Powerful Lessons on Healing Malawi can learn from History

In 2014, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) made a proposal to make history a compulsory subject in schools in the country. This followed the growing intolerance and blatant disregard of respect for symbols of history and culture in that country.

In May 2015, the country’s Minister for Basic Education said the country’s Department of Basic Education was going ahead with plans to make the subject compulsory for Grades 10 to 12. She gave the following as reasons: “It has become crucial that, in order to move forward as a united and productive nation, we need to know where we come from as a country. Media reports indicated that many of those who participated in the looting, violence and vandalism (during the xenophobic attacks) were youths . . . we need to equip our youth with an accurate account of our history in order for them to make educated decisions regarding their own future.”

There are people who say a nation must look forward because anything past has the potential to prick anew old wounds. I do not share that reckless thinking—any nation serious about its future always makes reference to its past. I think the only difference is how well they negotiate the tricky events or issues in their history to bring a form of consensus and a mechanism for healing.

History of Malawi’s politics is a jungle. Unless people make a deliberate effort to make it clear and agree on the many things that agree, we risk losing so much because most of it is not written, or if written, only a small limb has made it into books. Unfortunately, many people who would provide the important pieces in this jigsaw puzzle are advanced in years, and worse, some have passed on without us making any effort to benefit from their rich memory.

History when carefully compiled and used stands to benefit a nation mostly in two ways. First, it offers a point to refer to when trying to make sense of why, where, and how a people went wrong. Second, the lessons learnt help in seeking a balanced mechanism of healing and reconciliation.

In Malawi, many people think the moment we let days pass by, time, like a turbulent stream will carry all trash of our history into the ocean of forgetfulness. Wrong. Very, very wrong. Time does heal yes, but in matters of nation building time invites the people with a heart willing to talk and negotiate to meet half-way.

Malawi is known for a people full of forgiveness. We must take advantage of this and vow never ever to go back to a period where honest people had to pay with blood for expressing their free minds.

A few cases of forgiveness stand out in my heart, examples we must embrace and emulate to heal.

In December 1981, Vera and her husband Orton Chirwa together with their child were abducted and smuggled into Malawi to face treason charges. The rest you know, but my point of interest is what Vera did many years after that great loss to her life. She writes in her book, Fearless Fighter, that when Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda was ill, she requested Mama, the Official Hostess, to give her some time with Kamuzu, which Mama did. Vera says there, alone with Kamuzu, she prayed for him, asking for GOD’s forgiveness on everything Kamuzu did on her and her family. I’ve heard many people describe Malawi as a nation doomed. A nation that has a people with a heart like Vera’s is a pride anywhere.

And Vera goes on to say she has a lot of respect for Mama because if Orton was to die it was soon after the Cabinet Crisis when he went to State House and boys there started beating him, only to be rescued by Mama. Orton died in 1992, but Vera was able to look back and celebrate the years GOD allowed her man through Mama Kadzamira.

In 1992, the Catholic Bishops in the country authored a letter criticizing the one-party dictatorship. At a convention by the then only ruling party, Malawi Congress Party, delegates resorted to killing these servants of God. It took the intervention of Pope John Paul II, the international press and local sympathy to spare them death and further victimisation. Recently, commenting on what one overzealous member had said at the convention on the nature of punishment she wanted administered on these Bishops, Bishop Emeritus Allan Chamgwera said the bishops forgave MCP’s Mai Hilda Manjankhosi who had said at a party convention in Lilongwe that she would urinate into their mouths if she met these bishops head on. “Probably she did not mean it, she wanted to impress upon her masters that she was more MCP than others,” Bishop Emeritus Allan Chamgwera said.

And away from home, there is a sad yet inspiring story of Archbishop Janan Luwum, that Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire, murdered by late President Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda.

One online article by Carol Natukunda of the New Vision, provides a frightening account of what happened the night of February 5 in the year 1977 in Uganda. Natukunda says Amin men arrived at the house of the Archbishop at about 1:30 am, duping him, by sending a man in blood to knock on the door, but that, as the Archbishop opened, security forces who had hidden nearby pounced on him, accusing him of stocking weapons with which to overthrow Amin’s government.

Following this unfortunate incident, bishops wrote a letter to the presidency asking the authorities over the terrible treatment given the man of God at the hands of state personnel who could not even identify themselves. It also queried on other killings in the country. On 16 February, only five or so days after that letter, the government called for a meeting for all religious leaders. There the government showed them weapons they claimed had been found at Archbishop Luwum’s compound, weapons they had themselves planted so as to implicate the Archbishop in rebel activities. The clergy were then taken to be locked up in a room, from where the state authority came and took away the Archbishop.

It is said on February 17, stripped to his underwear, the Archbishop was taken into an overcrowded cell. According to a witness quoted in another article by Moses Walubiri, there the Archbishop, while seating in a corner, urged all those inmates to forgive those who wronged them. Later that day, the Archbishop was to be killed, a road accident simulated to convey a picture of a fatal road accident in the course of transferring him and others to an interrogation centre.

What is moving is that Archbishop Janani Luwum, though he faced death throughout, never flinched from requesting for forgiveness for those who wronged him and others.

Still there, another man of God wrote a book entitled I love Idi Amin: The Story of Triumph and Under Fire in the Midst of Suffering and Persecution in Uganda. The author, Bishop Festo Kivengere, says he chose this for title because he discovered that he was developing hatred to Amin and so had to force himself to forgive a person who had wronged him and others so much. To remind himself of this forgiveness he wrote this title bearing a title as though celebrating the life of Amin. That’s how deep forgiveness reaches.

And close to home, we have South Africa, an example of what forgiveness can do to a nation broken when those leading reconciliation are men and women full of principles of love and forgiveness. And I have in mind the role Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu played in the healing process of South Africa.

There are books people must read; Desmond Tutu’s The Rainbow People of God: South Africa’s Victory over Apartheid is one. And the reason is simple: you can never know the power of living together if you do not tap from the experiences of those men and women who had tasted abuse, hatred and despondency yet refused to succumb to vices that would bend their spirits.

In a letter, dated 6 May 1972, to Prime Minister John Vorster, Tutu talked of why black people needed white people, and white people black people. He was not talking about tribes; he was talking about races—black and white—and in a context where black people would be ‘justified’ to hate the whites. In most countries today we have tribes which hate each other despite all being black, often on senseless reasons such as coming from different geographical locations or speaking different languages or dialects. A sad example today is South Sudan, a nation we all prayed for, a nation that was granted what it had longed for, yet so soon turned on each other.

Later at the funeral of Steve Biko, on 25 September, 1977, Tutu rallied the people—both black and white—never to be filled with despondency and despair, never to be filled with hatred and bitterness because “all of us, black and white together, shall overcome, nay, indeed have already overcome” (p 21).

The context of this speech should be understood. Steve Biko was the people’s hope, a walking inspiration, a talking fire of liberation against apartheid. This young man, he was about 31, had died in circumstances in which those handling him knew what their terror would result in. Biko had been denied exercise and kept naked in a police cell for eighteen days without being questioned. Come the interrogation day, he was to suffer a brain injury following two blows to his head. As if all that was not enough, they were to transport him naked in the floor of a police van in a distance of 750 kilometres. A few days later he died.

The context of Tutu’s speech at Biko’s funeral should also be understood from the events that had happened a year before, on June 16 (1976), after black students in Soweto had taken to the streets in protest against the imposition of Afrikaans in their secondary school curriculum. The police opened fire, killing a thirteen-year-old Hector Peterson. By June 24, over 140 people had been killed and many began to see use of force as the only language the apartheid South African could listen. (Today, a photo of Mbuyiselo Makhubu carrying a life-less Peterson away, Hector’s sister, Antoinette crying alongside, has come to symbolize the magnitude of brutality of the apartheid South Africa’s police machinery upon even innocent school children—the image of the Soweto schoolchildren’s revolt, and 16 June is now celebrated as The Day of the African Child.)

In such a highly volatile setting, Tutu preached a belief in each other.

In one moving photo of 1990, one man is seen hoisting an axe, yet Tutu is speaking as though he’s made of metal, as though nothing can happen to him—a man with a belief that a heart forgiving is an instrument with which to beat every prejudice.

In 1990, when it was announced that Nelson Mandela was to be released on February 11 (that year), Tutu gave an interview with an American television reporter in which he said the release of Nelson Mandela from prison would mean freedom to all people, both black and white. He said whatever was happening in South Africa, the white people were not free, for he saw freedom as the liberation of all races.

The complete picture of forgiveness in Tutu’s life can never be appreciated without looking at the role he played in April, 1993. On April 10 that year, all the gains made in the struggle so far were about to be washed down the drain of chaos following the assassination of Chris Hane at the hands of one overzealous anti-Communist Polish immigrant, Janusz Waluz. Chris was the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and also member of the executive committee of the African National Congress. On the day of Chris’ funeral, April 19, Tutu delivered a speech, rallying the people to consider Chris’ death an opportunity to demand not bloodshed or vengeance, but freedom and democracy. It is widely believed that Mandela and he had played a crucial role at this point to take back South Africa from a brink of civil war.

Naturally, many would expect a man who had seen it all, a man who had suffered with his people, a man with such great popularity to seek some reward in form of some political seat. When asked by a Danish journalist whether he would go politics in the new South Africa, Tutu said he was not a politician, that he had been an interim leader merely because the real leaders had been either jailed or exiled. This is a rare leadership gem. I believe Mandela saw sense in just running for a single term from learning from such men as Tutu that the greatest reward you can get from serving your people is bringing them freedom and democracy. I must be quoted correctly here, the democracy I am talking about is the one that should greatly benefit the black race.

In Malawi, every leader comes to the throne promising forgiveness, but if one analyses the works on the ground it tells it all that the forgiveness meant was only part of podium rhetoric. The clergy and others of goodwill must help us realize the power of forgiveness for the sake of those who suffered so much for their freedom and democracy. There are lots of people crying in Malawi, people who lost just so much; we cannot sit by pretending everything is alright and that everybody will finally forget and healing will naturally come as does a bruise. We need to go back in history, and faithfully seek the best means to move forward with a heart open and forgiving. A true mechanism no matter how small must be put in place to ensure that those who lost so much did not suffer in vain. No matter the cost, as a nation we must face the past before we begin to embark on the future. The West can teach us many things but certainly not forgiveness; slave trade should have been a source of great shame among white people, yet Africa pays the West for money made by resources dug out from the belly of Africa and dug by Africans. We, Africans understand forgiveness better; let us practise it in its entirety.

Parties such as the Malawi Congress Party have a duty to lead in forgiveness, and lead not because we want them to carry shame, but this is their opportunity to make Malawians embrace MCP anew. It is an opportunity for the MCP to speak out and show everyone it was a party for all Malawians, and by accepting full responsibility and promising change if they could be voted in, they could offer people an alternative. Otherwise the same old picture of MCP will continue and few from the South or North can take them seriously.

I know people will speak of the 1995 Tribunal. Honestly speaking, that thing served a select of people, mostly those close to those in power. We need a better one, an all-encompassing one, one not based on region or popularity, but on the magnitude of suffering the people went through.

Many people talk of the rule of law. Fine. But the rule of law does have limitations. A good example is what we are witnessing as a country right now that people stole billions, making so many suffer, lives were lost and are still being lost all because money which would have bought medicine for the poor were stuffed into pockets of the few, yet when convicted they are getting the same sentence someone who cooks a dog and sells for money to pay fees for his kids gets. Is there justice?

A nation that wants to move forward has to practise equity besides the rule of law. One such value is that individuals have to accept responsibility and do all they can to ensure we heal as a nation and we begin to feel one for the other. This we can learn from history, unfortunately as Tutu puts it: history teaches us that we don’t learn from history.

There’s a dose of criticism that builds; there’s another that kills

I have in my possession a brochure bearing the title The House of Commons: A Brief Guide. It was not on my schedule to read this small work today, for I am reading Richard Holbrooke’s To End a War, inside which is this brochure (I am not sure how it got there), and to this, my attention was quickly drawn. It says something about the House of Commons that makes me feel like we are not doing enough on the freedom of expression front in our democracy.

The brochure starts with a kind of confession, namely that visitors to the House of Commons could, in a way, feel betrayed by its small size—the chamber has seating accommodation for only 437 (some say 427) of the 659 (as for period 1997-2005, though now the number is 650) Members of Parliament, forcing many members to stand around the Speaker’s chair during major debates and statements. And despite this ‘small’ size, the Speaker of Parliament then had this pride to share: “It is truly a debating chamber, where every Member is free to express his or her own view on a matter, and where opposing arguments can be expressed frankly and passionately. We value the vigorous nature of debate in the House of Commons—it is a reflection and a reminder of our nation’s democratic principles.”

I am not sure we can boast the same of our Chamber as far as the freedom and power of debate is concerned. Unfortunately, that is not my subject; my subject is whether some criticism can indeed work to serve the interest of nation building, and if yes, what nature and level such criticism should assume in order to benefit both the ruled and those ruling them.

Nelson Mandela in his great work The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, offers an interesting lesson on the power of being at the receiving end of criticism and the benefits one derives from the same. He talks of his experience in the palace of Jongintaba, a Xhosa Paramount Chief in Thembuland, the man who had adopted Mandela at nine soon after the death of Mandela’s father. At page 29, Mandela says this of the meeting between the regent and his amaphakathi—the core of the Chief’s parliament and judiciary: “At first, I was astonished by the vehemence—and candor—with which people criticised the regent. He was not above criticism—in fact, he was often the principal target of it. But no matter how flagrant the charge, the regent simply listened, not defending himself, showing no emotion at all.” Mandela goes on to say the regent waited till the end to speak, to sum up consensus among the diverse opinions. He adds, saying that no conclusion was forced on those who disagreed, and that if no agreement was reached, another meeting was scheduled.

In prison and outside it, Mandela was known for his calmness, and honesty on issues. I believe, he learnt all that from what he observed from his elders on how they handled criticism.

On July 6, we celebrated 52 years of Independence. If we were a people who learn from history, this coming 9 September would be a day to remind ourselves of 52 years of failure to cultivate in ourselves a culture of constructive debate and tolerance, for I strongly believe it to be the main reason great men and women who fought as a unit for Independence fell apart only weeks after attaining the independence status in what is described as the Cabinet Crisis. Our inability to reflect on where we went wrong in that a nation sharing so much suffering in making our Independence could so soon after turn on each other and could not forgive and come back as one people even as I speak is scandal, great scandal indeed. During this year’s Independence prayers, the clergy requested for healing; I believe true healing should take into account a time of reflection on where we went wrong in the first place, and possibly, how we can truly say sorry to those we hurt in the course.

Some leaders in the world have learnt the painful way that a world without criticism is a poisoned chalice to power.

Late John Frederick Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, is one great man I respect in history. One event in his life reminds me some people can really learn from their mistakes or history. On November 8, 1960, Kennedy, young, handsome, charismatic, and above all, intelligent, was voted into power with 34,226,731 votes against 34,108,157 for Richard Nixon of the Republican Party. Of course, following this, Kennedy won an Electoral College majority of 303 to 219.

Kennedy did his mathematics subtracting 34,108,157 from 34,226,731, and the answer was a mere 118,574 votes. Richard Reeves in his book President Kennedy: Profile of Power says, “Over the next three years, he (Kennedy) often stuck a slip of paper into his pocket to remind himself of that tiny popular vote margin: 118,574 votes.” He did this to remind himself 34 million people had voted against him, and so had to work hard to convince those 34 million people.

He was intelligent in this regard, but sometimes too much intelligence can destroy. One communication theory that explains why a gathering of all-intelligent people is a recipe for disaster is known as Group-think Theory by Irving Janis. Strangely, this theory was born out of one folly by this same man I have just described as intelligent, JF Kennedy.

In April 1961, Kennedy sent 1,400 invading forces to Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro in what is described as the Bay of Pigs invasion. The decision was a catastrophe.

Janis tried to find an answer on why a man they all thought was intelligent could make a decision so grave. He thus looked at the people who had surrounded Kennedy when that decision was being made, and concluded that it all went awry because there was no element of dissent or criticism at that table.

Janis says Kennedy, himself a charismatic leader, had surrounded himself with a cream of thinkers, blue-ribbon group of thinkers who believed they could never go wrong as a group. In that group was Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, a man of high standing in the American society and former President of Ford Motor Company; Dean Rusk, Secretary of State and former head of Rockefeller Foundation, another man of high standing in the American society; McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor, himself former Dean of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University; Arthur Schlesinger, an outstanding historian from Harvard; and Robert Kennedy, President’s Kennedy’s brother and US Attorney General.

Janis argues that this group of great thinkers did not allow room for criticism within themselves because each falsely believed they were the best group in America, driven by invulnerability, standing for US morality and representative of everything correct. But what happened? The invasion was beaten right on the shores by 20,000 Fidel Castro’s waiting soldiers. Most of the invasion soldiers were killed and the rest were sent to prison camps. Later the embarrassed US was to send Cuba food and medical supplies worth $53 million for Castro to release them. According to Janis, that poor decision making by a group that had believed it had a vast collective intellect to bear on any governmental decision became the reason Castro (or later through his brother) has outlived almost ten US Presidents.

It is important to note that a lot of facts pointed to possible failure yet these educated men assumed that everything would work in their favour. According to Em Griffin in A First Look at Communication Theory, p. 223, at one point Schlesinger had expressed doubt over the success of the invasion but the Attorney General, the whole legal advisor of the state, waved it away: “You may be right or you may be wrong, but the President has made his mind up. Don’t push it any further. Now is the time for everyone to help him all they can.”

Following that disaster, Kennedy learnt in a terrible way dissent should be part of any policy or political system if it is to be protected from making one-sided, jaundiced decisions of dangerous consequences. Too late though, Kennedy encouraged dissent and said he would guarantee external criticism or evaluation as part of his decision-making process.

You would think the US learnt a lesson from this. Not at all—politics never learns from mistakes. In 2003, George Bush attacked Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussein had stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. To ‘win over’ dissent to this war, and to ensure he gave no room to criticism, George Bush said, “You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”

And a few weeks ago, a report by Sir John Chilcot, on UK’s involvement in that war pointed to many issues bordering on detestation of dissent by the leadership. For example, the report says the intelligence presented was not challenged, and should have, that there was little questioning on the decision, and consequences of the invasion were underestimated. Among the recommendations of the report are (1) ministerial discussion which encourages frank and informed debate and challenge is important; and (2) in future, all aspects of any intervention need to be calculated, debated and challenged with vigour.

Political parties in Malawi have always demonstrated Group-think sickness where anyone showing any mind to the contrary faces total ridicule or the chop. The old UDF, at the height of power, dismissed Commerce and Industry Minister, Reverend Peter Kaleso, and descended on Joe Manduwa, Jap Sonke and others, for openly refusing to support the Third Term bid. Strangely, the current President of the PP, Uladi Mussa, then UDF Regional Governor for the Centre, had described Kaleso’s dismissal as a big lesson for insubordination. The new MCP, and at its helm is a man conversant with the high principles of tolerance to dissent as taught by Christ, seems never able to learn that he who receives dissent with dignity stands to win. Unfortunately, the picture the MCP is giving us is that they are children of the same father but cannot eat from the same plate. The damage this is causing them cannot be put in figures, and with this, to convince some of us otherwise will be an uphill task. And I would not say of the DPP and their ability to absorb criticism, I think Winiko has a better tale to tell on this.

Our refusal to absorb dissent saw us fracturing ourselves in September 1964. In 1971, our abhorrence to dissent saw Kamuzu (for he was part of Parliament) declare himself life President in 1971 following a similar declaration by delegates at a party convention in 1970. The spirit that keeps persuading us that only we are the best sent the once mighty UDF into the path of self-destruction—surrendering power to a guest at the expense of veterans therein. Today, Winiko, a man with fangs of jokes and nothing more, has received the ‘punishment of dissent’ for walking semi-nude in red rags before the Malawi public. I cannot believe there are no people who know some decisions simply defy logic, but I believe they all want to be seen to belong to the ‘right’ group. Fifty-two years of Independence, no lessons learnt.

Malawi is a great nation no matter what some funny writers say about her. All we need to do is put politics behind us and work as one people to leave behind a telling legacy for our children and for generations unborn. Let us learn to criticize one another in a spirit of mildness and tolerance, and where we offend one another, let us never fear to offer apologies for the good and health of this great nation. Let our leaders, men and women we pray for, guide us in believing in ourselves and in carrying dissent with a heart receptive. At the same time, let us distinguish the dissent that aims to destroy from the dissent that has a heart to perfect things for the good of all. The former is divisive and dangerous, the latter constructively healthy. We would do better to go for the latter.

Made for each Other: Public Sector Reforms and Access to Public Information Legislation

The West boasts some of the best open public sector regimes in the world yet the West has found it necessary to put in place robust access to public information legislation. There is a very good reason for this—to ensure that everything taking place in the public sector happens in the medium of openness. Openness ensures transparency, accountability, citizen participation and government responsiveness. The story is different in Africa where secrecy is mistaken for safety. As a result, in Africa, passing of ATI law becomes a pitched battle often between the citizenry together with civil society organisations (part of which the media are) and governments. The picture is worrisome even in those countries considered beacons of democracy on the Continent. Take the example of Ghana, often described as a model democracy yet even there, passing of ATI law has become a complicated dance of one step forward and two steps backwards.

As we speak, almost every country on the Continent is undergoing public sector reforms of some kind, often following some crisis of telling proportions. In Malawi, these reforms are coming hot on the heels of the worst public pillage ever at Capitol Hill, the beehive of government activities in the country. Despite all this stench of corruption, very few in Malawi seem to see sense in passing ATI legislation into law to stave off a repeat of that cardinal plunder.

Just where does ATI fit in public sector reforms? I think the best answer should come from the connection between democracy and public sector.

Malawi as a democratic country runs on the wheels of a liberal Constitution in which is incorporated the Bill of Rights. And we are told democracy is a system of government by the people, for the people, and of those people. In Malawi, this means democracy is the voice of the 17 million plus people living therein. In practice, it makes it impossible for all these 17 million plus people to express their voices together. Democracy being what it is finds a way to ensure all these people have a say in their government through some form of contract between all the citizens on one hand, and a few trustworthy people to run the people’s affairs on the other. This special contract, a kind of relationship in trust, is made legitimate at elections where these few people are given some authority through the Constitution to guide the affairs of the country in terms of utilization of resources and upholding of the rule of law. In a way, those in power are given the authority at elections on trust; it is not theirs; it is the people’s. And because it is the people’s, the Constitution puts a mechanism so that these people are given extra eyes to see what those in power, those holding the authority or power on behalf of them, the people, do.

This special contract arrangement has the basis in the Constitution itself. Section 6 of this Constitution provides that authority to govern is from the people. At the same time, section 7 ensures that, in exercising that power, the executive must take into account express wishes of the people. This is also provided for in sections 8 and 12(ii), which respectively, talk of interests of Malawians and power on trust. And to ensure that these people are afforded an opportunity to monitor whether those in power abide by this contract principle, section 37 of the Constitution gives the people right of access to information.

Now, if the public sector, and the public sector is the machinery or mechanism through which government serves its people, undergoes any change or innovation, it naturally follows that those people who gave those in power the authority to lead them should be afforded eyes to see what is happening in the course of those changes.

In simple language, ATI legislation is an enablement mechanism through which the people follow what their government is doing, to monitor whether these public innovations are indeed taking place in their interest, and whether the motive are in line with the aspirations of them, the people.

The second reason why ATI is necessary in these reforms is that these reforms are taking place in an arrangement that inevitably demands presence of ATI.

From the mid-1970s to around 2000, public sector reforms used a management strategy known as New Public Management, NPM. This means that before the mid-1970s, PS reforms were modelled on a different strategy.

Before the 1970s, the public sector, everywhere, took care of all the affairs of the people as far as providing public goods and services was concerned. It kind ran like a welfare state, and this philosophy or approach was known as (Weberian or bureaucratic) Public Administration. In the mid-1970s, mostly after the oil crises of the 1970s and the failure of the US dollar as the main determinant of currency exchange regime, it became apparent that carrying all the responsibility in public goods and service delivery was unsustainable to governments including those in the West. From that time, governments began to borrow practices from the private sector so that the public sector should be run the same way the private sector is, i.e. running it as a business to make profit. This approach is known as New Public Management, NPM, and it used privatization (selling some public enterprises to private hands for efficiency and effectiveness), decentralization (giving away decision-making power to some public agency away from the headquarters) and public-private partnership, among many. In Malawi NPM (and they arrived in the late 1980s in the cauldron of World Bank-IMF through a package described as structural adjustment programs or SAPs) mostly used privatization and decentralization. The legal instruments that gave these two NPM strategies legitimacy were the Privatisation Act passed in 1996, and the Local Government Act, passed in 1998.

Towards the year 2000, it was realized that the best form of running the public sector had to take into account human rights issues—stakeholder engagement, transparency, equalities agenda (gender, ethnic groups, age, religion, etc.), ethical and honest behaviour, accountability, sustainability, et cetera and had to look at the people and other organisations as partners rather than as customers. In other words, the idea of strict business was being replaced by the idea of collaboration, engagement and listening to the people on what value they want the public sector have or demonstrate. Whereas New Public Management was preoccupied with changing the internal structures of the public sector, this new form of management was preoccupied with horizontal approach to management, i.e., partnering with the people, NGOs, et cetera. This new form of management is associated with governance rather than mere management. Thus this new form of running the private sector came to be known by different names: Post-New Public Management, or New Public Governance, or Networked Governance, or Whole-of-Government, or Collaborative Government, or e-Government, or ‘small government and big public’, et cetera. Post-NPM uses mostly PPP. This is why the Public-Private Partnership Act was passed in 2010 to give legal direction on this mode of running the public sector.

In short, these current public sector reforms are taking place under the New Public Governance banner and not under the Weberian (bureaucratic) Public Administration, or under New Public Management banner. An important component of New Public Governance with its human right approach to reforms is engagement between government on one hand, and the people and the civil society on the other.

Engagement entails interaction between the parties, sharing of information, giving the people an opportunity to scrutinize accounts, providing them with reasons for various decisions, et cetera. And the three pillars of engagement are access to information, consultation and citizen or public participation. In fact, access to information is described in many pieces of literature on New Public Governance as the bedrock for effective citizen participation.

In short, the current mode of running the public sector entails that issues of human rights form the hub, and one most important instrument that enhances this collaboration is ATI legislation. It would thus make little sense to engage in ambitious reforms without putting in place a mechanism that will afford the citizens the capacity to see inside the PS reforms because through this, the people can check against abuse and corruption and seek accountability for decisions made. At the same time, through ATI legislation, the people can give feedback on the reforms for government to effect improvements.

So where do the media come in?

Well, the media are part of the partnership as the ‘fourth branch of government’. Access to information is not for them; it is for the people, but the media being a friend to the people, it is, in some way, theirs too. In fact, the media too, are accountable to them, the people.

These reasons and many others should help us see sense in encouraging our government to give the people the opportunity to participate in these reforms through ATI law, robust ATI law. Such participation creates ownership in the people, and ownership is an important ingredient at the policy implementation stage, for it triggers acceptance and with it, willingness to participate and enthusiasm to support, after all there is already a general consensus that these reforms are necessary.