Mini-bus non campaign

The minibus non-campaign

The word has been out since Bingu wa Mutharika’s first term that his brother, Peter, would be dauphin or the next in line for the presidency. The rumours were driven by his unelected very senior appointment as advisor to the President during the first term and since this second term it has been an open debate within the party and outside. One local artist had his song banned from the public airwaves for denouncing the phenomenon. Every week another district governor of the DPP declares his or her support for Peter as candidate. Just this past week the papers tried to whip up a story by getting quotes from some of the people in the civil society organisations who denounced this tendency and how it by-passes the normal handover to the Vice-President who is a woman.

Tuesday night there were vehicles driving up and down the M1 highway in front of Makupo with loud speakers blaring something out in ChiChewa that I didn’t get. Wednesday morning I wanted to go by the schools at Chilanga to see how the Bishop’s students were doing and I found all the school closed and a couple of large tents mounted on the primary school football pitch where a large crowd had been assembled. I was told that the President’s brother was there to hand over a mini-bus to the school for the blind. The headmaster of the primary school came to offer me a chair under one of the large canopies, but I was wearing my bush shorts and vest and wasn’t prepared to be seated amongst people dressed in their Sunday finest. I excused myself and ran back to Makupo to change into my suit and came back in the vain hope of saying hello, no matter how briefly to Peter.

We had worked quite closely with Peter when we were all members of the Malawi Action Committee from 1992 to 1995. Nellie and he were on the executive and communicated frequently and met periodically during that time. We felt quite comfortable with his integrity and enthusiasm. He was a professor of law at Washington University in St-Louis, Missouri and like ourselves paid the price of transport and inconvenience to get to meetings in Toronto, Washington, Buffalo and elsewhere because we were committed to bringing down the abusive dictatorship of Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

There before me was a scene reminiscent of the days of the Malawi Congress Party. Crowds of women wrapped in DPP cloth with Bingu’s picture in a very prominent position were seated before the dais. They periodically got up to sing or dance. Men were scattered about with DPP shirts. The blind school children and the staff of all the Chilanga schools were under a neighbouring canopy and sang as requested. Security was tight. Regular police men and women organised the crowds. Outside the perimeter were the Police Mobile Force like our tactical squad and scattered in and amongst the officials were the omnipresent plain-clothes types who never smile and are always watching the crowd. Like me they were the only ones not to close their eyes during the prayer.

Peter was sitting enthroned in the central and highest position with a scattering of Ministers around and beside him. Ken Kandodo our MP and the Minister of Finance was nearby as well as the Minister of Disabilities and Women, and a couple of other Ministers, deputy ministers, senior chiefs and senior officials sat at ground level beside the stage. The business of governing had ground to a halt with so many senior people assembled to attend a minibus handover.

Their relative significance in the hierarchy was determined by the quality of the chairs with sofas and easy chairs for the biggest poohbahs and the regular issue garden chair for the ordinary officials. The green and white plastic garden chairs had been imported from the Kasungu Teachers Training College for the occasion. I managed to score one of these.

Because Chilanga is church land, there was also a gaggle of reverends and church officials on the other side of the stage. I saw the reverend Nehemiah Kanzathu amongst them and in a small break, I went over to greet him and was immediately offered a chair with the church elders that was much closer to the dais. Kanzathu had been the minister of the Chilanga church over the course of last year and had been a breathe of fresh air since he had a solid activist approach. He left before the end of last year to take up a church position which will challenge him much more.

The focus of attention was the fine, brand new Toyota mini-bus which was much needed for the Blind School students. In addition, on a table nearby were 2 brand new computers, 2 magnificent laser printers, a pile of paper, bundles of salt and sugar. All these were gifts donated by a parastatal organisation, the Malawi Communications Regulator Agency (MACRA) with the assent of the Minster responsible for the treasury. The reverend Kanzathu had been one of the most activist church ministers I had met in Malawi and was responsible for the request and the lobbying that had resulted in the arrival of the van. All the gifts were much needed but the whoopla around the presentation was not about the needs of the school. They were most certainly mentioned in a couple of speeches, but the real purpose for the MP from Neno far way in the Lower Shire of the Southern Region to appear at Chilanga in the northern part of the Central Region was to cement his admiration for Kamuzu Banda and seal the support of the old die-hard Banda supporters in the heartland and home of Kamuzu in the campaign to become the next president.

Speech after speech lauded his qualities. What the politicians couldn’t say publicly about his candidacy, was given voice by the party praise singers, the party ‘youths’ seated on the ground in front of the dais who often interjected to state very openly their support for Peter as president as did the women’s league dancers and singers. When Peter finally spoke he was the only one that did not have to open by reciting the list of honourable dignitaries and he declared that he was not campaigning, because that would only start in 2013 the year before the election. 2014 was a constant reference in all the speeches – very clearly the party plans its strategy long in advance.

Several things are worrisome with this phenomenon. From dictatorship to democracy to monarchy seems to be the trend. It was hard work after 30 years of totalitarian dictatorship to move to a democratic arrangement. That was subverted by the venality, greed and corruption of the UDF that contaminated political life and spread like a cancer throughout society. The arrival of Bingu was greeted by many with apprehension because of the way he was parachuted in over the heads of many others by his predecessor and patron Bakili Muluzi. He campaigned against the corruption of the Muluzi regime, but despite this negative connection, his first term won him wide support from all layers of society and from all ends of the country. The DPP swept the election last year and seemed to have released us from the blight of regionalism. The move to crown Peter as Bingu’s successor has disappointed many who read it as another subversion of democracy.

In order to garner favour in Kamuzu’s home base amongst the Chewa people of the northern part of the Central Region, the DPP began to rehabilitate Kamuzu’s image. A tall plinth was erected in his honour and a huge tomb placed in a very prominent place in the new capital of Lilongwe. After the first democracy vote, his name had been removed from many public buildings but was returned during Bingu’s first term. The atrocities and injustices of the dictatorship were lifted from his shoulders and ascribed to the people around him. This served 2 purposes. It demonized John Tembo the leader of Kamuzu’s old Malawi Congress Party and allowed the DPP to coopt Kamuzu and the respect Malawians have for the elders in favour of the DPP. The strategy worked as the DPP swept the MCP out of the whole Kasungu region where they held sway even after the fall of the Banda government.

The van was a donation from a parastatal and it should be normal that where these produce a profit, they be plowed back into the common wealth. However, the DPPs instant wealth since its creation during the first term some 6 years ago has been a source of great mystery. Fleets of fancy party buses, hummers and more lately a state jet for the president have all come too easily and can only be considered a diversion of government funds to maintain a ruling group in power. In addition, it is a perversion of the principle of separation of state and party. We saw the blurring of the lines under the Chretien government in Canada when state funds were used for purely patronage purposes. The MBC still gives little or no air time to the opposition parties and plays the same old praise singer to the ruling clique.

I am also disappointed with the phenomenon of the intellectual whose training should be to serve the interest of the greater good. Here is a man for whom the rigour and training of the law, indeed as a professor imparting respect and ethical conduct to his students should be setting the impeccable example of sacrifice and integrity. To aspire to replace his brother as president in a such a crass and venal way. All the skills acquired in his years of exile are being used to consolidate power around a ruling clique which is out of touch with the needs of the people, which calls on the ghosts of one of the most evil dictators to validate its existence, and thwarts the goals of democracy by subverting the chances of any real change and shutting out of power the possibility of younger dynamic and more representative leadership is indeed reprehensible. It is not just lawyers, but doctors and university professors who accept the dictates of the powerfulrather than standing up for the needs of the weak and powerless. They could use their voices and skills for good but instead defend dictators and corruption. The real battle against corruption has not really been fought in Malawi. This is not particular to Africa. Micheal Ignatieff the noted Harvard prof strongly defended America’s policy of imperialism, returned to Canada and tried to end run his way to power through the text book rather than by a life time of representing the interests of the Canadian people.

As a footnote to the van presentation, non-campaign, I spoke with numerous Malawians who had been in attendance and checked out his claim that he was not campaigning. They clearly stated that it was a campaign even though not all of them were critical of it. One however reflected that Malawians were much smarter voters than the politicians gave them credit for. He used the example of how the MCP had trotted the teetering elderly Kamuzu all over the country in their campaign to outflank the multiparty elections in 1994. They came out in great numbers and sang the songs that the party liked to hear, then went into the polling booths and threw the MCP into the dustbin of history. According to my friend, the election in 2014 that was so much anticipated by the leaders and their coteries would come as shock when they discovered that people were no longer willing to take the abuse.