent of what each particular leader is capable or incapable of doing. July 20^th itself offers a telling Malawian example.

The entire idea behind the lecture was ill-thought. As George Kasakula noted in one of his columns in The Weekend Nation recently, Malawians did not need lectures; they needed solutions to chronic social, economic and political problems. The choice of the date itself was a “bizarre juxtaposition” with the demonstrations, to quote Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza in his 21^st July article, “Malawi on the Brink: The July 20 Movement.” That was reason enough for many not to even listen to or watch the lecture. Even after listening to it in its entirety, many people’s reaction was utter dismissal and ridicule. That was exactly my attitude as well.

Britain is not our mother

Early in the lecture the president referred to an opposition critic of his government, who said the president had been wrong to antagonize Britain, because Britain was “our mother.” The president said the last line in the country’s national anthem goes “. . . and mother Malawi,” not “. . . and mother Britain.”  A lot of the reaction to the president’s decision to expel the British High Commissioner, Mr. Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, was understandably in fear of the potentially disastrous effects of any British retaliation in the area of development aid to Malawi, which is widely believed by many Malawians to support poor people.

As a matter of fact a lot of foreign aid benefits the donating country as well as the wealthy elites of the recipient country. But another corner of the reaction bordered on hysteria, fed by the existential belief that foreign aid is an act of Western altruism and not strategic political interest; that it is the natural order of things for Western countries to give aid, out of altruism, to Third World countries for whom it is the natural order of things to forever remain beggars.

The strategic purposes of foreign aid extend beyond bilateral support to national budgets. Most Non-Governmental Organizations receive aid for reasons that have little to do with altruism. An article forwarded recently to the Fahamu Debate List, written by Tafataona Mahoso, has a most telling title: “How the US controls ‘civil society’ throughout Africa.” In the article Mahoso argues that all of civil society in Africa is sponsored by US and European interests, with the aim of making Africans “feel and believe that they are only thankful receivers of freedom and human rights conceived, taught and funded by the West.” He goes on: “The Anglo-Saxon powers, led by the US, already control a continental network and superstructure of ‘civil society’ throughout Africa.” A syndrome that has been cultivated over several centuries, Mahoso argues that it “is not natural.” It has created, Mahoso argues, a “willingness to apologise against our own dignity and interests while upholding the arrogance of the enemy.” Mahoso is quick to point out that “the problem is not with the North Americans and Nato as such.” Africans themselves are to blame: “. . . we have allowed ourselves to be tutored in governance matters by people who are our declared enemies or by organizations and individuals funded and managed by our declared enemies.”

Whether or not one agrees with Mahoso’s language of “declared enemies,” and the depiction of African civil society as pliant and supine, the point about self-sabotage should not be a substitute for apportioning blame where it belongs. As I have already pointed out, the benefits from this system go to both the Western donors and to wealthy African elites. It is the poor, and marginalized Africans, that get sacrificed in the process. For all the comical relief and laughable madness about MBC’s claims of the 20^th July demonstrations being aimed at showing support for homosexuality, gay rights have become a tug of war between competing interests in the West.

Africa has become the battleground for Evangelicals wanting to use Christians in Africa to stop the spread of Western forms of homosexual lifestyles, and a battleground for gay rights activists to contain Western forms of Christian homophobia. In the process, the human stories of Africans born gay, and their genuine struggle for their humanity, their rights and equality, get lost in the pandemonium. Because matters of sexuality are considered private in most societies, the surface outlook suggests that there are no born homosexuals and other types outside heterosexuality in Africa.

President wa Mutharika has spoken of gay people in the worst terms possible, repeating language used by President Robert Mugabe. He has claimed that homosexuality is unMalawian and unAfrican, reflecting an insensitivity to the diversity of human sexuality that is as part of human nature as is heterosexuality. The entire discourse about gay rights is fraught with extreme views on either side, making debate, and opportunities for educating ourselves about the gifts of God’s diverse creation, impossible. The irony of the denial of one’s humanity for how nature created them, a phenomenon black people around the world are only too familiar with, has not even registered.

When President wa Mutharika spoke to Malawians a month earlier on Friday June 24^th about the causes of the fuel and forex shortages in Malawi, the reaction from most Malawians was predictably the same. Front pages the next morning said his speech was empty and devoid of any solutions; full of blame for the IMF, donors, everyone but himself. In his 20^th July lecture, he went on to talk about how Malawi’s forex ends up in Mumbai, London and other global financial centres. He repeated what he had said on June 24^th that it was the IMF that had ordered the government to liberalise oil importation and forex, and leave them in the hands of the private sector.

The acute shortages the country was experiencing were a direct result of those policies. There has been very little discussion on email forums, newspapers and electronic media as to why exactly the country has no forex, or responses to the president’s accusation that foreign banks, which have proliferated as part of Malawi’s economic growth since he was elected, have been siphoning it out of the country. Nor has there been much discussion as to whether poor countries have the power to reject the IMF’s neoliberal policies, with the prevailing opinion being that countries choose whether to follow IMF advice, or to leave it, with no consequences.

Is democratic debate still possible?

Not everyone has received President wa Mutharika’s lecture with indifference and ambivalence, however. In The Nation of Friday July 22, the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MCCCI) responded to some of the issues the president raised. Speaking for the organization, the Executive Director, Chancellor Kaferapanjira, doubted that the government had the resolve to institute measures of self-sacrifice that would be required for the president’s suggestions to be implemented. “The vehicle fleet of the Malawi Government is one of the largest in Africa,” said Mr Kaferapanjira. “If they can get rid of the appetite for new vehicles and maintain the current ones, it can help in reducing recurrent expenditure.”

An interesting observation this one, but one wonders why the Malawi Police and the Ministries of Health and Education, big ministries with big numbers of employees and big operations, have never had adequate numbers of vehicles. But Mr Kaferapanjira’s observations are also echoed by the petition civil society has presented to the president. They are also echoed by several columnists and commentators, including The Weekend Nation’s Ephraim Munthali and The Sunday Times’ Deborah Nyangulu-Chipofya and Raphael Tenthani, who have pointed out how government could rein in excesses and abuses if they could embrace self-sacrifice and austerity measures themselves.

That there has been little debate stems, partly, from the manner in which the president speaks. It has become an expectation that every time the president veers off his prepared remarks, he will make the next day’s front page headlines. He has called his critics “drunks” and “tiankhwezule,” (in reference to a small bird that, by implication, should not be taken seriously), and donors “stupid.” The latter term has so scandalized Malawians, to the extent of the opposition critic who is reported to have said Britain was Malawi’s mother and should not be antagonized. It is common amongst Malawian pundits and columnists to declare that imperialism ended with colonialism, and Malawi has all but herself to blame.

This is an observation made mostly in reaction to what Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has called “the president’s nationalist anxieties and preoccupations with colonialism and admonition of Britain,” which to the majority of Malawi’s population, born after independence, “are outdated and irrelevant.” Obviously, the tendency by African leaders to use colonialism as an excuse has backfired on them. However imperialism is still very much at work, as a growing body of development studies scholarship shows. This is a body of scholarship intellectuals from Africa and from other parts of the world that demonstrates how African wealth and resources migrate out of the continent every year. The blame game insists on one culprit, when it is both Western interests and wealthy African elites behind the looting and plundering.

President wa Mutharika’s second term of office has given cause to two questions about many African leaders: Are they their own worst enemy? Are they really different from other leaders elsewhere? They set the tone for how Africans are going to discourse. It will be them setting the terms, as they know best; they cannot take Africa over a cliff, they reassure. Because there will be no real dialogue and serious debate about genuine issues raised in the pronouncements by both the presidents and their critics, the only choices left on both sides will be extreme positions that portray the other party as out of touch and ignorant, intolerant and stubborn.

In their extreme moods, African leaders want the organizers of protests and demonstrations prosecuted for treason, or “smoked out”. In the extreme fringes of the protestors, they want these leaders out of power, and worse. The presidents bring the full force of the state to bear on their detractors, who find ready support from Western interests. The middle ground which was supposed to foster debate about Africa’s desires for true democracy and independence, “Africa of the new beginning”, to use Mutharika’s own words, is further adrift.

Reframing the discussion on Malawi’s problems of access to higher education

This article first appeared in The Nation, on Wednesday 15th December, 2010, under the title 'No solution to Malawi's problems of access to higher education?'.

Returning from a trip outside Malawi, Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Professor Peter Mutharika, brought back home some ideas on how to change Malawi’s higher education landscape. Professor Mutharika told journalists that he had held discussions with various officials in American universities on Malawi’s plans to introduce six new universities in the next ten years. One particular idea the minister mentioned was that of community colleges.

I recently suggested in an article published in The Nation newspaper, in Pambazuka News and at the Zeleza Post, that one way of making the six universities a reality might be to elevate the country’s five public teacher training colleges into universities, granting bachelors degrees and higher to primary school teachers and other educators.  In addition to the proposal from Professor Mutharika for Malawi to explore the possibility of community colleges, let us consider two more ideas. The first would be to elevate all technical colleges to university status granting 4-year bachelors’ degrees. The second would be to convert all 3-year diploma programmes into 4-year bachelors’ degree programmes. Otherwise, the proposed six universities will remain a mere drop in the ocean of lack of equitable access to higher education in Malawi.

The results of the 2010 Malawi School Leaving Certificate (MSCE) examinations help put the problem of lack of access to higher education into sharp perspective. In 2010 68,642 Malawians sat the exam (The Nation, 18 November, 2010, p.1). Out of these, 36,621 passed. Going by this year’s university selection numbers, less than 5,000 of these will be accorded places in the country’s universities. The University of Malawi will take in approximately 2,000, and Mzuzu University (MZUNI) will take in about 500. The Catholic University of Malawi (CUNIMA), the Malawi Adventist University, University of Livingstonia, Blantyre International University, African Bible College, and the other 4-year degree granting institutions will not take in any more than UNIMA and MZUNI, combined.

The remainder, no less than 31,000 young Malawians, will be faced with very grim life chances. Some might find places in the certificate and 3-year diploma granting institutions such as Domasi College of Education, Malawi Institute of Journalism, Malawi College of Health Sciences, the various nursing schools, teacher training colleges, and others. Even then, the numbers won’t add up to much. Others will find some form of self or paid employment in the formal and informal sector. But many others will languish in a socio-economic limbo, unable to turn their school leaver status into economic viability.

As of 2007, the year for which current data is available from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST)’s Education Management Information System (EMIS) Section, the total university enrollment for UNIMA and MZUNI was 8,168. The figure was much smaller for the seven technical colleges in the country, 1,388 students. No figures are available for the total enrollment of students in other tertiary institutions, such as nursing colleges, the college of health sciences, the Malawi Institute of Journalism, Domasi College of Education, and others. The gross enrolment of secondary school students in Malawi hovers around 233,573 (Education Statistics, 2008). Each year Malawi releases on to the streets and in the villages no less than 30,000 young people who have passed the MSCE. Another 30,000 fails the exam, and has to either repeat, or forget about a school-leaving certificate altogether.

The case for drastic changes in access to and enrollment in our universities, and expanding the number of higher learning institutions in the country, is overwhelming. We could establish community colleges, as Professor Mutharika proposes. We could elevate technical, vocational and teacher training colleges into 4-year degree granting institutions. We could also abolish the 3-year diploma programme across the board by adding one or two more semesters and award graduates with a full bachelors degree. In some countries such as the United Kingdom, three years of full time study earns one a bachelors’ degree.

In the United States of America, community colleges offer a two-year associate’s degree. Anybody who has successfully completed a secondary school education is eligible. The cost is remarkably lower than conventional universities, making them accessible to as many Americans as possible. According to Dr. Jill Biden, wife of US Vice President Joe Biden, a private university in the United States costs an average of $26,000 per academic year. A public university costs an average of $7,000. A community college costs an average of $2,500.

It is strange that many Malawian institutions of higher learning cling to the outdated 3-year diploma model. Students in these diploma programmes do work that is comparable to 4-year degree programmes. It is a huge waste of time and money for the students, their families and for the nation to make people undergo a three-year diploma programme, and then a few years later bring some of them back to spend another two or more years to finish a bachelors degree. It should be possible to redesign 3-year diploma programmes into bachelors’ degree programmes. We could save a lot of time, money and interrupted lives.

Such a change would increase the number of highly educated Malawians. It would also prepare more Malawians for post-graduate studies. This would also lead to a wider pool of Malawians with requisite academic qualifications and intellectual training better qualified to teach in the degree-granting institutions. The above point is important to make in response to the inevitable question of where Malawi can get qualified university lecturers and professors to teach the numbers that would result from these proposed changes. Affording more Malawians an opportunity for an appropriate university education relevant to Malawi’s context locally and globally would be good for the development of the country.

As I pointed out in the aforementioned earlier article, most countries around the world are realizing that the future of their societies lies in improving access to and the quality of university education and research. Countries such as India, China, Singapore, and the United States of America are looking up to and increasing funding to their universities to help revitalize their economies and chart a better future for their people. Recent talk from President Bingu wa Mutharika and Professor Peter Mutharika, suggests Malawi is also beginning to make access to higher education a national priority.

In the United States, community college enrollments represent 40 percent of all higher education enrollments. There are more than 18 million students in approximately 4,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States, according to Harvard University professor Louis Menand, in his book The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Reaction in the American University (2010). Calling it “one of the best-kept secrets of higher education,” President Obama in 2009 asked Jill Biden to lead a new initiative to revamp America’s community college system. President Obama and Vice President Biden have proposed $12 billion dollars for the initiative, over a ten-year period. They hope to strengthen the capacity of community colleges across the United States and enable them produce up to 5 million graduates over that period. Long seen as a poor alternative to a university education, community colleges have started seeing their enrollments rise in the wake of the economic crisis America has been undergoing since 2008.

Some community colleges in America have already been working on plans to link themselves to universities so their graduates can seamlessly transition from 2-year associate degrees into bachelors’ degrees. Community colleges have very flexible entry qualifications, offering access to a diverse range of Americans. Some students are parents who left school so they could raise families. Others are workers who have been retrenched and are looking for an opportunity to re-skill and catch up with new advances in their profession. The operational premise here is that if you can successfully complete a secondary school education, you can successfully attend university. In Malawi, the acute lack of space in the university system has bred the belief that merely passing the MSCE is not enough; you have to pass it with distinction. This belief is misleading. It has wasted the lives of many capable, brilliant young Malawians on the grounds that they did not achieve a distinction at MSCE.  

Considering all of these proposals for the Malawian higher education context would go some way toward fulfilling national education policy as laid out in the National Education Sector Plan (NESP) 2007-2-16, the blueprint guiding education policy and practice in Malawi. The policy priorities for all educitonal areas outlined in the NESP are improved governance and management, quality and relevance, and access and equity. The climate seems ripe for a discussion of such bold initiatives in the country’s higher education system. We will miss a golden opportunity if we fail to engage each other and consult as widely as possible in this national discussion.

Transforming the teaching profession as a national development strategy

Note: This article appeared in the Daily Times, 7 October, 2010

The occasion for this year’s World Teachers Day commemoration, October 5^th, has spurred recollections and reminiscences of teachers who have been influential in a number of people’s lives. In a ‘My Point of View’ op-ed column by Limani Nsapato in the Friday October 1^st issue of the Daily Times, he wrote about a Mr. Zuze, his Standard 3 teacher who inspired him to start liking school, and achieve academic success in later life. In the Nation on Sunday of October 3 Akossa Mphepo dedicated her Editor’s Note in the EveryWoman section of the paper to the teachers who have remained memorable for her to this day. She also interviewed Maggie Madimbo, a primary school teacher who went on to amass degrees, and is now studying for a Ph.D. in the United States.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun, I would like to say something about my own teacher training days and how I was inspired by teachers who shaped my passion for reading and writing. In so doing, I would also like to celebrate friends and colleagues with whom I have travelled along this path, some of whom are, unfortunately, departed. I will conclude my thoughts with a discussion on Malawi’s aspirations for its future teaching corps, as outlined in the National Strategy for Teacher Education nd Development (NSTED), developed in 2008. Over and above everything else, I want to suggest that we engage in a constructive national debate on how to transform teachers’ lives and performance in Malawi.

My teacher training started in December 1989 and ended in September 1993. The MASTEP program had been designed as a three-year program, combining a residential model during the school vacations, and a distance-learning model during the school year. In effect, as can be seen from the dates, it lasted four years. I made some very striking friendships within a week of my arrival at the Lilongwe Teachers’ College, towards the end of December 1989. In a matter of days, I had become very good friends with Charles Mnjale Gwazeni, Albert Kalimbakatha, Isdor Kaiya, Limiton Chalera, Ken Kalonde, and a few others. We all had one thing in common. We loved to read and write. Soon we formed what we called the Malawi Special Teacher Education Program (MASTEP) Writers Workshop. During our two-month stays at Lilongwe Teachers College over the next three years, we met almost every afternoon right after lunch. We took turns reading our writing, and critiquing each other. Our writing ranged from poetry to short fiction to feature essays. Gwazeni, Chalera and Kalonde are deceased now, but their literary and teaching spirit lives on in those of us who were touched by their genius.

By the end of the MASTEP program we had put together a literary journal containing works of poetry, fiction, essays and other types of writing. We drew inspiration from some of Malawi’s finest writers. After the initial two-week residential orientation at Lilongwe Teachers’ College, I was posted to Chikande Primary School, in Ntcheu, where I spent the rest of my teacher training. We taught during the school year, and we went into college during the Christmas, Easter and Summer vacations.

Looking back at my time in the MASTEP programme two decades later, I am very happy that I chose teaching as my profession. Well, I didn’t actually choose it over other careers. I was away at my home village in Ntcheu enjoying the summer vacation when my father saw an announcement for the MASTEP programme in the newspaper. He cut it out and mailed it to me, advising me to apply for it. My father, a police officer of many years, believed that I would make a better teacher than a policeman. He thought my mother was an excellent primary school teacher, and I could tell he respected teachers more than he respected any other profession.

Teaching gave me a start in my professional life, and I have grown to see the world from the perspective of a teacher and the role teachers play in building a society. Even as I have developed other professional habits, teaching has always been at the centre, from the knowledge production aspects around a particular practice, to the dissemination and utilisation of that knowledge for broader social purposes.

Over the years I have had many wondeful teachers, at various levels of the educational system. Mrs Kajawo was my first ever teacher in Standard One at Police Primary School, and in Standard Two Mrs Saiwa and Mrs Mwenelupembe were my teachers. These wonderful teachers guided my earlierst attempts at reading, writing and numeracy. In secondary school, two teachers stand out, mostly for their encouragement, through actions mostly, on the importance of reading widely and writing seriously. I started thinking of myself as a writer when I was Form Two at Nankhunda Seminary in Zomba. In Form Three our English teacher was Fr. Lawrence Mlenga, and he easily noticed how I enjoyed writing. I did my Form Four at Police Secondary School in Zomba, and there it was again an English teacher who stood out. Mr Lot Dzonzi, now Commissioner of Police, introduced a Writers’ Board, and encouraged us to write and post our stories there. In addition to being my English teacher, he was also patron of the drama group, and we ended up at number three at the 1989 ATEM national grand finals. Police Secondary School later won the national championship. By then I had finished my Form Four and left.

Mr Dzonzi went beyond the call of duty. He took personal books from his library, which were not even on the exam sylabus, and gave them to his students to read. One such book was Ngugi wa Thiong’os Devil on the Cross, which I read right after I finished Form Four. Another one was Athol Fugard’s published play Sizwe Bansi is Dead. After the MSCE exams, he took me to the homes of Wokomaatani Malunga and Garton Kamchedzera, where he introduced me to these Malawian literary luminaries and encouraged me to follow in their footsteps. It was these steps that later led to my becoming a non-university member of the Chancellor College Writers Workshop, which later led to many other writing ventures, two decades later.

I recently wrote about spending six months in 2004 visiting schools and talking to Malawian teachers about prospects for peace education in Malawi. For me those six months epitomised the coming full circle of teaching, writing and national aspirations. As a classroom teacher, I remember feeling respected by the village community around Chikande in Ntcheu, while learning how unappreciated teachers were by the authorities. My school visits and talks with teachers in 2004 revealed to me new depths in the anger and frustrations many Malawian teachers feel, especially in primary schools. This is no secret to anyone who studies Malawian schools. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has highlighted the problem of teacher morale and frustration in its 2008 National Strategy For Teacher Education and Development (NSTED). The NSTED document has offered practical recommendations for teacher development policy to enhance the lives of teachers and thereby promote teacher performance in Malawian schools.

No clause in the NSTED strategy holds more potential for the revitalization of the Malawian school system than the recommendation to introduce an accreditation programme to offer teachers a path for career advancement through classroom performance. The NSTED proposes that the accreditation programme be tied to collaboration between teacher training colleges and universities, and be supported by equipping Teacher Development Centres with modern technology and Internet connectivity. 

The NSTED is a far-sighted, comprehensive educational policy recommendation that has the potential to transform teacher education and school performance in Malawi. If it can become widely publicised so that every teacher and educator in the country knows what the teacher policy is, Malawi will have embarked on the road to revamping the educational system and to a more meaningful approach that goes beyond Millennium Development Goal Number Two, Universal Primary Education by 2015. As many educators understand, it is one thing to achieve universal primary enrollment, but it is quite another to provide those children a quality, meaningful and relevant education.

As has been observed by Bob Moon, founding director of the Teacher Education in Sub-Sharan Africa (TESSA) programme, the MDGs do not mention teachers, an oversight that can potentially stall progress and development in any country. During the BBC’s MDGs panel discussion in New York last week, President Bingu wa Mutharika told the audience that the MDGs missed the “supply side” of the equation. The MDGs, said Professor Mutharika, said nothing about the teachers that would be needed to train the children being targetted for Universal Primary Enrollment. Bringing teachers into the strategy calls for massive investments into not only teacher recruitment, but also sustained, long-term research into how to train and develop excellent teachers. As of now we do not have that kind of research in Malawi, a consequence of not involving the university establishment in the education of primary school teachers.

For the school experience of children to have relevance beyond universal enrollment, we need to not only address chronic teacher shortages, we also need to realign teacher education with the needs of a 21^st century society. We need to broaden the discussion on how effective it is to offer teachers a two-year education, with none of our universities taking an active, leading role in teacher education and curriculum research. We need to seriously think of how to motivate teachers beyond cash emoluments and higher qualifications.

Several of us have started a discussion on how to develop an annual Teacher of the Year Award, along the lines of the end of year awards organizations such as the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation run. We are having this discussion using online tools that are increasingly becoming more accessible here in Malawi. In the coming years it will be possible for many teachers to access the Internet, as some teachers have already taken the initiative, on their own, to open email accounts.

To create space for discussing teachers’ issues and share information and developments about education in Malawi and beyond, a number of us recently started a google online forum, called Bwalo la Aphunzitsi. It is located at http://groups.google.mw/group/bwalo-la-aphunzitsi. To join, send an email to bwalolaaphunzitsi@gmail.com, and be a part of the important discourse envisioning Malawi’s teaching profession for the 21^st century.