THE POST-MAY 21 POLITICAL IMPASSE IN MALAWI AND WHY DE-ESCALATION THROUGH DIALOGUE AND DEMANDS FOR REFORMS IS NECESSARY AT THIS HOUR

Introduction

Demonstrations have one major purpose in society: to force a party on the other side to come to the negotiating table on terms more acceptable to the party organising those demonstrations. In this way, the party organising them creates such psychological pressure in the party that had been neglecting a particular position that the latter begins to take ‘interest’ and devise means to address the problem in question. In public policy, this act of ‘inviting’ a party adamant to this table of consideration and negotiation creates a ‘window of opportunity’. The concept of ‘window of opportunity’ requires that a party bringing those vexing problems to the attention of decision-makers read the setting with mathematical precision to establish (1) priorities in the problems, (2) the sort of players they communicate to or interact with, and so who can lead the drive or derail the effort, and, most importantly, (3) the right time to introduce a concern for solution, kind of making hay while the sun shines. By extension, the last point also suggests that a party organising the demonstrations ought to use great premonition and sophisticated public opinion reading to establish when exactly to de-escalate. Knowing when to introduce a problem or when to de-escalate is critical because the policy ‘window of opportunity’ is never permanent; one ought to strike while the iron is hot. In the context of Malawi, I think the iron has been hot for some time yet we all seem clueless on how we should address ourselves in this impasse. As a result, players, other than those well-versed in policy making, are taking over the role of guiding reforms, depriving reform champions of this noble role. And reform champions in the retreat, these ordinary people are suggesting and carrying out, sad to say, radical propositions, kind of ‘jungle reforms’ and at times, ‘jungle justice’ that point to no precedence in the policy world. The atmosphere seems degenerating into a crisis. These matters have forced me, a Malawian who loves his country, to write again.

Structure of the Discussion

In this discussion, I explain the purpose of demonstrations and argue that it is now time that commonsense should persuade us to go back home and give peace and dialogue a chance. I also challenge those who speak in parables and double tongues―the social and political commentators, the faith community, and tribal leaders―to come out and contribute to matters that concern us, matters that are threatening the very survival of this wonderful nation. Throughout, I take a position that our problem isn’t a single person but, to quote Bishop Mtumbuka, a “culmination of frustrations by Malawians who do not see the value of belonging to the state” (see ‘Catholic Bishop says Malawi turmoil is culmination of frustrations’ dated Saturday, October 12, 2019 available at www.nyasatimes.com). In my reasoning, our insistence that the answer to this post-May 21 political impasse lies in one person in the name of Justice Dr Jane Ansah diverts us from addressing the real issues, when we fail to separate the trees from the forest. Throughout the discussion, I make reference to history―we must learn from history to distill ourselves better and balanced answers.

The following questions will help guide this discussion:

(1)   Why we must submit ourselves to the cause of peace through balanced debate on affairs that concern our democracy;

(2)   Why each one of us pretends we do not know the root cause;

(3)   Whether the on-going demonstrations have since achieved their purpose;

(4)   Whether our approach to solving this problem is likely to bring the much-needed change in our politics and policy approach; and

(5)   Why dialogue must be the word now.

WHY WE MUST MAKE INPUT ON MATTERS THAT CONCERN US

There is a conscience that prefers to keep quiet even on matters that threaten to shake the very foundation of a people’s existence. Perhaps these people, among them the majority of the cognoscenti of politics, public administration, and perhaps international relations, all of them prophets we look to for interpretation on a clear day, stand on a premise that critical matters in society do eventually address themselves, and so, are better left undisturbed. A very dangerous way of looking at issues, and there is a term for this―inadequate truth.

The notion of ‘Inadequate Truth’

According to Elcheroth and Reicher (2017), the notion of ‘inadequate truth’ refers to “the idea that even when complex accounts are analytically accurate, it can still be morally wrong to utter them” (p. 6). It is a fear that paralyses a people, forcing them to shun the nub or centrepiece of a matter yet expecting a positive end to it, all the same. In Malawi, it has made us look away when we should take part in healthy debates to help direct democracy the positive way. Achebe (2012) warns against this when he writes that “the African writer who steps aside can only write footnotes or a glossary when the event is over” (p. 61). He describes such a ‘hermit’ or ‘recluse’ as an equivalent of “the contemporary intellectual of futility in many other places . . .” (p. 61).

Intellectuals―disregard the contemporary intellectual of futility in many other places―are better placed to set the agenda on critical matters in our society. Achebe (2012) describes them as spokespersons for Africa. To this group, I would add “journalists who acquire detailed knowledge, and an appreciation of the flavour of events, which can escape more distant observers” (Ellis, 1999, p. 19). Let me specify that such journalists are those who do not owe allegiance to some political master, living or dead.

As spokespersons, I think they have a duty, almost a commitment, to set the agenda on the path to peace. This is important for some two objects, the first of which centring on the nature of the dominant participant in our debate today. I call this participant the social media foot soldier, this fella with limited education and a penchant for breaking the law. My fear of this soldier springs from the fact that, more often than not, he demonstrates his naked disregard of the rules of the game, for there’s no chapter on rules of engagement in his ‘manual’. So, he says anything, does anything, and uses any word at his disposal to embarrass and disarm an ‘opponent’. He acts and regrets later. When good men and women do not talk, this social media foot soldier, turns himself into some commander and sets his own agenda, often with devastating consequences on the nature of both debate and response to problems dogging our politics, public policy, and democracy in general.

In Malawi, this problem is compounded by the fact that almost all formal media outlets in the country are in the hands of the elite with heavy connection to politics or politicians, gone or active. As a result, the angle of discussion on each one of these outlets, public or private, is structured in favour of the taste of their master. Unfortunately, the world, the West especially, tends to judge us by versions from these sources.

In an impasse like the one at hand, we must also talk before the unscrupulous politician and his backers purloin the people’s mind with misinformation that emphasises a people’s differences rather than matters that glue. In Rwanda, towards the 1994 genocide, politicians with poisoned objectives took advantage of tension to create chaos for their own evil end. What Sibomana (1997) writes on this is a powerful warning:

Every society bears its own divisions. . . . These divisions exist; there is no point in denying it. But it was not necessary to revive them and turn them into political arguments. Divisions were deliberately exacerbated by unscrupulous politicians, simply to satisfy their basest designs, their hunger for power and money, their pride and their desire for revenge (p. 137).

Sibomana’s observation that divisions do exist implies that tension is inevitable in society. What is dangerous is when tension is hijacked by men and women with evil intent, men and women who find pleasure is serving themselves at the expense of the common man and woman. It falls on good people therefore to talk to diffuse the tension.

Good people must talk to help turn conflicts into solutions. For, to borrow the words of Einar Gerhardsen, Prime Minister of Norway for most of the period between 1945 and 1965, “[T]here will always be conflicts in a democratic society. . . [But] these conflicts must be regulated and kept within limits if the democratic nation state is to become a community and function as an arena for peaceful cooperation between groups and people with different economic interests and political ideas” (Brandal, Bratberg, & Thorsen, 2013, p. 1). Talking is one way to ensure the democratic state lives as a community and functions as an abode for peace and development. Thus, we must talk to warn this unscrupulous politician from both ends that our job is to solve problems, not to create some, that our diversity which represents beauty and strength must never be manipulated for some cheap political gains and chaos.

Some simple content analysis of a language Malawians, including the media, use each on the other today could proffer a somehow accurate measure of how fast our society is degenerating into full lawlessness. I have observed with great concern how free many of us have become in the devilish art of denigrating our opponents. I’ve never seen Malawians this crude in their language when describing fellow Malawians. By all standards, the level of hatred based on ethnicity as stoked by politics is growing by the day among us. People might not see any danger in this, but history teaches us that those who want to destroy each other begin by doing what we are doing: hiding in the group (ethnicity or anonymity), and dehumanising others. Malawians seem to be following the very pattern those who want to destroy themselves take before finally turning one on the other.

Shaw (2019), citing Reimann and Zimbardo, observes that two processes happen in a people whenever they want to create evil out of others. These processes are deindividuation and dehumanisation. According to Shaw, “deindividuation happens when we perceive ourselves as anonymous. Dehumanisation, on the other hand, is when we stop seeing others as human beings, and see them as less than human” (p. 19).

According to Shaw (2019), when a person acts in a group, that is, when he or she assumes anonymity, he or she engages in evil because he or she is under a belief that an evil committed by an ‘invisible group’ is no evil. It thus, makes one feel secure in that a destruction and damage you cause through a group lacks the actual actor to take responsibility. In this forest, one can say and do anything, and the social media proffers a perfect habitat for this. In the end, people who do not hate as individuals find it perfectly alright to hate in a group where they are hidden by the identity of the group. This is false sense because evil is evil, whether you do it in a group or as an individual.

On dehumanisation, Shaw writes that it is an evil that makes us stop seeing others as human beings, and see them as less than human. Dehumanisation creates in us a blurring of our perception so we stop being able to really see people. If you read comments on the social media on how Malawians are exchanging taunts bordering on ethnicity, you would feel embarrassed we could reach those incensing levels of hatred. It is toxic, fellow Malawians now refer one to the other using terms denoting insects and animals. Seriously, whatever excuse we have, we have no right to reach those embarrassing levels of invective as a people. We, definitely, must do something to remind ourselves that we can do better as a people entrusted with this Inheritance of a nation.

Lastly, the intellectual must talk because talking is the best way to diffuse political tension, and political tension is like a powder keg, always waiting upon some trigger to explode. Put simply, writers, intellectuals, high integrity journalists and the faith community must speak lest some daredevil should rush in to supply the trigger to the powder keg of this impasse to cause chaos. The words of Julius Nyerere in 1952 are instructive here: “A world seething with hatred is an intolerable place to live in. But we cannot reach the goal by hypocrisy or wishful thinking. We can only do it by honest thinking, honest talking and honest living” (Bjerk, 2015, p. viii).

All this means that we must begin to talk seriously to diffuse this tension. We must rise above this temporary blemish on our nation. This is important as a noble pursuit. Why? Because when an impasse is left to go on for too long, things eventually do get out of hand. The case of Rwanda proffers a very good example of what happens when a people and the international community procrastinate in the face of tension.

According to Longman (2010), “in November 1993, the Catholic Bishop of Nyundo publicly condemned the distribution of arms to civilians, an early preparation for the genocide” (p. 8). Unbelievably, the world kept quiet. Over a month later, in January 1994, there rose an opportunity to deal with the issue strategically. It came through an informer―Jean-Pierre Twatzinze―who revealed to General Roméo Dallaire (the force commander of the 2,500 peace-keepers who were under the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda―UNAMIR) that the elites were planning a horrible act.

According to Bernett (2002), Twatzinze had reported that the Hutu elites were planning an extermination campaign against the Tutsi, that, “to transform the plan (extermination campaign against the Tutsi) into reality, the Interahamwe was busily stockpiling and distributing weapons, creating lists for assassination, and organising hit teams” (p. 78). Strangely, when General Roméo Dallaire communicated to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, DPKO, for authorisation to seize the weapons, the DPKO advised against it.

Three months later, following the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana in a fiery plane crash on April 6, 1994, the plan was set into action, and the result was horrendous, for “in one hundred days, between April 6 and July 19, 1994, they murdered roughly eight hundred thousand individuals. For the statistically inclined, that works out to 333½ deaths per hour, 5½ deaths per minute” (Barnett, 2002, p. 1).

Am I suggesting we are heading in that direction? No, not at all, but history is there for us to learn from. At the same time, let us not take our peace for granted. Absence of conflict is no guarantee that a country will always be at peace. Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) used to be known as the African miracle, and its capital, Abidjan, used to be called Africa’s Paris. For a very long time, no one ever imagined that Côte d’Ivoire would ever go to war with itself someday. Unfortunately, politics using the ambers of ethnicity and diversity forced the Ivoirians to turn one on the other. I’m not sure how many would boldly claim that Côte d’Ivoire still maintains her African miracle accolade today, or Abidjan those Africa’s Paris compliments.

Talking is also necessary at this hour to warn others not to take advantage of the impasse to provide the spark. Remember, the world is never bereft of fanatics.

The First World War (1914-1918) was a result of a crisis that had started many years before including the First Balkan War (1912) and the Second Balkan War (1913). Just an explanation, the Balkan Wars were two short and bloody confrontations in which Serbia successfully fought Turkey to reclaim parcels of territory lost to the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) centuries earlier. Bosnia wanted to follow suit, fighting its occupier―the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But to break into a World War, the crises “still needed a spark to detonate the explosive mix of old-world superiority, diplomatic miscalculation, strategic paranoia and hubristic military overconfidence” (Butcher, 2014, p. 29).

That spark was provided on June 28, 1914, after the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was shot in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old Bosnian Serb. Because Princip and his group had received support from a small military intelligence community in Serbia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (supported by Germany) declared war on Serbia. Other nations joined to support Serbia. That way, the World went to War. Whatever had happened, “none disputes that it was the shooting in Sarajevo (the capital of Bosnia) that led the world to war a century ago” (Butcher, 2014, p. 29). The Second World War, and more recently, the Bosnian War of the 1990s, were all to stem from what that single man did in 1914. And Butcher adds that “the Bosnian War (it ended in 1995) would spill further into the future, its battlefields a training ground for jihadists who would take part in the 9/11 attacks on America” (p. 17).

According to Butcher (2014, p. 35), Princip was to die four years later in an Austro-Hungarian jail, his bones eaten away by skeletal tuberculosis. Every time I read this history, I ask myself whether what Princip did in 1914 in the name of defending his people was worth it. They must be right those who say violence only begets violence.

In short, we must never keep quiet. We must constantly warn our people, especially this social media foot soldier, that destruction only leads to more destruction. Malawi can never afford to lose the best we have simply because some politicians don’t agree on some issues. South Malawi needs North Malawi and the Centre just as the Central Region of Malawi or the North needs the South and Centre. We must always remember that no matter what we think and do, we can never have a complete Malawi without the Centre, a complete Malawi without the South, and a complete Malawi without the North.

Perhaps someone would say but we all know the person at fault: the Malawi Electoral Commission Chair. Malawians know what the problem is, but no one is honest and bold enough to point it out and demand the right approach for honest answers.

WHY WE ALL PRETEND WE DO NOT KNOW THE TRUTH IN ALL THIS

Those organising the demonstrations have insisted that the problem is the Chair of the Electoral Commission, Justice Dr Jane Ansah. Recently, they argued that they would return to their shelter once she abdicates her post. We must never forget that, while this is the message they give us today, they had repeatedly told us in the early days of this impasse that the demand for the MEC Chair to go was the first on their wish-list. To make matters worse, other quarters are now urging the resignation of everyone who was involved in the process. You can never exactly tell what it is exactly they are looking for. Strangely, language from some prominent personalities in this country, including some Men of Cloth, has thrown weight behind the demand for Justice Dr Jane Ansah to resign, observing it is her failure to discern the signs that has led to all this. What an excuse and a way to pile our national guilt on one soul.

Since the impasse, we have heard demands that have nothing to do with Justice Dr Jane Ansah―think of the quota system in our education system, the problem of Chichewa as a core subject on the curriculum, and the call for federalism. This should tell us that the problem at hand is beyond Justice Dr Jane Ansah. In fact, the deficiency in our electoral management in the country dates back to the very first multiparty elections in 1994 (although some quarters tend to paint a rosy picture of those elections).

Way back in 2006, Kajee made this observation: “The Electoral Commission is partisan and lacks independence. The standard of election administration has steadily declined from 1994 (emphasis mine) to 2004, as election observers have noted” (See prg 19, ‘Challenges for democracy and human security in Malawi: Mapping a policy research and capacity-building agenda’, available at https://issafrica.org.)

Through these years electoral mismanagement has been the story, and none of it has ever referred to an individual there; they talk of a compromised system―the Electoral Commission as an institution. My question thus is: Are Malawians really not aware of the real problem in all this? So why do we direct our efforts towards removing Justice Dr Jane Ansah instead of initiating robust dialogue to address systems that have created problems among our people, especially the poor? Well, personally, I am not surprised. Human beings have a tendency to find some excuse, some scapegoat. It started with the old Adam in the Garden of Eden: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3: 12-13).

Many theories in psychology and communication also explain this tendency to find some scapegoat. Allow me to cite a few here, starting with the cognitive dissonance theory, a communication theory.

According to Tavris and Aronson (2007), cognitive dissonance is a state where a person holds two opposing cognitions, or beliefs, or ideas. The two authors give the example of a smoker who may hold opposing cognitions or opposing sets of information, namely that ‘smoking kills’ and that ‘I do not smoke often’. There is thus conflict in this smoker because, on one hand, he or she knows the truth about smoking―it kills―yet (on the other hand) uses another cognition―but I do not smoke often―to justify the indulgence. In this way, the latter cognition, namely that he doesn’t smoke often, justifies his habit, and therefore he keeps on smoking.

In short, people can use all sorts of self-justification to cause harm, but whatever justification, harm is harm. Besides, answers that come through harm never last.

People do know that to insist that someone should abdicate their post because they ‘mismanaged elections’ without following formal procedures and without providing of evidence before a neutral assessor is not in the interest of natural justice. But, for whatever reason, something within them keep convincing them that to end this impasse someone must give in, and, of all the people, it must be the MEC Chair. How that people, including Servants of GOD, have been persuaded that we can now begin to condemn another without formal evidence in a formal setting presided over by a neutral referee is beyond belief, in my thinking.

My limited knowledge of Christianity holds that even judgement day itself shall require that each explain their deeds before the judgement seat (II Corinthians 5: 10), where we shall give account for every idle word we utter (Matthews 12: 36). The all-powerful and omnipresent GOD knows everything, even before we speak, HE knows it all, yet HE shall still require that we should explain our side of the story in an open setting. Why? Justice requires openness and fairness for satisfaction to both parties.

Every lawyer worth their name should know better you can never insist on someone resigning without first letting them through a formal process of determining wrong.

A book on law I read recently has fortified a belief in me, a layman, on the power of following procedures when condemning a person. Its story concerns Michael Dee Mattson, a man who, in July 1982, was on death row, convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a number of young girls in California, the United States.

According to Potts (2008), Mattson was given an automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court. Potts, who was working as a law clerk, was asked by his professor to assist him in representing Mattson. Potts writes that, by then, he had not yet learnt anything on the case, that is, he wasn’t aware of the nature of crime Mattson had committed. Potts says when he did, he found his personal principles in a tug-of-war with his professional principles.

Here was a murderer, “a cold, calculating sexual predator who showed no sign of remorse” (p. xiii). Besides, Potts’ sister had been assaulted three years’ earlier, and he wondered whether he should be part of the team representing the person “who had been convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of several young women and girls, some mere children” (p. xiv). Potts went ahead and happened to be the person who had found the issue that resulted in reversal of Mattson’s conviction.

Potts writes that his own marriage went through the rocks for representing Mattson. Did Potts do all this because he found pleasure in it? No, not at all. He did it because even those who offend society ought to be given an opportunity to realise justice requires that we must respect each other. He writes:

Yet, as citizens, we have to remember―we can never forget―that in our search for vindication, justice must be served in a manner consistent with the state and federal laws so as not to diminish the rights of every citizen of the United States. If we extinguish those rights, the rights of the victims to have their killers answer for their crimes will be lost as well. Vigilante justice has no place in American society. I am just as adamant that the legal system we have in place not be daunted by sloppy police work or emotional, knee-jerk reactions that ultimately destroy the basic foundation of the Constitution.

What all this means is that, no matter our group, no matter our personal convictions as individuals, we must remember that justice requires that all sides be party to the process for a satisfactory end. This applies to all of us, for tomorrow we shall be in those situations and we shall never like that the people should judge us before they have heard our side of the story. It is for this reason that I vehemently defend this woman. I would do the same of any person if anyone was demanding their resignation without giving them an opportunity to explain themselves first in a neutral setting.

As I speak now, universities in Africa are coming to terms with a realisation that some lecturers, those devoid of principles, have, over the years, been preying on their own students, demanding sex for grades. Although we know this is a common problem in most universities the world over, those pointed out ought to be given an opportunity for a fair hearing. Every time and everywhere, we must force ourselves to accept that our choice of liberal democracy meant our entering into a contract to respect each other and to judge others based on evidence in a formal setting. Anything outside this creates an attempt to rattle very pillars of the justice we purport to serve.

Another explanation why certain people consider their position or ideology superior to those of others is stashed in the tendency among people to associate themselves with their group (emphasis mine). All along our lecturers have taught us that we vote for a policy or candidate who will benefit us the most―public choice theory. However, Haidt (2012) argues that, in matters of public opinion (emphasis mine), “people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political” (p. 75). Citing Don Kinder, Haidt writes, “In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not ‘What’s in it for me?’ but rather ‘What’s in it for my group?’” (p. 75). In short, what matters to you is not the reason others give you; it is what it is that is good for your group. This is why it is said that “parties, like social movements, are more effective when their supporters and leaders are united by a common identity” (Labas, 2011, p. 43). Are there no times when the ruling Democratic Progressive Party goofs big time yet those aligned to it find no issue with it, and instead, find some justification to accommodate the act? Similarly, haven’t we seen the opposition going it so shoddy you would wonder what type of government-in-waiting they are for this country? Yet in all this, we find some justification and ‘accept’ that there are what we have, the wrong can pass.

When first I read Haidt, I thought something wasn’t adding up. But when I tried to put this in its context, the similarity was striking. Consider this: when the Nyasas (Malawians) were fighting for independence from the colonial masters, they fought as one group―they weren’t looking at themselves as a people divided by languages, name it, because they had one common enemy who threatened them as a group. Even when Dunduzu Chisiza disagreed with Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, he promised to keep quiet until after independence when he would start his political party (of course he was to die before independence). Chisiza had considered more for the group, afraid that if he could start a party before independence, the white man would look at that as a sign of division and therefore a justification for him not to grant the black person self-rule. Although the Cabinet Crisis happened after Dunduzu was long dead, one can still notice that the group had now started to break along the seams, smaller groups with similar identities coming up.

Haidt arguments opened my eyes on the question I have kept asking myself on why South Sudan which fought to break away from Khartoum soon found itself on each other once they were granted independence. They had fought as a bigger group, but once that bigger group got its reward, smaller groups within it began to ask what it was that was good for their smaller groups. This has led to terrible loss of lives among a people that had recently come out as one.

Today, the UTM, a break-away faction from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, is a darling to the Malawi Congress Party. Recently, MCP and UTM supporters agreed to conduct political rallies together, a sign of solidarity. But all this is because they are a group connected by a common cause―allegation that the May 21 Poll was stolen from their leaders. I am not sure their ‘ideologies’ will allow them to operate as children of the same parent post-Constitutional Court determination.

In Malawi today, people are fighting for what it is that is for their group. It is not a bad question, because we all wish to benefit from this small national cake. However, we must never shy away from asking and warning ourselves whether our demands are realistic in the context in which we are. At the same time, such demands must be made within the framework of liberal constitutional democracy, the form of democracy we adopted for ourselves. In short, we must remember that liberal constitutional democracy incorporates both liberal elements and constitutional elements, and so must comprise the three features: ‘liberty’, ‘constitution’, and ‘democracy’ itself. This is important because these three elements must all be present together or a country is not a liberal constitutional democracy (Ginsburg & Huq, 2018, p. 10).

The ‘democracy component’ in liberal constitutional democracy means that there must “first (be) a democratic electoral system―most importantly, periodic free and fair elections in which the modal adult can vote―after which, the losing side concedes power to the winning side” (Ginsburg & Huq, 2018, p. 10). Conceding of power here entails that the elections were free and fair; if not, democracy itself institutes a system that deals with that. This is the duty of the second component of democracy―constitution or simply “a level of integrity of law and legal institutions―that is, the rule of law―sufficient to allow democratic engagement without fear or coercion” (p. 10). The last component―liberty―comprises the particular liberal rights to speech and association that are closely linked to democracy in practice” (p. 10). In the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi, we have a whole chapter on this, Chapter IV, the Bill of Rights (sections 15 to 46).

Now does liberal constitutional democracy cease to be one when there is a deficit in one of these three components? Well, liberal constitutional democracy requires some modicum of all the three components (‘democracy’, ‘constitution’ and ‘liberty); it might also survive if some elements are not at full capacity” (p. 10). ‘Deficit’, remember does not entail ‘absence’.

The last explanation why we prefer to ignore reality can be found in what is described as the blinding glare of the expert. Credibility oozing from experts tends to blind us from seeing the truth. If I get my advice from a lawyer ‘of good standing in society’, the probability will be high that I will repose all my faith in him or her, and take what he or she says for gospel truth. Likewise, if one leading a cause is someone people respect, people are likely to follow without questioning. This implies that self-justification increases with the type of experts espousing your cause. If the majority of the so-called political scientists endorse your cause as just, you’re bound to swallow their ‘advice’ and believe in your cause as being just and pro-people. The international community often falls prey to this spell because they often rely on surveys, opinions and research by such experts. Unfortunately, most such surveys are interpretations from the experts themselves rather than a mix of meanings from the experts and the participants with careful regard to context.

It is not a crime to believe in the experts. Even philosophers such as Plato, Kant and Kohlberg assert that the “ability to reason well about ethical issues causes good behaviour” (Haidt, 2012, p. 78). It therefore makes sense that many follow such experts and professionals as lawyers, pastors, philosophers, political scientists, journalists et cetera as they represent a value conflict-of-interests-free. Despite this truth, Haidt, citing Eric Schwitzgebel, warns that, sometimes, those who know the law or the subject matter better can even be worse off.

According to Haidt, Schwitzgebel had conducted surveys and more surreptitious methods on the extent to which moral philosophers gave to charity, voted, called their mothers, donated blood, donated organs, cleaned up after themselves at philosophy conferences, and responded to emails purportedly from students. The results were striking in that “in none of these ways are moral philosophers better than other philosophers or professors in other fields” (p. 78).

Explaining why the world was plunged into an economic crisis and then deep recession in 2008 following the loss of at least $11 trillion from the U.S. economy alone, Sarna (2010) says the expert ended up being part of the greed and fraud through their failure to question things well until the crash had occurred. Sarna cites Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University who said:

The problem is that in the bubble years, everyone becomes a cheerleader, including the media. This is the time when journalists should be asking tough questions, and I think there was a failure there. The Masters of the Universe were always on the cover, or the front page . . . I wish there had been more financial and business journalists, in the good years, who’d said, “Wait a minute, if this man or this firm, is making 100% return a year, how do they do it?” (p. 8).

What Professor Roubini means by this is that everyone was gullible, believing the version of the truth from the textbook of the Masters of the Universe or CEOs or politicians. Professor Roubini is calling for a more critical media at all times, including the time of plenty, and not only when things go wrong.

In Malawi, we had to wait for some maid to spend lavishly and for some bizarre shooting to occur for us to realise some people were stealing from government coffers. And even after that, we have left it in the hands of the courts, nothing happening on public policy front yet literature tells us the problem of corruption can never be addressed through litigation alone; overhaul of the (whole) policy system ought to occur first to work hand in hand with the litigation route. We never learn.

While still on this subject of the media as a source of the blinding glare of the expert, it would be naïve of me to paint them in black without highlighting their noble role in a democracy. There is no question that the media play a crucial role in democracy especially in the fight against corruption. The media however are never without frailties; they are human beings after all. For the reason, they, in some cases, distort facts, or even pump in people a sensation that force them to throw caution to the wind. Two or three illustrations on this excite me.

At page 3, Richard Campbell (in his wonderful book, Media and Culture) tells a story of how, in April 1996, the media in the United States had contributed to the death of seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff along with her father, Lloyd, and her flight instructor.

The sensation surrounded the hype to make history; the media wanted to make Jessica the youngest person to fly a plane across the North American continent. Campbell says prior to this, Jessica’s father had supervised a letter, inviting Bill Clinton (at the time President of the United States) for a ride. Fortunately, “the President staff declined the invitation” (Campbell, 1998, p. 3).

The stunt by the media had forced the crew to disregard severe weather on the day; their goal was to break the record. That this was a small plane carrying too much weight didn’t matter to them. They had to break the record (in April) before Jessica’s eighth birthday which was May.

According to Campbell, TV crews and news reporters waited at every stop along the way, and then the disaster struck―the plane crashed. And “one of the items recovered at the crash site, a smashed portable TV camera, belonged to ABC. Jessica’s father had planned to use the camera to document the flight for the network” (p. 3). He adds: “In the wake of the crash, the media’s role in the publicity stunt was criticised” (p. 3).

The moral in this story is that much as the media have the power to set positive agenda on matters of democracy and good governance, they also command a glare that can guide a people to act in certain ways akin to making them throw caution to the wind, more or less forcing them to not see things with that critical eye. One can just imagine what would have happened had Bill Clinton got carried away with that and accepted to be part of the people in that small Cessna 117B (plane).

In Malawi, some journalists have been known to offer Government dangerous public policy advice or have exaggerated issues to increase circulation and advertisement. Commenting on how local elites exploit the poor especially in the developing world, Professor Dan Banik (2010), observes:

Another instance of local elites ‘using’ human deprivation to promote their interests was that of a handful of local journalists who may exaggerate stories or wrongly file sensational reports (e.g. on child-sale, prostitution, forced migration and alleged starvation deaths), not only to boost the circulation rates of their publications but also to become somewhat indispensable to their editors who are based faraway in major urban centres. Such reports are therefore quite common in major Ugandan and Malawian dailies and at regional and district level publications in India (p. 233).

One person who knows first-hand what the media can do to sway public opinion even on issues that do not exist is George Thapatula Chaponda, former minister in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

In February 2011, a section of the Local Courts Bill was submitted to Parliament of Malawi. In the Bill was a clause: “Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public, to health of persons in general dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.”

When journalists understood the provision to mean banning of farting in public and the then Minister of Justice, George Chaponda, was asked, he found himself swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. Chaponda said the provision was indeed applying to farting in public. News outlets, including the BBC and The Huffington Post, came to our door, disseminating the comedy the world over.

It took the Solicitor-General at the time, Anthony Kamanga, to correct the matter, explaining that, by ‘air fouling’, the provision simply meant ‘air pollution,’ adding, “how any reasonable or sensible person can construe the provision to criminalising farting in public is beyond me.”

Chaponda later clarified himself, saying he had been misled by the journalists.

Am I saying journalists are liars? No, not at all. What I am saying is that sometimes some journalists do report things they themselves do not understand or whose consequences they do not carefully foresee. Public policy and law as is engineering and medicine are fields of specialty; you need some study upon them to understand and interpret them properly. The problem we have in most developing countries is that anyone does become a journalist or reporter, and once they get this great opportunity to serve public interest, they make no further effort to improve upon themselves academically or professionally to execute the job with distinction.

At one time, a friend of mine, a journalist, had pestered the Government of Malawi to sell maize when strategic policy making was advising otherwise. Adamant, the Government refused to sell the maize at the time. Months later, when hunger struck, the journalist’s judgement was proved misleading. Fortunately, he came out and confessed he had read it all wrong. He is one of those few principled journalists I know; I’m not sure others would have retracted their statement with similar level of magnanimity.

Again, am I saying the media are liars? No, if I did I would be a liar myself. What I am saying is that there must be room in us to reason and arrive at a balanced answer or interpretation. I must question a survey that encourages violence no matter the author.

In short, although experts tend to convince us that what they do is always right, it is good insurance to assume some objectivity before succumbing to their expert opinion. Lived experience often contrasts with the well-arranged contents of a published textbook and those who represent it.

The same could somehow apply to some Men of God. It does not necessarily mean that when someone professes to know GOD then their advice will never be laced with prejudice. Lessons from the Rwandan Genocide show a lot of Men and Women of GOD and churches in the forefront in the genocide. In fact, Longman (2010) observes that in some communities it were the clergy, catechists, and other church employees, a class of people with better knowledge of the local population, that identified the Tutsi for elimination. He adds that some church personnel went as far as actively participating in the killing. In fact,

[T]he International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda convicted Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a pastor in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, for encouraging Tutsi to assemble at his church in Kibuye Prefecture, then leading to the church a convoy of soldiers and civilian militia, who slaughtered some 8,000 Tutsi (p. 6).

Again, he writes that “in April 1998, a Rwandan court condemned to death two Catholic priests, Jean-François Kayiranga and Eduoard Nkurikiye, for luring people to Nyange parish, where soldiers and militia subsequently massacred them, then bringing in a bulldozer to demolish the church and bury alive any survivors” (Longman, 2000, p. 6).

He adds that,

Prosecutors in Rwanda have accused Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, the curé of Sainte Famille parish in Kigali, of turning over to death squads of Tutsi who had sought refuge in his church. Survivors report that Munyeshyaka wore a flack jacket and carried a pistol and that he helped to select out sympathisers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front to be killed. According to some witnesses, he offered protection to women and girls who would sleep with him and turned over to death squads those who refused his advances (Longman, 2010, p. 6).

Thus, politics and hatred turn even good people, from every section of the society and every religion, into unimaginable perpetrators of evil. In fact, according to African Rights as cited in Longman (2010), “more Rwandese citizens died in churches and parishes than anywhere else” (p. 4). Longman adds, “believing that their actions were consistent with the teachings of their churches, the death squads in some communities held mass before going out to kill” (p. 7).

Thus, we should beware the extent to which we deliberately discard truths in exchange for rooted bias, unsubstantiated belief and bigotry about or in our group, and in our faith in the all-knowing, invincible expert.

Perhaps I should add that sometimes we keep quiet or refuse to take a stand because we misread some pieces of legislation. A good example can be our fear that when we’re serving in the civil service or public sector, we must lock ourselves against anything politics because law in Malawi admonishes civil servants or bureaucrats to never embroil themselves in politics. My reading is that a lot of people get this advice wrong, a pure misreading of some provisions in the (Malawi) Public Service Act of 1994 (Cap. 1:03 of the Laws of Malawi).

It is important to note that this same Act, the (Malawi) Public Service Act of 1994 (Cap. 1:03 of the Laws of Malawi), that is, provides in section 7 as follows: “All public officers shall be treated fairly and equally in all aspects of human resource management and development without regard to their political, tribal or religious affiliation or to their sex, age or origin in Malawi” (emphasis mine). What this means is that law recognises that civil servants too do have political positions.

In fact, the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi itself, in section 193(1), provides that “[M]embers of the Civil Service shall ensure that the exercise of participation in political activities does not compromise their independent exercise of their functions, powers and duties as impartial servants of the general public”. Of course, there is a category, that of senior public officers, which the National Assembly is mandated to prescribe as “not (be) able to directly participate in political activities” (see section 193 subsection 2 of the Constitution). This ‘seniority’ however does not apply to those civil servants whose functions are not directly concerned with the formulation and ‘administration’ of the policies of the Government [see paragraph (c)―the proviso to section 193(2)].

In short, when the issue before us is such that it threatens our very existence, when it threatens to shake this National House off its foundation, we have no right to obsess ourselves with mere regulations as a way of imprisoning ourselves from not speaking on matters that threaten to shake the very foundations of the very national interest we purport to serve and protect. However, our input should be that which shall encourage overall reasoning on matters, balanced input backed by evidence, done in the interest of survival of this perfect inheritance, Malawi.

We all know the problem: weak electoral system, not the people there. Political science suggests that “the rules governing an election can influence outcomes” (Cross & Blais, 2012, p. 60). How that we do not work to perfect such rules in the system is beyond me.

HOW THE DEMONSTRATIONS HAVE ACHIEVED THEIR PURPOSE

I have heard many who have argued that these demonstrations have so far failed to achieve their purpose. The argument these people advance is that, the demand (by the organisers of these demonstrations), namely to see Justice Dr Jane Ansah abdicate as Chair of the Malawi Electoral Commission, hasn’t been met. As far as I am concerned, these demonstrations managed to achieve some important purpose some weeks ago. In my opinion, our failure to realise this is now working against the very objective they purport to serve―fighting for the voiceless majority.

In what way(s) have the demonstrations failed to achieve the purpose?

First of all, it is important to remember that demonstrations work better when they “trigger exaggerated responses from government, thereby revealing its (government’s) true ‘repressive’ character” (Neumann & Smith, 2008, p. viii). In other words, demonstrations attract a lot of sympathy when the authorities respond with brute force, when those organising the demonstrations look victims at the hands of the authorities, especially the police.

Some analysts argue that, in fact, organisers target places where they are absolutely sure of harvesting maximum publicity, confrontation and violence. Ginsberg (2013) writes that one of the reasons Martin Luther King, Jr. had organised the April 1965 march at Selma in Alabama was to court maximum attention. In other words, Ginsberg argues that

Selma had been chosen not only because of its record of discrimination but also because Dr King was confident that state and county (local) political leaders (there) were fools. He expected them to respond to peaceful protests with violence and, in the process, imprint themselves upon the collective consciousness of a national television audience as the brutal oppressors of heroic and defenseless crusaders seeking freedom and democracy (p. 23).

In short, Dr King knew that authorities there were bound to use heavy handedness, a situation that was going to provide the protesters with wide public sympathy. True to Dr King’s wishes, Alabama state troopers attacked the protesters, leaving forty demonstrators seriously injured, forcing the media to dub it ‘Bloody Sunday’ (p. 23).

For the same explanation, some scholarship has argued that what organisers of ‘peaceful demonstration’ hope for as they organise the ‘peaceful demonstrations’, is, in fact, the violence itself. Milligan (2013) gives the example of satyagraha (literally meaning firmness in the commitment to truth or passive resistance) or simply the non-violent movement spiritual protest organised by Mahatma Gandhi in India during the latter days for the country’s struggle for independence.

Milligan writes that Gandhi had made attempts to secure a formal separation between official participants in the protests and the larger undisciplined crowds who supported them. However, Milligan cites critics who argue that despite this attempt to explain the difference between the official participants wedded to peaceful marching and the isolated undisciplined elements within it, “the formal separation did not alter the fact that there were scuffles, low-level violence and sometimes not-so-low-level violence wherever he went” (p. 11). According to Milligan, such critics take the position that the violence was “the price of popular mobilisation” (p. 11). However, this works where such violence is met with exaggerated response by those in authorities. Has this been the case in the current demonstrations?

Well, at first the authorities came in with threats, largely verbal. But so far, their handling of the protests has been civil and measured. The demonstrators have been to every place, among which Parliament, and State House, where presence would anger the authorities for maximum force. Perhaps the authorities know any heavy handedness would play the trigger in this powder keg of tension for more violence and more demands, thereby submitting to the desire of those organising the demonstrations. Eventually, among victims have been police officers themselves, two of them killed though we know two civilians have also died, one while in the hands of the police, and the other, a child, perhaps through inhalation of toxic vapour from teargas at a hospital in Blantyre.

It is becoming difficult to judge who exactly is the victim of whatever is happening, the common man and woman, the police or the organisers of the demonstrations themselves? In an atmosphere where one can hardly point the outright victim, change of strategy is necessary. Moreover, demands following these demonstrations are taking ethnic dimensions, something that blurs the whole purpose of these demonstrations in the first place. In this way, one would argue, these demonstrations have failed to trigger the exaggerated response from the authorities. This could make more sense when one considers the fact that in the history of Malawi, the police have never been so mild in their response to violent demonstrations. I know there are people who have accused the police of not handling the situation better. Such people forget that these demonstrations have been the worst in the history of Malawi yet police response to them has been so measured. On July 2011, twenty demonstrators lost their lives at the hands of the police. And years ago, towards change to multiparty democracy in 1992, “at least 38 people were shot dead by the police (in this country)” (Muluzi, Juwayeyi, Makhambera, & Phiri, 1999, p. 140). If we consider facts with such evidence, we can appreciate the difference.

My urge to the police is that they should, as much as possible, avoid this exaggerated response because when government uses a calm response to violence, sympathy finds for government (Neumann & Smith, 2008, p. i). This happens when government uses a calm approach, emphasising the importance of the rule of law (p. viii).

At the same time, my urge to those organising the demonstrations is that the cause is now becoming a confrontation between regions and ethnic groups. This is a dangerous development, one that requires a rethinking of the strategies. In short, there is no better time for talk than this.

In what way(s) have the demonstrations achieved the purpose?

These demonstrations have managed to bring to the surface long-time problems in our democracy. In other words, they have managed to set the agenda though the organisers have failed to make use of this when they declined to engage themselves constructively in dialogue at the right time. Second, the demonstrations have managed to create apprehension in the people, but again, the organisers have refused to read that creation of anxiety requires that you must not push it too far and too long lest the people should get weary of violence and begin to shun the cause.

First, let us consider what the purpose of a civil disobedience is. I will start by defining it.

Civil disobedience is defined as “the conscious (deliberate, calculated) violation of a law or custom of society by a group or individual in order to achieve some good or eliminate some evil within society” (Kepferle, 1980, p. 3). Two issues are worth mentioning here, namely that normally the act of disobedience runs on the principle of non-violence, and that “self-interest is not the primary motive for disobeying the law” (p. 4).

As far as I am concerned, the on-going demonstrations in the country are taking the civil disobedience route mainly for taking the demonstrations route while the matter is in court. Their argument is that their demand to see Justice Dr Jane Ansah go is a different issue to what is before the Constitutional Court. They argue that the demonstrations are about seeing Justice Dr Jane Ansah go because she presided over elections fraught with irregularities, while the Court is working to determine whether the poll was irregular or to determine the extent to which it was irregular and therefore deem it invalid and thus order a rerun.

All these aside, these demonstrations have managed to set the agenda. So, what or which agenda? Well, without the organisers knowing it, they have managed to point us to the problem that has dogged our democracy since its inception in 1993. To make sense of this, I should discuss three models of democracy: the minimalist (electoral) model, the midrange (proceduralist) model, and the maximalist (substantialist) model.

According to Merkel (2018), those countries in the minimalist model, also known as electoral model, define their democracy by whether they conduct free, equal, and secret elections. In other words, for these countries, once you hold free, equal, and secret elections, you are done, you have achieved democracy.

In this model, voters are compared to buyers at a market place where politicians (sellers of political merchandise) sell their goods (policies) promoted through manifestos. The market place is the poll where the people make decision whether to elect or reelect a representative based on their performance or their manifestos. In this model, although “human rights and or the rule of law are important preconditions for democracy, they do not see them as necessarily inherent elements. The monitoring of government by civil society, let alone direct democratic intervention by the people, is considered incompatible with rationalist realistic democratic theory” (p. 4). In this model, the CSOs are present but they are just a category of players since the king in this model is the voter himself or herself. This is the type of democracy we have pursued ever since we adopted multiparty democracy, where nothing else really mattered as long as we held the elections. In fact, we are still on this stage, are we not?

The second model, the midrange model or the proceduralist model, is an advanced stage of the minimalist model. According to Merkel (2018), democracy should not be restricted to free, general, equal, and fair elections; there also must be the rule of law and horizontal (not merely vertical which is offered by the voters) checks and balances. In other words, vertical checks and balance, that is checks and balance by the people at elections, isn’t enough. There must be parallel or horizontal checks and balances by the civil society. No elections will be described as democratic unless they are “embedded in guaranteed human, fundamental, and civil rights, the democratically legitimated genesis of norms binding on the whole of society, and the interlocking of and mutual constraints on the executive, legislature, and judiciary make formally democratic elections also effectively democratic (Merkel, 2018, p. 4, citing Beetham, 1994, p. 30). Simply put, the midrange model is characterised by a vibrant civil society, genuine respect for rule of law, well informed (general) public, critical public debates, open structures for transparency, accountability, and government response. Do we have these structures in Malawi? Put differently, does Malawi practise the midrange model?

Well, in theory, yes; in practice, no. In practice, we are still bogged down in the minimalist model. The civil society organisations and these demonstrations are asking for this model (the midrange model) when all along we have been practising the minimalist model. Can this change overnight? No, not at all. We need to put in place a system to hold this in place. We must change our electoral laws, for example, by adopting the second round model also known as the 50 + 1 model, find ways to make our systems more open, for instance, by making the Access to Information Law a general instrument to guide the way we conduct our affairs, etc. Thus, the first step is to put in place a system to uphold the midrange model of democracy, otherwise, even if the Constitutional Court orders a rerun, we would still struggle as we would still witness the same problems, something that will make it difficult to come out.

The Human Rights Defenders Coalition have managed to point us to a need for structures to support the midrange model although they are failing to find the best approach to address it. They believe that once Justice Dr Jane Ansah goes, things will align themselves and the country shall, from then on, begin to practise the midrange model. This is why I always argue that the problem is beyond Justice Dr Jane Ansah.

Well, the last model, the maximalist (substantialist) model, is beyond Malawi and even most developed countries since this model includes the output dimension as systemic performance. Simply put, it is like a different type of democracy altogether as it contains all issues described in the midrange model but adds a component that ensures that a nation is strong in the following area: “placing collective goods such as internal and external security, economic well-being, welfare-state guarantees, and fairness—however defined—in the distribution of basic goods, income, social security, and life chances” (p. 5). In short, it focuses on “avoiding extreme inequalities in the distribution of income, primary goods, and life chances, for only social democracy safeguards the principle of political equality” (p. 5).

Issues in the maximalist model are issues our economists talk about, but honestly speaking, they talk about them without understanding what they imply and whether they are attainable in a nation that is still fighting to assume a better posture in the minimalist model.

Think this way, Malawi is currently struggling to adopt the midrange model yet no one is ready to make proposals for us to take this direction. Everyone thinks this change will come once Justice Dr Jane Ansah leaves the scene or once the Constitutional Court orders a rerun. I am not surprised; we like this. When we were moving from the one-party system to multiparty democracy, those we had entrusted the job with, got obsessed with doing away with the one party system, and they ended up disregarding what measures we had to put in place to ensure we were growing from the minimalist democratic model to the midrange model. The window of opportunity we have today is this realisation that what we have been doing so far has failed to fling us onto this second stage. Unfortunately, instead of seizing on this opportunity, we are adamant on demands that take us back to the minimalist model―we are dancing about a point.

Many a time I have pointed out that the Public Affairs Committee ought to rethink its approach to issues by understanding what it is that we need to emphasise at this hour in our democracy. This is what I mean: they must study the requirements for a midrange model, and what it is that we should collectively do to attain it.

The window of opportunity the impasse has provided us with

First, let me discuss how the organisers of the demonstrations have managed to push matters, a situation that has led to this ‘window of opportunity’. It is important for me to discuss this since they have used creation of apprehension to achieve it. I know you’re surprised.

By apprehension here I mean anxiety, “a description of a particular kind of extreme fear” (Neumann & Smith, 2008, p. 2). Thus, I use this term to refer to “the deliberate creation of a sense of fear, usually by the use or threat or use of symbolic acts of physical violence, to influence the political behaviour of a given target group” (p. 8).

During the fight for independence, our parents had used the same tactic when they triggered the asking of a question on the part of the target group (colonialists): ‘is it worth paying the price to maintain the present situation?’. Neumann and Smith say colonial governments reexamined their stand, asking whether it was worth it holding on to their prized colonial assets when maintenance would be too high.

Thus, by creating terror in the mind of the colonial master, our parents forced him to give up his determination to hold on to such colonial assets as the Nyasaland Protectorate. We used the same approach when fighting the one-party regime in the early 1990s.

Like it or not, what the organisers of the demonstrations have done so far has, to some extent, managed to create some apprehension in most of us. For example, for the first time, President Arthur Peter Mutharika used law to order the country’s Defence Force and the Police to counter the demonstrations at airports and borders. From his tone, he was decisive; he had felt threatened. In some way, Government has also used the same tactic, creating apprehension in people to buy sympathy. For example, a few days ago, government held a press conference where they argued the opposition are pursuing a plot to assassinate the ruling party leadership. I personally do not think there could be any truths in these except as a means to create fear in sympathisers and thus buy their support. But such things are unnecessary because the social media foot soldier can interpret it in his own manner and arrive at funny answers himself or herself. At the same time, those on the other side should avoid creating scenarios with the purpose to buy sympathy or put government in bad light. Let honesty drive our cause, government, the opposition, and the civil society.

Demonstrations and Democracy

Before I discuss this section, let me say something about what the American President Donald Trump had said about how China should handle the question of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

According to ‘The end of Hong Kong as we know it’ (from National Review) posted August 15, 2019, 11: 09 PM available at www.yahoo.com/news, protests in Hong Kong started in June this year, and the trigger was the extradition bill Carrie Lam (the city’s Beijing-backed chief executive) had proposed that many feared would enable the Hong Kong authority to turn over to China anyone the Chinese Government would deem ‘criminal’ including human rights activists and political dissidents. The Bill has since been withdrawn although the protesters are now giving five demands, not one less.

According to the BBC (see ‘Hong Kong protests: Trump urges Xi to meet demonstrators’ dated 15 August, 2019, available at www.bbc.com/news), the Chinese Ambassador has since warned that Hong Kong was at a ‘critical moment’ and that the Chinese Government would intervene if events deteriorated further. This is beside what the Hong Kong leader herself has warned, namely that the city could be ‘pushed into an abyss.’ The article says that President Trump has however urged the Chinese leader, Mr Xi Jinping, to meet the protesters. Earlier Mr Trump had tweeted that he does not doubt that President Xi “wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem.”

Why does America take this stance on protests? Two reasons I suppose. First, despite all the contradictions and pain protests bring to democracy, the truth of the matter is that protests are like water to a river―take it out of the equation, the whole concept (of democracy) tumbles. In their book Beyond Control (foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu himself), Redekop and Paré (2010), demonstrate how protests have come to resemble democracy itself, arguing that, since the 1960s, protest crowds have been significant agents of social change in modern times. The two authors cite a number of examples, including how protests helped to persuade Richard Nixon to pull the United States out of Viet Nam, and how they help put environmental concerns on the political agenda. They add that protests were instrumental in bringing down communist regimes (through what is described as the ‘velvet’ or ‘silent revolutions’ in 1989 and 1990), and in turning back corrupted elections in Serbia in 2000, Georgia during the Rose Revolution, and in Ukraine during the 2004 Orange Revolution.

The second reason could perhaps be because the birth of America itself (and of course many other nations on earth) was through an act of protest. According to Redekop and Paré (2010), when crowds gathered in Boston in 1774 to protest taxation of tea (after Britain had reduced import tax on tea which meant loss to businesses to American tea traders) and emptied a ship’s cargo of tea into the harbour, the American Revolution was born. This Revolution was to end in independence of Thirteen Colonies from Britain and in the formation of the United States of America.

Recently, the demonstrators in Malawi vowed to shut down the country’s twin airports and borders. The High Court came to Government side, ‘banning’ the demonstrations in these places. Undeterred, the organisers announced another bout of demonstrations in the country’s main cities. Again, the Government had been rescued by the intervention of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal which had since ordered a moratorium of 14 days within which demonstrations should not be held. The Court hoped that within those days all the sides would meet to work out a commitment or modality that would ensure peaceful protests. It didn’t work until the Blantyre protests which saw a prominent member of the SCO, Billy Mayaya injured. Lately, the Supreme Court has demonstrated that peaceful demonstrations are part and parcel of democracy. People considered it a landmark ruling when it is all clear no nation that practises some form of democracy on earth can ban demonstrations. Of course, if demonstrations are getting out of hand, the Courts have a duty to protect public interest by guiding how they should be conducted within the ravine of peace.

As I write this, we have lost a police officer at the hands of rogues in the Central Region of the country who were against the President using the road, “because he is not a legitimate President”. Currently investigations are ongoing. I would thus not say much on it. Important however has been the call for cessation and for dialogue by one of the organisers of these demonstrations, Timothy Mtambo of the Human Rights Defenders Coalition. Many people have dismissed the call as too little too late. But Malawians must remember this, despite all the pain this has caused us all, we must never dismiss gestures that point towards peace.

Why should we all embrace peace? Well, no one will ever come to tell us to stop demonstrations. We have ourselves to reason amongst ourselves why this should be the time to rethink our strategies and demand constructive dialogue.

The Courts have demonstrated that they can never ban demonstrations. The President has demonstrated that he can never ban the demonstrations though he has requested them to rethink their positions. The police have handled the violence component of the demonstrations with a largely measured response. The people have demonstrated that they are not happy with the violence component in the demonstration. Mediators have tried to bring parties together for a lasting solution to the problem. We have lost a police officer, in fact, two police officers so far, and two civilians―a baby and a protestor. Should not this be time to de-escalate?

Pressure on authorities works to bring both the government and its people, including organisers of demonstrations, to the negotiating table. There must be a point where we all would say let’s sit down and talk. Let us not forget that there always comes a time when people yearn peace, peace at whatever cost. It is important to give the people peace at this critical moment. Besides, when people begin to challenge one another in language of discrimination along ethnic lines, wisdom must force us to talk and remind them that what builds us is far bigger than what divides us.

WHY DIALOGUE SHOULD BE THE WAY NOW

The most important reason we need dialogue today is that an impasse left for too long degenerates into strife or violence. Whoever we are and wherever we are, we must be concerned about violence. Joseph L. Soeters (2005) gives three reasons why violence should be a matter of concern to the world.

According to Soeters, “the first reason to be concerned about violence is its ubiquity. It takes place close to home, much closer than we tend to think at first hand” (p. 2). In other words, wherever violence happens, it always affects us. Even violence outside our country still affects us somehow. It is like an outbreak of a disease; it is never far from me or home. I must therefore take precaution.

I do not know how much tax money we have lost to maintaining order during demonstrations, money which should have served some more immediate needs in our already resource-restrained setting.

The second reason why we should be concerned about violence is that violence is not a passing phenomenon. Think like this: once violence begins in a country, it creates more violence. Initial violence is like a fissure through which more ‘violences’ flow out to cause chaos. In his words, Soeters observes that “conflicts follow one after the other, wave after wave” (p. 2). He gives the examples of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and how that was followed by conflicts in neighbouring countries such as Burundi and the Congo. He adds that “the problems in Somalia were only just abating when the Sudan was moving towards an expanding war” (p. 2).

Soeters had made the observation in 2005. If he were making it today, he would find it necessary to note that the violence which started in Tunisia in December 2010 “with the self-immolation of a jobless student, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire after police tried to seize the vegetable cart that he was using to make a living” (Milligan, 2013, p. 4) has seen a number of countries turn to the state of nature, numerous lives perish and millions and millions of people left destitute. I am not sure how much pride the people who had set it all a-motion feel about their role in it all.

In Southern Africa, especially in South Africa, new and radical voices are coming out in deafening quantities, agitating for reclaiming of their economic freedom. To allow what happened in North Africa to spread in Southern Africa can set in motion a terrible form of fire. Malawi is generally known for her peace, almost an example of how a people should live. If this example can explode, what will prevent others already living on the edge of tension from going the same way? Our leaders in this country have a duty to ensure we do not slip into lawlessness.

Mozambique is holding her elections next week. News coming from there is not particularly encouraging. Let us hope GOD will guide them and bring them out without issues.

Finally, Soeters observes that violence should scare us all because “it cannot be accepted morally” (p. 2). What he wants to suggest by this is that violence causes extensive human and property damage, and whatever justification those behind it might wish to advance, the collateral damage is morally unacceptable. Whatever justification one may have, it fails to justify such acts as undressing a female police officer in public, looting private businesses, setting alight private and public property, injuring of demonstrators, killing each other, you name it.

RECOMMENDATIONS

First, let us tame both our words and our anger. Tension, like a powder keg, requires that we must avoid words that can incite, as “words have the power to hurt, even to denigrate and oppress others and work as a spark to destruction” (Achebe, 2012, p. 63). On this, I would advise that spokespersons for political parties should be people who measure their language before execution. Careless talk costs lives. We do not want this treasure of a nation to go down in flames because someone fails to censure his or her language.

Second, let us, with speed, identify matters which concern us and bring them to the negotiating table. Let us also draw parameters of these concerns: do we address matters regarding these elections and forget previous recommendations? Should we discuss issues right from the days of Independence or even before that?

At the same time, let us go there with a heart to meet mid-way. In negotiations people do have positions, but honesty requires that we must be prepared to give in so as to reach a compromise. In this regard, I wish to agree with those who have proposed a national peace conference on the need to address policy and legal areas that have given us a headache over the years.

Nothing can work in dialogue when those entrusted with it lack that earnest talking heart. For the reason, let us desist from creating false alarms of coups and assassinations, or blaming each other on staged acts. Such attempts to buy sympathy and make the other side look more devilish will only lead to an atmosphere of distrust. We do not need that.

At the same time, let us hear more of sermons of peace from our political leaders from both sides of the divide. Followers ought to be told in no ambiguous terms that there’s no border in Blantyre or Lilongwe or Mzuzu, and so any Malawian can be anywhere at any time in his or her country. My home district is the wonderful city of Zomba, but I have no business marking boundaries therein, refusing others from enjoying Zomba, a city that belongs to all Malawians. In fact, it was this very belief that allowed our forefathers, forget Kuntumanji’s position on the issue, to see the city go to a strategically central position―Lilongwe. We of Zomba expect brothers and sisters of Lilongwe to learn to respect this great gesture.

When people who live together begin to remind each other where they come from, or which ethnic group they belong to, we must never keep quiet and believe that things will reverse themselves. At that point, we must rise above all prejudice and tell in no unambiguous terms we can do better.

This is important: tell your people what they should do on the day the Constitutional Court makes their determination. Remind them that decisions do go the other way, but what matters it to remember that we have a bigger inheritance to look after. Remind them that there will be another election in five years’ time, but that there won’t be another Malawi outside the Malawi we have today. Remind them that after the Court determination our job to build this national Inheritance should continue with an even higher measure of vigour. Remind them that whoever shall form Government, it shall be our duty as Malawians to offer our support to build this great national Inheritance.

Finally, unless people who matter in this society take real interest in addressing this impasse, we should brace ourselves for some real shocking moments. It seems we are fast letting go of that which had been holding us together all this while. Malawi needs a national conference to discuss matters with an open mind, to dig out the core of our problems and seek answers for a better nation.

The many social and political commentators who openly take sides on many an issue ought to be reminded that we have a job to build here, and that the last thing we need is a language that can scupper this great process of peace and dialogue. It should be made clear to them that, should they in their stoking, and GOD forbid, plant chaos, we shall demand a clear explanation from them in a formal setting of justice.

Finally I could suggest that we involve such people as Father Andrea Riccardi in our dialogue. I do not think he can turn down that request. I know this man loves Malawi. In 2008 or 2009, he launched a book in Malawi―Living Together. It was published in London yet Father Riccardi decided to launch it here in Malawi, which, to many of us, was a privilege as well as a surprise.

Father Andrea Riccardi, Professor of Contemporary History at La Terza University in Rome is the founder of St Egidio (which he founded in 1968) and he and Matteo Zuppi (through the community of St Egidio) were the mediators for the end of the 1975-1992 war in Mozambique, an internecine war that claimed one million lives. He was also mediator for peace in Guatemala, and the Ivory Coast. He also created the DREAM Programme, an important facility in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the Southern Hemisphere. We have one in Blantyre as I speak. From 2011, he even served as Minister in the Administration of Prime Minister Mario Monti in Italy.

In Living Together, Father Riccardi asks whether, despite our differences, we can live together, connected by a greater good. For him the answer is yes but only through our pursuit of peace. Using history, he warns against a belief that a people can live in peace only when they are equal in all areas of life because even a people with similar beliefs or ideologies do turn one on the other. He seems to suggest that, whatever it is, we are one people, one big race of GOD, and we must fight one for the other, kind of my brother’s keeper. His writings, which I would encourage all to read, imply that it is a fallacy believing that we can be on our best when our ethnic group lives as one group.

This is the man I would encourage our elders to contact to help us see sense in the power of unity.

Lastly, lastly, let us remember we have an assignment regarding the many Malawians who suffered both for independence and for our democracy. Let us never shut ourselves from their deafening cries. A nation can never move forward if it refuses to heal. Healing begins with addressing our past failures as a nation. This does not entail blaming one another; it entails closure and some compensation so that those who suffered, or those who saw their relations suffer and perish, finally realise the world is a better place after all.

CONCLUSION

In the words of Bishop Mtumbuka again: what we see today is a culmination of years of frustrations with a system that has failed to make all Malawians feel at home in their own country. It is thus dangerous to begin to fight individuals rather than demand that certain systems be transformed to suit our democratic desires in line with the liberal constitutional democracy we adopted. We can win this battle, but it won’t come through violence and bloodshed or realignment along ethnic lines. Let the damage we have caused ourselves be the last. Let now be the time to embark on a quest for peace as a people determined to improve themselves. Let us heal.

Thank you GOD for creating Malawi, this Home and Inheritance.

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