What’s missing in Malawian political cartoons

Political cartoonist Hazwel Kunyenje draws, on average, 15 cartoons per week. Depending on the level of detail, creating a cartoon might take him from 15 minutes to four hours. Photo by Elena Sosa Lerín.

By Elena Sosa Lerín

Hazwel Kunyenje is a political cartoonist who has spent more than 15 years illustrating articles, editorials and short stories for one of the country’s largest media houses, Blantyre Newspapers Limited.

Of affable allure and with a serene expression, Kunyenje remembers drawing on any piece of paper or surface he could find as a child.

“Drawing was a necessity,” he says, “I just felt I had to do it and I knew I wasn’t bad at it.”

Although he studied painting at the University of Malawi, he is mostly a self-taught caricaturist, who has “picked [up] some tricks along the way.” He follows cartoonists at Newsweek and the Washington Post, and enjoys Dik Browne’s “Hägar the Horrible” because of its unclassifiable humour.

Political cartooning is relatively new in this country. Prior to the 1990s, the press was just an outlet for government propaganda, and cartoons were mere depictions of places or events, often published in lieu of photographs.

But between 1993 and 1994, the 33-year rule of President Hastings Banda came to an end and the press was liberated. Suddenly, there was a demand to graphically satirize the new political atmosphere and editors were hiring anyone who could caricature it.

Kunyenje started working as a cartoonist at New Voice, back then, a small, local newspaper in the northern city of Mzuzu - but he had larger aspirations.

In 1994, he mailed samples of his work to the editors of BNL, a move that has placed him on the national press scene for the past 17 years.

Political cartoonists in other countries (like Burkina Faso’s Damien Glez, Kenya-based Godfrey Mwampwemba, or Canada’s André Pijet) are usually accepted as serious commentators and analysts of political and social issues due to their satirical but critical look at local and world issues.

But unlike them, Kunyenje feels that cartoonists in Malawi are merely considered “people that can draw well.”

He believes that editors and readers overlook the impact of cartoons on democratization.

As a matter of fact, Kunyenje has limited control over the creation of his cartoons, as they regularly follow the vision of his editors. Most of the time, they are the ones who decide on the subject of a cartoon, and, even the jokes.

“Editors in Malawi don’t have a good idea of what a cartoon can do,” he explains.

At this point, Kunyenje’s stutter takes over his speech. He stops talking, reaches for his briefcase and pulls out a folder. He starts flicking through dozens of carefully catalogued cartoon clippings from different national and international newspapers and magazines he has collected throughout the years, and soon finds what he wats.

“This. This is what we don’t have in Malawi.” Kunyenje holds a small, aged clipping dated Feb. 16 1989. It shows a fat vulture wearing a headscarf, about to prey on an emaciated bear lying on the ground. It is the editorial take by world-renowned Israeli cartoonist, Ranan Lurie, on the end of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. 

“We aren’t this sophisticated,” emphasizes Kunyenje. He thinks Malawian cartoons lack the degree of visual metaphor and symbolism that other cartoonists bring to their work, in part due to editorial decisions, but also because cartoonists are still forging their identity in the newsroom.

Something that would contribute to the betterment of cartoonists in Malawi is criticism. But Kunyenje points out that he only gets positive feedback from the readers, who he says, “think cartoons are just something to laugh at.”

Yet there is always the occasional government official who threatens the papers with censorship, like the Minister of Information and Tourism, Patricia Kaliati, who in April 2006, considered cartoons from national newspapers The Daily Times and The Nation to be “disgracefully castigating the government.”

Although his editors deal directly with the censorship threats, he welcomes such comment on his cartoons - even if they’re negative - because such comments are an acknowledgement of the art of cartooning.

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Malawi abandons tobacco for crop diversification, food security

At a farm estate in Zomba District, Malawi, chickpeas now dry in the sun where previously space was only made for tobacco. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

This past season, Henry Tambula saw his farm narrowly avoid financial ruin.

“I’ve grown tobacco for 25 years,” he said on the property he manages in Zomba District, Malawi, “and what happened this year has never happened in Malawi – it has forced us not to grow tobacco this season so we have stopped. We will never go back to tobacco.” 

Strong words for a farm manager in a country that once relied on “green gold”, as is it commonly known in Malawi, for as much as 70 per cent of its exports and 15 per cent of its GDP. But Tambula is in good company for renouncing the crop.

For 2011, Malawi’s tobacco earnings are down 57 per cent from what they were the previous year. After five consecutive seasons of declining returns on tobacco, a combination of the global recession, oversaturated markets, and increasingly-popular anti-tobacco campaigns is forcing Malawian farmers to look to other crops.

According to Prince Kapondamgaga, executive director for the Farmers Union of Malawi, this is not bad news. “Diversification is long overdue,” he said.

A group of Canadians working in Malawi agrees.

Canadian Physicians for Aid Relief’s Putting Farmers First program has long supported food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. In an email sent from Toronto, Kevin O’Niell, a program officer with the group, wrote that CPAR builds on the strengths of small-scale farming communities by promoting conservation agriculture principles such as crop diversification. 

“Crop diversification is one of a series of sustainable farming techniques at the core of CPAR's approach that improve crop production and expand opportunities for farmers to lead competitive agricultural production efforts,” he explained. “By moving away from mono-cropping (planting only one staple crop such as maize), small-scale farmers lessen their dependency on the success of that crop.” 

What’s more, he continued, this strategy also helps to improve the nutritional content of household diets. As arable land previously used to grow maize and tobacco –the two most-common crops in Malawi– is cleared of those plants, more room is made available for healthier fruits and vegetables.

O’Niell maintained that for CPAR, these issues are very much a matter of human rights. 

“People's right to food is driven by the notion that food should be accessible to all (sustained year-round access to a stable supply of food), available to all (a sufficient supply), adequate for all (nutritionally adequate and from a sustainable food system), and acceptable to all (culturally appropriate and respectful of traditions),” he wrote.

“Our work with small-scale farmers is based around these principles.”

A success story posted on CPAR’s website highlights how crop diversification is a means to achieving those goals.

It recounts how Harold, the head of a family of 10 living in the Lilongwe District, learned to diversify his crops in order to bolster food security.

“This training was an eye opener to me,” Harold is quoted as saying. “Through this training we learned the importance of growing different crops like cassava, sweet potato, vegetables and others throughout the year rather than just relying on rain fed maize production.”

With climate change altering rainfall patters, such stories are increasingly important to sustainable agriculture, CPAR maintains.

“In the face of dwindling natural resources and an ever-increasing demand for food due to high populations, crop diversification remains key to achieving food security,” it states on its website.

Back in Zomba District, Tambula toured his farm and pointed out more than a dozen different fruits and vegetables for which his fields have been prepared. But he noted that the transition will not be so easy for others in Malawi.

A reliance on mono-cropping holds the most risk for small-holder farmers, which, in Malawi’s case, account for 80 per cent of agricultural production in the country.

The company that Tambula works for, Mulli Brothers Limited, is large enough to recoup the money it lost on tobacco last year. “But the poor people in the village, the farmers there who grew tobacco, they bought fertilizers and also employed people to help them. And they are not going to be able to recover their money,” Tambula said. “Those people are even worse off. It is terrible. A disaster.”

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Big aspirations, small budgets - and disenfranchised mental patients

                     A mental health patient undergoing a medical check-up. Epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia and                                           bipolar disorders are some of the top mental afflictions in Malawi. Photo by Blantyre News Limited. 

 By Elena Sosa Lerin and Lucas Bottoman

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health problems are already the fourth leading cause of the global health burden, representing a third of all years of healthy life lost to disability among adults.

By 2020, they will rank second, behind heart disease.

In Africa, regional WHO studies show that mental health issues such as epilepsy, depression, psychosis, mental retardation, substance abuse, and other psychotic disorders, are among the top ten causes of disability in the region.

But in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, where health policies and development goals are primarily centered on the prevention of HIV and AIDS, the reduction of maternal mortality, tuberculosis, and malaria, mental healthcare is - at best - an afterthought.

Case in point, the Ministry of Health has no solid data on the nature and the extent of those suffering mental illness.

Its National Mental Health Policy Plan admits that in the absence of research on mental health patients, it has had to rely on studies done in neighbouring countries.

Based on these studies, health officials estimate that at least 10 per cent of Malawi’s 15 million people are affected by a mental health problem, also meaning that mental health afflictions are as common as infectious diseases.

And yet, given these dire statistics, the Ministry of Health’s Strategic Plan for 2011-2016 recognizes that the government’s budget for the health sector is “inadequate.”

Health places third in budgetary allocation, (at 10.2 per cent) after education (13.7 per cent) and agriculture (18.9 per cent).

Less than two percent of the national health budget is spent on mental care.

In 2007 and 2009, respectively, Malawi signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care.

Among the guiding principles of this Convention are accessibility to facilities and services, the right to health, as well as habilitation and rehabilitation services and programs.

The Malawian Constitution addresses the right to development, declaring that the State commits itself to “take all necessary measures” to guarantee “access to basic resources, […and] health services.”

But with such a tight budget, intentions can only go so far.

Mental patients have to deal with public mental healthcare institutions that suffer chronic shortages of essential drugs, inadequate if not, deteriorating facilities, insufficient and overworked nurses and doctors, and no access to counseling.

For instance, the psychiatric section of the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), the largest hospital in the city of Blantyre, has been out of essential drugs, (like Chlorpromazine and Modecate, which are used in the treatment of conditions such as schizophrenia, psychoses and manic episodes) for over a year, while the one at the Bwaila Hospital in the capital, Lilongwe, has lacked medication for 10 months.

Based on hospital records, six out of 10 patients are relapsing due to the lack of drugs at QECH.

“There’s no hope for many patients,” says one of the psychiatric nurses from QECH. “It is a very sad situation to see – and we can’t do much about it.”

The little the nurses can do is to use substitute drugs if possible. But sometimes they have to turn patients away if there are not adequate drugs to treat their specific needs.

“We feel very sorry to tell the patients who have walked for many hours to get their medication that we don’t have any,” says another nurse from Bwaila Hospital.

As if the lack of essential drugs were not enough, there is also the issue of the scarcity of mental healthcare workers.

For instance, QECH has just one psychiatrist and 18 nurses to attend an average of 2700 patients a year. Bwaila Hospital does not even have a psychiatrist. It is entirely run by five nurses who attend about 200 patients every day.

Two years ago, Dr. Rob Stewart, the head of the psychiatric unit at QECH decided to shut down admissions of patients because the rooms lacked windows and toilets.

One of the nurses from QECH, when asked what improvements she’d like to see in the mental healthcare system, said having a computer would make a big difference, as patients’ records are still handwritten and usually get lost or mixed with other papers.

“The only piece of technology we have here is a telephone, “ she says. 

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South African indie makes waves

Gazelle's Xander Ferreira performs the band’s single "Chic Afrique" at Bushfire, Swaziland's annual international festival of arts. Photo by Sarah Berman.

South African indie music has rarely crossed the ocean to North America's mass markets, but the genre is developing, and the sound is big, bright and bold. 

Gazelle frontman Xander Ferreira says South African indie music is in a renaissance period: "We believe this is the future for African music, for people to gather a scene here first and then go and take over the world."

At the Bushfire festival held in Ezulwini, Swaziland, Journalists for Human Rights reporters Sarah Feldbloom and Sarah Berman explored this movement of new music. In this podcast produced by Sarah Feldbloom, you can hear what bands Gazelle, Hot Water and Tshe Tsha Boys have to say about what makes South African indie so hot right now.

Listen to the podcast: South African indie 

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God’s word in Malawi

By Nina Lex

In Malawi, God’s word is everywhere.

Minibuses have “Fear God” scrolled across their hoods, salons signs are painted with “God is Great Beauty Salon” and restaurants menus read “God’s Tasty Foods.”

And it doesn’t stop there.

Questions about your religious beliefs are common among co-workers and friends – even from strangers.

God is also the answer to all problems.  As my Canadian co-workers and I were told, “You aren’t married? Because you don’t go to church” and “You are unhappy? You need Jesus.”

With another four months ahead of me here in Malawi, I longed to be a part of a community – and attending the Catholic Church in my neighbourhood seemed like the perfect introduction.

It had been 15 years since I last attended a church service and, even then, I only went a handful of times with my German                                                                  Worshippers line-up outside St. Montfort’s Parish in Blantyre                                                                                                to attend Sunday morning service. Photo by Nina Lex. 

grandmother. I dreaded those early Sunday mornings full of endless preaching that left me feeling little more than a cynical sinner.

I arrived half an hour early at St. Montfort’s Parish to attend the 8:30 a.m. English service.  A vast crowd had already formed outside the red brick archways. I held my breath and pictured myself going up in flames as I was shoved through the threshold of the church.

Inside, the church was simple: the walls were whitewashed and filled with wooden pews - a far cry from the over-embellished churches I had seen in Europe and Latin America.

The pews were packed and the aisles full. Smoke and incense filled the air and white and purple fabric was draped throughout the church celebrating September, which was declared by the Pope as "Bible month."

I shuffled around searching for a seat and found the last remaining spot, front row and centre, right beside a nun.

In Canadian churches, it always seems as though there is an abundance of free seats.  Here, even with five services on Sundays, the church is overflowing with worshippers. While 84 per cent of Canadians adhere to a religion, approximately 97 per cent of Malawians attend church or are religious.

As is the case in many other African countries, Malawians have a profound and perpetual belief in God.

Christianity is the main religion in Malawi, with 60 per cent of Christians being Protestant and 15 per cent Catholic. Other sects include Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Anglicans, Church of Central African Presbyterians and Jehovah’s Witnesses, which was outlawed by President Banda and made legal again in 1995.

The second most prominent religion in Malawi is Islam, with 15-20 per cent of the population being Muslims.

Indigenous beliefs and religions make up about 5 per cent of the population.

David Livingstone first introduced Christianity to Malawi at the end of 1800 during the British colonialism. The religion spread quickly across the country, and until 2001, Bible study was an essential subject in Malawian secondary schools.  However, Christianity in Malawi doesn’t follow strict Western practice, as many Malawians practice Christianity alongside traditional African rituals.

This quickly became evident as the church service got underway.

“Satanism and witchcraft is everywhere,” warned the priest. “Witchcraft is in our country, communities, schools and families.  Even if you don’t believe, it’s there.  Jesus even had to face Satan. “ He then proceeded to explain the three stages of evil- 333, 666 and 999,

“The only way to combat evil is through the word of God,” he explained.

Although Malawi is deeply religious, you don’t have to go far to hear criticism of the country’s God-fearing ways.

One person I met blamed religion for making Malawians lazy, “because they believe God would solve their problems and the people will not help themselves.”

And many human rights organizations blame strong religious influence for Malawi’s strong anti-gay stance.

The United Nation recently produced its first brochure highlighting its position on sexual orientation and gender identity human rights, in response some African countries, including Malawi, led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) are fighting to define human rights regarding religion to exclude homosexuality.

However, the Zambian priest presiding over this church service preached about acceptance between Christians and non-believers. This church was also the “House of Everyone” regardless of their race or nationality, he announced as he glanced at me, one of the only “mzungu” – or white person – in the congregation.

Between hymns and much to the delight of the worshippers, the priest told jokes, referring to “the constipation and gas of religion”.

When the service ended, I left the church not converted, but with a smile on my face – and feeling a little more Malawian.

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Malawi’s economic crunch hits the media hard

Employees of The Daily Times and other BP&P papers have been laid off as Malawi faces economic difficulties. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

“Dear brethren,” Leonard Chikadya, managing director of Blantyre Printing and Publishing, began the conclusion of a speech to staff on Aug. 30.

 “With a lot of pain in my heart, I have swallowed my pride and, reluctantly, decided that I am going to reduce our head count. I am going to reduce the number of colleagues that we have by 44.”

 Speaking for the leadership of the largest publishing house in Malawi, Chikadya’s words soon reverberated throughout the media environment of the entire country.

 And they were not the only ones.

On the same day, the state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation announced that a significant round of layoffs would hit its ranks too. The following morning, just 418 remained of the 700 employees who comprised MBC the day before. 

In a packed cafeteria at BP&P’s head office in Blantyre, Chikadya showed remorse for the situation. 

“I have called this meeting because this problem affects all of us,” he said to some 150 of the company’s 260 staff. “We were all witness to what happened on the 20 of July…but what happened on the 20 of July was just a symptom of the problems we are facing.”

The date Chikadya referenced was initially reserved for peaceful demonstrations aimed at government inaction on foreign reserve shortages and fuel scarcity. But the people’s anger boiled over and by nightfall, riots met with police brutality left 19 dead and scores more injured. 

And so, yesterday, BP&P’s editors, reporters, salespeople, and everybody else that a publishing house requires to function, were told that financial hardships matched by the government’s mismanagement of the economy had reached their doorstep.

“We are all aware of the acute shortage of forex,” Chikadya explained, referring to the country’s dwindling foreign currency reserves. Requests for loans from Malawi’s cash-strapped banks had been denied and negotiations with BP&P’s paper supplier had hit a wall. If action was not taken, Chikadya continued, BP&P would no longer have the capacity to pay for the broadsheet on which it prints Malawi’s news.

Throughout the rest of the day, envelopes circulated as reporters manned their desks until the last of their stories were filed. Even those who knew they were on their way out remained loyal.

“Don’t show it to me,” one was heard as a letter was dropped on his desk. “I will file my article and be gone by the end of the day.”

The morning of Aug. 31, those who remained spoke with nervous optimism. “We live to fight another day,” one BP&P reporter said.

I’m sure the mood over in the newsroom at MBC was similar.

Malawi’s economy is struggling badly. On Aug. 31, two of the country’s biggest media houses felt the weight of these hard times. And 326 of their employees carried it home.

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Accidental recycling in Malawi

Blantyre craftsman and merchant Isaac Stone begins his work for the day by carving into a used tire. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Give Isaac Stone 500 kwacha, a tire, and two hours, and he’ll hand you back a pair of sandals.

At just 21, Stone has already been making footwear for nearly a decade. Born and raised in Blantyre, a city of some 732,000 people (2008), Stone didn’t always have to compete for kwacha in the market. He once went to school and had a mother and father who looked after him. But his mother passed away and his father disappeared. And so, when he was 12, Stone was forced to drop out of school and fend for himself.

Born street smart, he quickly realized that his best bet for survival was to learn a trade – to the carving knife it was.

I chatted with Stone as he made his day’s first pair of shoes.

His morning starts at 7, when he catches a minibus out to Limbe –a trade hub on the outskirts of Blantyre – where he can pick up a used car tire for 250 MWK (about $1.60 CAD).

Stone then travels back to central Blantyre where, from 9 to 5, he can be found working behind a makeshift wooden stall, cutting away at rubber.

”I like working with my hands,” he told me. “It brings me money for food. Just enough for a place to stay.”

Stone doesn’t know it, but his small sandal business is part of something very big: Malawi’s efforts to meet the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.

The MDGs can broadly be defined as a set of development goals aimed at significantly reducing poverty, hunger, and disease by 2015. Target seven reads: “integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.”

Stone explained that it had never occurred to him that what he was doing was a form of recycling – and more than that, I offered, he was saving the tires from the garbage fires that so often sour the city’s air.

”It’s a business,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I do it because I can make some money. But if it is good for the air, that is okay, too.”

Karen Price, a project manager for Malawi Environmental Endowment Trust, explains that in a country as poor as Malawi, while many possess an awareness of environmental issues, it is difficult to get communities thinking about garbage.

“I think there is general awareness of the environment, but when it comes to something like recycling, there is much more that could be done,” she said.

“It’s about the understanding of what waste is,” Price went on to explain. “There is not that added value of something as waste – that something can turn into waste or be recycled to become another product that can be reused.”

Stone and his tires are not the only accidental recycling operation running in Blantyre’s downtown market. In nearly every direction, people have repurposed and are reusing objects of every sort in countless imaginative ways.

And it’s a good thing, too, for Blantyre’s one-and-only garbage depot is filling up fast.

Down the hill from Stone, Grant Kenneth, another young entrepreneur, sits in the market with a small group of associates. Surrounding the men are mountains of empty plastic and glass bottles of every size, shape and colour.

”People bring them here,” Kenneth told me. “We pay three kwacha, five kwacha, 10 kwacha, and 15 kwacha, depending on the size.”

Kenneth or one of his colleagues will take the dirty bottles they receive, strip them of their labels, clean them, and sometimes refashion their shape to fit a specific purpose. And then they’ll resell the bottles at a slightly higher rate than the one for which they were purchased.

“It’s a job,” Kenneth said to me, echoing Stone’s remarks. “I guess it is good for the environment because otherwise, the people would be throwing it away. But it is just a job.”

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Canadian-African poets proclaim the power of spoken word in southern Africa

From the mainstage to the spoken-word tent at Swaziland's Bushfire festival, JHR reporters Sarah Berman and Sarah Feldbloom explore the power of poetry in southern Africa. Photo by Sarah Berman.

On the mainstage at the Bushfire Festival in Ezulwini, Swaziland, Canadian-African spoken-word artists D'bi Young and Croc E Moses take turns casting adjectives and adverbs into a dense crowd.

The poetry of southern Africa is a different beast than the one that lives in dark bars and sparse cafes in Canada - it garners an elevated level of respect. Though Young and Moses hail from Canada, they both chose Capetown, South Africa, as a place to conduct art-making for several reasons.

Young, a Jamaican-born, Toronto-based poet explains that Africa is the home of spoken word because of its oral storytelling traditions, what she calls "the genesis of life, which then spread throughout the rest of the world.”

Moses, originally from Yellowknife, suggests that it’s the paramount celebration of rhythm in African culture that makes spoken word so special here. He also says there is more “dream space” in this part of the world, built from the tradition of using creative forms to deal with issues.

And what are the issues most commonly faced in southern African countries today? It is too easy to name them: the HIV/AIDS epidemic, gender inequity, mass poverty, high levels of illiteracy and lack of political freedom for citizens, among others.

It is for this reason that Moses finds it hard to connect with the use of poetry as a mode for entertainment as it commonly is in the West.

“In southern Africa you get exposed to extremes,” he says. “There's a different level of consciousness.”

For Young there exists a noticeable divide between the culture of spoken word art in Africa and the West as well.

“You'll see that in North America because of the incredible commercializaion of art practice and art-making, there's another model [of expression],” she says.

Bushfire and other festivals in southern Africa create opportunities for performers to come together and discuss rights issues through art under the safeguard of an international public eye. Community-oriented initiatives like Bushfire serve, more than anything, as a platform to address social issues. This festival, in particular, holds the mandate to donate 100% of its proceeds to HIV positive orphans in Swaziland – the country with the highest HIV rate in the world.

From the main stage to the spoken word, tent poetry is playing a big role in raising consciousness.

“To me poetry is about clarity,” says Moses. “The more clarity we have about ourselves as individuals the more understanding we can have for others – that's what's shared a lot among people here, and that's how change can happen slowly but surely.”

 

 

D'bi Young - Dub for Swazi People

Croc E Moses - Pace and the Pulse and the Peace

 

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Malawi’s Vice President speaks out about protests

By Katie Lin

Seated on the porch of her state residence in Blantyre, Malawi’s first female Vice President, Joyce  Banda, wraps a thick, white shawl around her shoulders and clasps her hands together, indicating that she’s ready to be interviewed.

There is a calmness about Mudi State Residence, with its towering trees and extensive gardens. In such a setting, it is difficult to imagine the starkly different atmosphere that engulfed Malawi’s commercial capital just one month ago.

On July 20, nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations against economic and administrative mismanagement took place, but it wasn’t long before these organized marches disintegrated into chaos and the country erupted into two days of rioting, widespread looting, and violent clashes between police and civilians.

The use of lethal force by police resulted in 19 deaths, dozens of injuries, and more than 500 arrests.

“Where Malawi is at [right now] is as a result of two or three years of frustration and pain            and trying to reason with government – and government refusing to listen” Banda says.

Vice President, Joyce Banda. Photo by Katie Lin. 

Long plagued by fuel, electricity, water, and foreign-exchange shortages, Malawians presented President Bingu wa Mutharika and his administration with a 20-point petition on the day of the demonstrations. A dialogue between civil society organizers and the government to discuss the petition is scheduled for Sept. 17.

While Banda hopes this dialogue will yield viable solutions, she explains that the root of these problems lies within the political agenda of the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP). 

“The President wants his brother to take over from him,” Banda explains of the cause for tensions within the DPP.  “And that’s where [the problems] start from.”

In December 2010, the Vice President was expelled from the DPP for her stance against this unconstitutional succession process – and her strained relationship with Mutharika, her honourary “father” and mentor, only appears to be worsening.

Just two days after the protests, Mutharika threatened to arrest numerous political and civil society leaders – including Banda and leader of the opposition, John Tembo – accusing them of organizing the July 20 demonstrations to topple his administration.

Despite having been openly critical of the President’s constitutional breaches, Banda insists she did not organize or participate in the demonstrations.

“I called upon those that were going to exercise that right to march to march peacefully and not to destroy property. I asked the police to protect lives on the road. I also asked the leadership of this country to discuss matters that affect Malawians and resolve any problems peacefully.”

For Banda, Mutharika’s accusations are unwarranted.

 “When I hear my name, top on the list of those who are wanted, to be persecuted or to be killed or to be smoked out ... I’m surprised,” she explains, “because I don’t know what crime I have committed.”

“But if the crime is that I stood by Malawians when they suffered, when they protested, when they were not happy, then I am ready to be persecuted.”

Most recently, the People’s Party (PP), a political party formed by Banda and her supporters, officially registered and claims to have already gathered more than 1 million members, further strengthening speculation she is a strong presidential candidate for the 2014 national elections.

“Joyce Banda is a shrewd politician, both in terms of organizing and in terms of making an appeal when she speaks,” says political analyst Blessings Chisinga. “So when you look at the potential contenders for the 2014 elections, she is clearly a frontrunner.”

He explains that the emerging PP may offer a fresh and credible alternative for Malawians in the 2014 elections, as disillusionment towards the DPP grows and opposition parties enter a state of flux.

“Malawians are fed up and are very keen to welcome a new brand of politics.”

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For Malawi NGOs, tough times only getting tougher

Longtime activist Emmie Chanika sits in front of her struggling NGO's new office. Like many groups in Malawi, financial constraints have pushed the group near to its breaking point. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Considering I was interviewing Emmie Chanika to learn about the financial hardships her NGO is experiencing, we couldn’t have met at a more appropriate time.

I found Chanika working in the rain outside of her old office in downtown Blantyre. The executive director for the Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) had already loaded a truck with office equipment and files and was making final preparations for a move to a –shall we say– cozier space.

Running behind schedule, I jumped into the truck with Chanika and a couple of her colleagues and proceeded with my interview on the bumpy ride out to CILIC’s new headquarters in Mbayani, a neighbourhood just outside of the city’s Central Business District.

“Oh, you’re Canadian,” Chanika said. “You know, it’s a Canadian that is giving us this space for our office.”

I hadn’t known that.

Upon being contacted, my fellow countryman declined to allow for his name to appear in the media. But he made clear he felt that CILIC is an organization worth supporting.

“It is led by a very dynamic person,” he explained. “Over the years, Emmie Chanika has fought for many causes and not restricted her work to one segment of society. Black or white, she has been helping out everybody. She has given a lot of personal sacrifice.”

Back in the pickup truck, Chanika lamented that her Canadian friend’s organization is one of the few supporters CILIC has left. In Malawi, times are tough for NGOs.

“As an activist, my wings have been clipped,” Chanika said. “Civil Liberties Committee has been undermined by donors, government, and civil society. And because of that, we haven’t had funding for almost two years, going into the third year.”

It’s like there is a perfect storm working against NGO funding in Malawi, she explained to me. There is unnecessary competition for funds among nonprofits working in the country. Malawi’s economy is in a tailspin and chronic fuel shortages have resulted in soaring commodity prices.

And President Bingu wa Mutharika’s increasingly-autocratic leadership style has sent international donors running. 

“Our organization’s funding problems began before Mutharika,” Chanika noted. “Our problems started with NGO-infighting and needless competition. And then Mutharika was able to come and take advantage of a situation already deteriorating.”

CILIC was formed in 1992, making it one of the oldest human rights organizations in the country. Not only was it was at the front of Malawi’s first marches for women’s rights in the late 1990s, but Chanika was also one of the founding members of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, an umbrella organization largely responsible for organizing the July 20, 2011 nationwide demonstrations against poor governance and economic mismanagement.

But today, CILIC is all but defunct, Chanika sighed. She and her employees still show up for work everyday, but increasingly, they are having to empty their own pockets to continue working.

“My husband, he asks, ‘Why don’t you just leave them?’” she recounted. “And I ask my husband, ‘What then would I do with my energies?’”

About the 2011 summer/fall jhr bloggers