Conversations with Moses… ‘The Federal Republic of Malawi?’

I agree with you that federalism in the strict sense of the concept may not be a panacea for our political problems as its most fervent proponents would have us believe. The politics of regions and ethnicity in Malawi needs a more nuanced understanding. There is nothing scientific about our borders. They, like our state boundaries, were drawn up by the colonial powers without regard to any ethnic configuration whatsoever. Regionalism is not, therefore, an inevitable consequence of the regional boundaries that we have but a socially constructed phenomenon that fortifies and feeds into our patrimonial politics. Accordingly, there is absolutely no guarantee that folks from the 3 regions will not retreat into their even small sub-ethnic cocoons once the regional boundaries were done away with. So for arguments sake, if the Northern Region was to become an autonomous region, it wouldn't be long before the minority tongas, nkhondes, nyakyusas (you can add the many sub-ethnic groups that inhabit the region) started complaining of being excluded from the political process by the region’s majority ethnic group. Insidious fault-lines have got a way of being conveniently peppered over by the uniting presence of a common cause and or enemy. Closer to home, the tragic case of South Sudan should offer us all a sobering lesson. Against the mainly Arabic and Islamic political forces of the North, the darker peoples of the South found it easier to band together and demand their independence. But once the same had been secured, the thinly veiled ethnic fissures were to spectacularly explode. Folks who had hitherto fought side by side against a common enemy turned their weapons against each other in brutish slaughter. Now the very existence of their nascent state has been imperilled. My point is, folks from the 3 regions should not be naive enough to think that their own desired politically autonomous regions will be utopias and free from tribalistic rancor.

In addition, like DD Phiri, I have grave doubts about the viability of micro-states within a federal Malawi. Size can be a determinant for the viability of a state. Several political science scholars, for instance, have surmised that several African states have struggled to develop because they are simply not viable as states due to their tiny geographic size. Why? Well, the tinier the state the less likely it is that it will have the resources with which to take off and sustain itself development wise. That is why, perhaps [and holding all things constant!] Malawi would have been much better if it had been part of the larger states of Zambia, Mozambique and or Tanzania. So folks who want the North to be a micro autonomous state within a federal Malawi should ask themselves some tough question: is the region viable as an autonomous state? Does it have the resources with which to develop itself in a sustainable fashion? How and from where would the state government raise the revenues to meet its social-contract obligations to its citizens? The same can be asked of all the regions in fact. If one pays some sober attention to these questions, then one realizes that the matters of size of Malawi vis-a-vis the viability of a federal state as raised by DD Phiri cannot be cast aside with the casual indifference of some of the supporters of federalism.

That said, the debate about federalism and the rather surprising traction that it has gained is symptomatic of deep seated disaffection with the status quo. I personally believe that the grievances of folks from the Centre and North (at least for the time being) are not without justification. They are worth paying attention to before they find expression in more destructive forms. But maybe a Federal State may not be a way to go. We could start by ensuring that power really devolves to the lowest levels possible through decentralization. If say district/town/city councils had more say in the provision of social amenities such as roads, hospitals and education together with the control over relevant resources, then maybe some regions would not complain of being denied development. We could also introduce another tier of political authority at say provincial level they way they have in South Africa. Given the right conditions, these provincial governments could counter the central government. We should also reform our electoral system by requiring a President to be elected by an absolute majority.  If a President knew that he needed more than half of the voters to vote for him to stay in power, then I doubt if he would govern in a manner that was only pleasing to an enclave of his tribesmen. An electoral system which made it extremely difficult for one party to govern without a coalition would for these reasons also be preferred.

P.S. Isn't it amazing that we the colonized peoples continue to struggle with the legacy of colonialism decades after our supposed independence? From Iraq to Sudan to the tiny state of Malawi, the evidence suggests that we will continue to pay for the folly of straight-line maps drawn by imperialists without any regard to 'nationalistic sensitivities'.

THE FOLLY OF ROMANTICIZING DESPOTS

Ngwazi Dr H. Kamuzu Banda, as our founding president preferred to be called was rather quite an enigmatic a figure. For someone who lorded over us for some good 3 decades, it is simply incredible how little Malawians ‘intimately’ knew the man. This was not an accident of course. It was all part of a carefully designed persona, steeped in mythical obscurity, meant to keep Malawians in check. So successful was this project that most Malawians at the time grew up believing that any dissident whisper would be picked up by the walls and trees around them and somehow waft in the gentle breeze into the mighty Ngwazi’s ears at the opulent Sanjika Palace. The Ngwazi literally defined life as they knew it. Heck! Dr Banda owned everything they surveyed! Including, naturally, the very piece of earth on which their tiny and sorry feet were planted. And so it was generally in this spirit of things that May 14 was plucked from thin air and declared to be a public holiday in celebration of the great leader’s birthday. No one was of course bold enough to interrogate the historical accuracy of the ‘birthday’ claim. Well, at least not openly. Only idiots tempted fate in that fashion during those days. But like much of the Kamuzu symbology, the ‘birthday’ was done away with in the euphoria that engulfed the country at the dawn of the so called 2^nd republic in May 1994. So strong was the anti-kamuzu sentiment at that time that anything seen as dismantling of his dark legacy was wildly cheered on regardless of its merit. So Kamuzu’s name on public infrastructure was quickly scrapped off and replaced with something else. Never mind that in the intervening years the infrastructure itself was allowed to rot away in neglect. Prisons notorious for holding the Life President’s political enemies, real or assumed, were shut down in an exuberant display of presidential populism. The fact that the prisons held other non-political prisoners who would then need to be transferred and crammed into already over-stretched correctional facilities was hardly mentioned to the new man in charge. If it was, then it must have contemptuously been waved away. The trajectory of public benevolence was quickly reversed. The people, who for years had been forced to part with their hard earned chickens, or if they were lucky just eggs, as gifts for their Kamuzu, now found themselves at the receiving end of presidential charity. Soon they were being showered with new K50 notes at public rallies. That was, of course, if they were lucky enough to hold on to one in the mad scramble that usually followed the ‘donation.’ How people never saw the debasement in money being thrown at them for it to be fought for like one would do with bananas at caged apes is beyond me. It is fair to say that with each passing year during the first decade after the reintroduction of multiparty democracy, the coldness towards Kamuzu somewhat thawed. What was to follow during the subsequent 10 years, however, would have made the Orton Chirwas, the Atati Mpakatis and the Gadamas of this world turn in their graves.

On the face of it, it is rather difficult to understand Bingu’s morbidly enthusiastic embrace of Kamuzu. This is particularly so if one believes the claims that Bingu himself made that he had fled the country in the 1960s, fearing for his life, after policy disagreements with Dr Banda. One would thus think that he was just as better placed as anyone to make the correct call about Dr Banda’s legacy. The simplest explanation for Bingu’s rather strange behaviour was that it was all politics. He was in the middle of a fierce feud with his mentor and political patron Bakili Muluzi over who would be calling the shots in government post 2004 and wanted to find a political foothold to sustain himself. Since conventional wisdom had it that Muluzi’s bastion of political power was the Southern region, Bingu’s overtures to Kamuzu must have been a shrewd move to endear himself to the latter’s kinsmen in the centre. And so began the most comprehensive project to rehabilitate Dr Banda. His name that had so unceremoniously been knocked off several public buildings and facilities was restored in the splendour of a presidential decree. The project to construct his mausoleum, in respect of which the UDF administration had shown only a modicum of cosmetic interest, took off with gusto. An imposing statute of the former head of state was unveiled. There was even talk of the former President’s official portrait hanging side by side with that of President Mutharika. Bingu even went to the ludicrous extent of prefixing the former head of state’s title before his own name.  And of course, the dubious ‘birthday’ was reintroduced as a public holiday. How Bingu ended makes one wonder, of course, if the motivation for the cozying up to the Ngwazi was just a cunning political move or whether it was a result of some sincere admiration on his part of the first President’s ways. His impatient references to the need for public ‘discipline’, in response to charges of autocracy, and his authentic bemusement at our opposition to the same had an eerie sound of someone who was truly nostalgic about the darkest days of Kamuzu’s reign. 

To date, the romatincism of Kamuzu has continued unabated. There are no signs that the current administration will change tack and radically depart from the course set by Mutharika. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been celebrating the Ngwazi’s ‘birthday’ this year, would we?

That Kamuzu was a pioneering nationalist cannot be disputed. His role in ‘developing’ the country certainly needs to be acknowledged. But we wrong ourselves if we merely stop there. We need to remind each other that his was a particularly repressive regime that visited some of the most colourful atrocities on the people he was supposed to be serving. The many whose promising lives were snuffed out by his pervasive security apparatus should not be forgotten. The thousands of Jehovah’s witnesses who were exiled from their country for simply refusing to buy party cards should not be shoved aside in our rush to ‘honour’ Dr Banda. We owe it to the many nameless ones who spent uncertain and terrifying nights behind the walls of Mikuyu Prison to tell the whole story. And of course we must not forget folks from the ‘dead north’ who were victims of systemic purges from both the civil service and educational institutions every now and then. The list of the egregious human rights violations that this ‘great leader’ committed against ‘his people’ is depressingly long one must say. But it would do his admires no harm if they refreshed their memory by looking at it and the stark reality that it represents.

An obsession with the truth and nothing but the whole truth should not be mistaken for vengeance. It’s important to point this out because ever since Kamuzu so called apology for his atrocities in 1996, any attempt to re-open discomforting inquiries about the old man’s time at State House is met with slanderous accusations about the inquirer’s malicious intent.  Milan Kundera once wrote that ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ Celebrating Kamuzu’s ‘birthday’ the way we do now risks consigning his regime’s excesses to some amorphous bin of irrelevance. And that countrymen, will be our ultimate tragedy because whatever constitutional edifice we sought to put in place in 1994 was supposed to ensure that our ‘difficult past’ was never repeated. If we forget this ‘difficult past’ as we are likely to if this travesty of blindly celebrating Kamuzu is not arrested, we are surely ‘condemned to repeat it.’ History, sadly, is often the product of the dominant voices in society. Of those who control the ‘narrative’. Malawians must be wary of their leaders telling it not as it was. We must wake up to the fact that the picture that our politicians try to paint of Kamuzu Banda is one borne out of political convenience. It is an imperfect caricature of the real despot that Kamuzu was and it does violence to the memory of the many victims of his authoritarianism. History, for it to be accurate and authentic, if at all it’s capable of such, must be told in its totality. We must celebrate our glorious past, whatever that means, without smoothening its coarse contours. We need to look at our yesterday in the eye-with all its attendant inconveniences, embarrassment and painful truth- and hold its gaze. We owe ourselves that less. May 14 does not help our memory’s struggle against forgetting. It should hardly be surprising that our corporate struggle against power is similarly in a moribund state. 

Writing the Big Kahuna’s obituary… For Bingu Wa Mutharika (Ph.D?)

Until that moment, April 5, 2012 had been a rather uneventful day. I had been sitting at my rather ancient desk, probably drafting something. I must not have been engrossed in the task at hand because as soon as the tiny red light on my Blackberry started flashing, indicating receipt of a message, my hand reached out for it. It was a Blackberry Messenger message from my uncle. ‘That prophecy must have been ours after all!’ It read. ‘What are you talking about?’ I quickly shot back my heartbeat picking up a pace. But I need not have asked really. For close to 3 months then, the country had eagerly been awaiting the fulfilment of T.B. Joshua’s prophecy. Now T.B. Joshua is a Nigerian teleprophet, who commands quite a significant following especially in black Africa. It is said that in months preceding April 2012 he had prophesied that an octogenarian President from Africa would pass on. I had not personally watched the prophecy as I was no huge fan of the ‘man of God’. The news had reached me nevertheless. The teleprophet was to apparently ‘clarify’ the prophecy, stating that the old man would certainly not be from West Africa. It thus was to be the case that the search for the target of the divine prediction turned Southwards. The most likely candidates were our old but big kahuna Bingu Wa Mutharika and Zimbabwe’s comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe. And so in the months after the prophecy, intense attention had turned to these 2 old men. Each and every public appearance was scrutinized for tell-tale signs and each and every unexplained public absence was fiercely speculated on. And so when I got the slightest inkling that the prophecy might in fact have been fulfilled within our shores, I was understandably….Well.

Anyway, as we all know, it turned out that the President had indeed passed on or about April 5, 2012. After almost 2 days of posturing and astonishing scheming, the ruling party accepted the inevitable. Bingu was declared dead and the hitherto side-lined vice President ascended to the Presidency. She would become Africa’s second female President and Southern Africa’s first.   The political changes that followed then were truly seismic. The DPP, rather harshly, realised that the throne on which it had been perched in fact had marshmallow foundations. The collapse was spectacular. Folks who though not holding any elected public office, had held considerable sway over the tiny republic’s public affairs suddenly found themselves on the peripheral. And concomitantly, those who had been in the unenviable despair of political wilderness just a couple of hours before Bingu’s fall now revelled in new found political glory. Wondering, rather zanily, how they could ever have thought that they were staring at a cynical political cul-de-sac.

It’s been 2 years now since Bingu’s rather ignominious exit.  And while his end was greeted with a euphoria reserved for the very worst in our society, one gets the unnerving feeling that time may just rehabilitate Bingu’s soiled legacy. Chipembere had a point when he said that history takes long to deliver its verdict. For indeed, the inherent contradiction in assessing the legacy of a departed President is that to some significant extent, his greatness or smallness is inextricably linked to the performance of those who follow him or her in office. For within 24 months after his passing, folks are asking if he really was as bad as their feelings at his final hour had suggested. True he was one arrogant man, but compared to the flip-flopping we have seen in our tiny republic’s administration since his passing, his arrogance could almost pass for principle. Some of his dreams for the country may have been too vivid even for the country own good, but at least he had some vision that he could articulate.  Quite a far cry from the pettiness and mundaneness that has now engulfed the Presidency. Bingu’s sometimes-resentment towards the West and his whipping up of nationalistic sentiments appeared rather anachronistic and desperate at times, one has to admit. But neither did he have the pitiful naivety of believing that the West epitomised a benign and altruistic santa claus with bags and bags of presents to dole out.

In the 2 years that the son of Chisoka village eternally returned to his people, little has changed for the common man. Public service delivery remains poor; from provision of security to drugs in public hospitals. The refreshing promise to liberalise the public airwaves has dissipated as swiftly as it was made. And the looting from the public kitty has continued unabated. If you thought the days of unelected and powerful patrons were over, you were dead wrong. What has conveniently changed is the colour. The metamorphosis from blue to orange has closed with breath-taking speed. We sure are rocking. But we are not making progress.

Far from it for me to try to rehabilitate the legacy of the dead. But if truth be told, Bingu eloquently makes the case for the law’s reticence in meting out the harshest of penalties for those who fall foul of it. The vagaries of human behaviour indeed make sense of the fiction that the worst of offenders are not yet born. For just when you have sunk so low and you are so fortified in your belief that there is no more sinking to endure, it’s when someone drills even harder and lower. Somehow, just somehow, one gets the feeling that we might have been too quick in writing the big kahuna’s obituary…

Of drum beaters…

‘Chitsiru chinayimba ng’oma, ochenjera navina’ is a Chewa saying. Literally, it means the foolish will beat the drum and the clever ones will dance. But it says a lot about Malawians in general. You see, most Malawians are risk averse. Especially those who lay claim to enlightenment. They know too much for their own good. The economy aint right. No investment can thrive in this environment. Inflation is through the roof and the runaway interest rates should dissuade any clear minded fellow from obtaining a loan from the bank to finance a business project. Knowledge, instead of freeing the creators in us, somehow fetters our imagination. It becomes that thick albatross around our neck that tie us to our average normalcy. So we seek out safe zones and find comfort in there. Nchifukwa chake ambiri timajiwa. Chifukwa pakadafunda…

Take our local politics for instance. Those in elected office have been criticized for being clueless at best and ‘unfathomable idiots’ at worst. Be this as it may, those who supposedly know better will never throw their hat into the ring. They will be content providing an exasperated running commentary on the failings of our politics. Often from a safe distance of their social media accounts and the dim lit corners of drinking joints. So thick is our risk aversion that even when those of recognised brilliance decide to risk it by joining politics, we look at them aghast. Wondering what on earth they are thinking leaving ‘plum jobs’ to join dirty politics. So when Saulos Chilima gets lampooned for stepping aside as CEO of one of Malawi’s leading corporations, one should see it for what it is. Our pathological aversion to anything risky.

That explains in part why our politics is dominated by those who do not have a litany of qualifications after their names. It is dominated by those who risk big. By the bold ones. They dare to tread even where the matadors fear. They simply take the plunge while we the enlightened ones run sophisticated statistical models to measure the associated risks. And that is why my friends, they, for the foreseeable future, will continue to beat the drum while we, the supposedly clever ones, will continue to wiggle our sorry bums in a stupendous dance…Ha! Chitsiru ndi ndani pamenepa?

As they say, in a democracy people get a government they deserve. Of the people, by the people and for the people.