Debating Homosexuality and Human Rights in Malawi

[The article below was first published by Waging Nonviolence on 17th November, 2012]

When Malawi’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice Ralph Kasambara announced earlier this month that police had been ordered not to arrest anyone suspected in “engaging in homosexuality,” it was lauded by Human Rights Watch as “courageous” and by Amnesty International as “a step in the right direction.” A day later, Kasambara denied ever making the statement. As one of 36 African countries with laws banning same-sex relationships, the announcement suspending these laws has re-opened a debate on the subject which has been raging within Malawi for two intense years.

Since 2010 when two Malawian men — Steve Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga — were arrested, charged and convicted for their same-sex engagement ceremony in the city of Blantyre, the issue of homosexuality has evolved into a national dialogue. The Malawian NGO, the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP), has taken the lead, together with other NGOs, in promoting the rights of LGBTI people. Established in 2005, CEDEP has been carrying out sensitization campaigns on the rights of gay people and other minority groups. In collaboration with Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA), a South African organization, CEDEP published a collection of stories written by the Malawian LGBTI community in 2010.

Within her first one hundred days in office, current president Joyce Banda put the gay rights issue on the national agenda by announcing in her first State of the Nation address, on May 18, 2012, that the statute criminalizing homosexuality in Malawi law would be taken to parliament for repeal. Stunned by the sharp, immediate rebukes her remarks attracted, the president quickly rephrased herself and said the Malawian parliament would only enact a law that reflected the wishes of the majority of Malawians. There are no illusions as to what would be the outcome of a parliamentary debate on the topic, let alone a national referendum, as is being suggested by anti-gay rights activists.

The debate in Malawi often centers on the nature of homosexuality itself. A recent series in the  Weekend Nation, a weekly newspaper, described what life looks like for Malawian gays, and posed the question of whether homosexuality is a “natural,” biological condition or a choice. The author of the series, Bright Mhango, wondered why Malawian homosexuals don’t seem keen on openly fighting for their human rights, leaving it to others to do it for them.

Kenyan legal scholar Makau Mutua argues, in a chapter appearing in the book African Sexualities: A Reader, that homosexuality is about a person's existential identity, much like biological sex (gender), race, ethnicity or disability. Mutua identifies an interesting contradiction that apparently slips through the logic of those who use religion to argue that homosexuality is un-African.

He says the hatred against gay people in Africa today does not originate from African culture, rather it is a product of the propagation in Africa of foreign religions, particularly Christianity and Islam. Homosexuality existed in Africa prior to Christianity and Islam, but there was no homophobia, argues Mutua.

In Malawi, the most easily identifiable and openly gay people have been young men who go out with Western expatriates and tourists. Some of these young men have told Malawian researchers about making a choice to become gay because of the money from gay expatriates and tourists. To the ordinary Malawian, therefore, homosexuality seems like a deliberate choice one makes. This belief is reinforced by some LGBTI rights activists who prefer to talk about “choice” rather than “nature.”

The Weekend Nation has recently started publishing a paid-for column, called “Sexual Minority Forum.” It is authored by Undule Mwakusungula and Gift Trapence, leading human rights activists. A few gay readers have submitted letters to the columnists, some of which have been re-printed in the column. A recent letter read: “being gay is not an imported element, habit, or anything. There have been gay people in Malawi for generations.”

A South African activist with the Coalition of African Lesbians put this question into perspective at a recent nonviolence training workshop when she argued that today's social justice struggles need to focus on freedom, autonomy and — yes — choices. To argue that homosexuality is only biological or natural robs gay people of their human agency and power to choose, but to argue that homosexuality is no more than a simple choice is also to deny the reality which many people feel.

But the entire discourse is at great risk of being side-tracked from one addressing concepts of human rights for and the humanity of homosexual people to one centered on the role of international agencies and foreign interference.

Particularly damaging is the undue influence of Western donors and activists. Their loud pronouncements have wrecked the chances of local ownership in the debate and created the appearance of a foreign agenda that is using the economic vulnerability of African governments and their overdependence on aid to engage in what is being seen as cultural imperialism. In 2010, following the conviction of Steve Monjeza and Tionge Chimbalanga, the British government reduced its aid to Malawi by US$30 million.

In October 2011 British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened more cuts in aid to governments which did not respect gay rights. In December 2011 both US president Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said American aid would be tied to minority rights, and that gay rights were human rights. As necessary and timely as these statements and actions were, in Africa they have been seen us undue interference. If unchecked, they can potentially trigger chain reactions that could drastically roll back the gains African countries have made in human rights in the last two decades.

It is not hard to understand why donors and international human rights organizations are speaking out. Since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, world leaders are wary of putting too much respect into claims of sovereignty, when the human rights and lives of innocent citizens are being threatened. African governments are known to be more accountable to Western donors than to their own people, an argument that has been made against President Joyce Banda as it was made against her predecessors. 

Left to the dictatorial tendencies of majoritarian rule, and in the absence of local and international attention, minorities would be on their own, at the mercy of a mob mentality dressed up as the democratic wishes of the people. Malawian grassroots nonviolence civil society groups know this, and that is why they are unrelenting even in the face of duplicitous and self-serving accusations of being Western stooges.

There has been enough violence against sexual minorities, physical as well as psychological, to warrant concern across national borders. Malawians, of all people, know how important international solidarity can be when a government is abusing its majority power and denying some of its citizens their fundamental rights and freedoms. Malawi’s own transition from one party rule to multiparty rule from the late 1980s to 1994 benefited significantly from international solidarity.

Surprisingly, claims of cultural imperialism are arising from civil society groups and religious leaders who have previously been counted on to stand up for human rights. Some of the activists were only recently actively seeking the support of Western donors at the height of late president Bingu wa Mutharika’s abuses, oblivious of any concerns over fears of cultural imperialism. Many even argued that there was no such thing as imperialism at all. Now that the donors are pushing for the rights of LGBTI people, some of these activists and religious leaders have suddenly discovered imperialism, and are up in arms against it.

Bishop Dr. Joseph Bvumbwe, Chairperson, Malawi Council of Churches.
Weekend Nation, 10th November, 2012

For example, Dr. Joseph Bvumbwe, chairperson of the Malawi Council of Churches, recently told the media that: “We should not treat abnormality as normality. When there is something abnormal, we must recognize it as such and not treat it as a normality.” Dr. Bvumbwe went on to claim, without offering proof, that the campaign for gay rights was only happening in Malawi and not in neighboring countries such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia. The implication being that there is an external hand at work.

Nevertheless, it has to be acknowledged that the external interference from donor countries is a pernicious problem. Africans are wary of the excesses that have resulted from a seemingly objective “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, taken advantage of by surreptitious imperialistic agendas. That interference has made it difficult for Malawians to carry on the debate on their own terms, in their own contexts, and subjecting their disagreements and differences to scrutiny. Statements about tying aid to gay rights are counterproductive as they jeopardize the struggle for more awareness, better education and information on LGBTI issues. The bellicose rhetoric gets in the way of the kind of civil, constructive debate that needs to happen.

There has to be a way to distinguish between actual cultural imperialism and a genuine solidarity for minority rights. When a society fails to provide equal human rights and protections to all members, particularly those considered “different,” the marginalized will need local and international support and solidarity. 

The danger of external interests taking advantage of the situation and pushing for self-centered agendas is real. But the struggle for African self-determination will be meaningless if we fail to distinguish between imperialism on the one hand, and genuine international solidarity on the other — accepting our obligations to co-exist with those who seem different.

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

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

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

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

The ethnic origins of quota

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quota as scapegoat

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

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

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

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

Who qualifies for university: the true numbers

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

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

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

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

Elite entitlement

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

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

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

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

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

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.