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The Politics of Ethnicity in Malawi's Democratic Transition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Deborah Kaspin
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Extract

While the western media were directing their gaze towards South Africa's political restructuring, another democratic transition was taking place to the north that was no less remarkable and no more imaginable a few years ago. Since Malawi obtained independence in 1964, it had been governed by Dr Hastings Banda (as he was then known) and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) under a system of absolute rule which the country's élites refused to reform or relinquish. In March 1992 the Catholic bishops issued a formal protest against President H. Kamuzu Banda's political high-handedness, initiating a popular movement for democratic reform and anti-régime demonstrations by university students and staff, as well as factory workers.1 When additional pressure was exerted by the international community, holding foreign aid hostage to democratisation, the Government finally yielded, holding a referendum for multi-party democracy in June 1993 that led to presidential and parliamentary elections in May 1994. Banda and the MCP were ousted, Bakili Muluzi and the United Democratic Front (UDF) were elected, and Malawians of all parties revelled in the freedom to be openly, aggressively political.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 595 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 See Woods, Tony, ‘The High Cost of Obstinacy; Banda hangs on’, in Southern Africa Report (Toronto), 8, 2, 1992, pp. 17–21,Google Scholar and Newell, Jonathanu, ‘“A Moment of Truth?” The Church and Political Change in Malawi, 1992’in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 33, 2, 06 1995, pp. 243–62.Google Scholar

2 Some members of the intelligentsia seemed to believe that the political contest lay between the front-running opposition parties, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Alliance for Democracy (Aford). Many also assumed that Bakili Muluzi, a Muslim, could not win the Presidency in a predominantly Christian country, and that Chakufwa Chihana was likely to be elected, with the UDF claiming a parliamentary majority.

3 Nationally the vote tally was 47·16 per cent for Muluzi, 33:45 per cent for Banda, and, 18·00 per Cent for Chihana. Malawi Government Gazette (Zomba), 24 07 1994.Google Scholar

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11 Vail and White, loc. cit.

12 Although the Ngoni, who came as immigrants from South Africa in the nineteenth century, were also highly visible during the colonial era, their language was displaced by Chichewa and Chitumbuka in the regions where they settled.

13 Rotberg, Robert I., The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: the making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873–1964 (Cambridge, MA, 1971).Google Scholar

14 Ibid. pp. 317–21.

15 Africa Watch, Where Silence Rules: the suppression of dissent in Malawi (New York and Washington, DC, 1990), pp. 11 and 34.Google Scholar

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17 According to the Malawi Population Census 1966, Nyanja was then the first language of over of the population and understood by more than three fourths. Although such figure would justify using Nyanja as an official language, they had been inflated according to Vail and White, loc. cit. pp. 180 and 191 fn. 157, in order to support a language policy that had already been determined by the Banda élite. As no other language survey has been conducted since 1966, there is no way to test the veracity of either the Malawi census or Vali and White's counter-claim.Google Scholar

18 The stereotypic contrast between the Chewa (here Mang'anja) and the Yao is revealed in the following excerpt from This Africa Was Mine (Stirling, 1952)Google Scholar by Langworthy, Emily Booth, voted by Shepperson, George and Price, Thomas, Independant African: John Chilembwe and the origins, setting and significance of the Nyasaland native rising of 1915 (Edinburg, 1958), p. 49: ‘John was typically Yao, intelligent and quick in his though processes; his face and eyes were alert. He moved with assurance and decision. David was just as typically Mang'anja as Johm was Yao. He was big, kindly chap, gentle in manner and with a slow-moving mind…but once he knew a thing, he knew it. He made me think of a good-natured Newfoundland dog, he was so big and clumsy, but althogether lovable and trustworth’.Google Scholar

19 See Richards, Geraint, From Vision to Reality: the story of Malawi's new capital (Johannesburg, 1974).Google Scholar

20 These objectives were described in Nysaland Government Development Plan, 1962/65 (Zomba, 1962),Google ScholarA statement of Development Policies, 1971–80 (Zomba, 1971),Google Scholar and A Foreword to development Policies, 1971–82 (Zomba, 1971).Google Scholar

21 Mkandawire, Richard M., ‘Markets, Peasants and Agrarian Change in Post-Independence Malawi’, Bunda College of Agriculture, Lilongwe, n.d.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Ibid.

23 Thomas, Simon, ‘Economic Development in Malawi Since Independence’, in Journal of Southern African Studies (Oxfords), 2, 1, 1975, p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Mkandawire, Richard M., ‘Agrarian Change and Rural Development Strategy in Malawi: a case study of the Chewa peasantry in the Lilongwe rural development project’, ph.D. dissertation, University of east Anglia, Norwich, 1984,Google Scholar is much more critical than Acharya, S. N., ‘Perspectives and Problems in Developmetn in sub-Saharan Africa’, in World Development, 9, 2, 1981, pp. 109– 47, of the World Bank view that the Liongwe project was an economic sucess.Google Scholar

25 Kydd and Christiansen, loc. cit., claim that the real return for labour among cash-cropping peasants actually declined under Malawi's rural development projects, owing to the constraints they faced in marketing their crops. Thus they were required to sell to Admarc, which fixed the purchase price and resold at auctions with as high a profit as possible. This parastatal in turn reinvested most of its assets into estate farming and large commercial enterprises, so that the profits of peasant production were actually subsidising Malawi's financial élites.

26 According to Mkandawire, ‘Agrarian Change and Rural Development Strategy in Malawi’, financial aid was only offered to farmers deemed ‘credit-worthy’, thereby favouring Chewa chiefs and headmen who already had good garden land and other sources of cash income.I was able to confirm this during my own research in the Lilongwe project area in the 1980s.Google Scholar

27 Vail and White, loc. cit. p. 183.

28 Personal Communications: Msukwa, L., 1983, and Kashindo, P., 1994.Google Scholar

29 Anderson, op. cit. p. 86.

30 Williams, loc. cit. See also, Foster, Robert, ‘Making National Cultures in the Global Ecumene’, in Annual Review of Anthrepology, 20, 1991, pp. 235–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Africa Watch op. cit. pp. 58–9.

32 Fields, Karen, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa (Princeton, 1985).Google Scholar

33 Vail, Leroy and White, Landeg, Power and the Ptaise Poem: Southern African voice in history (Charlottesville and London, 1991), pp. 279–318.Google Scholar

34 Courtney Jung and lan Shapiro, ‘South Africa's Negotiated Transition: democracy and opposition in comparative perspective’, Institution for social and policy Stidies, Working Paper No.1052, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, July 1994.

35 The data on which the following discussion is based come from several sources. Language and ethnic distribution is based on Tew op. cit. 1950 and the Malawi Population Census 1966, as well as information offered by Malawian social scientists about the ethnic composition of theri own districts. Voting data from the referendum and the elections come from the International Observers Briefing Manual for the Malawi Parlimentary and Presidential Elections 05 17, 1994 (Lilongwe, 1994)Google Scholar and the Malawi Government Gazette, 24 June 1994. These data were cross- tabulated with population data from the Malawi Population and Housing Census 1987 (Zomba, 1987).Google Scholar

36 Aford won Nkhata Bay with 85 per cent of the vote, while the UDF came second with 8 per cent, slightly ahead of the MCP which had 6 per cent.

37 The MCP won Nkhotakota with 47 per cent of the cote because the opposition split into two smaller segments giving the UDF 38 per cent and Aford 15 per cent. It was a different scenario in Salima in the center, where the MCP also secured 47 per cent of the vote, but was edged out by the UDP with 48 per cent, while aford trailed in third with 4 per cent.

38 The seven opposition parties were the Alliance for Democracy (Aford), the United Democratic Front (UDF), the Malawi Democratic Party (MDP), the United Front for Multiparty Democracy (UFMD), the Congress for the Second Republic (CSR), the Malawi Democratic Union (MDU), and the Malawi National Democratic Party (MNDP). Of these only Aford and the UDF won parliamentary seats.

39 The centre gave 64 per cent of its vote to Banda, representing 75 per cent of his support in all three regions. The north gave 88 per cent of its vote to Chihana, representing 72 per cent of his support in all three regions. And the south gave 78 per cent of its vote to Muluzi, representing 76 per cent of his support in all three regions.

40 Rates of voter turnout were calculated as a percentage of population, using the Malawi Population and Housing Census 1987, noting also that population levels age 15 years and over were fairly uniform across all districts and regions.

41 For example, Chihana came second in Kasungu district, where the Tumbuka are in a minority, and where he got 19 per cent of the vote, while Banda came second in Salima district, where there is a sizeable Chewa minority, and where he got 47 per cent of the vote.

42 The one anomaly was Nsanje district in the extreme south with a Sena majority: although 81 per cent supported the opposition in the 1993 referendum, consistent with the tendency for non-Chewa to oppose Banda and the MCP, 53 per cent supported the MCP in the 1994 elections.Google Scholar

43 Reactive ethnicity is evident not only in districts that opposition candidates won, but also in districts with large non-Chewa constituencies where they came in second. For example, Nkhotakota district in the central region has a large Tonga population, who divided their vote between the UDF (38 per cent) and Aford (15 per cent), allowing the MCP to win (with only 47 per cent). Dedza district, also in the centre, has a large Ngoni minority, and voted 26 per cent for the UDF.

44 Mwanza, Chiradzulu, Thyolo, Mulanje, and Chikwawa districts in the southern region have populations of Nyanja, Lomwe, Mang'anja, and Sena: levels of voter turnout were from 8 to 11 per cent below the national average. Similarly, Ntcheu district in the central region has a majority Ngoni population, and had the second lowest rate of voter turnout in the country at 10 per cent below the national average.

45 I raise this point in response to an argument heard in Malawi that the cohesion of the north is ‘ethnic’ in so far as it is broadly Tumbuka, a function of its use as the lingua franca of the region that subsumes all the other languages spoken there. While it may be true that Tumbuka has widespread usage in the north as a language of commerce, to assert that this is the basis of widespread ethnic identity forces a redefinition of ethnicity to fit the northern case. If we accept it, then we are forced to ask why the south, whose lingua franca is Chewa, did not vote for the re-election of their Chewa President.

46 The Transition Council voted to disband the MYP in September 1993, and when the MCP failed to do so, the army intervened the following December and January This included shelling and burning MYP barracks, even the MCP headquarters in Lilongwe, as well as pursuing and disarming MYP members in ‘Operation Bwezani’. These actions were reported in several newspapers, including the Malawi Daily Times which is owned by the MCP and downplayed the events, and the Malawi Moniter which is pro-opposition and reported every encounter and rumour thereof among the MYP, the Malawi army and police, and the Resistência Nacional Mocambicana (Renamo).

47 Reported in Financial Times: Southern Africa Business Intelligence (London), 30 06 1995,Google Scholar and The Daily Telegraph (London), 30 08 1995.Google Scholar