A Shameful History of Exploitative Paternalism—I think we need a kind of South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to truly heal

Introduction

Malawi has one problem—a mentality that every problem has some shelf-life, some lifespan, and so the best way to deal with any problem is to sit down and wait for its expiry date. The belief is born from a belief that an expiry date does come anyway. After the Cabinet Crisis where six senior Ministers in Prime Minister Dr Hastings Banda’s first government at Independence had taken a stand against his leadership style in August-September 1964, most of them believed that a man who was past 60 (years) at Independence would very soon succumb to the demands of nature and find it hard to carry out the arduous task of running a new nation. They thought the man would one day just collapse under that great weight of expectations, succumbing to death; it was a mistake, a very big mistake—Dr Banda was to outlive most of them. You would think we learnt a lesson there. Never. We rarely learn, and so today, there is still this feeling of acceptance that borders on docility to our problems, that our problems will go just like that, and so we must postpone them or just relegate them to the fringes. History does not favour this approach to issues.

In this discussion I will strive to point the exact moment we all went wrong, and the exact problem we face as a nation, and of course, the reason we run away from it, I mean this kind of fool’s paradise that makes us think that there shall come a day when all our problems will just vanish and everything will be nice ‘again’ for us. But first, I will cite examples of latest manifestations of this tendency. Forgive me that I will take a completely different approach to our problems, so I will show you our problem is not corruption as many are made to believe, or the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or the opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP) or the People’s Party (PP) or the former ruling party United Democratic Front (UDF) or Chaponda or Mulumbe, for I believe that our problem is the system we ourselves put in place for us; I shall call this system exploitative paternalism.

But first, a warning: this is a very long post, almost a thesis for some political science course, but I have done this deliberately—history of Malawi is an enigma to Malawians, and often we have to learn it from the eyes and ears of the West, a very unhealthy situation. Second, the larger part of our history is very expensive to come by, one has to pay lots of money to buy discussions and history of Malawi, yet this is his or her history. I find this situation insulting. I think one can learn a few things from here free of charge.

Discussion

The Starting point of the debate

On January 26 this year, www.nyasatimes.com carried a story that bore a striking headline “Malawi Corruption worsens, TI shows; ‘Current generation of Malawian Leaders beyond redemption’”. The story followed release of the 2016 Corruption Perceptions Report by the Berlin-based Transparency International, a leading international non-governmental organisation at the heart of the fight against corruption. The story also sampled the people’s reaction to the report and the fact that Malawi, a nation that had been on number 88 only four years before, has now slipped, ranking shameful 120 on the rung.

The most heart-ripping sentiments came from Dr Boniface Dulani, perhaps Malawi’s first reference political scientist at Chancellor College of the University of Malawi. So, following this slide, a resigned Dulani tweeted: “Current generation of Malawian leaders is beyond redemption. . . Let’s focus on the youth to fight corruption.” It seems Dr Dulani was advocating for a change of strategy, paying more attention to the youths rather than wasting our precious time on old folks. Perhaps, I got him wrong; maybe he wanted to mean the battle must be waged on two fronts now—with more resources channeled towards the prong of the youths, kind of a preventive measure as opposed to a corrective or punitive one.

Another story that speaks volume of our tendency to resign when we should work to find an answer or solution comes from what said the Public Affairs Committee (PAC), a religious grouping looked to for checking the progress of democracy in the country. On Thursday (April 6, 2017), PAC floated a communication as follows:

We, members of the PAC Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, and representatives of mother bodies met at Mount Soche Hotel from 1-2 March 2017, 20-21 March 2017 and 3-4 April 2017, and resolved to take a concrete position that the (ruling) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration has failed to perform, and that its leadership has demonstrated indecisiveness on critical matters.

On Friday, Malawi News (see front page Malawi News dated April 8-14, 2017) asked the Grouping’s Publicity Secretary, Father Peter Mulomole, to clarify on this statement. Father Mulomole said what the statement meant was that the current government of Peter Mutharika has failed and so it is up to Malawians to decide the fate of this government.

And this is the irony of this whole issue—Malawians look to PAC as their final voice of authority, a people’s last hope, yet here they are telling the people they should, I’m not sure whether individually or collectively, decide what to do with this ‘hopeless’ government. For me, it sounds a kind of dereliction of duty of worst nature.

First, people should understand that the Public Affairs Committee has lost its relevance for failing to adapt to the changing times. The Public Affairs Committee still operates on the objectives it carried in 1992 when it was formed, yet this is 2017. Things have changed—democracy no longer means what it was in 1992; the main thrust in our democracy is no longer to bring people democracy; it is to restore confidence in the people that despite all the frustration democracy had brought us, it is still the best form of government. In short, the duty of PAC today should be to bring assurance in the people that our national integrity systems will become sane again. I am sure that the people’s greatest frustration with PAC has been their realisation that this organisation they have trusted could wage war on their behalf without taking sides is itself manifestly bipartite. The people have seen PAC operate as though we are fighting to claim democracy as was the case in the early 1990s when it should be fighting to restore credibility to the country’s integrity system so the democracy that has alluded us, should regain its meaning. People want to see a credible election system, a truly independent judicial system, et cetera, as part of the country’s national integrity systems. Some of the questions PAC should ask are: What can we do as a nation so our Anti-Corruption Bureau become truly independent in the fight against corruption? What can we do as a country so that our politics become an open ground where those elected will truly claim total legitimacy and authority? What can be done to restore trust in the people of those in authority? Above all, they should ask themselves: What discussion should we pursue towards true healing in the country?

Another problem facing PAC is its dilemma over which way it should take or follow to deal with mind-boggling problems in our politics.

Do you remember what happened at the end of March 2012? Well, the Public Affairs Committee had conducted a conference where leading civil rights, religious leaders and academics had converged to discuss the direction Malawi was taking under the leadership of the then President, Late Professor Bingu wa Mutharika. At that meeting, the participants demanded that the President resolve the country's economic and political problems immediately or else call for a national referendum in 90 days, or resign the presidency within 60 days. Bingu wa Mutharika spurned the ultimatum. “I want to inform the Malawi nation that Bingu will not step down until 2014; I would like to say that Bingu doesn’t run away from work, Bingu doesn’t desert responsibility even if the going gets tough,” was his reply. He added, this time addressing the media: “You should make a clean copy of this (what I’m saying) and give it to the Chairman of PAC and the Chairman of the civil society or whoever is supporting their calls. This is my answer to the memorandum that they (PAC) say they have written, I won’t answer again!” True to his words, he never answered again, for on 5th April, 2012, he died of heart attack.

Does PAC, away from the courage everyone shows in public, express some regret that they should have handled the situation better? I don’t know, but if I were PAC, I would somehow say, “Did I not pile up the pressure and did I not somehow contribute?”

Just suppose that’s how PAC feels, then one has to understand them when they say, “The people will have to decide what to do with this government,” a dangerous way to approaching issues especially when you say that to a people in a setting where illiteracy level is very, very high.

So, am I saying PAC should lead in some form of demonstration? No, not all. What I want to say is that Malawians must come to a table to reflect where things went wrong, and what it is that we should do, today, and not postponing it for our sons and daughters to deal with, and agree as a nation on the way forward.

In this discussion, I will help PAC see where we went wrong, that our problem is not the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, for they are only beneficiaries of a system we ourselves set up, a system we refuse to let go as a people. I will also show Dr Dulani that those who encourage the youth to steal are ‘old’ men, and we cannot let them go scot free on the hope that the youths hold the key. In order for me to achieve the best I will be brutal with history.

Where does this problem come from?

Malawi’s problem is that we have a system our parents put in place at Independence and even before that, and when time came for us to change things, we did not change that system. That system is still there, and don’t be cheated, all this politics isn’t for serving the people as politicians from both sets argue; it is for them to be in the driving seat in that system. And it is that system that directs every affair as far as corruption is concerned. The problem is not Chaponda or Mulumbe; the problem is not tribalism or regionalism or corruption or lack of integrity as people claim. The problem is that we have, as a people, refused to deal with the system of exploitative paternalism, and we are paying for that.

The danger today is: if we refuse to listen and deal with it head on now, in our time, we shall keep fighting these battles one step forward, two backwards. Put simply, this thing cannot go unless we agree to put in place a system that will respect public interest rather than wishes of those in power (ruling party) or those fighting to acquire power (the opposition), for both these sets are driven by a form of paternalism exploitative in nature.

Definition of Paternalism

Before I define paternalism, I should start by repeating what Jack Mapanje says about what happened when Malawi changed from one party system to multiparty system and Bakili Muluzi was given the trust to lead this nation and he could not go far enough in bringing healing. Mapanje observes: “No truth and reconciliation commission along the lines of South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in order to resolve the political problems of the past. Muluzi will probably regret this oversight; . . ” (“Afterword: The Orality of Dictatorship: In Defence of my Country”, A Democracy of Chameleons: Politics and Culture in the New Malawi, edited by Harri Englund, p 178).

Mapanje is wrong to suggest that Muluzi was the person to do that, for he could not. He could not because he was once part of that system so were many in his government. Our change was a kind of mixture—wolves and sheep—and you could not ask for a clean past in that context. However, the question should go to those who had the opportunity to advise at the time on why they didn’t seize on the opportunity. The answer is simple: they could not deal with the past as though their objective was to replace the system, for their objective was to replace the people at the top, the people who controlled in that system. Everything else was the same: the former MCP had the Malawi Young Pioneer, the Youth Leaguers and Women’s League; the new system under Bakili Muluzi had the Young Democrats equal to MYP and Youth Leaguers in everything except name and the era in which they were operating; nothing had changed in the system; only those at the driving seat had changed and perhaps names, for the new system was now known as multiparty. However, the real system was paternalism underlying it all. This system was still intact, and is, today.

Muluzi or someone resembling his name was very much part of that history; he would not reach deep in his efforts to confront that dark history. It scares when one looks into such history. Consider this:

Sosola Village, Central Region, August 26, 1975:

A group of men and women, including the local Member of Parliament, Mr Elson Muluzi, and the local Party Chairman, Stuart Maere, surround the homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses and ask if they are prepared to buy membership cards. When the Witnesses reply that they cannot do this, the party members ransack their homes and chase them from the village, saying: “Get away from here! Go away to a country where there aren’t any cards!” www.jehovahs-witness.com quoting “A Beastly Record: When will it End?” Watchtower, 12 August, 1975, pp 8-12.

It is important to remember that the persecutions against members of Jehovah’s Witness had started even before the Cabinet Crisis of 1964, though they reached this terrible climax in the mid-1970s. In short, the problem had started way, way before Independence, and some of the people we think could never be party to it, had in fact been party to it:

Even months before Malawi gained its Independence on July 6, 1964, the Christian Witnesses of Jehovah, from January to March 1964, experienced a wave of brutal violence and ruthless persecution because of their stand in this matter (i.e. refusing to buy party cards or to wear MCP badge carrying the face of the Prime Minister—Dr Banda). At that time, 1,081 of their homes and more than 100 of their Kingdom Halls were burned down or otherwise demolished. Also 588 fields of maize, millet, beans, cassava and cotton were destroyed. Many Witnesses were hospitalized, women were raped, and eight Witnesses died from beatings or were killed outright. . . . At that time (i.e. in 1964) Jehovah’s Witnesses in Malawi through their representatives did their best to try to reason with the responsible ones in government positions so they would call a halt to this violent persecution of innocent men, women and children. On one occasion they had a meeting with the then Minister of Home Affairs, Yatuta Chisiza [who later rebelled against Dr Banda, the Prime Minister, and recently (remember this is a 1968-issue) was shot by Malawi’s security forces]. He made it clear that he was highly displeased that the Witnesses were the only ones that refused to buy Malawi Congress Party membership cards and he told the spokesman for the Witnesses that unless he changed his mind, he would ‘experience a very sad accident’. (“Shocking Religious Persecution in Malawi” in Watchtower, 2/1/1968, pp 71-79, available at www.jwfiles.com/wt_control/malawi.htm accessed 8 April 2017.)

Remember my argument—that our problem springs from exploitative paternalism. And as I have already shown, the confusion in our history is such that when pinpointing the fault-maker you often find that even those we think were victims (Chipembere, Chiume, Chirwa, Chisiza, et cetera) had had some part to play in raising this system—exploitative paternalism—in our country.

So what is paternalism?

Well, paternalism is a type of leadership or “a style that combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence” (Ekin K Pellegrini and Terri A Scandura, “Paternalistic Leadership: A Review and Agenda for the Future Research” in Journal of Management, vol 34, no 3, June 2008, Southern Management Association, p 567, citing Farh & Cheng, 2000: 91, available on www.aomlists.aom.org accessed 8 April 2017).

Pellegrini and Scandura say Authoritarianism carries the component of the leader’s behaviours that assert authority and control, whereas benevolence entails an individualised concern for the well-being or welfare of the subordinates. In this way, this definition concurs with that proffered on www.thefreedictionary.com: “a policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.”

My interest is not to argue on different types of paternalism or whether all types display similar characteristics; my concern it to look at the form of paternalism that exploits the relationship between this father-figure and the subordinates and how this ‘father figure’ exercises his power over these subordinates.

The danger with paternalism is that it has within it elements of dictatorship yet you cannot say outright that a country such as Malawi was still a dictatorship after June 14, 1993—the Referendum Day. Put simply, paternalism is difficult to detect because it underlies everything leadership in our context.

More on the birth of Paternalism in Malawi

The Malawi setting in inherently paternalistic in nature right from the village to the upper echelons of power. In the words of one Situsi Nkhoma, “The position of traditional leader is hereditary; his or her authority and dignity are derived from a tradition which demands that every citizen in the area should accord him or her respect. People in that area are required to be obedient and loyal to the chief of that area” (Luckie Kanyamula Sikwese “The Politics of Decentralisation in Malawi: Process, Trends, Status and Challenges” in From Freedom to Empowerment: Ten Years of Democratisation in Malawi, Edited by Bodo Immink, Samson Lembani, Martin Ott and Christian Peters-Berries, Forum for Dialogue and Peace, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Malawi-Germany Programme for Democracy and Decentralisation, 2003, p 144). Perhaps I should add that all this is at a promise or in exchange for something good from that chief.

It was this culture that brought a disagreement between young Independence fighters and elders who could not buy being ruled by someone not resembling a ‘father-figure’. It was this thing that forced the young Independence fighters to invite Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, hoping that he would just play the figure-head and dance to the tune of these mostly young ministers. What the young leaders didn’t realise was the nature of paternalism, for paternalism contains within it an element of loyalty—the subordinates must demonstrate loyalty in exchange for his protection. At the same time, it entails that the relationship should always be viewed in father-child pattern. No wonder Dr Banda used to call his ministers ‘my boys’.

When Muluzi came to power, he repeated that pattern—his figure had to be everywhere from money to roadside billboards or hoardings. The women had to praise him the same way they were doing with Dr Banda, no change; same pattern. If anyone challenged him, he had to be ridiculed outright, sometimes in public or expelled from the party. This was not dictatorship; this was paternalism. If it were dictatorship then we would as well say the Referendum didn’t change anything. The Referendum removed the dictatorship but paternalism was as intact.

Come Bingu wa Mutharika, it was what it was in the late 1950s. They gave him power and tried to control him; like Banda he refused to give up any because it is the habit of paternalism to be obeyed yet it obeys no one.

Joyce Banda came in. Same pattern. Today we have Peter Mutharika, and the system is very much the same old one—paternalism at best.

Because this figure-head controls the resources, you have to belong to his side to benefit by it, to be protected by his powers. If you belong to the opposition, you pick up crumbs. He is the master holding the key to development. This is our problem, and it’s not new; Independence found it established.

If Chakwera came to power today he would fit in the pattern and continue with it, and our politicians would flock to him for the resources and protection. The reason is simple—despite the change in the number of parties allowed in the country, the system is the same—there is only one all-powerful leader, the same who controls resources and he cannot share them with anyone unless that one submits to him by offering his or her loyalty unconditionally.

It is not the problem of Peter Mutharika, because it is not the person at the top who matters, because if it were so, Muluzi and Joyce Banda would have been commanding a large following today. What matters is the one in control of the system. People follow that one. In short, they do not follow the person, they do not love that person; they follow the resources the person controls. As I said earlier on, if people were following people, Joyce Banda and Bakili Muluzi would have been commanding crowds and crowds of followers. Joyce Banda and Bakili Muluzi left the system and so no longer at the helm as far as controlling resources is concerned, and so they no longer matter.

At Independence in 1964 (and even before that), the young leaders—Masauko Chipembere, Kanyama Chiume, Yatuta Chisiza, Orton Chirwa, name them—put paternalism on the throne without realising it. By the time they realised their mistake, it was already too late.

How did the young leaders put paternalism on the throne without their knowledge?

First of all, this is not shifting the blame onto their side; this is history as I know it. I am not saying Dr Banda was right in everything he did. In fact, if people give you a position of trust, you should operate under some obligation to respect them for trusting you. Dr Banda did not do this; he ended up chasing these young leaders, forcing them into exile and destitution yet these men and women had been in the forefront in the fight for Independence even before Dr Banda had ever dreamt of ever being a leader. In addition to this, they were the very people who had invited him back, and even giving him the Presidency of MCP when he was released from Gweru Prison. Surely, they deserved something better, and he should have exercised some restraint as a human being.

Instruments of Paternalism

(1)          Songs/ Praise

One of the most important instruments for fortifying paternalism is music. When these women sing today, there is nothing new in it; that is the way to demonstrate their loyalty to their figure-head. He does not force them to, but they know if they don’t do that they won’t share in the spoils or the resources he controls. So, they dance—young and old, they dance. There is nothing new in what they do, and you can’t stop them; the figure-head won’t buy it.

If today, Reverend Chakwera, coming straight from a Christian conference requires that he should be welcomed with pomp and fanfare, there is nothing wrong he is doing; he is exercising paternalism, practising what he will do once in power. That should tell you even if we change leadership today, it will merely be change of the driver at the helm of the system, not the system itself. And this is where Chakwera has missed it, or rather, has betrayed most of us who believed that his coming was to change the system from paternalism. He is repeating the same thing, being praised, banishing those who oppose this system of paternalism, betraying even men like Gustav Kaliwo, Lovemore Munlo, honest men who stood by Kamuzu during Kamuzu’s most difficult and humiliating time—the Mwanza Murder Trial.

I digressed.

On music and praise, let me start by something Steve Chimombo and Moira Chimombo give at p 105 in their work The Culture of Democracy: Language, Literature, the Arts and Politics in Malawi, 1992-94:

“At Chileka Airport in the early 1960s, Dorothy Masuka, the Phata Phata queen, used to sing on the back of an open Land Rover:

Iyo! Ngwazi Banda!

Iih! Iyo!

Iyoyi Ngwazi Banda!

It was, of course, a rewording of her own composition, Iyo Phata Phata!. The significance of the performance, however, was that it was the first time in Malawi (Nyasaland) that a political party was to use a popular singer or music group as part of its publicity campaign, during the transition from the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) to the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). (p 105)

So, you can see that this system was there even before we were born. Most African countries practised it and still do today.

In Zaire, the late popular great Franco Luambo Makiadi, sang for Mobutu Seseseko Candidat na Biso Mobutu—our Candidate Mobutu—in 1984. The Zairean Presidential Elections represented those sham elections that were taking place during the one party era. There was only one candidate, Mobutu himself, and the electorates were asked to say either yes or no. And Mobutu got a whopping 99% ‘yes vote’.

According to Musica on www.kenyapage-net, Candidat na Biso Mobutu, 19 minutes long, is one the biggest and longest propaganda songs ever composed. The record was distributed free of charge and carried the most wooing message you can think of. It commanded all men and women to throng the streets and shout out like lightning, announcing the name of their candidate Mobutu. It asked them, each one of them, to be sincere with themselves and accept that if it were not Mobutu, then who else. It praised God for sending Zaireans Mobutu; it warned sorcerers never to play havoc. At one time it asked the voters to check each other, to look each other’s eyes to tell whether there was any traitor. It said all patients in hospitals and even those serving time had to know their candidate was Mobutu. It was not done yet, for it then listed all the big, known companies in Zaire, telling them their candidate was Mobutu. It is pure agitprop.

In Malawi, sometimes musicians compete on who will shower the best of praise. Lucius Banda praised the former ruling United Democratic Front; Joseph Nkasa praised Late Bingu wa Mutharika—the latter day Moses, and even Joyce Banda.

When you talk of praise, Kanyama Chiume was one of the best:

The MCP, by the time Chipembere came out of Kanjedza, was no longer the old Congress brought back to life, which is what Orton (Chirwa) and the Youth Leaguers had created. It had grown up around the message, brilliantly purveyed by the Publicity Secretary, Kanyama Chiume, that Kamuzu was the one and only leader, who destroyed the Federation and set the people free. Kanyama played brilliantly the role of the loyal acolyte to Kamuzu as Saviour of the Nation, and the whole country was singing the many new songs, all composed by Chiume, all focusing on Banda, such as Zonse zimene za Kamuzu Banda (Colonialism to Cabinet Crisis, p 208).

In fact, way before Independence, it is said fellow leaders had on many occasions expressed their dissatisfaction with Kanyama’s overzealousness. At pages 212-13, Andrew Ross, talks of a meeting called by Dunduzu Chisiza, Mikeka Mkandawire and Colin Cameron with Dr Banda in July 1962, requesting Dr Banda to restrain Kanyama who, they said, was commenting on issues outside his portfolio, and was trying hard to put down other members.

In 1973, Aleke Banda (1939-2010) had become perhaps the most popular politician after Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda in the MCP one-party regime. When, in 1973, a Zambian newspaper reported that Aleke was the likely successor to Dr Banda, the MCP ganged up against him, expelling him from the Party, forcing him home. A year later, Aleke was forgiven. To demonstrate his gratitude for this forgiveness, Aleke wrote a letter to Dr Banda. At page 26, James Gibbs in Singing in the Dark Rain: Essays on Censorship (The Barn, Aberhowy, Llangynidr, Powys: Nolisment Publications, 1999) carries part of the letter as it had appeared in Malawi News dated 11 May, 1974. What scares are the words the letter carried:

“Words fail me,” wrote Aleke. “What can I do to prove my honesty and sincerity in my penitence?” asked he. Then he proffered the answer, a long promise-cum-praise of sorts: “I can only pray for God’s help and guidance so that my words and deeds can prove throughout my life my complete loyalty and dedication to and confidence in Your Excellency, the Party and the Government and my unflinching belief in the Four Cornerstones of Unity, Loyalty, Obedience, Discipline upon which the Party and the Government and the Nation are built.”

Aleke ended by quoting Psalms 145, saying it expressed “completely and exactly what (I) feel towards Your Excellency and the Party and the Government.” Gibbs gives the beginning part of the Psalm: “I will extol Thee my God, O King and I will bless Thy name forever and ever.” The final part of the Psalm reads: My Mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord and let all flesh bless His holy name forever and ever.”

All dictators love such lavish praise, and such was the case elsewhere including in Zaire (as I showed), where the television had to show Mobutu’s image floating in clouds to give the impression he was more than human.

Unfortunately for Aleke, despite all the praise he had lavished on Dr Banda in 1974, he was once again arrested in the early 1980s and kept in detention without trial at the notorious Mikuyu Prison in my hometown of Zomba for 12 long years only to be rescued by the change to democracy.

When Muluzi became President, right in the first meeting of Parliament, they sensed that he did not have that much power to command loyalty due him, and so good men, some of them men who had suffered under the one party regime, led in changing the laws to give Muluzi those extra powers. It was not their fault; we had changed from dictatorship to multiparty politics, but we were still subsisting on paternalism as a form of leadership—the figure-head had to have all the powers to command loyalty and control resources, and the same mistake the young leaders made in the early 1960s resurfaced. Did we really change? No. The system was the same—paternalism; all we had done was replacing those running the show.

(2)          Justice system

The history of Malawi is never complete without an analysis of the role Traditional Courts played in the country. Those courts came to form the machinery through which the one party terror was perpetuated. It was in the Traditional Court that the treason trial of Orton Chirwa (1919-1992) together with his wife Vera was conducted. The Traditional Courts were mainly a kangaroo setting where people with no legal knowledge whatsoever were allowed to preside over complex cases, set from the word go to serve and favour every way the power that be. In the setting, those with legal knowledge were only given the role to endorse verdicts passed by politically fired traditional leaders wearing badges of the single party, the Malawi Congress Party.

But history has a bad way of reminding us we must make laws with our eyes set in future. Unfortunately, as far as paternalism matters, those around a figure-head tend to do everything to ensure their grip to power and to avoid formal scrutiny.

Following the 1961 General Election, Dr Banda’s interim administration took office in 1962, and Orton was named Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Justice. This position was more or less ministerial in nature (of course, not truly ministerial). And note this:

In the run-up to the 1964 National Assembly elections, he (Orton) was responsible for promoting the use of traditional courts as an alternative to the existing judiciary, a controversial move in that these courts were subject to significant political influence, and was heavily criticised by the Chief Justice for this and by the Governor, Glyn Jones, for failing to investigate and prosecute hundreds of cases of politically motivated intimidation, in the form of assaults, murders, arson and crop destruction, as well as cases of intimidation against Jehovah’s Witnesses (“Orton Chirwa” prg 2, p 5, available on http://worldlibrary.org. accessed 6 April 2017).

On the same subject (Chirwa and the Traditional Courts), John Ndembwike in Life in Tanzania Today and since the Sixties, (Dar es Salaam: Continental Press, 2010, p 138) makes this observation: “As Justice Minister and Attorney General, he sent to Parliament a Bill establishing Traditional Courts in Malawi, where the accused were not entitled to defence lawyers.”

Felix Mnthali, a poet and novelist and former lecturer in the Department of English, Chancellor College, Zomba, arrested in 1976 on the very morning his promotion to professorship was to be announced, describes the Traditional Courts as a setting where “the verdict was a foregone conclusion” (Yoranivyoto, p 12). And on the birth of the Traditional Courts, he says:

The learned barrister (referring to Orton Chirwa) who founded them (God rest his soul and grant him peace) would never have dreamt of giving them the powers which they enjoy in our present dispensation. But then the barrister and some of our gifted thinkers now in detention, in exile and in the hereafter also founded ‘the mighty Malawi Congress Party’ when the ‘Hero’ was still in prison (Yoranivyoto, p 12).

In 1967 the President himself, Dr Banda, expressed strong reservations with the principle presumption of criminal law—innocent until proven guilty by a competent tribunal or court. He also openly detested the insistence for corroborative evidence and the need for intention in murder cases.

In 1969, the year the Traditional Courts were formally established as a separate (second) route of the Malawi court system, Aleke Banda observed in Parliament that courts in Malawi were toeing too much the practice line of Britain. He said that since we were now on the other side of Independence, we (Malawi) needed to depart from all that.

On this issue, Martin Chanock observes: “Taking part in the debate, other Members of Parliament objected to the English tradition of paying for the defence of the very same person who committed the offence, the presence of lawyers, and the constraints of the British rules of evidence” (“Neo-Traditionalism and the Customary Law in Malawi” by Martin Chanock, a presentation at annual meeting of the African Studies Association in Boston, November, 1976). In essence they were all demanding for a harsher way of administering justice and an abridged version of arriving at verdicts.

Another form of legislation that has been instrumental in nurturing paternalism has been the Prevention Detention Act, first promulgated by the apartheid South Africa in 1959 but so soon, in 1961, copied and made use of by the very African independence pace-setter, Ghana. Incredibly, in Ghana, the first victim of the Act was Timothy Adamafio, the very figure who had introduced its Bill in Parliament (Ndembwike 2010, p 138). Ndembwike says the same fate followed Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who, as Vice President and Minister of Home Affairs had introduced a similar Bill in Kenya. Odinga was to fall victim to his own trap.

In Tanganyika, Oscar Kambona escaped by a whisker when he fled to London shortly before his arrest which would have occurred under an Act whose Bill he himself had sent to their National Assembly as Minister of Home Affairs (Ndembwike 2010, p 138).

And Malawi which borrowed everything Ghana (from the cockerel, though ours was black theirs red, as a symbol of the one party state, to the Youth League and Banda’s personal ‘army’ the Malawi Young Pioneers) came with one of its own when on July 29, 1964 in a Wednesday Cabinet Meeting Dr Banda made his intention known of re-introducing detention without trial in the absence of a state of emergency. Chipembere wrote about this and the reaction of Colin Cameron, lawyer and Minister of Works, Transport and Communication, the only European in Banda’s first cabinet after Independence:

Dr Banda had had a Preventive Detention Bill in draft for some time, ready to get it passed by the cabinet and subsequently by Parliament at an opportune moment. It was an instrument to enable him to jail without trial any persons he considered dangerous to the security of Malawi . . . When Dr Banda introduced the draft of the Detention Bill, which was no doubt for detaining the now critical and therefore, to him, ‘dangerous’ ministers, Cameron severely criticised it. Dr Banda declared that he was determined to go ahead with it, and that those who did not like it could resign; Cameron, with tears of deep sorrow running down his cheeks, declared that he had spent the last few years fighting this very type of injustice committed by his own British people on the people of Malawi. He could not support it when it was perpetrated on the Malawi people by their own government. He was resigning. With those words he left the cabinet chamber (Chipembere: The Missing Years, p 71 citing “Chipembere Crisis: 1964”, Ufahamu, Vol 2, Part 2, 1970, pp 1-22).

After Cameron, a white man, had refused betrayal, Chipembere and others still remained, only convincing Dr Banda to temporarily suspend the Bill for further scrutiny. It seems that originally this Bill had been prepared with the eye to punish the people who had sided with the colonialists and that they were waiting for Independence to unleash it on them. On this argument, one can be forgiven to say this Bill had initially been encouraged by all the ministers or some of them and it had only become a threat the moment they realised it was being expedited to trap them. In “Chipembere Crisis: 1964”, he observes:

“The people were still bitter about men like Charles Matinga, Manoah Chirwa, Matthews Phiri, Chief Chikowi, Chief Makanjira and several others who were regarded as traitors because they had sided with the colonial rulers during the country’s freedom struggle. There had been widespread demands that these people be punished. Those among them who were chiefs had been deposed, but it had been difficult to punish those who were businessmen, farmers, etc. Indeed, in private, Dr Banda had always told us that he would detain some of these men after Independence.”

What I don’t understand is why these men should be punished for not supporting the MCP. This was paternalism at its best, kind of ‘those who are not for us are against us’. If they had opposed it right in private, arguing we do not have to jump on someone’s neck simply because he opposes us, I bet the ‘rebel’ ministers would have had the moral courage to stop it when Banda was reintroducing it. But as it was, how could they oppose a thing they had been party to all along?

Kanyama Chiume in his autobiography says none of them had knowledge the Bill had been in preparation for the past four or five months, but when I put facts together, I find this difficult to swallow.

You would think it was going to spare those who made use of it following the Cabinet Crisis. Forget it. First to fall was Gomile Kuntumanji then Aleke Banda, but the biggest fall came in the names of Albert Muwalo Nqumayo and Focus Gwede. According to James Gibbs, Felix Mnthali was arrested and detained (in 1976) as a result of “the machinations of Albert Muwalo Nqumayo (Minister of State), Focus Gwede (Head of Special Branch) and Alex Kalindawalo (Registrar of Chancellor College), ambitious tribalists with deep-seated resentments towards those from the north of Malawi” (Singing in the Dark Rain: Essays on Censorship in Malawi, p 44).

The other funny area of law paternalism often use is the law of defamation. In Malawi, journalism is at stake because politicians often seek refuge under the shelter of law of defamation. A territory where law of defamation is given a longer sting, journalism suffers, because reporters are always haunted by some terrible experience of their colleagues and therefore choose to operate from the right side.

(3)          Youth Brigades/ Women Brigades

The Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP) was created in 1963 by Prime Minister Hastings Banda as an armed wing of the Malawi Congress Party, taking after similar armed wings from Ghana and Israel. The 1966 Constitution of the Republic of Malawi made the MYP part of the security forces.

Apart from the MYP, the MCP also had youth brigades; we used to call them Chiswe, termite, for the bright colours of their shirts and sometimes berets. If you follow current affairs, the MCP Youth Leaguers are still there, very much alive. I had believed that with time and lessons, they would be a somewhat reformed group, but you just have to read their exploits whenever a disagreement occurs in the MCP.

Every party that comes into power anywhere in Africa does have theirs. In Ghana, the new government, the New Patriotic Party, has just unleashed their own version of these boys and girls; they call themselves the Delta Force. There they are seizing government property and beating up public officials. According to the BBC (see “Ghana court escapees ‘hand themselves in’” on www.bbc.com accessed 7 April 2017), just a few days ago in Kumasi, they stormed a court, literally breaking court cells to free their fellow members accused of causing trouble at a meeting of the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council. I strongly feel this 50-strong gang could never do this without the backing or support or protection of someone in the upper echelons of power. Africa everywhere is in trouble, and all these are manifestations of entrenched paternalism.

The former ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) have theirs, the Young Democrats. When the UDF was in power, they wielded such power, you literally had to bow down to every demand they made. The current ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP, have theirs, Young Cadets. You would think they are always uneducated; some of them are very, very educated, but they still play that role—young-cadetting.

All these are manifestations of paternalism, exploitative paternalism.

(4)          Censorship and animosity towards dissenting views

According to James Gibbs in Singing in the Dark Rain, p 41, the Censorship and Control of Entertainment Bill was presented to Parliament in March 1968 by Minister of Transport and Communication, John Msonthi, a man he says was later killed under suspicious circumstances. Interestingly, John Msonthi had been among the members who had resigned in solidarity with the ‘rebel ministers’ in 1964 though he soon rescinded his decision and returned to Banda’s side.

According to Gibbs, Mr Msonthi claimed that the Bill would meet “the need for us to be able to control public entertainment and publications according to our own Malawi standards in the interests of morality, decency and public order.” Three days later, it was a law.

Nowhere in Malawi did the people suffer more on censorship than at Chirunga Campus, Chancellor College of the University of Malawi. One event that happened at this place in 1977 is covered in James Gibbs’ Singing in the Dark Rain: Essays on Censorship in Malawi. Gibbs tells a tale of one white lecturer in the English Department, Robin Graham who decided to break the rule, determined to live by its consequences.

Gibbs says Graham who he describes as ‘likeable, energetic and creative’ had edited and distributed a literary publication without having the whole of it submitted to the Censorship Board for approval. The ‘crime’ Graham committed in this publication was the reference he had made to a ‘rebel’ poet-playwright, David Rubadiri. Rubadiri, a fine poet and a man of conscience, had represented Malawi at the United Nations in New York at Independence. When Kamuzu Banda fell out with his ministers during the Cabinet Crisis, Rubadiri, who disagreed with Kamuzu’s stance, resigned and lived his life as an exile. For this, he was labelled a rebel and thus criminal to mention his name.

Gibbs says Graham started distributing and selling the journal at the beginning of May 1977, and on 6th May, Chairman of the Censorship Board spoke to Graham, asking whether he was aware he had made reference to rebels in his journal. Gibbs says Graham said he was. On the 7th when the whole Chairman of the University of Malawi Council, John Tembo, came for the issue and asked Graham, Graham said he had done so from a literary point of view rather than political. According to Gibbs, Graham said openly before the Chairman he had intended to challenge that culture and refused to apologise. Gibbs says soon after the meeting, “Graham was handed a two-line letter terminating his contract with the University. He was told his travel warrants would be ready on Monday (9th May)” for him to leave the country. He left but after he had demonstrated courageously against what Gibbs says Graham termed ‘the dictatorship of taste by the Censorship Board’.

It is interesting to note that in Malawi, the tendency to abhor dissent had been very much present even before the Cabinet Crisis. Some of the victims of the Cabinet Crisis had been at the centre of the very machinery that looked at dissent as a thing to be dealt with.

Among the people I respect for their principles and intelligence are Dunduzu Kaluli Chisiza and Masauko Chipembere. However, even Chipembere was never spared of the vice that views opposition as an evil. As far back as 1960, Chipembere had advocated for a strong single party state and viewed anything that seemed to stand in the way of independence inimically. In 1960, he condemned the Catholic Church for supporting Chester Katsonga’s Christian Democratic Party. On this, Colin Baker observes:

It was in being opposed to this nascent one party philosophy that the Christian Democratic Party fell foul of Chipembere in 1960. In condemning the new, Catholic-backed, party, he saw the church (Catholic Church) as imperialistic. He focused his attacks on Archbishop (Most Rt Rev Dr JB) Theunnisen, ‘this foreigner’, and asked: ‘Has he ever been a black man and felt what it means to be non-white in Africa?’ This new form of imperialism was bad enough without it being led by a white person, and it had to be defeated (Chipembere: The Missing Years by Colin Baker, 2008, p 355).

And the Archbishop’s response to these attacks stands like a prophecy of some curse upon this land, for he said:

If the peaceful appearance of a new democratic party based on natural human rights and Christian principles has enraged so much the Malawi Congress Party, it can but be because human rights and Christian principles, justice and charity, are most inconvenient to them. Through this furious, unjust, and very low attack, the Malawi Congress Party has finally shown its true colours (Chakanza, Joseph C “The Pro-Democracy Movement in Malawi: The Catholic Church’s Contribution”, Church, Law and Political Transition in Malawi: 1992-94, p 62 citing “Malawi shows true stripe”, The Nyasaland Times, 28 October, 1960).

The words of the Archbishop stands true today more than ever before; today those in power never suffer to see a fellow party getting more organised or opposing them. In our modern democracy, dissent has to be responded to with machetes. Even within parties, one has to agree with everything the leader says. If you express yourself through word or any harmless action you are bypassed or even booted from the share of the spoils of the party.

Note that this stance by Chipembere was backed by the whole MCP machinery, and Aleke Banda, then editor of Malawi News, had dedicated the whole issue, an eleven-page scathing attack, to the person of Archbishop Theunnisen, former Archbishop of Blantyre, and the Catholic Church as a whole.

Paternalism has come a long way and to defeat it we need to get ourselves sober, come together, make sacrifices through talking to put in place integrity systems that will bring about democracy as it should be.

(5)               Secret Service/ Network of informers

Jack Mapanje is one of the few poet greats our land or our University has produced. On Friday September 25, 1987 in the Zomba Gymkhana Club bar, a “man wearing a dark blue blazer and formidable boots” (see Mapanje’s And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night, p 6) came where Jack Mapanje and Late Anthony Nazombe were taking their lunch. He asked who between them was Jack Mapanje, Dr Jack Mapanje. When Mapanje said he was, the man told him there was a gentleman in the golfers’ bar next door who wanted to see him. The gentleman was a police commissioner and had come to effect a ‘verbal warrant of arrest’ as sent by the Inspector General of Police at the time, Mr Elliot Mbedza. Mr Mbedza himself had been sent by the Life President, Dr Banda. So, not even Mbedza himself nor his fellow senior cops from Nsanje to Chitipa knew why they were arresting Mapanje. Mapanje was sent to the notorious Mikuyu Prison where they were to waste 3 years 7 months 16 days and more than 12 hours of his most productive days.

Two explanations are given as possible reasons for his arrest. The first hinges on Mapanje’s growing popularity at the time in a setting where all the honour and loyalty had to go to one person only in the name of Dr Hasting Kamuzu Banda, the Life President of Malawi. On this, Michael A Hiltzik (1988) in “A Poet for Life Against a President-for-Life” dated December 11, 1988, quotes Leroy Vail, an African historian who once taught Mapanje at the University of Malawi, who says: “In a place where intellectuals are docile and say nothing, he made the mistake of gaining an international reputation.” (available at www.articles.latimes.com accessed 10 April 2017)

Mapanje seems to endorse this when he says, “. . . because I was too successful. Too prominent . . . to stop career in mid-track.” (“MLA: Behind Bars, then out in the Cold” available at www.timeshighereducation.com accessed 11 April, 2017) This version sounds plausible when one considers the reservations by one member of the reconstructed Censorship Board, Late Enock Timpunza-Mvula, that some of the verse in Mapanje’s Of Chameleons and Gods ‘poked at wounds that were still raw in Malawi history’.

It should also be pointed out that Mapanje has also been quoted elsewhere as suggesting that Dr Banda might have reverse-engineered his (Mapanje’s) enigma machine of metaphors and arrived at his secret code of criticism in those heavily encrypted works of poetry (see Michael A Hiltzik, 1988 cited above) or might have suspected he had had some contact with some ‘rebels’ in some of the conferences he attended as an academician. Coming from a terrain that subsisted on oral culture and now living in a setting where those who should have led in true reconciliation shun the subject lest it should poke at wounds that are still raw in Malawi history, the truth will probably never be known.

Perhaps it should also be pointed out that Mapanje has other conspiracy theories for the arrest, for example, that he had refused to have one of his works published by Dzuka Publishing Company, a facility of Dr Banda himself.

Still on the subject of the feared secret service then, many accounts demonstrate you had to fear even the walls; walls had ears then.

Late George Ndomondo, a former guerrilla leader in the Chipembere camp and later a dedicated servant of the Lord as Priest, wrote about the depth of infiltration under which the people lived in that troubling chapter of our history:

In 1972, the Principal, Rev. Kauta Msiska, advised students who were found wearing Kamuzu badges while preaching the Word of God to stop doing so. Quickly the Nkhoma Theological students (where Ndomondo was a student at the time after his release from detention) reported the matter to the Malawi Congress Party leaders and thereafter the matter reached the President, Kamuzu Banda. Suddenly Malawi Congress Party officials came to the College and shouted and threatened the entire College. Here a second period of detention seemed imminent. The Principal, Rev. Kauta Msiska, was told immediately to stop being a church minister until further notice. This was a directive from the President. It was awful to see him sent off to Rumphi (a Northern Region district; Nkhoma is in the Centre) (The Life of George Ndomondo: Shepherd Boy, Clerk, Politician, Guerrilla General, Detainee, Priest by George Ndomondo and Colin Baker, Malawi Association for Christian Support, 2008, p 48).

(6)          Use of Government entities/ State machinery to intimidate dissent

In Malawi, there is this funny way of responding to dissent where a public agency is suddenly sent to deal with a grouping or person who portrays a view that shows government in bad light. Such an agency comes using the law, and we are entreated to be a law-abiding people, so no one speaks when such an agency finds fault with that grouping or person.

It is common, for example, to find the whole ‘independent’ Anti-Corruption Bureau coming upon someone only a few days after he has criticised the government. Even where people know this is a reaction to something, often truth, the entity or person said, everyone keeps quiet.

On Friday January 13, 2017, the country’s tax body—Malawi Revenue Authority—sealed the offices of the country’s oldest media house—Times Group—over taxes. There the Authority seized property including vehicles to force Times Group to pay what they owed the Authority. This invasion happened within the period newspapers under this brand were publishing articles ‘exposing’ a seemingly dubious deal in maize purchase from Zambia by the state grain agency going by the acronym ADMARC. It was mind-blowing why the Authority could not descend on the house over taxes all along and had to wait till now. No wonder their Editor-in-Chief, George Kasakula went to town, claiming they were “being punished for publishing the truth about the maize scam and they will continue publishing and broadcasting the truth” (see “Malawi Revenue Authority seals oldest media house, Times Group over taxes” dated January 14, 2017 available at www.china.org.cn accessed 12 April, 2017).

Following the seal of the offices, Times Group television wing relayed feed from the BBC and did not run any programme of their own, while its radio played music all through. This became an issue with the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority who came guns blazing, blaming the Group of the schedule change without an advance formal communication to them (the Regulatory Authority) (see “MACRA joins the clampdown of the Times: ‘Not about tax but political gagging’, Malawi News Group claim” by Thom Chiumia available at www.nyasatimes.com accessed 12 April 2017).

Many read the whole thing to mean government was doing all it could to stifle the Group, which is owned by the family of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the late revered figure in the opposition Malawi Congress Party, a party now giving the ruling party a run for its money.

Recently, on March 30, 2017, the same Revenue Authority invaded the offices of a research group—Institute of Public Opinion and Research in Zomba—where it confiscated documents, saying the group was not remitting tax returns to the Authority. This happened after the group had just released an opinion which showed the incumbent losing popularity, something he had not taken kindly, for he had told his supporters never to buy that opinion, saying the survey was compiled from opinion of flies (and not humans). (See “MRA invades Boniface Dulani’s Office” by Mphatso Katona, dated March 31, 2017, available at www.times.mw accessed 12 April 2017).

Well, everybody knows this is politics, and these people are fighting over who should control the resources. They cannot accept anything that will remind them of a life in the wilderness. They will react. It is not that they do not know it; they do, but you don’t have to remind them of this. In all this, I never lose faith with Malawi; I always believe that we can make our politics better and lead Africa in all things good governance and tolerance.

(7)          Ruthlessness/ Torture

If you take time to look at the manner of death administered to each precious life we allege to have fallen at the hands of state death machinery, you will read out in each one of them an element of inflict-the-worst-punishment-so-others-don’t-dare sort of. This is aimed to instill fear so we all should think twice.

On May 18, 1983, during the one party regime, Mr Aaron Gadama, Mr Dick Matenje, Mr Twaibu Sangala and Mr David Chiwanga were alleged to have been brutally murdered before their vehicle (a blue Peugeot saloon, registration number BF 5343) was pushed down a ravine in Mwanza to simulate a road accident reflective of the death of Archbishop Janan Luwum (of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire) at the hands of the Ugandan President, Idi Amin, in mid-February, 1977. The Mwanza Murder Report, a document in the public domain, has the following extract, giving, in graphic detail, the ‘testimony’ of one Inspector Leonard Winesi Mpagaja, a confessed participant in the killings. Caroline Alexander (see “A Classic Dictator” dated Saturday 7 October 1995 available at www.independent.co.uk accessed 11 April 2017) quotes it verbatim, and I borrow what she had borrowed from the Report:

Question (from the Commission): They came out (of the car) and they were blind-folded. What followed next?

Mpagaja: What followed next was the killing.

Question: Using what?

Answer: They used hammers that are used when erecting tents.

…….

Question: How many people were assigned to one person?

Answer: Each group would pick one and take him aside.

Question: As an example, what did you yourself do to Mr Sangala to make him die?

Answer: My boys took Mr Sangala, blind-folded him and made him sit down. I was the one who had the hammer and I hit him at the back of the head where I knew, according to my police training, he would die immediately.

You would think this never happened, but this is part of our history, and Inspector Leonard Mpagaja just gave a hint of what used to happen at the time. This man was a human being doing all this on a fellow human being, both Malawians. Only for expressing themselves, not through war, but words, these people were disposed of in such a ruthless fashion. Yet no one, not even the Church, sees sense in us coming together and heal ourselves, to rid ourselves of this demon.

On November 27, 2001, during the reign of the United Democratic Front, a popular reggae musician critical of bad governance, Evison Matafale, died in police custody. Although he was already in poor health by the time he was being arrested, many question the justification for transporting a person in such a state to Lilongwe (from Blantyre) a distance of over 200 kilometres (and this, even after his mother had expressed dissatisfaction with the idea to take him to Lilongwe). For some, Matafale’s death resembles that of Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid fighter, who had suffered brain injury during interrogation and while in that state (injured and untreated) was transported naked in the floor of a police van to a destination 750 kilometres away.

In 2011 (24 September to be specific) and this was during the reign of the first Democratic Progressive Party, Robert Chasowa, a student at the Polytechnic of the University of Malawi, was found dead, allegedly having committed suicide by jumping from a roof. However, many allege that the young man was clobbered to death and a scene staged to give the impression the Bachelor of Engineering student with the whole life before him had prepared for suicide before jumping to his death. Investigations on the issue are ongoing. In a land where people refuse to trigger a genuine all-reaching machinery of reconciliation, investigations are always ongoing, waiting for an opportunity when they can be discarded off through some funny explanation.

And recently, on 4 July 2015, the body of Issa Njauju, a Corporate Affairs Manager for the country’s corruption fighting body—Anti-Corruption Bureau—was found dumped behind Presidential Villas in the capital Lilongwe. He had been missing since July 2. His body had two bullet wounds—one on the neck and the other on the stomach. The vehicle he was using had been found in a different location, burnt to a state of unrecognition. Many believe he lost his life for doing his job in tracking those with a paternalistic agenda of sorts. This is 2017; investigations on the issue are ongoing.

If I would go back a bit, the following extract from AI Index: AFR 36/31/93 by Amnesty International in September 1993 reveals part of the terror:

Torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners was also routine up to late 1992. During their imprisonment both Vera and Orton Chirwa were periodically kept in leg-irons. Neither of them received adequate medical attention and both at times suffered from malnutrition. There can be no doubt that harsh prison conditions contributed to Orton Chirwa’s death. In the past, opposition activists have also been under threat of violence including extrajudicial execution from state and paramilitary forces. There are currently (this was 1993) over 100 people on death row in Malawi after unfair trials by the ‘traditional courts’.

Late Ndomondo also describes the pride Dr Banda had in people who demonstrated the highest form of ruthlessness when he writes: “We had a man like Goliath in the camp. His name was Mchiteni. He was an MYP Sergeant, and extremely unkind. His command was to be followed. Kamuzu used to say, ‘I have my boy Mchiteni at Dzaleka (Detention Camp) and he is doing everything possible to deal with the rebels.’” (The Life of George Ndomondo: Shepherd Boy, Clerk, Politician, Guerrilla General, Detainee, Priest, p 45).

Still on ruthless and torture, Hartone Lawrence Phiri (2011: 40) cites Harvey Sindima (2002) on a shocking event that happened in 1973 (though Henry Pota, a villager speaks of November 1971, in what he terms ‘Operation Tiliya’) in the southern lake-shore district of Mangochi:

At 4 o’clock in the morning, one day in September in 1973, the security forces raided Moto village in Mangochi District. They captured 567 people of all age groups, on ten trucks for detention in Dzaleka Prison Camp. Their homes were completely damaged, their property (cattle, goats, sheep, boats, sewing machines, beds, etc.) forfeited. Out of the 567 only 371 returned after ten months of imprisonment and detention. The rest had died due to torture, poor diet and eating schedules, living in overcrowded cells, and lack of medical attention and overworking.

When people want to protect their interest through their figure-head, they cease to operate with those faculties that make humans emotional beings. A feeling for others disappears. The following story says something about a regime that would incarcerate a man already fighting a mental breakdown:

After the arrest of Jack Mapanje (25 September, 1987), one of his colleagues in the English Department, Blaise Machila, suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital (Zomba Mental Hospital). There he was interrogated by Special Branch police officers. Machila denounced John Tembo, uncle of the President’s Official Hostess, and her brother Dr Zimani Kadzamira, Principal of Chancellor College in the University, as responsible for Jack Mapanje’s imprisonment. He was promptly discharged from hospital, arrested and detained in Mikuyu Prison himself. He remains there (this was 1991), reportedly in solitary confinement and in great mental distress. (“Malawi” Information Freedom and Censorship World Report 1991, Article 19, International Centre on Censorship, London: Library Association Publishing Ltd, 1991)

And Late Matchipisa Munthali (Malawi’s Mandela) who spent 27 years in prison had this to say about torture in the one party system:

I was beaten up very badly, particularly by a white man (John Savage, a Briton) who was the regional head of the Special Branch. The first time I was tortured they used whips; then they cut the inner tube of a car (tyre). There were four of them beating me the whole night through, from 9:30 pm until the morning. . . . my father lived only a short time after my arrest; he died in 1966. . . . I was married but they forced my wife to divorce me. That was typical. My wife is now married to a Local Government Minister (later after his release in 1992, Matchipisi reclaimed her and they remarried). They told me in prison that my wife had divorced me. . . They had put her in prison too. (Human Rights in Malawi: Report of a Joint Delegation of the Scottish Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society of England and Wales and the General Council of the Bar to Malawi, September 17-27, 1992, p 33).

All this, must tell us what people are capable of doing to remain in power, to perpetuate paternalism, exploitative paternalism. The saddest part of this is that the people who are sent to carry out such heinous crimes live the rest of their lives nursing a bruised conscience, a nasty legacy. One wonders whether it is worth it and whether such people don’t require a form of healing to rid themselves of this gnawing devil in them.

(8)          Destabilising other parties

Cases of one party, especially the ruling party destabilising other parties are not uncommon. A citable example is what befell the National Democratic Alliance in 2001/02 in the country.

By March 2001, a new force appeared on the Malawi political scene, the National Democratic Alliance, or NDA, led by former cabinet minister Brown Mpinganjira. By April 12, 2001, this new force was already spent as divisions rapidly started appearing within its ranks. At least three founding members of the NDA, Winston Sakwata, Ken Msonda and George Dilla, decamped from the executive of the party to join the ruling UDF. They accused NDA leader Brown Mpinganjira of not equitably sharing money donated to the organisation by business people (Malawi Review 2017, p 15).

In the case of the NDA, another form of such threat came in a very funny format when a grouping suddenly appeared on the scene, claiming it was the rightful owners of the name National Democratic Alliance and its acronym NDA. The impersonator grouping quickly registered their party National Democratic Alliance on 6th January, 2002, all this before the genuine NDA had registered theirs. The strange grouping comprised Thom Chiumia (President), Chikumbutso Mtumodzi (Secretary General) and Ken Ndanga (Treasurer-General).

The court was to buy none of the impersonator’s tactics. It restrained the three to use the name National Democratic Alliance, but they would have none of that, so they quickly brought in a twisted version of the same name, this time registering their party as New Dawn for Africa (NDA). Comments were rife that the new grouping had been sent by the then ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) since Malawi is never short of political mercenaries. The genuine NDA of Brown Mpinganjira went on to register their party but they showed poorly at the elections, the UDF winning again through a 69-year old economist, Bingu wa Mutharika, President Bakili Muluzi’s handpicked successor.

(9)          Political Speeches and sheer vain pride/ Obsession with power

In Africa, Presidents are gods. They can be educated but once they go in, we lose them to paternalism. And to show us they are on a rung of their own, they speak like gods and assume names that show them gods in human flesh, speaking in plural forms when referring to themselves.

Late Bingu wa Mutharika called himself Chitsulo cha Njanji or the iron from which railway lines are made. By this he was trying to demonstrate no fellow human could beat him. His predecessor Bakili Muluzi used to call himself Kuchitekete or Kuchikwenza—you can’t go there without toiling. Muluzi was telling us there was none who would equal him among those of us born of a woman.

Elsewhere, Idi Amin Dada called himself His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshall Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. (See “Idi Amin” https://en.m.wikipedia.org) All this had to be mentioned before the name ‘Idi Amin’ was said. Africa has seen things I tell you.

In 1972, the Late President Mobutu Seseseko of Zaire now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbengu Wa Za Banga—the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake. Can you believe this?

And not long ago, the Gambia had their man Yahya Jammeh who even professed to cure people of AIDS and infertility. In 2011 he told the BBC, “…If I will have to rule this country for one billion years, I will, if Allah says so.” He lost the December 1, 2016 elections to Adama Barrow, and in January, after his attempts to cling to power had failed, left the country for Equatorial Guinea where he remains in exile.

Jammeh’s full name was His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhadji Dr Yahya Abudul-Aziz Awal Jemus Junkung Jammeh Naasiru Deen Babili Mansa. Babili Mansa here means ‘chief bridge-builder’ or ‘conqueror of rivers’.

This vanity is also pronounced in speeches.

When Nyasaland was fighting for Independence, political speeches formed part of the menu, and demagogues tried to outwit each other on who would praise their leader the most. At one Protectorate-wide speaking tour, at Chief Kuntaja’s, after Dr Banda has spoken, Chipembere then spoke. “He (Chipembere) first called on all Nyasas to drop all loyalties except that to Kamuzu as ‘Leader of the Nation’ and then launched into a very fiery speech” (Colonialism to Cabinet Crisis: A Political History of Malawi, p 156).

Not long ago, a female minister in the current ruling Democratic Progressive Party thought she could serve her party better by proposing life presidency for the incumbent. She should have known better. Of course, she apologised for this slip of mind.

(10)      Relegating popular personalities in the party

Andrew C Ross talks about how Dr Banda had deliberately left Chipembere, Dunduzu Chisiza and Yatuta Chisiza in prison as he was consolidating power out there:

Banda did nothing at all about gaining early release for Chipembere and the two Chisizas. Astonishingly, during these six months as the number of the ‘hard-core’ was diminished by a policy of gradual release, these three key young leaders had to wait for their freedom to the very end” (Colonialism to Cabinet Crisis, p 207).

Of course, when released, they were given important party posts,

positions of authority, but they involved heavy workload which tied the men to the Party Headquarters in Blantyre. Whether this was intentional or not is an interesting question, what is important is that the workload of these offices got in the way of their rebuilding the grass-roots political fiefdoms which had enjoyed before March 1959 (ibid, p 207).

Often people wonder why sometimes performing young men and women often found themselves removed from the ministries they were performing superbly to some funny ministry dogged by bureaucracy and stagnation; they try to minimise the level of applause lest they should grow a big head.

(11)      Controlling communication outlets

Have you ever asked why all major or leading newspaper outlets in the country are in the hands of people with some connection to someone in power either today or in the past? The Nations Publications was founded by Aleke Banda, a former minister in Dr Banda’s era, at one time Banda’s number 2 man. In the multiparty era, Aleke served as minister in the United Democratic Front government of Bakili Muluzi. The Times Group is owned by Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s family. Former President Muluzi has a media connection under the ‘Joy’ brand.

In Malawi (then Nyasaland), the Press started in 1895 with a newspaper called Central African Times. This newspaper was later, in 1908, to be named Nyasaland Times. Later, it became what we know today as the Daily Times (which is under the Times Group). (See Malawi Second Democratic Elections, p 163.) The Times Group also owns Malawi News, a former propaganda paper for the Malawi Congress Party right from its birth in 1959 or thereabout. It is interesting to note that the first Editor of Malawi News happened to be Late Aleke Banda and his family now owns Nations Publications Limited.

The Malawi Congress Party won the general elections in 1961, and two years later, Nyasaland became a self-governing state in 1963. In 1964 Nyasaland Broadcasting Corporation assumed a new name, Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. There was no Minister of Information for many years and the President was himself the Director General.

So, again, why is it that all major media outlets in the country have a strong political connection? The answer is simple: if you want to build a paternalist system, if you want to elevate some figure at the expense of the other, you must control the people by giving them what will benefit you. Such outlets are also used to defend oneself against accusations because an outsider can never be allowed to use them to criticize you as a figure-head.

According to Kanyama Chiume, when Masauko Chipembere was speaking in Parliament that September 9, 1964 in his defence of the Ministers who had resigned, the loud speakers had been removed outside the Parliament Building in Zomba. This was definitely on instruction from Dr Banda who didn’t want the people to get the truth lest they should give the ‘rebel’ Ministers all the support. Removing the loud speakers helped somehow because it helped filter what the people had to hear and it was packaged in a manner that would fit he who was controlling the media at the time, and it happened to be Dr Banda.

Our politicians learnt this from Ghana, where soon after their independence the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah tried all it could to purchase or shut down newspapers that would feed the population with a different version of stories. They wanted the people to get only what Nkrumah’s government wanted them to. It is said that communication monopoly in Africa was created by the very independence pace-setter, Ghana under Nkrumah.

(12)      Rewarding loyal membership

If you are in business and you want to shoot to the stars, support the power that be. This is not a new kid on the block; it has always been there.

During colonial times civil servants were not supposed to have private income sources. This changed soon after Independence. In the early 1970s, Dr Banda launched a somewhat clandestine ‘development programme’ and encouraged top senior servants to acquire tobacco estates. To this end, the Commercial Bank offered soft loans to civil servants. Through this development scheme Banda integrated the top officials who posed a potential threat to his position in his system of patronage (“Freedom and Insecurity: Civil Servants between Support Networks, the Free Market and Civil Service Reform” by Gerhard Anders, A Democracy of Chameleons: Politics and Culture in the New Malawi edited by Harri Englund, p 45).

(13)      Making Pact with Churches so they should look the other way

Up to now I don’t understand why the Church in Malawi fails to take responsibility and rally the people to a big time of repentance and reconciliation by making public their role in building exploitative paternalism in the country. I know they tend to hide behind the March 1992 Pastoral Letter, but we must remember that before that, the Church had largely looked away, busy evangelising as the MCP was busy shedding blood of innocent people in the country. So many atrocities happened under 'the watchful eye' of the Church in Malawi.

Often the examples of courage we hear before 1992 have to do with individual pastors or bishops who went to some length in demonstrating in some way they were not prepared to toe the MCP line. For example, “In Chikwawa, the burial ceremony of the Government Minister, David Chiwanga who was killed in the Mwanza ‘accident’ was conducted by Bishop Mkhori, the Bishop of Chikwawa despite what the Government Authorities had directed” (Joseph C Chakanza, “The Pro-Democracy Movement in Malawi: The Catholic Church’s Contribution, 1960-1992” In Church, Law and Political Transition in Malawi 1992-94, p 71). That was May 1983. According to Jan Kees Van Donge (1998), Banda had issued an instruction that the caskets carrying the remains of the ministers not be opened for viewing and that burial be conducted at night (“The Rebellion of Enlisted Personnel and Democratisation in Malawi” Hartone Lawrence Phiri, Master Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, 2011, p 28)

According to Schoffelleers as cited by Grenna Kaiya (2013: 48), opposition also came from Peter Kaleso.

Peter Kaleso, a young minister in the Synod of Blantyre, decided that he could not remain silent; after his studies in Scotland from 1979 to 1981 he had returned to Malawi determined that the church should firmly challenge the political oppression and social injustice…was prepared to risk everything in order to address the Word of God prophetically to the social injustices which had become prevalent in Malawi (“The Role of Churches in Human Rights Advocacy: The Case of Malawian members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, their accounts of stories and memories and victims of religious persecution from 1964 to 1994” Master Thesis in Diakonia and Christian Social Practice, Diakonhjemmet University College, Oslo June 2013, p 48.)

Grenna also cites Ross (1996) who also talks about Reverend Jonathan Sangaya who, she says often spoke frankly to the President (Dr Banda) about evils which were prevailing in Malawi, and at some point it is allegedly believed that he confronted the president’s relationship with his companion Miss Kadzamira.

Despite these individual contributions (plus the issues of Reverend Kauta Msiska discussed) and a few others who took the pain without us knowing, the Church had remained relatively distant to the suffering of Malawians especially members of the Jehovah’s Witness at the hands of the MCP.

When Grenna asked one leader of the Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM) why the Church had kept quiet when members of the Jehovah’s Witness were being persecuted, he gave the following funny and flimsy excuse:

Evangelical Association of Malawi was there, but what happened is that EAM was established in 1962 and our main emphasis then was evangelism and prayer. . . When all that was happening, there was very little we could do because that was not our focus. . . we were very narrow minded. But if the same things were to happen now, issues of human rights violations we would definitely speak out, because we know it is our responsibility (p 42).

As for the Nkhoma Synod, it even signed memorandums of understanding with the MCP government promising to help the government. In one letter in 1979, the Nkhoma CCAP said they were pleased and praised God that freedom of worship was maintained and that the President had continued to encourage the people to worship God in the way they believed was right, without any interference. The strangest thing was that the Church was saying all this well aware of persecutions against members of Jehovah’s Witness. The following disturbing event would shock anybody:

Lumbadzi, North of Lilongwe, September 24, 1975:

That night the Malawi Congress Party area chairman and a crowd of Youth Leaguers come and take the Witnesses to the party office at Dowa. Their attackers beat them and then take two Witness men and tie their genitals together so that if one tries to pull away from the beating, he will injure the other. They tie heavy bricks onto the genitals of other Witnesses and make them walk with these. Among those responsible is a man named Chilunje, from Lumbadzi. When these atrocities are reported to the police, they reply: “Even though you may be killed, there is no help for you.” (www.jehovahs-witness.com quoting “A Beastly Record: When will it End?” Watchtower, 12 August, 1975, pp 8-12.)

If these things would happen in a setting where the people claim they knew GOD, then something was truly wrong with the way we understood GOD at the time. And today, the Church expects that those who suffered can just forget all these just like that. Many are now dead, their deaths accelerated by such humiliations and torture. I felt the Church could see sense in asking the people to look back into history and begin a life of penance through a South African kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Such a thing would also help burry the bitter memories of what happened when the Malawi Army disarmed Dr Banda’s personal army where approximately 2000 MYP members were believed to have fled into Mozambique with their firearms, while twenty-five members of the MYP and four regular military soldiers lost their lives. The MYP also suffered 123 casualties.  The rest of the members of the MYP surrendered and were allowed to peacefully integrate with the general population as civilians without discrimination. To effect closure, don’t you think we need such a facility of truth and reconciliation?

Did paternalism die at the 1993 Referendum?

At the June 1993 Referendum, paternalism just hid its face, but it was very much alive. In other words, it appeared as though the waters were still on the surface, and it was all because the people had a bigger common problem. Once that bigger common problem was over, the people recoiled into paternalism again. All of a sudden Chakufwa Chihana who had been hailed as the embodiment of bravery found his place being taken over by paternalism, when the people wanted someone of their own to control the resources. So during campaign for the 1994 General Elections, the people were back on the vehicle of paternalism, making sure someone they could associate with controlled the resources so they would benefit. The language was pretty paternalistic—“It is now our time.”

It was their time to control the resources and reward those loyal to them. The Alliance for Democracy had tried to no avail reminding the people Muluzi had once been convicted for stealing £6 in 1968 (when he worked as a court clerk in Lilongwe) and therefore not good for the leadership role in a nation that was just coming to its feet again.

In Malawi is it said that “if the General Elections were held immediately after the Referendum or if Dr Banda had called for General Elections without going for the Referendum, Chakufwa Chihana would probably have won and made it to (State House) Sanjika” (Reuben Makayiko Chirambo, “Politics in the Cartoon in Malawi: The Democrat Cartoon” Democratisation in Malawi: A Stocktaking, edited by Kings M Phiri and Kenneth Ross, Zomba: Kachere Series, p 206. I think the explanation is simple: the people would have been going to vote without their conscience aroused on traits of paternalism. It is the same thing that happened when we were going to Independence in the early 1960s. Although paternalism was rife, the people temporarily forgot it in pursuance of a higher good, but once that was attained, in fact only three weeks or so after attaining Independence, it all became evident we had not been sailing in the same boat. And thus came the Cabinet Crisis, not to launch it (paternalism), but to entrench that which had been launched.

Today there are people who insist that democracy was brought here by Chakufwa Chihana; you have to understand their attempt to build a figure-head—that’s part of paternalism. As far as I am concerned, democracy in Malawi was brought by those great men and women who stood up at the thick of things to oppose dictatorship and had paid dearly for it—Attati Mpakati, Mkwapatira Mhango, et cetera. Chihana came after the Pastoral Letter (read to over 1000 congregations countrywide) when the world was already beating the MCP for reacting violently against the truth. After his release in 1977 following his detention without trial in 1971 (for 7 years), Chihana was largely speaking from outside. How then could Chihana be said to be the pace-setter of democracy in Malawi? How about people like Jack Mapanje, Felix Mnthali, those intellectuals who went out and raised the dead conscience of the world of the atrocities taking place in Malawi? How about Machipisa Munthali (former Chair of Elections Commission and a grain marketing board, arrested following the 1964 Cabinet Crisis on treason charges, later changed to carrying a weapon without licence, sentenced to 5 years and changed to 11 upon government appeal; sentence ended in 1973, and yet from then he was just kept in detention until June 12, 1992, died December 15, 2014). Chihana played his role, yes, but he is not what the people make him appear in our history. I read history; I don’t just go by what other say; I add facts and arrive at some sensible answer.

I always say all these battles about trying to make someone look the greatest of them all are all attempts to find ourselves in the driving seat in a system entrenched in paternalism; they have nothing whatsoever to do with public interest.

So one can see that the coming in of multiparty did not remove paternalism; temporarily it had just given us a feeling that once we removed the one party regime, we would all control the resources together. But it is the nature of paternalism to create one figure-head, one to control the resources and reward loyalists, so soon we began to realign ourselves along that line. So we forgot Chihana, we couldn’t accept that our leader had any blemish, we couldn’t take that; we wanted to control the resources and it didn’t matter the antecedent of the one we wanted.

The same thing happened in the early 1960s. No one tolerated anything standing in the way of the mighty MCP. It’s funny that only in 1960, four years before the Cabinet Crisis, John Chester Katsonga, founder of Christian Democratic Party had “predicted that if the Malawi Congress Party came to power and formed a government, the people would have just moved from one form of oppression by the white man to another by Dr Banda” (Chakanza in Church, Law and Political Transition in Malawi 1992-94, Matembo S Nzunda ad Kenneth Ross, p 63, citing “Christian Democratic Party: Nkhani za padera”, Memo, October, 1960.)

One could thus see that when fighting for Independence, paternalism was disguised because there was one general goal, to attain self-rule. This was the case not only here in Malawi (Nyasaland). Other lands, Kenya for example,

While the initiative was taken by the Kikuyu, the most politically advanced tribe in Kenya, the Kenya African Union set out to establish a united front nationalist organisation for all Africans, regardless of tribal affiliations, religion or caste. At the first Congress of the Kenya African Union held in Nairobi on June 1, 1947, delegates representing all the main tribes—Kikuyu, Luo, Masai, Kavirondo, Kamba, et cetera, adopted a constitution and programme of economic, political and social reforms which was submitted to the Kenya Government (George Padmore, Pan-African or Communism, New York: Double Day and Company, 1971, p 222).

Years later, in 2008, events on the ground in Kenya were to put a lie to all this, for in Kenya, following disputed elections won by Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity and rejected by Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement, more than 1,000 people were to be killed and over 500,000 displaced. (see “The Crisis of Kenya” available at www.reponsibilitytoprotect.org accessed 10 April 2017)

Paternalism and Tribalism

The scandal of Malawi’s politics has always been that we give too much power to our leaders. This has nothing to do with tribalism; it is to do with what benefit the people will get once they put the figure of their choice in power. To ensure we shall harvest as much as possible we give him all the powers so we should equally benefit through the bumper yield of favours.

In 1958 when Dr Banda arrived back in Nyasaland from his long stay away, the people—Southerners, Northerner and ‘Centralers’—all, together, gave him the intoxicating powers he was to use to cause terror on the face of Malawi. Of course, the young leaders were of the hope that they would occupy important top positions while Dr Banda would only occupy a ceremonial Presidential position. As far as I am concerned only one minister had the sense to check this right in infancy, unfortunately, he was never supported, and in September 1962, he died in a ‘road accident’. This man, Dunduzu Chisiza, had argued:

“To keep social conformity at its minimum, political leaders must refrain from playing the double role of political as well as social leaders. Social leadership should be responsibility of different people who should be given due recognition and encouragement by the political leaders. But the base of social leadership should be so broadened as to accommodate a variety of tastes and ideas thereby preventing popularization of a few pet ideas originated by a handful of people. Lastly, it should be made clear to social leaders that their job is not to overboard everything African nor merely to process foreign ways but to uphold African ways of life where necessary, to adopt foreign ways where possible and to strike practical compromises where need be (John Lwanda in Politics, Culture and Medicine in Malawi, Zomba: Kachere Series, 2005, p 93 citing Chisiza, 1961).

Dunduzu Chisiza did not want the creation of a figure-head, but one voice against many, it didn’t succeed. Of course, we know that towards Independence he had expressed sentiments to form his own political party but had waited to avoid giving the white man an excuse to refuse granting us Independence. He feared that the white man would say, “Your house is divided and how can we give you the honour to rule yourself?”

Tribalism on its own is harmless; it becomes an instrument when politicians use it to inflame a feeling of control.

Paternalism in Modern Malawi

When Dr Lazarus Chakwera made a decision to join politics, I felt the nation had lost something. This I felt because I know Chakwera to be a great man who should have played the middleman or conciliator in MCP rebuilding. By rebuilding I am not talking about making MCP strong in the Centre as it is always strong there, but I mean making MCP a national party, the party it was in the early 60s. After he had joined in, many thought the type of Tembo-Chakuamba jostle for power would be over, that he would persuade the people in the Central Region to allow it to go so that they would have it back whole. This should have meant destroying paternalism, that feeling that it should always be us or our family or our tribe ruling, in control. His language began to show a man who had come to bring the MCP back to the Centre, all the mind on power—he too was caught in the spirit of exploitative paternalism. Internal wrangles began, language of rebels and disloyal members, the old language of the Cabinet Crisis began to appear once more in the MCP. Those of us who had hoped to see a man opening the MCP with an agenda to replace paternalism with an integrity system felt betrayed, and found in the DPP a better devil we knew. And today when the DPP confidently say they will be in again come 2019, I do not get surprised. With no viable alternative anywhere near what else can they say?

I have heard many argue there is no way the DPP can win again. They will again and punish us another five long years believe you me. But they will win because there is no one powerful enough to give them a good run for their money. The strategy of the DPP is go for the soft part of the MCP belly and harvest votes in the remote parts. With MBC very much on their side, this is a job all but done.

I am not saying the MCP cannot win; they can if they make that supreme sacrifice, letting the party go truly national, conducting a truly open convention. Just imagine the MCP had a President from the South and a Vice from the North and all the people in the Centre are persuaded to vote for the same, would the MCP not win with the majority? But I know they cannot do this, and this is why I had wanted Chakwera outside to play the conciliator because his voice would persuade many in the Centre to allow the MCP to truly go national. But the MCP I know would rather wait a million years if going in power means opening it as a truly national party.

Another way the MCP can win is by giving the President to a Southerner and the Vice to a person from the Centre. But I know they would have none of this.

In 2009, the MCP tried roping in Bakili Muluzi or rather Muluzi roped himself in, and things didn’t work; it happened to be the year the DPP won by the most comfortable vote ever. The reason was simple, people from the South, the East especially had rejected the arrangement. In the Eastern Region where I am from, there was a phrase the people exchanged just prior to those elections: “Pa Ndata ndipafupi,” meaning Ndata Farm (Bingu’s home) is closer to us, and so we better vote for Bingu. As far as I am concerned, Bingu’s strong vote in 2009 wasn’t necessarily the result of his good policies, for city dwellers, yes, but for the villagers, it was a rejection of John Tembo and the MCP. Put simply, if the MCP is to win the 2019 elections, they have to put in place a mechanism that will be accepted nation-wide, a system that will replace paternalism with a heavily guarded integrity system. Otherwise, they should be contented with the number of MPs they will harvest and of course, prepare for more court battles to contend another ‘rigged’ election.

One weakness with the MCP is that they go for DPP’s weaknesses, a very dangerous way of trying to go in. If you studied policy making, you would agree with me that’s the most pathetic way of making it to State House. The MCP, for example, argues that the economy is in bad shape, electricity blackouts have become the norm, et cetera. Well, that is true in 2017, but it does not mean it will be true in 2018 and 2019. In fact, it is better that it is true in 2017 than that it should be in 2018 or 2019. For a policy issue to be implemented it goes through phases. These phases entail time. To fix the electricity problem, you need to identify the way to deal with it (problem definition), bring in solutions and chose the best from those options (formulation) and then find resources to put those options in place (funding for implementation). You can never achieve these in two years; you need at least four years. So what will happen is that come year four of their being in power, power outages will no longer be a problem; come their fourth year in power the economy will chug along, inflation somewhere manageable, so when that happens, which will happen because some of their policies have gone into the implementation phase, what will be your campaign tool? Nothing. Please, change your strategies before it is too late.

When you major on weaknesses and the weaknesses are solved you have nothing to fall back on, and then you begin to play the sniper against personalities rather than issues, or advocating for mass uprising rather than a fight for reforms in the integrity systems.

So, does the MCP stand a chance to win? If they refuse the issues discussed above, then there is the last avenue—hope that the integrity system will be reformed in time to allow for an election not influenced by exploitative paternalism, which of course, is an uphill task though not impossible. I will discuss the integrity system issue in a section on the way forward in dealing with exploitative paternalism.

When Dr Banda was nearing his death, he surrendered the leadership of the MCP to Gwanda Chakuamba, a man from the Southern Region. This was kind of breaking with tradition because MCP is considered a party of the Central Region. There is a funny explanation that Dr Banda did this because he had felt betrayed by those around him, for they had led him to a loss at the 1994 polls. According to Adamson Muula and Emmie Chanika, “after Banda had lost the (1994) presidential elections, he later realised that there had been some advice from the British government about how he ought to have handled the Referendum and the elections. The British government was of the opinion that Banda would have won the elections had he gone straight to the Presidential and Parliamentary elections instead of calling for a Referendum first” (Malawi’s Lost Decade: 1994-2004, p 24). For them, it was because Dr Banda had lost confidence in John Tembo that he chose Chakuamba as President of the Party.

I find this explanation at best misleading. My understanding is that Kamuzu knew it was now time to open the MCP for all the people. Unfortunately, after his death no one suffered seeing it in the hands of a Southerner. For them, it doesn’t matter being in the opposition for ages, so long as the MCP leadership is still in the hands of someone from the Central Region. I think the MCP ought to rethink its position on this.

Why have I discussed the MCP this much? Simple: the MCP should have led the way in shaping the new way of going about politics. What they have done instead is repeating the (same) pattern—fighting for leadership because they want to be at the helm, paternalism at its best. The MCP should have come in with a message to uproot exploitative paternalism for a working integrity system. If you look at the way they conduct their meetings, or react to internal dissent, it is the same old MCP of the 1970s doing it in 2017.

Today (10th April, 2017), The Nation carried an opinion “Brevities on the 50 + 1 and other matters” by Malawi’s greatest historian, DD Phiri. The article ends in this manner: “As for MCP, it should stabilise its internal affairs and try to project a winning image to the general public. Malawi Congress Party President, Lazarus Chakwera, should engage in self-analysis and ask, ‘Why do I have to dismiss so many of my followers?’”

I am not sure what DD Phiri wants to mean by ‘the MCP must stabilise its internal affairs’? I do not think the question is stabilising internal affairs of the party; it is adopting a progressive mind to thwart the spirit of exploitative paternalism—to lead a life simple and humble. This day and age one should not live in a feeling that you matter most, everyone else should bow before you. It should be an era when people can accept dissent as part of the system, to allow that a Northerner can rule as well as a Southerner or a ‘Centraler’. It is a time we should ask ourselves whether some of these biases against others on flimsy excuses still matter.

Why uprooting paternalism should be a matter of urgency

Malawi goes to the polls again in 2019. This is 2017, meaning we are some two years away, but what is happening on the ground is as though 2019 is tomorrow. If the people can be at each other’s throat today two years away, what will it be like in 2018 or 2019 itself?

On Tuesday April 11, 2017, nyasatimes carried a story that pretty scared me. It bore an equally threatening headline for its length: “Mutharika brands Malawi ‘Crocodile of Death’(sic): MCP hits back, says killers of Mkwapatira (Mhango), Attati (Mpakati), Chasowa, Njauju, July 20 are in DPP” (available at www.nyasatimes.com accessed 11 April 2017).

Note that Mkwapatira Mhango an exiled Malawian journalist was killed (in October 1989) in Lusaka, Zambia, in a firebomb. He was killed together with nine other people, including his two wives and five of his children. As for Attati Mpakati (a Yao from Njuli, Chiradzulu), he was killed by a letter bomb in Harare (of course, I know another version that he was shot, but we go by what most literature says). At one time in February 1979, an attempt on his life had been made in Maputo, but he survived though after his hands were blown off. Dr Banda openly acknowledged sending the letter. Following that attempted assassination, Mpakati wrote an open letter to Dr Banda, challenging him he was wasting his time and resources on his life yet it was obvious that even after he would kill him, the people would still oppose him. He was indeed killed on March 24, 1983, and indeed many years later, the people were to openly oppose Dr Banda.

At one time a Malawi Congress Party Administrative Officer, Brian Mungomo, had asked Dr Bakili Muluzi (when he was President) to lead the nation in apologising for the atrocities MCP had committed during the 9 years he (Muluzi) had served the MCP as its Secretary General, a very powerful position during the one party era. Mpakati was killed during that time. “Was MCP free from blame during the nine years he led the MCP as Secretary General?” Mungomo had queried. (See Malawi News Online, Edition No 34, September 19, 1997 available at www.africa.upenn.edu).

Remember I am on a story where the DPP and MCP were throwing mud at each other. The story says on Monday, April 11, President Arthur Peter Mutharika lambasted the opposition Malawi Congress Party, saying they must never ever dream of going into power again. According to Mutharika MCP has a tainted record and so no one can vote for it again. He said it is a party of “crocodiles and deaths” and it must forget of getting into power again. (There is a version of MCP atrocities that says the MCP used to feed humans, alive, to crocodiles its youth wing of the Malawi Young Pioneers kept at some dam in Blantyre. Another version says the MCP used to throw people into the crocodile-infested River Shire as food for crocodiles.)

The MCP, on their part, said their Party is now a reformed one, and instead, it is the ruling Democratic Progressive Party that the people should be wary of. Their spokesperson said, “The people who showed the secret agent where Attati Mpakati lived are in the ruling party (DPP). The people who killed Mkwapatira Mhango in Zambia are in DPP. Who killed Robert Chasowa, Issa Njauju and July 20 senseless killings.”

What did we learn from this exchange?

First, that we are a people refusing tolerance, eager to point fingers. I believe this comes in because we are ashamed of our past and are unwilling to confront it through a sensible healing mechanism. Second, it told me that these people we see have secrets; they know who did what, or who sent who. This is dangerous because unless we learn to expose these things the culture of killing will never go. Those sent to do the deed will know they can do it (again) and no one will ever know it. This is another reason we desperately need to heal.

The other lesson is that it will be naïve of Malawians to believe either of these people—the DPP is working hard to build paternalism around their figure-head Arthur Peter Mutharika, and the MCP are busy building theirs around Reverend Chakwera. Does this suggest the People’s Party or the United Democratic Front is better then? In fact, for me they are worse—most of the troubles we are facing today came because the UDF had refused to build a system for smooth transfer of power or leadership; and as for the PP, how many people has GOD ever favoured more, giving them an opportunity on a silver platter to lead this great nation yet they botched all that because they fell for the very people who destroyed democracy in this country? So who is better then, King? Well no one is better, and no one will, unless (1) we accept to look into ourselves and learn to forgive ourselves and then (2) seek forgiveness from those we offended before we finally (3) put in place a system to replace paternalism.

Believe you me those in DPP do not know they are entrenching paternalism, so are those in MCP. They think they are practising politics. It happened with the first Ministers. Chipembere makes the following observations on this:

Finally, I must emphasise that my desire is for change in Malawi—change of system. If Dr Banda (you can replace him with DPP or MCP or PP or UDF or AFORD) could change the whole paternalistic and autocratic apparatus with which he governs Malawi; if he could agree to rule the country on the basis of our time-honoured traditional values with their characteristic emphasis on respect for individual rights . . . the objections to continuing office would abate, and he would regain the loyalty of those once devoted to him (Chipembere: The Missing Years, p 241, quoting Henry Chipembere’s “Dr Banda’s Opposition in Exile” in The Guardian, 7 July 1966.

Here is Chipembere after he had learnt the danger of paternalism, working hard to reverse it, pleading with Dr Banda to put back a system to guide the affairs of Malawi. Do not forget that he was among those who had made Dr Banda this figure-head, in fact, he even fought to ensure Malawi was a one-party state, a machinery that was to work against him in a fashion words can never describe. On learning this lesson, he observes: “Malawi is, in practice, a one-party state. I have no quarrel with the theory behind this. I was myself an enthusiastic advocate of it until two years ago, when, as a result of experience within Malawi and observation of other trends in other African States, the system’s susceptibility to abuse became clear” (Ibid, p 240).

What a sad way to learn, my hero.

Solution to dealing with Paternalism

To deal with paternalism, every person and each party must engage in some serious soul-searching. Even journalists who tell us the ‘truth’ must engage in some serious soul-searching. Why am I saying this?

Well, there is something I think many fail to see in everything that is happening in Malawi, namely struggle for power. Parties are fighting to ensure their figure-head continues in power (in case of the ruling DPP) or their figure-head (in term of the opposition) replaces the one at the helm of this paternalistic system we put in place for ourselves circa 1960.

Even journalists are part of this system—paternalism—and people should not just believe everything journalists say without putting in a dose of reasoning. I should present an illustration using a recent backlash to Brian Banda following some interview he conducted with Ken Msonda.

Brian Banda is a maven of modern day journalism in Malawi as far as objectivity and fearlessness is concerned yet a few days ago Brian found himself on the wrong side of public opinion, accused of asking fiery yet personal questions to Ken Msonda, a former Spokesperson for the former ruling People’s Party of Joyce Banda (not a relation of Brian). It should be noted that Brian had served as a communication engine at State House in the regime of Joyce Banda. When Joyce Banda lost power, he too lost his—this is the reality of the equation of paternalistic politics.

Msonda, like many others who had followed Joyce Banda not because it was good to follow her, but because she was at the helm in this system of paternalism, ran away from her when she lost power. Msonda went to the enemy. To Brian, Msonda might have behaved like a foot soldier who abandoned his post in the thick of exchanges, exposing his friends to direct enemy fire. He had to be taken to task for this. He had to go personal. This is not new; it has just happened in the US that those who were with Donald Trump in the wilderness have, soon after his election, begun to harvest through various posts including in communication in the White House.

This sounds a diversion, does it not? Well, all I am trying to do is to show that even those you think live by objectivity do have an agenda, an agenda not necessarily for public interest. This was one example to prove that journalism doesn’t necessarily mean that he who shows ‘objectivity’ always does it on behalf of public interest. Perhaps I should be allowed to make this sweeping statement: every journalist serves those who pay them. People always serve those who will give them some bread and butter. If this was not the case, no journalist would accept a post from government when only a week before he was on its neck for violating some human rights.

The study of journalism is never complete without knowledge of media economics. In case, you need a better discussion on this, please read Media Economics: Understanding Markets, Industries and Concepts, 2nd edition, by Allan B Albarran (Iowa: Iowa State Press, 2002).

At page 2, Albarran argues that “mass media are economic institutions, engaged in the production and dissemination of content targeted toward consumers. (And) because media firms are economic entities, their behaviour is governed by economics” and I should add: gain or profit. This entails that the media will never put something that will jeopardise the interest of those who feed them unless it is truly independent, operating on some budget that requires no replenishing

Put simply, what happens in the mass media resembles the rational choice theory where no individual does a thing that does not benefit them. Of course, in the course of serving their interest, the people can benefit, but this does not mean that the sole reason they do it is public interest.

When Joyce Banda suddenly found herself in power, Brian went to serve her. Scandals happened in her administration, but Brian, like most of the people there never resigned. Simply put, even journalists have something they defend. This is not their problem; it the problem with the system we ourselves put in place—exploitative paternalism.

If the DPP loses power today to the opposition, the new government won’t take those working there currently to work in their communication machinery; they will take those we deem objective today. I do not need to show you how many journalists were deemed objective yesterday and when an opportunity arose to align themselves with those controlling the resources turned worse ‘colluders’.

Am I saying we should discourage ‘objectivity’ in journalism? No, not at all. We do need objectivity no question about that, but that should not take away the power in us to question things. At the same time, the greatest principle in journalism and indeed liberal law is that you side with those who are weak, hence our insistence that those with a small voice should be given the best of protection. If we cannot do that, we can risk surrendering even the small we have to those who wield power, and the end can be terrible. Looking at things in this way, then it becomes safe to conclude thus: where government is fighting the independent media, the benefit of the doubt should be given to the independent media.

How about the Public Affairs Committee, are they objective? Well, PAC has on various occasions expressed lack of consensus on some issues because the members therein have tended to diverge on important political ideals. In short, even the Public Affairs Committee, the giant we or Blantyre Synod (later joined by others) established in late 1992 to defend us, is never without taints. It’s not the fault of PAC; it is our fault as a people—we set up a system that works only one way—supporting those who feed us. We can pretend in public, but we each subsist in this giant of bias.

I seem to be nobody’s friend, because I seem to challenge everyone or everything. I don’t think so. All I was doing was to demonstrate that even those we think represent us are also tainted by the same brush of paternalism. If you give them an opportunity to go to this other side, you can never recognise them. You might remember how bold and slippery Mavuto Bamusi that civil society giant was. Today he serves the government. Do I need to go into details? I think it’s self-explanatory. How about Brown Mpinganjira and the hardship he underwent at Mikuyu Prison, but see what he became later in Parliament—in the forefront in chasing others. Or read about Sam Mpasu, the hardship he underwent and the position he took in Parliament when the country entrusted him with the responsibility to the position of Speaker of Parliament. In short, there are no good people or bad people or good tribe or bad tribe in Malawi; we are a people shaped by a history we put in place, and everything we do follows a set pattern—exploitative paternalism.

I think the next great thing in restoring our democracy after the Declaration of Public Assets Law and the ATI Law is the Electoral Reform issue and then asking ourselves how to make these laws truly applicable to all without fear or favour. If we want to build a strong national integrity system, we must look in that direction. However, a good policy is one negotiated on so that it should be owned by all. So, whatever it is, let us try our best to talk and reach a consensus so each party will understand all the laws in rebuilding our integrity system are meant to serve us all. And our language should not appear as though we are making these laws with the objective to topple them or target those in power. Remember those in power are only benefiting by the system of exploitative paternalism we set up towards Independence and has remained intact all along even after we had dismantled the structures of dictatorship.

The Electoral Reform issue is particularly crucial in changing the terrain to neutralise the voting pattern that follows the rut of paternalism. Currently, “the electoral formula or mathematic method for determining the winner (in the Presidential race) is the plurality rule. Thus, the candidate that wins more votes than any other candidate (regardless of how small that vote is) is elected President. . . As a consequence, the winning candidate can become President without a majority of the voters having voted for him or her” (Lise Rakner, Mette Bakken and Nixon S. Khembo “Elections: Systems and Processes” Government and Politics in Malawi, edited by Nandini Patel and Lars Svasand, Zomba: Kachere Books, p 187).

On commenting on the issue of 50 + 1 mode of electing the country’s presidency, DD Phiri, “Brevities on the 50 + 1 and other matters”—also gave the merits of the 50 + 1 mechanism of electing the presidency. He cited Tanzania where the people don’t really mind where one is coming from or what ethnic group or religion he or she belongs to when electing their leader.

I agree with DD Phiri on the merits of this system, but using the example of Tanzania in our context does not add up. Julius Nyerere refused right from the beginning exploitative paternalism (though you would still find some people, for example, Ludovick Mwijage in his The Dark Side of Nyerere’s Legacy, saying Nyerere never took kindly to opposing views). However, the larger part of Nyerere is that he lived a simple life and the obsession for a figure-head or deity status had never been part of him. He had built a system that respects people for what they are, and not where they are coming from, et cetera. In our case, right from the beginning, we had obsessed ourselves with building the most powerful figure in the name of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, and when we tried to reduce those powers we had irrationally endowed upon him, he bared his teeth of dictatorship.

50 + 1 is a great idea, but let us understand why we need it, and talk to agree to take the same path together. At the same time, there are times in life when everyone else and everything else changes, that is a great time to begin to change too. To wait until the people begin to push you often forces one to act or negotiate from a weakened position. If Dr Banda had read the signs of changes from what had happened in Zambia and changed without being pushed by demonstrations or the Pastoral Letter, his legacy could have assumed an even higher value in the gallery of democracy. If the Law Commission has adopted it (the 50 + 1 mode), it means things are taking a different direction. Let us start making preparations lest this great requirement of change catch us unawares.

Malawi can turn itself into a beacon of democracy by setting the pace in everything democracy in Africa. We have this opportunity because we are a peace-loving people who never know a serious war. But the secret lies in learning to define where we have shortfalls and agree, all together, to do something about it for our sake as well as for posterity. At the same time, the secret lies in us exercising patience to talk and reach some consensus. One thing that scares me these days, and this is from both the opposition and those in power—they see no obligation in condemning violence by their boys and girls. Our children must be shown the danger of befriending or marrying violence. They have a future to live; we cannot afford to let them slip into criminals when we have entrusted the future of this country in their hands.

We must love our country; our political struggles will pass; we too shall some day pass, and this power shall elude us, we must tread carefully so when that time comes, we shall find ourselves surrounded by more friends and fewer enemies. Those who speak against us can never be our enemies. Only paternalism infuses that feeling in a people, but we should, together as Malawians, fight to practise the most civilised politics on the African Continent.

I know that true reconciliation entails taking bold steps because, as Ralph Kasambara observed at the 1996 “Understanding the Past to Safeguard the Future” Conference, a number of challenges can frustrate such a project of virtue. Kasambara, based on experience from what happened during the Mwanza Murder Trial (he happened to be assistant to the Director of Public Prosecutions on the Mwanza Murder Trial), noted the following as some of the challenges on issues to do with gathering information on cases that happened in our history:

Some people who wanted to testify didn’t know what happened. Sometimes they had only half the truth, and sometimes they were just trying to get their colleagues into trouble. Some witnesses were unwilling to testify. They would say, “What if those people come back to power?” . . . Others were honest and said they were made what they are by the MCP, and there was no way they were going to testify against the MCP (“Understanding the Past to Safeguard the Future”, p 38).

Other problems Kasambara learnt from the Mwanza Murder Trial were the question of faded memories, and of course, the way law operates sometimes, for example, in witness protection. On the latter, he observes: “It did not make sense to Malawians (as they didn’t understand issues of witness protection) that the people who actually killed the politicians were given state protection, were chauffeur driven to and from the court” (Ibid 38).

Kasambara was making these comments reacting to comments by Late Zangaphee Chizeze who expressed a concern that if such a Commission were to be formed, then it should have the noble goals “reconciliation and peaceful co-existence”.

Of course, we had what is described as the National Compensation Tribunal, which was scheduled to operate for 10 years only. Today many commentators argue that the facility ended up serving only those connected.

Many issues are refusing to die all because we rushed to coil our past into some roll of oblivion. We should have used it to bring us to truth and healing for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. Of course, there are challenges, but it is never too late to correct our ways, otherwise old practices will keep appearing in the way we conduct our affairs. Besides, we shall keep perceiving one another with deep suspicion.

My final word is this: if you look carefully where we went wrong, many parties share the blame. I think we can gather courage and, without pointing fingers, confront our past and trigger the button of reconciliation. Malawi still needs a genuine kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and if you heard Henry Pota lamenting at the 18-19 October 1996 Conference on “Understanding the Past to Safeguard the Future”, you could not but wish that something should happen to all those people we subjected to great pain and death because of our support for paternalism. At the same time, even those of us who watched when we could have said something have a share in the blame. This is part of what Henry Pota said at that Conference:

I was detained from 24 December 1964 until 24 December 1966 at Dzaleka Prison Camp, As a result of this detention, I lost my job, and my wife was forced to marry an MCP Chairman. . . . We were subjected to heavy beatings by prison warders, sometimes with sisal before being splashed with water, which made the sap penetrate our skin and caused irritation. “Understanding the Past to Safeguard the Future”, p 26)

The ruling party, the DPP has an opportunity to lead in reconciliation because though it could have its fair share in this, the dirtiest part belongs to the one party regime. We must never cheat ourselves that our journey forward will be possible without first confronting our past—our past simply scares. In our history we have cursed Bishops, we have hacked innocent people for their conscience, we have eliminated dissent in any way we could—there is no way, as a nation, we can go ahead without first addressing these things, and this is where I agree hundred percent with Poet Mapanje that we need a South African type of TRC.

And PAC can once again make itself relevant by introducing healing so we can start afresh. All these squabbles and lack of openness it’s a sign we have issues we must address before we learn to smile together as a nation. We must never say time will heal these things; we must never say let us forget those old men and take the fight to the youths alone; we must fight now through lens of reconciliation and understanding. Such healing can bring true integrity in our national integrity system because then we could be starting afresh. Then and only then can we talk of true nation building, and that is the starting point when dealing with paternalism, exploitative paternalism.

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