'Kudya Nawo': How Cashgate Became a Mindset

A lot of Malawian pundits and commentators have pointed out that cashgate symbolises a larger malaise affecting Malawian society. To these commentators, cashgate happened because we are a “rotten” society ruled by corrupt leaders; because we have lost our moral compass as a nation. If this is true, does it not then follow that many of us, to some extent, have what we can term a “cashgate mindset?” Does it also not follow that this “cashgate mindset” can be evidenced in every sphere of our daily lives?

Despite a few revelations of how much money has been looted thus far and how IFMIS was at the centre of it, forms of plunder at the scale of cashgate have gone on before in the history of the country. Only that past perpetrators managed to get away with it. There is need to continue asking what really caused cashgate, and what needs to be done to ensure it does not happen again. Short of that, we should brace ourselves for more of the same.

In what follows, I discuss the extent to which a “cashgate mindset” has been in the making since we won our independence. I suggest that our failure to tackle inequality and improve the lives of the majority of Malawians lies at the root of the greed that has led to the unprecedented levels of the plunder that we have recently sees. I conclude with a thought for the brave Malawians who have played key roles in bringing out this scandal.

The Malawi Parliament

Categories of plunder

The revelations from how cashgate was perpetrated reveal two categories of plunder. The first category was a means for fundraising for political parties. Many pundits have observed that this goes back to 1994, when we adopted a multiparty system of government. I contend that it probably goes back to the one-party era, albeit in a different format.

The other category of the plunder was straightforward thievery; people selfishly enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. There have been three common denominators in both categories of plunder. First has been the economic inequality that has been the bane of modern Malawi, preceding the independence era. Wealth in Malawi has always been controlled by very few individuals, be it during the colonial era, or the post-independence era, or the multi-party era.

The second denominator has been a shift in the perception and understanding of moral ethics. What in the past would have been seen as taboo, the wanton looting of public funds, came to be seen as normal and acceptable. Even when people knew it was wrong to steal from public funds, many people who should have stopped the theft either simply looked away, or became involved themselves; “tidye nawo.” 

The third denominator has been the greed mentioned above; grotesque self-enrichment at the expense of others, through uncouth means, including funding for political campaigns through illegal means. Greed has always been with humankind, and it knows neither geographical boundary nor historical era. But in a society where inequality is blatant and moral ethics are shifting, the desire to curtail malpractices can easily give way to nihilistic irresponsibility.

Cashgate in historical context

A cashgate mindset did not take hold of the Malawian psyche overnight. It has been a gradual process in the making for as long as we have been an independent nation. During the one-party era, the only party in power, the Malawi Congress Party, controlled all the resources and did not have the need to worry about how they would fund election campaigns. Wealth was concentrated at the very top. It was a form of a cashgate mindset, although only those close to the corridors of power had access.

When the multiparty era arrived, ushered in by the coming to power of the United Democratic Front in 1994, a different type of cashgate mindset crept in. Allowed to compete in elections for the first time in decades, parties now had to work hard to look for campaign finances. The depravations of the one-party era meant that those newly in power in the multiparty era had sudden access to what they saw as a ready cash cow that could be milked anyhow. For once, politics became the fastest way to accumulate wealth without having to work hard or be accountable to anyone.

With the economy still undeveloped, there were not many rich individuals who could fund political parties from private wealth. The public purse became an obvious target. With international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund insisting on the privatisation of public assets, ruling party politicians found an easy way of transferring wealth from public control into private pockets. Malawi lost national assets such as the Malawi Development Corporation, the Malawi Book Service, the Malawi Railways and numerous other institutions. This was a cashgate mindset at work.

The curse of low salaries

Malawi has always had low salaries in the civil and in the public service. That this was a problem was not obvious during the centralised economy of the one-party era which prohibited individuals from amassing excessive wealth. In the early years of multiparty the UDF government made an attempt at restructuring salary scales in the government. Erstwhile president Dr. Bakili Muluzi commissioned an inquiry, whose findings became commonly known as the Chatsika Report (1995). The report recommended new salary structures, but it also recommended trimming the size of the civil service.

The government warned that it would have to reduce the size of the civil service of almost 120, 000 at the time by half in order to be able to increase salaries. Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on the Economy at the time, Dr. Cassim Chilumpha, was quoted as saying the government would have to raise US$ 660 million (K1 billion at the time) “to fully implement the recommendations of the Chatsika Report” (Malawi News Online, April 1997). Dr Chilumpha, who was also Minister of Justice and Attorney General at the time, argued that pumping such a huge amount of money into the economy would “trigger high inflation” and would render useless the Chatsika recommendations. Most goods, he warned, would be too expensive.

Even worse, warned Dr. Chilumpha, the country would be burdened with borrowed money and accruing interest, discouraging investments and savings. The UDF government's position was that it was better to “share the little there is and retain most of its work force.” There were obvious merits in the government’s argument at the time, but it is up to economic historians to put into perspective the consequences of that decision.

In a 2005 article titled “Public Finance Management Reform in Malawi” economists Dick Durevall and Mattias Erlandsson from Göteborg University in Sweden argue that numerous efforts to restructure civil service salaries failed over the decades due to entrenched elite interests. Many top civil servants were paid salaries close to those in the private sector, and restructuring the salaries would benefit low and middle level civil servants more than they would benefit top civil servants. Durevall and Erlandsson dispute the recommendation made in the Chatsika Report to cut the civil service by half, arguing that Malawi’s civil service has always been much smaller than that of comparable countries in the region.

In an Economics Association of Malawi (ECAMA) lecture he gave in August 2013, Professor Thandika Mkandawire pointed out that while other countries had ratios of 1:12 for civil servants and the total population, Malawi’s ratio was more than 1:100. Professor Mkandawire’s observation about the small size of Malawi’s civil service supports the argument by Durevall and Erlandsson, raising the question of how the country has been unable to have adequate numbers of civil servants while paying them well.

What has happened instead has been a cashgate mindset at work. Groups of elites have set about changing the salaries and benefits regimen for their own benefit, leaving behind those beneath them. Durevall and Erlandsson point out in their article that in 2003 only 35 percent of the civil service wage bill was made up of salaries, while 66 percent comprised allowances. International travel allowances are particularly generous, by far dwarfing monthly salaries. No wonder international trips are a big motivating factor for top civil servants, and a huge cause of resentment amongst low level civil servants who are effectively barred from such benefits.

The private sector was able to carry out salary restructuring, with the result that profitable corporations now offer salaries and benefits that are much more attractive than civil service salaries. It must be pointed out however that such attractive salaries and benefits are the preserve of elite managers and senior employees. Employees in lower ranks are paid low salaries, with huge gaps between the top and the bottom levels, even when educational qualifications are not significantly wide.

Inequality as a root cause
Such discrepancies in salary structures both in government and in the private sector have led to unprecedented levels of social and economic inequality. The inequality has created enormous amounts of resentment, which find expression in the most unexpected ways. Inequality in remuneration leads employees to engage in money-making ventures, including setting up businesses and travelling to commercial centres in and outside the country when they are supposed to be working for their employer and for the public.

Government employees demand bribes to do routine jobs such as issuing passports, drivers’ licences, or business permits. Lowly paid police officers demand bribes to work on cases, or to issue police reports. The cash system of paying for traffic offences on the spot makes it easy for one to pay a small bribe and get away without having to pay an unreasonably exorbitant penalty.

There was a time in Malawi when strangers would come to one’s rescue; today people demand payment for the simplest help. It is not that people have become heartless for no reason. They have seen others become inexplicably rich while they have continued to wallow in poverty with no hope of ever seeing their economic lives improve. Such inequality breeds a type of insidious anger clueless elites find difficult to understand. As some seem to prosper while others stagnate, there has gradually emerged a culture of “tidye nawo.”

Those elected into public office have been in the forefront of promoting the “tidye nawo” culture. Having no fresh ideas for how to find long lasting solutions that would improve the lot of Malawians, they have found it easier to canvass for their own interests. Hardly a year passes by without the Malawi parliament moving a motion to increase their salaries and perks. Instead of benefitting poor Malawians and graduating the country out of perpetual food crises, the Farm Input Subsidy Programme has become a cashcow for entrenched elite interests.

Ironically, their failure to enact a better remuneration package for government workers and to address problems of poverty in their constituencies comes back to haunt them. Malawian parliamentarians spend a good chunk of their money giving hand-outs to poor people for school fees, medical expenses, funeral expenses, wedding expenses, hunger relief and other forms of charity. 

No wonder many parliamentarians choose to live in urban areas away from their constituencies, only coming back during campaign time. Many of those clamouring to run for parliament live in towns and cities but want to represent people living in remote villages.

It is not surprising that the government and the political leadership have sought to cash in on cashgate. While Malawians were perplexed with anger and bewilderment, the government and the leadership were busy claiming that cashgate was a “breakthrough”, a testimony to their efforts to stamp out corruption. But Malawians know better.

Unsung heroes
Thus far the untold story has been of those who decided enough was enough and it was time to stop looking away. These unsung heroes include ordinary Malawians who tipped off the police and assisted them in investigations. They include police officers who rose to the call of duty and made daring arrests, uncovering some of the stolen money and property. They also include government employees, low level, middle level and top level, who knew it was time to act and put a stop to the runaway train of elite robbery and executive impunity. The media and civil society took a leading role in exposing the travesty for the world to see.


These are Malawians who have not been corrupted by the “cashgate mindset.” They work against the current, taking on high profile individuals who mastermind fraud and deception and hope to get away with it. These are Malawians who prove that it is possible for Malawi to turn around for the better and address the entrenched inequality that is tearing the country asunder. They know that it is possible for the country to exorcise the cashgate ghost that has controlled our minds for decades. They inspire the rest of us in taking our respective roles and doing what is in our capacity to make Malawi a better place for everyone.

Note: This article appears in the February 2014 issue of The Lamp Magazine.

What happened to creative writing in Malawi?

The Nation newspaper has raised the alarm over the quality of creative writing in the country. Judges in several national writing competitions have pointed out the quality of entries is very poor it is clear something has happened to creative writing in Malawi.

In order to find a more satisfactory answer to the question as to what has happened to Malawian creative writing, it would be a good idea for the Malawi Writers Union (MAWU) to team up with an English Department in one of the prominent universities to do a study of this phenomenon. A starting point would be to survey a few hundred creative writers, young and old, and ask them about their reading and writing habits and contexts.

I must confess I don't read or write as much fiction as I used to. One reason is because there's a lot to read nowadays online. A lot of my writing nowadays is expository; feature articles and opinion pieces for my blog and for op-ed pages. And that's what drives my reading habits also. I read a lot of expository writing; essays, articles, and opinions. Some of it is also for work purposes in the form of reports.

If I can offer some informed guesses why creative writing is facing problems in Malawi, it could be due to the question of what young Malawian writers are reading these days. Reading is fundamental to writing and thinking. The quality of what is available for reading could be a big factor in what has happened to creative writing in Malawi. I can think of four factors to elaborate this point.

The late Chinua Achebe and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka:
Are young Malawian writers reading some of Africa's and the world's best writers?

The first factor could be the availability of well-written literature by writers from Malawi, from the Southern African region, and from the rest of the world. Let's face it, our bookshop industry collapsed. This happened due to neoliberal policies introduced soon after we adopted multiparty politics in the mid-1990s. The bulk of books one now finds in the few bookshops we have available are for study purposes; for people studying all kinds of programmes, the majority being business management and finance-related fields. There are Malawian bookshops that do not carry a single Malawian fiction book, new or old.

The second factor is the quality of teaching in secondary schools, colleges and universities. The roots of this problem lie in the general problems Malawi's public education system has been facing due to large classes, poor teaching and learning resources, low salaries, and low morale amongst teachers. Most school libraries have very few books outside the syllabus. Even some of our best secondary schools don't stock enough copies of books on the syllabus. One English teacher recently told me she has six copies of one literature title for a class of 60. What this means is that we have students who sit MSCE without having read a single literature book in its entirety.

Of the many private universities that are mushrooming across the country, very few offer humanities courses where people can study languages and literature, creative writing and literary criticism. The University of Malawi has been operating without a university bookshop for some eighteen years now. Funding problems in the universities mean that even the university libraries are unable to stock new literature.

The third factor is the abandonment of research in Malawian languages: The deliberate policy to exclude Malawian languages from official business in government and in public life, and in the economy means that local languages are not developing. They are stuck in the past. Creative writing benefits from language development, and the development of local languages influences writing and publishing in other languages.

A fourth factor is the poor incentives for good writing. Malawi does have very good writers in local languages and in English, but they have to put food on the table first. Writing does not pay well enough to allow these writers to spend time developing good fiction. So we have lots of young people populating the fiction pages in weekend papers and in competitions without the guidance of expert writers and good writing.

What can we do to improve the quality of creative writing in Malawi?

It is useful to point out that MAWU and other individuals are doing a commendable job encouraging students and organising competitions. But there is need to do more trainings and workshops alongside these competitions. There is a thriving creative culture amongst a few individuals in cities such as Lilongwe. The Living Room hosts open mic readings every Wednesday evening, although this is a niche for a small group of people. The launch of the Story Club by Shadreck Chikoti is an excellent initiative, and more such clubs appear to be on the rise. In 2012 Caine Prize finalist Stanley Onjezani Kenani launched Malawi Write, a website that publishes high quality Malawian writing.

There is a big need to incentivise creative writing. As weekend newspapers are the commonest medium for publishing fiction, newspaper publishers need to take a special interest in creative writing. They could invite particular, well-known writers to write good stories and pay them attractive amounts. The more Malawians are exposed to excellent creative writing the better the creative writing that Malawians will be producing. That was the idea behind the website Malawi Write. The newspapers can consider sponsoring established writers to hold workshops for young writers. They can also organise literary contests.

We must augment efforts to promote the teaching of language and literature in schools and universities. Schools need to emphasise the importance of language and literature in cultivating critical minds. Students should be encouraged to read more books beyond what's on the syllabus. Private universities need to include language and literature in their curricula, and to develop university libraries that stock good Malawian and world literature.
Publishers have always complained that Malawians don't buy books, and so literature is a loss-making venture for them. It's a chicken and egg situation. Publishers need to support schools and libraries in promoting reading and writing. The more Malawians become interested in reading and writing the more sales publishers will realise, thereby promoting reading and writing.

We should also work on government policy. We need government policies that can promote the availability of reasonably priced books in the bookshops. Tax on books and imported paper should be reduced so as to bring down the cost of books and newspapers. The absence of a prominent public university in the capital city deprives Lilongwe of an intellectual culture that can drive both the arts and the humanities, and science and technology. The government needs to make the construction of a big public university, or the expansion of existing public University of Malawi colleges in Lilongwe, as a priority in higher education.

Reclaiming the Youth Space: The Next Agenda for Young Malawians

Keynote address given at the Youth Consultative Forum's National Consultative Meeting and Annual General Meeting

6 February, 2014, Crown Hotel, Lilongwe

Youth Consultative Forum annual general meeting
6 Feb 2014, Crown Hotel, Lilongwe

It is interestingly fitting that the Youth Consultative Forum is holding its Annual General Meeting exactly one week after Malawi hosted the BBC Africa Debate at the University of Malawi’s College of Medicine in Blantyre. Is it by design? That debate last week focused everyone’s mind in Malawi and in the BBC’s global listenership on issues of youth and what is being termed the ‘demographic dividend.’ As you may recall, the debate’s question was: ‘Africa’s youth population: opportunity or risk.’

The debate’s moderators, Nomsa Maseko and Nkem Ifejika, opened the debate by asking for a show of hands: how many people in the audience saw Malawi’s youth population as an opportunity? How many people saw it as a risk? A rough count of the hands showed an overwhelming response for the risk part. Many in that audience felt that Malawi’s growing youth population was a risk. I raised my hand for the opportunity part, although as the debate wore on, I modified my thinking and felt that Malawi’s growing youth population could be both a risk and an opportunity.  The difference lay in what policies were enacted, what resources were made available, and how much space young people were able to claim for themselves.

I got a chance to speak towards the end of the debate, and said that the statistics were depressing: Malawi has 4.2 million primary school learners. Out of a population of 14-15 million, that means more than a quarter of our population is in primary school. Now comes the depressing part: from 4.2 million in primary school, we come down to only 260,000 students in secondary school. And it gets worse. Out of 260,000 students in secondary school, we have only 13,000 in the universities, public and private combined. That is 0.4 percent of the appropriate age-cohort. The technical and vocational schools have even less, at 9,000 students.

What these numbers paint is a picture of alarming inequality in Malawi; we have an enormous gap between the rich and the poor. The education sector is both a reflection of this, as well as a catalysing factor of this inequality. Less than half of primary school learners, that is 38 percent, finish primary school. For girls, it is 35 percent. The majority of these are in rural Malawi and among the ranks of the urban poor. The most educated 10 percent of Malawians use 73 percent of the resources available. In the universities, 95 percent of students come from the wealthiest 5 percent of Malawians. Private schools dominate university selection; 80 percent of the university population is from private schools.

It is not surprising why most people in the BBC debate saw Malawi’s growing youth population as a risk. As a country, we have not invested much in the youth. At the debate, the Secretary for Youth was unable to say what the budget for his ministry was. It was both a lighter moment, as well as a serious one. The conclusion most people reached was that the budget for the Ministry of Youth is so small that it would have been an embarrassment to mention it to a global audience.

Now to be fair to the Secretary for Youth, the amount of money and resources allocated to his ministry is not representative on the total amount spent on the youth in the country. There are other amounts spent in other ministries, as well as in other initiatives, that also go to the youth. Ministries such as education, gender, health, trade and industry, and initiatives such as the Malawi Rural Development Fund (MARDEF), the Youth Entrepreneurial Development Fund, allocate money and resources to the youth. As the Secretary told the BBC debate audience, some of the ministry’s funding also goes straight to districts.

As well-meaning as are these efforts and initiatives, the investment in the youth is still very minimal, owing in large part to the small size of our economy. And then there are gargantuan inefficiencies, caused by both capacity problems, as well as politicisation and lopsided prioritisation processes. The net effect of these problems has been a massive loss of self-confidence and paralysing cynicism, understandably so. 

But this is where the youth of Malawi have realised they have to step in. This is where the Youth Consultative Forum is leading the effort to reclaim the youth space. And your work is cut out for you as you strategise on how to “Give Back to Mother Malawi.”

The country needs a different kind of engagement with the youth. The youth of today are different from the youth of the previous generation, yet the mindsets of older Malawians remain unchanged. There is a generation gap manifesting itself in a clash of mindsets. The institutional culture remains stuck in a mindset that treats young people as a tabula rasa, an empty mind that needs filling with adult advice and supervision. Unfortunately, this includes the education system.

Despite curricular changes in the education system aimed at engaging students in a more meaningful and more participatory way, many educators still believe in lecturing to young people and telling them what to do (if I seem to be doing that in this talk, it is for purposes of debate). You can see the results of this disconnect in the system itself. Hardly a week goes by without hearing of students vandalising their own school and disrupting their own learning. In the larger society, the loss of confidence in our institutions has led to an escalation of mob violence and destruction of police stations.

The challenge is for young Malawians to take charge and claim their space in a way that is constructive and forward-thinking. This was reflected in the views expressed at the BBC debate. The most important way of doing is through self-education. And the starting point is familiarisation with current research and policy formulation so as to reclaim your space well-informed and well-prepared.

Your contributions to the problems of unemployment need to be cognisant of the fact that this is one of the biggest global policy issues today. It is therefore important for you to know what the research is saying, both domestically and globally. Your contributions need to focus on how to increase the productivity of the youth. Economists say that the only way for an economy to grow is for more people to be productive. For Malawi, the question is in what ways can young Malawians be economically productive? The answers are not easy, but the type of education available to young people is the key issue.

You have to deal with the national confidence crisis. While it is true that many of us feel hopeless, not everyone is paralysed by the cynicism and hopelessness. There are Malawians, many of them young people, who are doing a lot to make Malawi a better place. It is important to identify these Malawians and celebrate them. This is the best way of inspiring ourselves as a nation and re-injecting national confidence into our society.

You need to engage with the question of what really caused the cashgate crisis, in both its historical context as well as in its current manifestation. And you can not analyse the root causes of cashgate without discussing social and economic inequality, which has reached crisis proportions. If we do not learn lessons from cashgate, and what lies at the root of the problem, we are bound to have more cashgates generation after generation. It does not need to be that way.

You will need to engage in the national discussion on girls’ education, which is now taking centre stage. While the numbers I presented earlier are very bad for most young people, they are worse for girls. And they translate into a bigger gender problem. We are a very sexist society, as is much of the world. Do not jump onto the bandwagon of painting all women with a single brush of paralytic cynicism based on what is said to be the performance of one woman.

Nor should you join those who are making the sweeping statement that in the fifty years we have been independent the country has achieved nothing. That statement is made out of understandable frustration, but if you entertain that thought you are bound to let your sadness about the country’s state of affairs paralyse you into further cynicism and inaction. Paralysis of thought impedes progressive thinking. No doubt the country has not lived up to its potential in the 50 years of independence, but it is you young Malawians who can change that and usher in new thinking and new realities.

Lastly, May 20 is approaching, and there will be a lot of drama. It has been very encouraging to see a lot of young Malawians getting involved in the process. Be mindful of the ever-present danger to get co-opted into orthodox thinking and perpetuating failed practices and beliefs about politics. 

In closing, I would like to thank the YCF executive and secretariat for working very hard to make this annual general meeting a reality. I would also like to thank Action Aid for providing much-needed sponsorship. Special thanks go to all of you who have come today.

I wish you a great time of reflection, strategizing and reclaiming your space.

Thank you very much!

What's the matter with Malawian universities?

When a university student performs poorly and is withdrawn, the problem is with the student. But when 132 students perform poorly and are withdrawn, then the problem is no longer with the student alone. The university itself has a problem. When it is two universities, then it is not just the universities that have a problem, it is the broader national educational system.

It is instructive to scrutinise the numbers. The number 132 comes from the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR), out of a first year class of 700. Granted that a few were withdrawn from second and third years, but LUANAR authorities are on record to have said the majority are first year students. That figure, 132, is almost one fifth of the class; 19 per cent, to be precise. From Chancellor College the number withdrawn is said to be 116.

In the 2012-2013 academic year, the group speculated to have yielded the mass weeding, Chancellor College admitted 399 students. This is based on records uploaded on the University of Malawi’s website on 25^th September 2012. If these numbers are accurate, 116 out of 399 is 29 per cent. 

A few theories as to how such numbers could be withdrawn in one year have dominated commentary on social media, in newspaper columns, and on the street. The list includes: the results of cheating at MSCE; the quota system, poor preparation in secondary school, capacity problems in the universities in question, and students entering university too young, among others. Both LUANAR and Unima say they have investigated the causes of this massive performance failure, and will be releasing reports. So it is difficult at this point to pin down any single cause.

Will the new Malawi University of Science and Technology 
herald a new approach to higher education?

But some of the reasons thus floated are less likely to be causes of the problem. Cheating at MSCE is less likely a cause of the poor performance because selection into either Unima or LUANAR is not based on MSCE results only; students sit an entrance examination. Selection is based on an aggregate of both the MSCE and the entrance exam. If an exam is the problem, then it is both the university entrance exam and the MSCE.

The quota system is also an unlikely single cause. The majority of students entering Unima and LUANAR these days are coming from elite schools and well-to-do families. Joseph Patel, president of the Independent Schools Association of Malawi (ISAMA) says private schools contribute 80 per cent of students entering Malawian universities every year.

Researchers Stella Kaabwe and Lillian Kamtengeni estimate that 91 per cent of university students in Malawi come from wealthy families. Poor families send less than one per cent. The remaining eight per cent are from somewhere in the middle. The double bar system of two exams means that whoever ends up getting selected has merited their place.

Most of these students will have gone to very good secondary schools. If you are in doubt, next time the university selections are announced just look at the full-page congratulatory advertisements from elite schools listing their students who have been selected. And many of these students will have received specialised university entrance exams coaching. For most students, you have to come from a well-to-do family background to afford an expensive private school, and the exams coaching. 

If cheating at MSCE and the quota system are not plausible explanations, the other suggested causes have a higher likelihood: poor preparation in secondary school, capacity problems in the universities, and students entering university too young. Let’s briefly examine each in turn. Poor preparation in secondary school sounds counter-intuitive, considering that many of the students are said to be coming from elite secondary schools. One lecturer, quoted in a Nyasatimes article, said many students struggle with English, while some students speak perfect English but have very poor writing skills.

This raises the question of what the MSCE and University Entrance Exam measure. Do they measure what a student knows? Or do they measure a student’s reasoning capability and aptitude? Or both? Is it possible for one to be coached perfectly and pass the entrance exam when their aptitude cannot withstand the rigours of higher level reasoning?

Many students these days are learning to speak perfect English without grasping the fundamentals of reading, writing and reasoning in that language, let alone in their mother tongue. The reason for this, as argued by language education researchers, is that learners learn best using a language they are familiar with. Learning in a familiar language facilitates not just learning but reasoning, writing and problem solving.

Our problem in Malawi is not that we are introducing English too early, no. It is that we are abandoning the familiar language too early, before children have developed important faculties such as reasoning, arguing, writing, problem solving and discovering. The best education systems in the world teach their children using a language they are familiar with, and then add a second language such as English for non-English speaking societies.

What Malawian private schools are doing, abandoning local languages very early in a child’s development stages, is going to affect intellectual aptitude in later academic life. The stipulation in the new Education Act to make English the language of instruction from Standard 1 is a big mistake. It has no basis in language education research. It is Malawian children who will pay the price for this mistake in later life. The solution would have been to introduce a multi-lingual policy, with a deliberate provision to strengthen local languages. This needs resources, but it is a worthy national investment decades down the line.

At the secondary level, our secondary schools are going through a troubled period, an extension of poor preparation in early childhood and primary school. Secondary school teachers in government schools report large, overcrowded classrooms. There are very few books such that in some cases ten students have to share one copy. Reading is the foundation for intellectual development. We have students who finish Form Four without finishing a single prescribed literature book.

Another explanation offered thus far has been capacity problems in the university. As Dr. Boniface Dulani of Chancellor College told me in a private conversation, accommodation problems in the universities and in surrounding areas mean that some students reside in conditions that make it difficult for them to concentrate on their education. Some are residing in houses with no electricity or running water, far from campus. Dr. Dulani also bemoans the unpreparedness of those that come too young. At 14 or 15, one is too young for the university, unless one is a certified genius. There are geniuses and child prodigies alright, but it cannot be everyone.

Some classes are very large and are a burden for the lecturers, as Dr. Dulani indicates. Without a system of Teaching Assistants or Graduate Instructors as is the case in US universities, students have no opportunity for extra help. The culture of consultancies also means that attention to individual students has to compete with attention to a lecturer’s other responsibilities and needs.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is quoted as having received reports from the universities on what has happened for such large numbers of students to have performed so miserably. There are a number of questions one hopes the reports have provided answers to: What are the percentages of students withdrawn from particular years? What is the ratio of male to female students withdrawn? What is the proportion of those on the parallel system to those on residential? What disciplines have been most affected?

We will also need to know what support services are available to students, from their lecturers and from their respective administrations. How many of these students came from private schools? How many from government schools? How about community day secondary schools? How many received coaching for the entrance examinations?

Only a holistic analysis can provide answers to these and other questions. This is more than about the students alone. It is about the entire education system and its recent history.


Note: A shorter version of this article was published in The Malawi News of 14th December 2013 under a different title.

Where is the 'holy anger' over cashgate?

A wide section of the Malawian punditry has been arguing that there has not been enough anger expressed over cashgate. Some are going as far as suggesting that there has not been any anger at all. I sympathise with the argument. However I wish these pundits could take the lead and demonstrate exactly how they would like Malawians to express their anger over the scandal. It is very possible that they have specific ideas about how we ought to express the anger.

My own view has been that there has been enough anger expressed by those who have followed the scandal closely. But these are only a small fraction of the Malawian populace. These are Malawians who have regular access to the Internet and are on Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Nyasanet. They read Nyasatimes and the other numerous online sources. These are Malawians who have access to the daily newspapers, listen to the radio regularly, and watch TV. In other words, these are Malawians with the means: a formal job, successful entrepreneurs, urban-based, educated up to secondary level and beyond.

Urban Malawi 

The statistics tell us that the above-described Malawians are a minority, no more than 10 per cent of the population at most. And that’s being on the generous side because even for urban dwellers, a huge majority of them earn far too little to be able to afford the daily paper, a TV, and Internet access. Confounding this picture is the exclusive use of English as the dominant language of the daily newspapers, business, parliamentary deliberations and communication, higher education and research, and social media. This is made even more dire by our extreme donor dependency.

Out of a population of about 15 million people, the highest print run for our newspapers does not go beyond 50,000, and we are talking of the weekend papers, the most widely read. Even when you factor in the mukawerenga-mupatse-ena effect where several people read the newspaper in a household, a workplace or an entertainment joint, the number of Malawians who have access to newspapers on a regular basis hardly goes beyond a quarter of a million people.

The radios reach far more people, and use far more Chichewa and other local languages than the newspapers. However MACRA’s attempts to quantify the figures go only as far as percentages of listeners per radio station without giving actual numbers for each station. According to the most recent available data from Internet World Stats, only 4.4 percent of Malawians (whose total population they estimated to be 16 million in 2012) have access to the Internet; the actual number being 716,400 as of 2010.

For Facebook, the number is much less, about 204,000, or 1.2 per cent of the population. The figures are clearly out-dated, but there has not been a major economic or technological transformation enough to bring about drastic changes. The business of numbers of ICT users is an area where MACRA’s initiative is conspicuously lacking.

The picture being presented by the estimates above points to a nation with inadequate information and intellectual infrastructure to muster nation-wide interest in national issues. The ‘holy’ anger summoned by Malawian civil society over cashgate has thus far been restricted to what is known as ‘clicktivism’; Internet activism by the mere click of a computer mouse. The few activists who have managed to galvanise action have only managed to reach the tiny population of newspaper reading, English-speaking and Internet-accessing urban-dwellers.

Even the term ‘cashgate’ is an English term; there has been no attempt to come up with a succinct, evocative local language term to capture the essence of the scandal. With the exception of the Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter and position on cashgate (which they later undermined with their response to the Peter Chinoko saga), there has been no attempt to provide a comprehensive local language explanation of what happened and what the effect of the scandal has been for the ordinary people. The hearings the Public Accounts Committee of parliament held recently were exclusively in English.

All these factors make it impossible to create a critical mass of outrage and ‘holy’ anger enough to make cashgate a turning point for Malawi. I am personally complicit in this failure; there is nothing I have written in a local language over the issue. Although I have a Chichewa name for my blog, I blog exclusively in English.  And I am writing this opinion piece in English.

The failure to generate a critical mass of national interest goes far beyond cashgate. It pervades the entire development edifice of the nation. Malawians are having very different conversations between urban and rural spaces. President Joyce Banda knows this, as did her predecessors and all politicians. They benefit from it, and therefore do everything in their power to perpetuate it. Unless this changes, it is difficult to imagine a significant transformation happening in Malawian politics and development anytime soon.

Rural Malawi

There are precedents of past mass movements to learn from. The independence struggle being one of them, and the transition to multiparty being another. It behooves the punditry, including myself, to go beyond the rhetoric and point to actionable methods of bringing this discussion to as many Malawians as possible.

To paraphrase the late Chinua Achebe some four decades ago, we have been given the English language, and we are going to use it. We cannot suddenly stop using English. But we need to invest more in multi-lingualism. We need to develop a greater capacity and expertise for translation between English and the local languages. This should be a two-way process. There is a lot of knowledge being created in local languages which remains unrecognised and unutilised because of our retrogressive language policies.

There are a few attempts at harnessing this new knowledge developed in local languages, through local language publications such as Fuko by Nation Publications Ltd, and Mkwaso, from Montfort Media. Some radio and TV programmes are also contributing to this new knowledge, but the effort is far less than the resources poured into maintaining the dominance of the English language.

For changes to happen, we must begin with our daily newspapers, parliament, higher education, research and publications, and social media. Only then can we begin to hope to bridge the chasms between the Malawi of the urban people and the Malawi of the rest; the Malawi of the rich and that of the poor.

Note: A version of this article appears on the opinion page of The Malawi News of Saturday 11th January, 2014.

How A Shooting Exposed The Plunder Of Malawi's Treasury

On the night of Friday September 13, 2013,  Paul Mphwiyo, Budget Director in Malawi's Ministry of Finance, was shot. Armed men were lying in ambush just outside the gate to his home, and fired at the 37-year-old as he drove in. Mphwiyo's family rushed him to the Area 43 MASM Clinic. It was 11:30 p.m. I happened to be at the clinic at the same time with a family member who was hospitalised. I witnessed first-hand the harrowing 30-minute frenzy during which nurses and a doctor battled to save Mphwiyo's life.

As I drove out of the Area 43 MASM clinic around 1 a.m. on September 14, I could not have imagined how serious the repercussions of the scene I'd just witnessed would be for my country. Click here to read the full post, published on Global Voices Online on 15th October, 2013.  


[This post is part of The Bridge, featuring original writing, opinion, commentary and investigation from the unique perspective of the Global Voices community.]

Why we should brace ourselves for more cashgates

Regardless of what happens to President Joyce Banda in May 2014, she will go down in Malawi’s historical record as a president for whom lightning struck twice. The first time was on Saturday 7^th April when she was suddenly and unexpectedly thrust onto the stage as the fourth president of the Republic of Malawi. The second was on Friday 13^th September when the Malawi government’s Budget Director, Paul Mphwiyo, was shot and seriously wounded, prising open secrets of massive plunder of government cash that has been going on for years.

Bitter fruits of cashgate. Photo credit: Steve Sharra

The metaphor of lightning striking twice for Mrs Joyce Banda is apt here because on two occasions, she has been given the “reset” button to click and chart a new path for the nation. Historical legacies for presidents don’t take shape for several years, so it will be a while before we know whether Mrs Joyce Banda did click “reset” or not. But by the time we know, there may have been a few more cashgates. And here’s why.

In the Out of Turn column of Saturday 2^nd November, 2013, Malawi News “Guest Writer” laid out a five-point plan for how Malawi as a nation could move on from cashgate. The key argument from Guest Writer was that if we handled cashgate with wisdom and care, Malawi “could be corruption free” in the “next couple of years.” I have made optimism for Malawi, and for the continent my life philosophy (Afrika Aphukira), but it’s not for a simplistic feel-good factor. It takes a lot of energy, anger and yes, pessimism, to generate optimism for this country and for this continent. But it’s well worth the effort, in the end.

Guest Writer is a kindred spirit in sharing optimism. But s/he has set the bar a bit low. Guest writer is basing his/her optimism that Malawi could be corruption free on the fear of consequences if someone is caught. Fear of a law that works and a law enforcement that is efficient is indeed enough of a disincentive for a would-be offender. But the rich and powerful always find a way to make the law work for them. They make the law. They make it in such a way that they can get away with murder.

President Joyce Banda has been unequivocal in stressing that no one will be spared, and that includes her family and children, as she told members of the clergy recently. Personally, I want to believe her, but I also realise what a revolutionary act that would be. Were she to allow full justice to take its course, she would be the figurative embodiment of kadziwotche, the insect which flies too close to the fire and gets burned in the process. I would like to sample the percentage of Malawians who believe the president when she says no one will be spared. The pessimists have a solid history to draw from.

But it’s the question of root causes of why cashgate happened that ought to exercise the toughest sinews of our muscles. Thus far pundits have listed greed, a lack of patriotism, a faulty IFMIS, spiritual decay, the destruction of ethics in public service, the politicisation of the civil service, a thoughtless transition from dictatorship to democracy, and unethical politicians looking for campaign cash, as some of the reasons that led to cashgate.

In order to do a good job digging up the root causes, we need to distinguish two things. What aspects of cashgate are pure personal greed and nothing more? That’s one thing. What aspects of cashgate reveal an inability by our political parties to raise funds to keep parties on their feet and effectively participate in national elections? That’s another thing. Each problem has its own unique solution.

The greed is a manifestation of both social inequalities that have infested over decades, and a spirit of avarice in a society where material wealth is the ultimate pursuit. The resulting inequality has bred huge resentments among social classes. Social inequality thrives in capitalist systems where the class divide is enormous. This is true of Malawi as it is of many countries. The few tens of thousands of Malawians who are gainfully employed are stuck in jobs that have no career path. Workers have no hope that things will ever improve for them.

Those in managerial positions who discovered this truth quickly found a way around the problem. They accumulated privileges and benefits for themselves, and suddenly catapulted themselves into a whole new social class. Such benefits included huge salaries, free school fees for their children, ownership of houses in affluent suburbs, health care, and ownership of expensive cars that become personal property after a certain loan period. For groups who can’t accrue such benefits and perks for themselves, they watch all this and find their ways of fighting back.

The problem of fundraising for parties indeed goes back to the transition from dictatorship to democracy. This is a much less discussed topic in Malawian politics. But it could very well lie at the root of why cashgate happened, why it was not the first time, and why it will not be the last time. It seems Malawian political parties have no financial stability outside state coffers, a point made in a 3rd April 2012 article by Jimmy Kainja, and revealed in a number of studies.  

Kainja observed at the time that it was “no coincidence that in Malawi it is only a ruling party that always has resources to buy and distribute political party materials: t-shirts, party cloth, bicycles, etc.” A Global Integrity article of 13^th April 2012 hoped that the ascendancy of Joyce Banda to the presidency provided an opportunity for a fresh start in addressing problems of political corruption once and for all. In its May 2012 report titled Overview of corruption and anti-corruption in Malawi, Transparency International cited “patronage and clientelist networks” as feeding corruption in Malawi’s bureaucratic and political ranks.

Therein lie the two lightning strikes for President Joyce Banda. Social inequality is creating deep rifts among Malawians, a ticking time bomb. The increasing incidents of mass violence and vandalism we are witnessing across the country daily are but a tiny ripple in the sea of resentment resulting from this inequality. That is made more complicated by how our political parties have no established means of raising funds for their very survival, rendering the entire political arena a charade and a get-rich-quick scheme. Unless we address the fundamental causes of the deep inequality ripping Malawian society apart, we should brace ourselves for more cashgates. 

Note: A version of this article appears in the 'Guest Writer' column of The Malawi News of Saturday, 9th November, 2013.

What really caused cashgate?

With over a month and a half now gone since the government financial scandal hashtagged #cashgate erupted, are we closer to understanding the underlying causes why it happened? We can classify the reasons why this happened from simplest to most complex. Going by the earliest statements that were offered in September, the simplest explanation can be caricatured as “IFMIS made me do it.” It came from commentators whose first explanation was that the Integrated Financial Management Information System was faulty.

The most complex explanation thus far as to why cashgate happened has been that we may have transitioned from one-party rule into multiparty rule without having dealt with the question as to the kind of public service ethos the new dispensation would require. This explanation is extrapolated from thoughts expressed by Jimmy Kainja,  Dr. Blessings Chinsinga, and Dr. Justin Malewezi. The biggest challenge facing us as a nation now is whether we can learn from the scandal and redefine the kind of character we want to instill into ourselves as Malawians.

A humorous take on the scandal by an anonymous artist

Jimmy Kainja wrote in Nyasatimes in the first few days saying the scandal was “a symptom of a rotten nation.” He traced the roots to Dr. Bakili Muluzi’s rule between 1994 and 2004. The word “rotten” has also been used by Martha Kwataine in an interview with the Weekend Nation of 26^th October. She says “We are a nation that is rotten and rated very low internationally in as far as patriotism is concerned.”

In the same issue of the Weekend Nation Dalitso Kubalasa maintains the corporal imagery used to describe the degeneration of a living being. He says the scandal shows that “our society is sick.” Writing in the Daily Times of Wednesday 30^th October, Dr. DD Phiri attributes the massive looting of money at Capital Hill to “greed.” There are politicians and civil servants who do not wish the country well, he writes. They only care for their personal wealth.

Wonders Dr. Justin Malewezi in The Nation of 30^th October: “How can people be so greedy and so thoughtless about others?” He argues that something was lost in the transition. He harks back to the civil service he worked in during the one party era, which was characterised by three ethical pillars: respect for hierarchy, merit, and teamwork. He says all three pillars were destroyed at the onset of multiparty rule, when government introduced the “contracts” system. With this system, people can now join the civil service from outside and ride over the heads of several long serving officers. That killed the respect for hierarchy, merit and teamwork.

Innocent Chitosi (Malawi News, 26^th October) is worried that we are “grappling with the symptoms and overlooking the causes.” He puts the finger on “unethical politicians who want fuel for their party rallies or cash to splurge during the rallies.” Agreeing with him is Ephraim Nyondo who believes that the president has known about corruption in government from her previous cabinet positions, but chose not to raise the alarm until Paul Mphwiyo was shot (Nation on Sunday, 27^th October).

He does not see the current cabal as capable of rooting out the rot: “This is why the future of Malawi hardly rests in this crop of post-colonial vampires of politicians. They need to be wiped out for good so that we start a rethink of this country.” Reminds one of “Prophet” Joseph Nkasa’s latest hit which says a vehicle that has damaged a road cannot be used to repair the same road. You need a D7.

But Dr. Chinsinga sees a silver lining in the cashgate cloud. He says “cashgate presents a very rare opportunity to raise and confront squarely bigger and potentially epoch making national questions  . . . The nation is ripe for tough and bold decisions from the political class.”

Two questions need some honest answers from us all. First: why did some sections of our society give up on the country to the extent revealed in the looting and plundering? The answer to that question needs to include what can be done to restore hope and what Martha Kwataine calls ‘patriotism’ in us all. Second: what did we miss during the transition that led to political parties that seem incapable of financing their campaigns outside state coffers?

Speaking to leaders of faith-based organisations last week, the president struck a rare tone in candid talk. She said neither her family members, nor her very own children, would be shielded in the investigations currently underway.  But dealing with the looting of state coffers once and for all and ensuring it never happens again requires going beyond the present scandal. It requires an extended, deeper discussion of what really led to the scandal, and whether indeed this can be seen as a defining moment for a fundamental re-examination of what kind of Malawi we would like to shape. 

Note: A version of this article appears on the My Turn column in The Nation of Wednesday, 6th November, 2013. An account of how the scandal broke started can be found on the Global Voices Online website.

Why I still believe in the African rebirth

Text of my talk at TEDxLilongwe, 25th May, 2013

Watch the Youtube video here

When I started blogging in 2005, I gave my blog a Chichewa name. Chichewa is my first language, spoken by more than 80 percent of Malawians. It’s also spoken in parts of Zambia, Mocambique and Zimbabwe. I gave my blog the name “Afrika Aphukira.” In Chichewa that translates as “Africa will have a rebirth.” It’s been eight years since, and every other African country seems to be undergoing a rebirth, with the exception of Malawi, if you ask the average Malawian.

Speakers at TEDxLilongwe, 25th May 2013

Two weeks ago, the Africa Progress Panel released the 2013 Africa Progress Report. The foreword, by Kofi Annan, chairperson of the Panel, starts with the following sentence: “Africa is standing on the edge of enormous opportunity.” Headlines from global media are salivating on new discoveries of mineral and oil deposits in the African soil. Sceptics have retorted with the line: Africa is rising but Africans are not. The same 2013 African Progress Report reveals that Africa is losing $34 billion annually from its mining and oil deals.

Researchers from Oxford University have given Malawi 74 years before the country can eradicate poverty. That gives us up until the year 2087. When I first saw this headline in the Daily Times of 22^nd March this year, I thought of the millions of Malawians for whom daily life is a struggle. I thought of the glaring contradictions: glamorous shopping complexes facing the most dilapidated market squares, separated by a heavily potholed Devil Street.

I thought of this particular stretch in a busy part of Old Town Lilongwe: a bank, a superette, an expensive restaurant, a mobile phone company, and two upscale car dealerships. Look at the street running along these structures, and 74 years doesn’t look enough. Then I thought of those who had already had their poverty eradicated.

The African rebirth I am envisioning is not based on global media headlines. It is Africa-owned; it derives its meaning from the term ‘uMunthu.’ This word means personhood in Chichewa. uMunthu is about how our humanness is tied to that of others. We say “You are, therefore I am.” The question I always ask myself is: what would it look like if uMunthu were at the centre of social policy and governance? Let me illustrate this.

In June 2010 I met a group of teachers from several primary schools here in Lilongwe. The purpose for the meeting was to start what we hoped would be a forum where teachers would regularly meet and help one another become better teachers. A bigger goal was teacher empowerment; an attempt to address the helplessness and hopelessness many teachers feel about the conditions of their schools and their profession.

As I returned to my car at the end of the meeting, I was approached by one teacher. His name was Amos Matchakaza. Amos asked for a ride to a local college, where he was studying for his bachelors’ degree. I asked Amos how he was managing to pay for his bachelors’ degree courses from his teacher's salary. He said 90 percent of his salary went to pay for tuition. They had had their electricity disconnected because they couldn’t pay the bill. He was not eligible for any government loan, nor any form of support towards his higher education. He was only able to make it because his wife was also a primary school teacher.

That evening I tweeted about Amos. A friend of mine, and former classmate from primary school, sent me a direct message. His name was Hastings Fukula Nyekanyeka. He wanted to know more about Amos. Hastings promised to support Amos until he finished his bachelors’ degree. That was June 2011. In March this year 2013 Amos graduated with his degree.

On 10th November 2012 the weekly Malawi News published a story about Mike Demesterb Nkhoma. Nkhoma dropped out of Form One, first year of secondary school, because his father could not afford the school fees. He started working as a garden boy for a lecturer at the University of Malawi’s Kamuzu College of Nursing. Her name was Juliana Lunguzi.

Juliana sent Mike to a boarding secondary school. Mike scored distinctions in Mathematics, Agriculture and Biology, and was selected to the prestigious University of Malawi College of Medicine. Juliana kept supporting him, and in November 2012 Mike graduated as a medical doctor. Today Dr. Nkhoma is practicing medicine at Malawi’s biggest referral hospital, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital.

Even more remarkable is the example Mike set for his sister. She had dropped out in Form Two, second year of secondary school, for the same reasons as her brother. She got married and went on to have four children. Her brother Mike’s story made her rethink her future. She went back to secondary school. She made it to the University of Malawi’s Kamuzu College of Nursing, and is in her final year of her bachelors’ degree programme. Then there is the story of William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

The reason why many Malawians do not achieve their ambitions is how we look at human potential. We look at human potential as a fixed quantity. If one fails at school, they must be dull. This thinking leads to policies and practices that limit the potential of many Malawians. It has led to policies which favour heavy social investments in elitist structures, and little to no investment in the lives of poor people. That is why in Malawi today the government pays millions of Malawi kwacha every year to students attending public universities, while tens of thousands of younger Malawians drop out of primary and secondary school every year because they cannot afford the fees or the expenses associated with going to school.

In its Malawi Demographic and Health Survey 2010, the National Statistics Office reported that 70 percent of Malawians aged 18 years and above have never had a secondary school education. Some of the reasons for this are lack of resources and the size of the Malawian economy. But a less discussed factor is the assumption, prevalent in our policy making, that intelligence and human potential are limited.

The stories I have shared today confront these assumptions. These stories offer a beginning for us to define the rebirth of the country, and of the continent, on our terms. These stories are the reasons why I still believe in the coming rebirth of Malawi, and of Africa. They are the reason why I still believe in uMunthu. Thank you.