From the man who promised Malawi free shoes

IN HIS first campaign to become president in the early 1990s, Malawi’s Bakili Muluzi offered his countrymen free shoes in return for votes.

A few weeks ago, Muluzi, with 10 years as president of the country behind him, made another flamboyant gesture in a bid to be re-elected next year, after an absence of one term. At the congress of his United Democratic Front (UDF) party, held three weeks ago to choose a presidential candidate, he promised free fertiliser to all Malawians.


Now that might not sound outrageous at first glance. But the politics of fertiliser is no small matter in Malawi.


The government, headed by Bingu wa Mutharika, has already dug deep to provide heavily subsidised fertiliser to about a million small farmers over the past two years. The programme cost about $51m last year and another $78m is budgeted for this year, which the government needs to fund out of its own revenues due to donor disapproval of the scheme.


Since the government put the subsidy in place, world fertiliser prices have risen sharply, increasing by a huge 200% last year. So the fertiliser subsidy is quickly becoming a prohibitive undertaking for a poor country such as Malawi.


Muluzi won his party’s presidential nomination and savvy Malawians are hoping that in the unlikely event that he wins the election, Muluzi will forget he ever made that promise.


A local businessman who attended the UDF congress told me that he was unimpressed with the offer. “In simple terms, Muluzi has promised us the collapse of the economy,” he said.


Of course this negative view of his “generous” offer is unlikely to deter Muluzi, who, in his two terms as president between 1994 and 2004, managed to wreck the country’s economy.


What is surprising is that Muluzi still commands political support, given the mess he left Malawi in.


But there is a chance he may be prevented from standing.

First, he is under investigation by the Anticorruption Bureau for allegedly diverting $11m of donor money into personal accounts while he was president.


Second, the constitution, which only allows the same person to run for two consecutive terms, could be altered to remove the word “consecutive”, an issue being bandied about in the local newspapers.


No one I spoke to during a week in the country believed Muluzi would win. But stranger things have happened in African elections.


Mutharika, who won the presidency with just 36% of the votes in 2004, has increased his popularity in urban areas through successful economic reforms over the past few years, and in the rural areas through the agricultural subsidies.


He is expected to win a second term based on the economy, but his popularity may be tempered by the problematic political situation he ushered in by leaving the UDF, on whose ticket he won the presidency, less than a year into his first term and forming his own new party.


For the three years since then, the country’s legislative process has been held hostage to floor-crossing shenanigans.


The president suspended parliamentary proceedings in September last year as a result of the floor-crossing frenzy. It was reconvened seven months later, and immediately boycotted by the two main opposition parties. This political paralysis does not bode well for Mutharika’s second-term aspirations.


My taxi driver in Blantyre was sanguine about Malawi’s politics. “This is Africa”, he sighed by way of a reply to my barrage of questions about the free shoes, the free fertiliser, Muluzi’s support from the very people he had robbed and impoverished, and so on.


And the shoes? His party supporters had not forgotten his rash — and empty — promise of a decade ago. They checked back with him at the April congress. He is reported to have replied, “I didn’t know your sizes.”