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.