Knee-deep in a river & dying of thirst: Malawi's water woes

On the morning of Sunday October 28^th the water supply in the part of Lilongwe City where I live suddenly stopped. We thought it was a temporary problem. But lunch time came and the taps were still dry. I called the faults line for Lilongwe Water Board. They explained that a pipe had burst at their Mtunthama Booster Station, and their technicians were fixing the problem. They had no idea how long the repair work would take, but they reassured me the problem would be solved before the end of the day.

Over the course of the afternoon and evening I called the fault lines a few more times to ask for updates. To make dinner, we had to buy bottled water from a grocery store. The end of the day came but the water didn’t. I woke up at 3.30am to check. There was not a drop. At 5.20am I called the faults line again, and the news was different this time. They had just finished the repair work, and anytime the order would be given to start pumping water into the tanks. How long would it take before the taps would flow again? I asked. It was not possible to tell, came the reply.

Many wells and boreholes in Ntcheu have dried up
after four seasons of poor rains

It wasn’t until 9am on Monday morning, twenty four hours after the outage, that the taps started flowing again. For some areas of Lilongwe City water supply wasn’t restored for another excruciating twelve hours. But we know of parts of Lilongwe City where taps dry up for months. There have been letters to the editor and news articles on this. Recently we read about a group of people that stormed the office of the Lilongwe Water Board general manager, delivering an ultimatum for the parastatal to improve service delivery or people would stop paying their bills.

To their credit, Lilongwe Water Board has a functioning, regularly updated website. On Monday morning they uploaded a press release on the website detailing where the pipe had burst, who was affected, and what time repairs had been finished. The website is professionally designed, and provides much of the information that customers usually need. They even list numbers to call for faults, bill payments, and a host of other functions. Every time I have picked up the phone to call either the faults line, or customer service, there is always someone who responds. I have had my queries politely addressed, and have been treated with courtesy. At least this has been my experience, speaking for myself.  

That said, there are things Lilongwe Water Board could have done better in handling the problem. To start with, the immediate concern for customers was where we were going to get water for cooking, bathing, doing laundry, and for the toilets. Monday was a working day, children needed to go to school. What Lilongwe Water Board should have done immediately would have been to arrange for an emergency water supply for the affected areas. I am aware that no single water board in Malawi ever does this. The taps dry up, and you are on your own. And this goes for most Malawian public and even private entities.

Communicating with customers was another aspect LWB could have handled better. Organizations that value their customers are pro-active. Rather than wait for customers to call and find out why they are experiencing a problem, a pro-active organization will take the initiative and communicate first. A friend who runs an IT company, Austin Madinga, commented on twitter and remarked that he found it “hard to understand why [Malawian companies] don't use social media. So much faster, plus everyone is there already!” And he is right. The only reason I was able to find LWB’s press release on the water outage was because I was looking for evidence, for this blog post, of what measures the company had taken to communicate to their customers.

Many more people access their Facebook and twitter accounts on a daily basis. People using social media get the latest news without having to go searching for it. These days good websites operate hand in hand with social media. Social media is far much cheaper, and much more easily accessible. In countries where computer access is still light years behind, people use cellphones to access the Internet. And then there is sms, and instant message sent to thousands of customers at the click of a button.

The bigger point I am driving at is a new type of leadership that inspires Malawians. Malawians today are looking for leadership that evinces creativity, fresh ideas, and innovative thinking. Malawians find it difficult to understand why we continue to experience severe water shortages when the country is unusually blessed in terms of water sources. Lake Malawi straddles two thirds of the country’s length, and is a fifth of the country’s land area. The remaining one third has the gigantic Shire River. Lake Malawi is less than 100 kilometres away from Lilongwe City. Is there a good explanation why Lilongwe continues to suffer from acute water problems? Where is the visionary leadership that understands and appreciates how so blessed we are?

In parts of Ntcheu people are using carts, bicycles
and jerrycans to fetch water

As a few friends have observed lately, we Malawians appear to have such a high tolerance for mediocrity. Politicians, leaders of public institutions and the private sector know this. That is why they do not feel compelled to up their game. But this will not continue forever. Those leaders who are demonstrating vision and proving to be innovative thinkers will clearly stand out amongst the mediocre lot. I hope Lilongwe Water Board will exemplify that kind of leadership and demonstrate that they are forward-thinking. The country is changing, and expectations are changing also.

I started drafting this post in Lilongwe a day after the water problem I have described. This just-ended weekend I travelled to Zomba, where on Saturday morning the taps had no water in the part of town I went to. The Weekend Nation of Saturday November 3^rd interviewed Blantyre Water Board’s public affairs officer Innocent Mbvundula asking him why Blantyre was also experiencing terrible water problems. The Nation of Friday November 2^nd carried an article on Blantyre’s water problems and how human rights activists are taking up the issue. I finished the weekend in a part of Ntcheu where many wells and boreholes have dried up, and there are long lines at the few functioning boreholes. 

The passion of Hastings Maloya: A tribute

I learned with great shock, a few hours ago this Friday night, that Hastings Maloya is no more. Malawi has lost a young, unique dynamic Malawian who combined a passion for the environment, a zeal for communication and a love for conservation. In addition to being an environmentalist and a conservationist, Hastings was also journalist, blogger, public relations practitioner and cultural conservationist, among many other hats he wore.

I first met Hastings Maloya in 2004. I had travelled to Mulanje to visit Our Hope Private School, which he was running with a group of friends. I had brought him a blue t-shirt with the words “Post Oak Elementary School,” given to me by Mrs Mary Krouse. Mrs Krouse, now retired, was then a 5^th grade teacher at Post Oak, in Lansing, Michigan, USA. She was an experienced mentor teacher in whose class I supervised post-bachelors degree students interning for their certification to teach at Michigan State University. She wanted to twin her 5^th grade class with a Malawian 5^th grade class. I posted the request on Nyasanet, and Hastings Maloya replied immediately.

I spoke to the children at Our Hope on August 16^th, 2004, and took some pictures with them. I also took some artefacts they had asked me to take back to their friends at Post Oak. Our Hope didn’t last long; it closed a year or so later, but Hastings held on to hopes that it would reopen one day. I remained very good friends with Hastings, and got to admire a number of things that made him stand out as a uniquely talented Malawian.

He dedicated his professional life to the environment in general, and to Mulanje Mountain in particular. The third highest peak in Africa, Mulanje Mountain is a rare monument that holds amazing wonders. Yearly tourists visit the mountain from all corners of the world, and some attempt to go to its no-go areas. The highest peak on Mulanje Mountain, Sapitwa, means just that: no-go. In the last ten years at least two tourists have attempted to reach Sapitwa, with fatal consequences.

On the morning of 12^th or 13^th September 2003, Linda Pronk, a lab technician from the Netherlands working for VSO, set off on her own to scale Sapitwa. When she did not return by night, search and rescue teams were despatched, but did not find her. She has never been found, to this day. According to Peter Mitunda, Malawian filmmaker Villant Ndasowa produced a 30-minute documentary on Linda Pronk’s missing, a review of which is available online. There is also a 3 minute video clip on Youtube. Mitunda’s review of the documentary mentions two other known disappearances on Sapitwa. Patrick Phewa disappeared in 1943, whereas Kubwalo Mwabvi disappeared in 1992. They were both Malawian locals who came from the Mulanje area.

On 5^th August 2009, grass cutters found the body of Gabriel Buchmann, who had been reported missing three weeks earlier on July 17^th. Buchmann was a Brazilian Fulbright scholar studying at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), in the United States. He too had hoped to climb Sapitwa Peak, without the help of trained guides.

In both the 2003 and 2009 episodes, which grabbed international headlines, Hastings Maloya was the public face of Mulanje Mountain. He was Programme Officer for Education and Communications for the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust MMCT, where he started working on 1^st September, 2002, according to what he wrote on his blog. In 2010 Hastings became chairperson of the SADC Environmental Forum, ascending to a remarkable position in recognition of his work on environmental activism and conservation. Previously he had worked as a reporter at the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. Hastings wrote on his blog and in the local print media about the disappearance of Linda Pronk, and spoke to local and international media on the death of Gabriel Buchmann.

As an environmentalist, Hastings was a walking library of knowledge about Mulanje Mountain and about the environment in Malawi. I nursed the hope that he was one day going to sit down and write a book about the mountain, something I suggested to him on more than one occasion. He promised he would. He liked to post pictures on facebook and on his blog, in which he was lovingly and nonchalantly caressing deadly snakes. I once asked him what it took to learn how to do that, and he said it was a matter of training. He was an avid sports lover, and actively promoted the annual Mt Mulanje Porters Race.

Hastings had a strong presence in Malawi's social media sphere. He founded and moderated an environmental discussion forum, before co-founding and moderating the google forum for the Malawi chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). As a blogger, he promoted environmentalism and conservation. He was a prominent feature on Nyasanet, where many of us first met him, before meeting him face to face. Countless times Malawians in the diaspora would make contact with Hastings as they planned trips to Malawi, and would make it a point to visit Mulanje just to see him. He did the same on his travels around the world, using social media to connect with other Malawians in the diaspora.

In November 2011 I joined a team of colleagues who were visiting schools in Mulanje district. The next afternoon I walked over to Hastings’ office, and found him out on a long lunch. I phoned him, and he asked me to wait, he was just turning the corner. He asked, half-jokingly and half-seriously, if I had any interest in seeing his snakes. I told him absolutely no way. I had planned to go up the mountain to see how far an hour's hike would take. I asked Hastings if it was safe to do so, and if I needed a guide. He reassured me it was safe, and that for an hour's hike up from Kara O' Mula Lodge, I would not need a guide. I was surprised to find robust cellphone network deep into the recesses of that of the mountain, which enabled me to tweet my way up and down the trail.

That afternoon Hastings told me about an exciting project that was about to be launched in Mulanje district. A remote village was going to have electricity for the first time ever, solely powered by a hydro-electric plant on a falls along Likhubula River. He and his colleagues were very excited about it. He also gave me calendars, magazines and annual reports prepared by the MMCT. I told him I was particularly interested in MMCT’s project to have UNESCO designate Mulanje Mountain as a World Heritage Site. It would be Malawi’s third such site, after Lake Malawi, and Chongoni Rock Art in Dedza.

Should this happen, it will be a dream come true for Hastings. It would also be a fitting tribute to his life and work to protect Mulanje Mountain and to promote ecological consciousness in Malawi and beyond. May your soul rest in eternal peace, Mbwiyanga, Mapwiya Mung’onong’ono. 

Marikana and the limits of the new Afro-enthusiasm

As a Malawian, the August 16^th Marikana Mine massacre in South Africa invokes the kinds of questions that Malawians asked on 20^th July in 2011. Why did the police shoot to kill demonstrators? Was there absolutely no non-violent action the police could have taken, other than killing so many protesters? Were the demonstrators so violent that the police had no option but to shoot to kill? On both 20^th July 2011 in Malawi and 16^th August 2012 in South Africa, blame has been apportioned on both sides, revealing the ideological worldviews that we use to interpret ghastly events like these. Around the world on 16^th August, people’s memories went back to March 21, 1960. On that day South African police shot and killed 69 demonstrators. As with Sharpeville, one version of events said the police had shot at peaceful, unarmed people, while another version said the demonstrators were armed and had threatened police.

President Jacob Zuma cut short a trip to a SADC summit in Mozambique, and urged a stop to the fingerpointing to let South Africans mourn and allow a commission of inquiry to investigate what really happened. At the risk of making an unfair contrast in unlike contexts, Malawi’s president at the time, the late Bingu wa Mutharika, blamed 20 July 2011 on the protesters and the civil society activists who organized the protests, and there was no official mourning period announced. The contrast is unfair and the contests dissimilar because the Marikana massacre arose from an industrial dispute pitting two unions against each other, backed by different interests. In Malawi the dispute was between civil society and the president himself.

But the loss of life in both cases is shocking. And both situations have their roots in economic grievances emerging at a time when the global mainstream media is changing its characterization of the African continent. Both scenarios warrant questions about the place on uMunthu or uBuntu in the social imaginary of Southern Africa. As a peace imperative, the quest for uMunthu challenges the propensity for violence and the underdevelopment of nonviolence practices.  

Despite calls from President Jacob Zuma and others for parties to desist from blaming each other, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the largest affiliate of the Congress for South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is blaming the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). NU M says the AMCU harbors what it calls “criminal elements” and that the protests have not  been based on genuine industrial concerns. On its part, the South African Communist Party is rejecting any characterization of the differences between the two unions as “union rivalry”, calling it an attempt to disorganize the South African labour movement.

But the most persuasive analyses of Marikana thus far have come from commentators talking about the political economy of South African violence and the neoliberal context of the mining industry in that country.  Sahra Ryklief, Secretary General of the International Federation of Workers’ Education

Associations, finds no justification for why police had to use lethal violence. She writes that the police have access to non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, teargas, and tasers. She says the police can cordon off protesters using barbed wire, and they have resources and expertise to prevent crowds from getting violent and harming others. She cites examples of cases elsewhere in the world where police have defused volatile situations without any fatalities.

Ryklief says the blame goes to many parties involved in the broader outlook of labour relations in South Africa. She includes herself on the list of who bears blame, as a labour organizer and educator. She says previously she has glossed over and excused coercive actions and violence tactics that workers have used against each other, while urging unity and solidarity. “I will do so no longer,” she declares. She says worker unity now “has to be based on something superior to violent coercion”. She writes that unity based on coercion cannot lead to any lasting, positive solutions. Coercion, she says, has for far too long shaped the way South Africans approach strike organisation. “As labour, we need to take responsibility for change in this respect.”

Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu has added his voice to the calls for inward reflection for everyone. He decries the gross inequality and yawning gap between rich and poor, but he also asks marginalized South Africans to reflect on their actions. “When we march, we demand, we destroy and we loot. We care not whether our demands are reasonable, or what actions we take.”

Gavin Capps of the University of Cape Town told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, an American TV programme, that the massacre needs to be looked at from the perspective of the recent global rise of demand for platinum. He says this new demand started in the mid-1990s, and its rapidity has caused a lot of social problems for the people living in the areas surrounding the mines. There has been environmental damage, expropriation of land, displacement of people, and economic exploitation of massive proportions. These have been the root causes of what has culminated into this massacre.

According to a statement issued by the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, “all the major platinum mining corporations have made billions of rands out of the world’s richest platinum deposits in the Bojanala District of the North West province, while leaving a trail of misery, death, poverty, illness, and environmental pollution in the surrounding communities.” The Communist Party’s statement is quoting a 167-page report, titled “Communities in the Platinum Minefields”, released just days before the massacre.

Gavin Capps says South Africa accounts for 70 percent of global platinum production, yet the mineworkers live in desperate conditions with neither water nor electricity. The disregard for the conditions in which mineworkers live has been epitomized in the manner in which Lonmin, the company that owns the mine, treated the aftermath of the massacre. While the rest of the world was expressing shock and disbelief at the massive loss of life, and mineworkers were grieving the loss of their colleagues, the company was issuing an ultimatum for the other mineworkers to immediately return to work, or face dismissal. It took the intervention of the South African Council of Churches and the office of President Jacob Zuma to restrain the company from dismissing the more than 70 percent mineworkers who defied the ultimatum.

In the words of the Socialist Party of Azania, “profit is always put before the interests of people and never vice versa.” Activists working for social and economic justice have for a long time bemoaned neoliberal economics and how it puts profits over people’s wellbeing. The current rhetoric that is rebranding much of Africa as the new hub for the next global economic miracle risks burying the inconvenient questions that dog neoliberal economic thinking. Gone are the days when development meant equitable growth across an entire country or region.

Most economic development happening across Africa today is concentrated in narrow straits and benefitting very few people at the expense of the rest. In South Africa, the development of ultra-modern cities within cities such as Sandton best exemplifies this. Sandton can stand toe to toe with Manhattan or any highly advanced city in the world. Yet just on the outskirts of Johannesburg you have increasing numbers of people living in shanty towns with no water and no electricity. In the words of former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “We are a deeply wounded people who are custodians of a very special country with people and resources that are second to none. There is enough for all South Africans to share.” The same trend is happening in Malawi, where the capital city, Lilongwe, has currently no less than four shopping malls under construction. Yet just a few miles within the same city hundreds of people live in slum-like conditions.

For South Africa and the wider region, the massacre at Marikana ought to usher in a new era of critical reflection on the trajectory of Africa’s economies amidst the renewed rhetoric of latter day optimism. The optimism is well-intended and holds transformative potential for how Southern Africans look at themselves and shape their destiny. While it exposes the naked greed of capital in a neoliberal era, the optimism also risks masking deep grievances particularly by those being left behind. Tutu’s words are true for much of the continent and beyond: “Our ‘haves’ have largely failed to share, our ‘have-nots’ are feeling increasingly frustrated, and our leaders are locked in seemingly endless contestation for political and economic power.” Marikana should force African countries to rethink their role and place in the global economic structure, and to persist in questioning the kind of inequality the world is experiencing. 

Can new media transform the lives of poor Malawians?

At the recent World Press Freedom Day debate on 5^th May, 2012, Arnold Munthali, online editor for Blantyre Newspapers Limited, lamented that Malawi government press releases can only be relayed to the Malawian media via a 20^th century relic, the fax machine. This belies the strides the world, including the African continent, have made in harnessing the power of the Internet. Going by her recent State of the Nation address, President Joyce Banda aims to maximize the potential of ICT in general, and the Internet in particular. But the digital divide in Malawi is so severe it dumbfounding to imagine what can be done to make new media work for the transformation of poor Malawians.

As of March 31^st, 2012, there were 140 million Africans on the Internet, out of approximately one billion people, according to the Internet tracking website www.internetworldstats.com. This translates into 14 percent Internet penetration on the continent. Of these 140 million Africans on the Internet, 40 million were on the social networking site Facebook. In terms of sheer numbers, Nigeria has the biggest number of Internet users, 45 million out of a population of 155 million. In terms of proportion, Morocco has the best percentage, 15.7 million people on the Internet out of 32 million, representing half the population. Egypt and Kenya have one in every four people on the Internet.

Malawi’s presence on the Internet is one of the lowest in the world. Out of a population estimated between 14 and 15 million people, only 716,400 Malawians had access to the Internet as of March 31^st 2012, a 4.5 percent penetration. Of these, 127,780 were on Facebook. Our neighbours fare a little better than us: 6.4 percent for Zambia, 11.5 percent for Tanzania, and 12 percent for Zimbabwe. Mocambique trails Malawi at 4.3 percent. South Africa has 14 percent of its population on the Internet.

Taken as a whole, the growth of Internet usage in Africa is the fastest in the world, mostly due to the fact that the Internet is entirely new here. Between the years 2000 to 2011, Internet usage in Africa grew by 2,527 percent, according to the November 2011 issue of African Business magazine. Compare that with the rest of the world where Internet usage grew by 480 percent. African Business magazine puts the percentage of Africans on the Internet at 11.4 percent in November 2011, but by March 31^st 2012 this had increased to 14 percent, going by the figures presented by internetworldstats.com. In the rest of the world 30.2 percent of the global population is on the Internet.

In Kenya Internet usage is growing more rapidly than in most parts of the world. In two years alone, the number of Kenyans on the Internet has grown from 2 million to 12.5 million. Up to US$7 billion is transacted through the Kenyan mobile money transferring system, M-Pesa. A mobile application used for conflict alerts pioneered by Kenyan bloggers and software engineers during the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya, known as Ushahidi (witness), is now used in 128 countries around the world.

A number of important points were raised during the question and answer session following the WPFD debate. Pilirani Semu-Banda, communications manager for UNFPA Malawi observed that in Malawi the Internet was still dominated by men. The audience murmured in agreement, with one person pointing out that even on the debating panel, there was only one woman out of five panelists. The woman in question was Catherine Chawezi, Information, Education and Communication officer for the National Commission on Science and Technology.

Other members of the audience expressed concern with the abuse that the Internet makes possible. False rumours spread very fast, and others use pseudonyms with the sole aim of attacking and badmouthing certain individuals. One audience member pointed out that before he died, the late President Bingu wa Mutharika had suffered several early deaths, all of them maliciously spread through social media. A listener called in and said new media was contributing to a lot of wasted time, with students spending the entire day on Facebook instead of studying. People were busy browsing on the Internet even during church. Each of the above concerns is a genuine problem.

It is true that Malawian women are disproportionately underrepresented on the Internet.  A big part of this comes from the gender gap in office employment. Most Malawian offices, whether in government, private sector or civil society are dominated by men. Even in professions like primary school teaching, men outnumber women by 62 percent to 38 percent, as of 2010 figures. In addition to the gender digital divide, there is also a class digital divide. I remember one primary school teacher complaining that every time they step foot into the computer room of a teachers’ college, lecturers makes it clear that primary school teachers are not welcome to use the Internet. This is a common problem in Malawi where people in superior positions monopolise the Internet, regarding themselves as more deserving than their subordinates.

The problem of false rumours is a product of unnecessary government secrecy. Late President Mutharika believed that he had a right to disappear from Malawi without explaining to Malawians his whereabouts. Rumours of his premature deaths could have easily been thwarted by simple announcements about his holidays or private trips. Several world leaders now use social media very effectively. Several African presidents are on the micro-blogging site Twitter, or facebook, or both. They include Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, and Jonathan Goodluck of Nigeria.

If President Joyce Banda means every word of what she said about new media in her State of the Nation address on May 18^th, she will not only use Facebook and Twitter, she will also encourage government ministries and departments to use social media to communicate with the growing number of Malawians who are taking to the Internet. The Kenyan Police and Army have Twitter accounts. Recently the Kenyan Police used twitter to communicate details about an accident and arrange for emergency help. By far the most efficient user of Twitter is the Mayor of the City of Newark in New Jersey, in the United States. Cory Booker uses twitter to send ambulances, police help and other emergency rescue services for residents.

It is true that a lot of time is wasted on the Internet. But it is also true that a lot of crucial information is shared on social networks. Most breaking news nowadays first appears on Twitter or Facebook. Women have groups where they share knowledge about childbirth, child care, relationships, cooking and lots of other topics of interest to women. Educators share knowledge on subject matter content, new research and classroom practices. Lawyers share legal knowledge, as do many members of many professions and professional interests.

An ambitious goal for Malawi would be to start working towards equipping Malawian primary schools with Internet access. Knowing how expensive and almost impossible this would be at this stage, a more realistic goal would be to start with Teacher Development Centres. The National Strategy for Teacher Education and Development, completed in 2008, already recognizes this, although currently there is no actual plan to identify the necessary funds. Individuals and the private sector can also play a role here, as some are already doing. 

Part of this entails changing our attitudes about social class entitlements and perceived benefits. The challenge for Malawi is to find ways of making the Internet not only accessible for Malawians in rural areas, but also useful, with relevant Malawian content available in Malawian languages. Only then can we meaningfully talk of harnessing new media for national development. 

Was the Bingu Africa Saw the Bingu Malawians Knew?

Several comments made about the departed president by a number of Africans from various countries, and a few non-Africans, seem to paint a picture of a man Malawians do not seem to recognise. He has been called a visionary leader, a Pan Africanist, and an anti-imperialist, among many other colourful adjectives. Is that the man Malawians knew?

Landing at Chileka International Airport for the funeral of the late president on April 22^nd, Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete gave a glimpse of how differently Mutharika appears to have been perceived by Africans outside Malawi, particularly in his last days. Kikwete said Mutharika was a visionary leader. He said every time they met, Kikwete learned something new from Mutharika.

Speaking at the burial, the Dean of the diplomatic corps in Malawi, Zimbabwean High Commissioner to Malawi Thandiwe Dumbutshena, repeated the statement about Mutharika being a visionary who had big ideas for Malawi and Africa. She said Mutharika liked to question conventional wisdom, and asked for evidence before accepting anything, a trait also mentioned by Raphael Tenthani in his ‘Muckraking on Sunday’ column (Sunday Times, 22^nd April).  Dumbutshena said this made Bingu look as if he never listened to other opinions.

On April 12^th the state-run Zimbabwean newspaper, The Herald, ran an opinion piece by two Zimbabwean academics, Darlington Mahuku and Bowden Mbanje. Mahuku and Mbanje wrote that Africa had lost “one of its illustrious sons.” They found it “disturbing and shocking . . . that some sections of the Malawian population celebrated his demise.” To them, Mutharika was a “radical Pan-Africanist” who sought to wean Malawi out of donor dependency. For his part, American academic and advocate of more aid for Africa, Jeffrey Sachs, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that pointed out Mutharika’s first term achievements and second-term failings. It ended with the sentence “Mutharika helped put Africa on a path out of poverty and hunger.”

How did Mutharika manage to create such contrasting images between Malawians and other Africans? Even in his last days he talked of how outside Malawi people stopped him to ask admiring questions about how he had transformed the country. What was it that other Africans saw in the man, that Malawians didn’t? And what did Malawians know about Bingu that other Africans didn’t? Some have opined that he lacked diplomacy in his public speeches. Others have said he had a very poor public relations machine. Yet others feel that he blundered in choosing to directly respond to each and every criticism leveled against him, instead of letting his cabinet and other officials do that for him.

All three explanations risk being interpreted to mean that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with Bingu’s presidency, it was all a matter of appearance. A lot of the debate on Mutharika’s leadership style has been characterized by a bifurcation of two extremes; either he was Malawi’s worst president, or he was Malawi’s best president thus far. Dualistic views are always unhelpful in trying to understand a complex problem, but they are an easy resort in the absence of handy explanations.

Mahuka and Mbanje are correct to observe that Mutharika preached an end to donor-dependency, but they seem unaware that Mutharika only started talking about this after he had exposed Malawi’s pathological aid dependency himself. Mutharika was rightly concerned about the extreme vulnerability of the country to donor whims, but such notions made little sense to people losing relatives because hospitals had no drugs, and to motorists spending weeks at fuel stations without getting any.

But perhaps Mutharika’s biggest failure was his inability to engage his fellow citizens in a discussion on his deepest beliefs, and to lead a life that reflected those beliefs. A few months before his death his outbursts grew in ferocity. He said donors could “go to hell” for all he cared. He appeared deeply angered. This came in the wake of a foreign relations offensive in which his own brother, Professor Peter Mutharika, and a few high ranking cabinet ministers toured Western capitals, including London and Washington. They were on a mission to make amends for the diplomatic spat that resulted in the expulsion of the British High Commissioner to Malawi, Fergus Cochran-Dyet, and to restart negotiations with the IMF.

It appeared that Malawi’s donors had said they were willing to resume aid, but not with Bingu in office. Mutharika saw that as a coup plot against him, funded by donors. Attempts to make deals with non-Western countries such as Qatar, Angola and Nigeria yielded nothing. The Nation newspaper of 2^nd March, 2012 reported, in an article by Kondwani Munthali, that the president was incensed by high profile sabotage of his plans to obtain relief for the country. Some Malawians speculated that Qatar, Angola and Nigeria may have abundant oil, but not many Malawians seem aware of who controls the oil companies in those countries. It is not the Qataris, the Angolans or the Nigerians.

Mutharika had trouble communicating his frustrations in ways that would have endeared him to ordinary Malawians. Instead, he issued threats to Malawian civil society, shouted down donors, and spoke with careless abandon. Whatever Pan-Africanism he may have believed in never became a topic of cordial, educative debate in Malawi. Talk of weaning the country out of donor dependency was not matched by a personal lifestyle that would have shown Malawians how to live within their means. He shopped in Hong Kong, holidayed in Australia, and flew in a presidential jet believed to have been bought using diverted donor money. Days after his death the Malawian cyberspace was awash with unsubstantiated rumours about the extent of the looting and plundering Mutharika was alleged to have perpetrated.

Many leaders preach Pan-Africanism abroad, while promoting a parochial, ethnic nationalism at home. This creates a convoluted understanding of a concept that once powered a movement that set a continent free. The future of Africa is sorely in need of a twenty first century Pan-Africanism not preached from lofty capitals, but grown from the grassroots, uniting Africans on the continent and around the globe. Few African leaders since the era of Nkrumah and Nyerere have walked the talk on Pan-Africanism. Mutharika wrote brilliantly about Pan Africanism in his books, but put very little of it into practice.

There is something about political power that brings out the best and the worst in people. Until we start questioning how power changes people, we will not find lasting solutions to the problem of politicians starting out very well, and ending up tragically.

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.