A new 'Ngwazi' in the making in Malawi

Last week I talked about how the Malawians chaffed under late dictator Mzee Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda. As biology was slowly but surely claiming the 'Ngwazi', Life President of Malawi , the country was being ruled by a cabal comprising of his chick, Cecilia Amanda Kadzimira and her much-reviled uncle John Tembo. Ngwazi is Kingoni for 'warrior'.

Born in 1932, Tembo went to university in Lesotho and worked as a schoolmaster before being appointed to Banda's cabinet as Finance Secretary in 1963, an appointment which was unpopular with other cabinet members for it smacked of blatant nepotism.

In his early years, Tembo played a sycophantic role in Parliament, using his position primarily to acquire a personal fortune. By 1990, he was a director in practically every business sector that dealt with government, including Malawi's main bank.

John Tembo who was Banda's hatchet man came to be seen as his natural successor, and in January 1992 he finally became, in name, the Minister of State in the Office of the President. In effect, John Tembo was appointed the executive president of Malawi .

The long suffering Malawians let out a loud grumble and, reading the times, the Catholic bishops of Malawi wrote a protesting letter which documented in graphic detail the failings and abuses of power of the Banda administration. The letter was read aloud in every Catholic church in Malawi .

Banda's response to the letter was to place the bishops under house arrest. For that move, the ageing 'Ngwazi' was condemned by governments and churches worldwide. Within Malawi , for the first time since independence, there was a climate of open dissent. May 1992 saw Malawi gripped with strikes and protests, culminating in the Lilongwe Riot of May 7, in which 40 people were gunned down by the police.

In October 1992, Orton Chirwa, the founder of MCP and a leading member of the short-lived independence cabinet, was murdered in Zomba prison , reportedly at Mzee's orders, where he was being held since 1981.

Banda's unpopularity left him with little option but to announce a referendum on the question of multi-party election. There arose two new parties: AFORD, and the UDF that challenged Banda's MCP.

The Malawians gave the MCP the boot in favour of UDF led by Bakili Muluzi, a businessman. Muluzi became the de facto owner of party. John Tembo became owner of what remained of MCP and AFORD was led by the late Chakufwa Chihana.

Bakili Muluzi soon found out that two five-year terms in the presidency were too short a time. So he became victim of the power disease which afflicts most African presidents. He wanted to change the constitution which will allow him stand for a third term. The Malawians gave him an overwhelming NO. He was left licking his wounds.

But Muluzi was not finished yet. He decided that he could rule Malawi by proxy. He picked a bright economist within his party, Dr Bingu wa Mutharika, and made him the UDF president while Muluzi remained chairman.

He taught Mutharika what and what not to say, making sure that he (Muluzi) edited his speeches. Muluzi even wrote Mutharika's acceptance speech as the next president of Malawi .

But Mutharika had other ideas. He crafted his own speech and departed from the puppeteering by Mr Muluzi. Once installed as president, Dr Bingu wa Mutharika publicly said he was no one's puppet. He also established a new party, the Democratic Progressive Party, which now rules.

Malawians have also hastily decided to wipe out last vestiges of Banda's legacy. They have removed his portrait from the Malawi Kwacha in favour of John Chilembwe, a 19th century Malawi nationalist.

Now over the past fortnight or so, Malawians have been zapped by what they claim to be delusions of grandeur by their president. He let it slip into the Malawi public that he won't mind being given the title of 'Ngwazi'.

The first 'Ngwazi' was Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Now there is a Ngwazi Dr Bingu wa Mutharika. Presently, there is a spirited debate on whether Mutharika should wear such a title. Some hope that he does not add the title of 'life president' in the future as the late Mzee Banda did.

Malawi: Mobile company flies high

Malawi`s top mobile company TNM has listed on the stock exchange market weeks after the public sale of its shares priced at K2.00 Initial Public Offer (IPO). During the listing the price of the shares rose by 75 percent to K3.50 thereby leading the market as the most sought after.

In all, 34,000 people bought the shares and the company raised K2.4billion through the trading. On the first day of the stock market trading 146 million shares changed hands that made the company the most attractive now on the stock market. Few weeks ago the Initial Public Offer of 1.29 billion shares was over subscribed with 305 percent.

Stock Exchange Operations Director John Kamanga said TNM shares gained a total of 362.84 points from 5, 958.88 adding up to 6,323.71 points. He said TNM’s presence has consequently increased the number of counters (companies) on the local bourse to 15.

MSE board chairman Khrishna Savjan praised TNM for listing on the stock market saying the development meant Malawi’s capital market has come of age and that people are taking interest to save money through the purchasing of shares. With 34,000 shareholders, TNM has surpassed other top companies including NBS bank with 11,000 and Malawi Property Investment Company (MPICO) at 13, 000.

Service enhancement

TNM executive board member Pius Mulipa said the sale has been successful, as it has enabled the company to go closer to its public. He said the K2.4 billion would enable them enhance their services and most probably hasten the upgrading process of their machines.

“We are now a public company and there are so many rules of running a public company particularly with the demands from our share holders as well as customers. More importantly the listing has empowered us to upgrade our system even faster,” he said.

TNM ‘s lead advisor on Stock Exchange Rob Stangroom from Securities Africa described the share-pricing rise as a result of growth of the confidence people have in TNM shares. “I was the first person to establish stock market in the country in 1996; we started with small number of companies now we have 15.

“The listing of TNM is special because of the observed scramble for the shares. It is evident that people have confidence in the TNM shares but above that, the presence of many counters on the market means investors now have a choice where to go,” he said.

Simon Msefula MSE Chief Executive said TNM’s listing was historical going by the record of being over subscribed to the tune of 305 percent. He said: “There is every indication that the TNM prices gain more points and go up.”

Madonna's Adoption Plans In Tatters

Madonna's plans to adopt another child are in tatters because she is getting divorced.

The "4 Minutes" singer - who announced her split from director Guy Ritchie last month - has been in negotiations with officials in Malawi for two years to care for three-year-old Mercy James but has now reportedly been told she will not be allowed to adopt the girl because they do not approve of children being placed with single or recently divorced parents.

Penston Kilembe, Malawi's director of Child Welfare Services, told Grazia magazine: "One fundamental condition in scrutinizing adoptions is the connectedness of a family. We can't approve a child to go into a broken family because the divorce could be the result of the behavior of the party trying to adopt."

"Madonna should forget this one."

Madonna - who adopted another Malawian tot, David Banda, now three, in 2005 - became aware of Mercy's plight when she met her at an orphanage in 2006.

The child's family have been opposed to her adoption, insisting they want her back "when she is no longer a baby."

European film festival opens in Malawi

The European Union in partnership with the German and Irish Embassies, the French Cultural Centre, Germany’s Goethe Institute and the British Council have organised a European Film Festival to be showcased in all three regions of the country.

According to British Council Communications Officer Vera Ng’oma, the organisers have lined up a number of foreign films from the scope of human experiences and current global trends.

"The films this year will explore what impact the current global trends like migration and global terrorism have on people," she said.

Some of the films to be showcased include Jasmin from the United Kingdom (UK), Warchild from Germany, Kicks from Holland, Un franco pesetas from Spain, Tasuma from Burkina Faso, 2 days in Paris from France and Once from the Ireland.

She said the festival will also showcase the latest Malawi films like Seasons of Life and Mama’s Restaurant.

Malawi Muslims planning to establish university

Muslims in Malawi are planning to establish a first-ever Islamic University to promote modern education among the country’s Muslims, who make up 20 percent of the 12 million population, APA learnt here Tuesday.

Confirming to APA during an interview, Chairperson of the Organising Committee of the Muslim University, Sheikh Aman Matiya, said all the necessary arrangements for the establishment of the university are at an advanced stage

\"We are planning to start the foundation work of the infrastructure early next year and we hope that the school shall be finished in December and open for the selection and University entrance in 2010.

He said the school shall accommodate both local and international Muslim and non-Muslim students since it would be the first Muslim University in Southern Africa.

He added that the Muslim University would seek to provide Islamic education to anyone interested it and welcomes students with an interest in Islam from among the largely non-Muslim community of Malawi.

Currently, Malawi has three universities run by religious groups: The US group-run African Bible College, the Livingstonia University owned by Church of Central Africa Presbyterian and the Catholic University.

Rethinking AIDS in Africa: Why prevention is now more important than ever

Prevention is a word that draws considerable controversy among AIDS experts. Billions of dollars have been poured into treatment programs and vaccine research, but prevention strategies – things like condoms, education, and clean needle exchanges – rarely receive comparable attention. Prevention does not require vast research capabilities. Its success is not dependent on feats of technical ingenuity such as refrigeration in remote, off-grid villages. But in Africa, prevention has nonetheless baffled the medical establishment. Meanwhile, the most recent in a long string of research disappointments have caused scientists to forecast a long wait for a vaccine breakthrough. In its absence, it is increasingly apparent that prevention will have to be at the forefront of any HIV/AIDS response.

The year 2003 saw the beginning of a new wave of political and financial capital invested in AIDS treatment across Africa, as the United Nations and the international community called the epidemic a global health emergency. While the number of Africans receiving life-extending antiretroviral therapy increased significantly, studies show that the disease is spreading as quickly as ever, with new HIV infections outpacing the numbers of patients going on treatment. Hence the inconvenient paradox of AIDS treatment. As epidemiologist and AIDS expert Elizabeth Pisani puts it, “The more effective our prevention programs are, the less treatment we need. But the more effective our treatment programs are, the longer people live with their infections, the healthier and more sexually active they are, the more prevention we will need.”

But prevention is not popular. For one thing, unlike treatment programs that yield tangible results, the fruits of prevention efforts are notoriously difficult to qualify. For another, while promises of treatment provoke surges of optimism and general good feeling, doling out condoms and clean needles does little to help politicians win votes.

It is also clear that those prevention programs that have been deployed in Africa have largely failed. Many argue that it all comes down to an issue of funding: which programs receive funding and how much. In 2003, President Bush announced an unprecedented financial commitment – $15 billion over a five-year period – to fighting HIV/AIDS. While the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has dramatically increased the number of people receiving antiretroviral treatment, its record on stemming the tide of new infections has been questionable. Critics have said PEPFAR’s promise has been undermined by its morally-driven standards for funding. In order for an organization to receive prevention funding, it must sign an agreement saying it will not work with sex workers or provide clean exchange programs. Over PEPFAR’s first four years, a third of its prevention funds were channeled into abstinence-until-marriage programs.

But while PEPFAR may be the starkest illustration of a moral agenda edging its way into public health policy, the prevention efforts of the broader international community are similarly shaped by a chorus of concerns that can essentially be distilled to a single question: to whom do we want to give our money? It’s far easier to convince donors to fund programs for vulnerable women and children than for the fringe groups who are highest at risk – sex workers, drug users, and men who have sex with men. Not only are these groups at higher risk of infection, they are in turn at higher risk for infecting other parts of the general population.

In the movement to tie HIV/AIDS funding to broader development issues, policymakers have sometimes lost sight of what HIV is first and foremost: an infectious disease. There are many reasons – and mostly good ones – why AIDS has been framed as a development issue. For one thing, in countries where HIV runs rampant – countries like Swaziland, for instance, where almost 40 percent of adults are infected – the country’s work force is decimated, precisely among the demographic at the height of its productivity. Staggering death rates leave children orphaned and families strained. They divert huge portions of government funds to healthcare. The United Nations agricultural agency estimates that in the 25 most-affected African countries, AIDS has killed seven million agricultural workers since 1985 and could kill as many as 16 million more within the next 20 years.

While HIV/AIDS is an epidemic of complex social dimensions, the response of the international health establishment has been criticized for being both too broad and too narrow. Too broad because the refrain “AIDS is a development problem” allows the disease to get lost amidst a flurry of programs on gender, human rights, poverty, and agriculture – all issues that reckon with huge swaths of the fabric of society. The HIV/AIDS response has also been called too narrow because it fails to contextualize the epidemic within the larger crisis of healthcare. Some point to the many cheaply preventable and treatable diseases that together incur far greater death tolls in developing countries than AIDS. The larger healthcare system suffers, they say, because of the exceptionalism with which AIDS is treated, an exceptionalism that is not justified by the cost effectiveness of its interventions.

Speaking in Zambia in 2006, UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot stressed the social aspects of the epidemic. “It is patently clear that we need to make real headway against the fundamental drivers of this epidemic, especially gender inequality, stigma and discrimination, deprivation and the failure to protect and realize human rights. This challenge is perhaps the greatest of all those facing the AIDS response. And there can never be a technological fix for these social issues. We need positive social change – and all of us in the AIDS effort must be willing to back this. I am increasingly convinced that just expanding programs, doing more, even much more, is not going to stop this epidemic. To reach universal access to HIV prevention and treatment care and support, we need to pay attention to the drivers.” Few would argue that issues such as gender inequality and poverty have largely shaped the particularities of AIDS in Africa. But there is a cost of focusing on the social dimensions of AIDS to the exclusion of its immediate health implications.

“I think there are a lot of misconceptions about AIDS in Africa – including misconceptions among the agencies of the United Nations,” says Susan Watkins, a research scientist and sociologist who has long studied the response to AIDS in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Too often, she told MediaGlobal, “depictions of gender and HIV in international and national policy documents do not reflect the reality on the ground.”

Watkins, whose latest work is a long-term study on HIV prevention in rural Malawi that questions much of the conventional wisdom on gender and AIDS, cited a Johns Hopkins project in rural Malawi that aimed to give women a safe space to talk about AIDS. She noted, “Our data show that women have lots of safe spaces to talk about AIDS – the borehole getting water, walking together to cut wood. It’s simply not a problem.”

A great deal of Watkins’ anecdotal material comes from extensive records kept by Malawian participants over a number of years. Watkins calls them “conversation diaries” and says the only instructions given were to record from memory any conversation witnessed about HIV/AIDS. The logic is that, in conventional studies, informants often give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear, which may differ greatly from how they talk about AIDS in everyday life. In one diary, a woman called A. recorded the conversations of an informal women’s group to which she belonged. The group of neighbors gathered weekly to discuss everything from parenting and divorce to ways of supporting themselves to local gossip. In one entry, A. recounts the history of Mrs. M., who was twice divorced and is now single. Like many women, she sells firewood to make a living, but with the recent rises in the price of food, she is now finding it difficult to sustain herself and her children. The group offers advice – one says it is better to try a new business than to fail in the old one, but another woman warns that, unlike selling firewood, other businesses require capital to start. The conversation then turns to the issue of sleeping with men for monetary or material gain:

These days are very dangerous. They are not the days which one can depend on having a sexual partner because of the AIDS disease. You cannot sleep with a man for several times before you get infected with AIDS… It is better to stay [as we are] though we are poor than buying death. Miss J. said that it is better to die of hunger than to die of AIDS. If it is hunger, maybe you can die all of you, but if it is AIDS, you die alone and leave your children suffering.

But Mrs. T. said that things are just happening. It is better to get married and be faithful in your marriage. [But] there are some people who were born sexy – those people who cannot stay without men. It does not mean that they have partners because they need them to help them. What they want is sex. Therefore if the marriage is not found, let us use the condoms for the protection. But we should not take sex as our business because of hunger, we shall put ourselves in trouble. But Mrs. M. said that she heard from her religion at the Roman Catholic that condoms are forbidden to the Christians. They encourage people to be having sex with those who are not their spouses, which is committing adultery. What we should just stop having sex with outside marriages.

What becomes clear from this and the many other conversations recounted is that women in rural Malawi know very well that they can protect themselves from AIDS by using condoms. They talk openly about sex within and outside of marriage. And perhaps most significantly, they also cannot talk long without coming back to AIDS; it is the persistent refrain in the conversation, the point that must always be taken into account.

It’s difficult to come to any quantitative conclusions about the efficacy of women’s empowerment trainings in terms of HIV, mostly because there is very little data. The vast majority of these programs do not test for HIV. A few have tested for indicators of safe sexual practices such as sexually transmitted disease rates, but those that did have largely found that sexually transmitted diseases either stayed constant or increased. Putting aside all undertones of cultural hegemony inherent in outsiders coming to “empower” women – sometimes in as quickly as a few days – or the unaddressed question of the men who are presumably doing the disempowering, these programs do not seem to be listening to whether or not they are succeeding. In a sort of dual blindness, or perhaps hubris, not only are these programs conceptualized by people other than those impacted, but they are not attuned to their own implementation. Catherine Campbell, who has studied prevention strategies in South Africa, notes, “HIV prevention strategies are informed by the assumptions of Western science and policy, with insufficient assessment of whether these are appropriate for local conditions. Proposals for projects funded by overseas bodies may be written by external consultants and presented to local groups for implementation. Local people may therefore have little sense of ‘ownership’ of the proposals.”

In many ways, it’s the archetypal tale of modern times. Western interventions fail to accommodate the nuances and complexities of local topographies. Too often, they rely on outdated conceptions and over-simplified conclusions. Out-of-place values get in the way of real solutions.

Thailand has been hailed as a rare success story among developing nations attempting to curb their HIV/AIDS epidemics. A large part of its success had to do with the groups to which Thai funding and programming were aimed: drug users, sex workers, and the men who visited sex workers – all the demographics, in other words, that are not in vogue with UNAIDS. But Thailand differed from most African countries in a crucial way: it had the resources and governmental infrastructure to tackle AIDS on its own terms. Likewise, in 2005, Brazil made headlines when it rejected $40 million in U.S. funding due to the Bush administration’s prohibitions on sex workers and clean needle programs.

Sometimes the larger “truths” about AIDS get in the way of seemingly small but significant discoveries. Economist Emily Oster, who has studied routes of HIV transmission in Africa, believes the continent’s high rates of other sexually transmitted diseases – it is estimated, for instance, that roughly half the population has the herpes virus – play a much larger role in the spread of HIV than previously thought. “Because many of these infections cause open sores on the genitals, transmission of the HIV virus is much more efficient,” she says. Treating other sexually transmitted diseases would cost about $3.50 per person each year. Providing an individual with AIDS treatment is an annual $300.

Of course, that would require a healthcare system with the capacity to treat half of Africa’s population. And no less importantly, it would require that the international community start listening with its ear to the ground.

Refugee life explored in “I Live Here”

Much too often, the pain in the world goes overlooked; much too often, the hunger of people is unnoticed; much too often, human suffering is pushed to the wayside. As you open “I Live Here,” the quote “there are too many stories” resonates throughout the four books that are enclosed in the cover of this moving composition.

“I Live Here” by Mia Kirshner, J.B. MacKinnon Paul Shoebridge, and Michael Simmons is a moving documentary of the lives on refugees and people who have been displaced from their homes by wars or fear for their lives. The authors of the book had to travel to all corners of the globe: the war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico and AIDS in Malawi, telling the heart-wrenching stories of these people.

Mia Kishner, actress turned social advocate, came up with the idea for the book. “I had a day job, but I felt uninspired at work; not really plugging into my environment. After Sept. 11th, I was frightened…frightened by my own level of ignorance. From there I started research and put the idea for this book together,” she said.

This book is not a typical documentary. It combines stories with photography and art by renowned artists Joe Sacco, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Phoebe Gloeckner and Chris Abani, among others. Trying to describe this book accurately is nearly impossible because of its individuality and uniqueness. It is truly something you have to pick up and read yourself. The stories told are those that no person should ever have to experience yet inspirational in a way. “I asked people to tell their most personal experiences,” Kishner said. “In spite of these terrible conditions that people have been forced to live in, not by choice, the grace in which they function under is something that one can’t help to be completely inspired by.”

The book is only one small part of a larger movement sponsored by the I Live Here Foundation. The foundation is “dedicated to telling the stories of the silenced and unheard people through a series of books and other media projects about our world.” Another facet of their mission is to bring creative writing programs to the areas in which their members travel. This is in the hope that they will facilitate creative communication between strangers. This book is the first multimedia project, and it is going to be released in concurrence with a creative writing program being started at the Kachere Juvenile Center prison in Lilongwe, Malawi. Many of the prisoners in Kachere are orphans who do not have any families to take responsibility of them, making the cells overcrowded and the conditions heinous.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The foundation are already working on a second book project, which is in the funding stages, will focus on locations such as Iran and Colombia, and with that will come a writing program in brothels all along the Thailand/Burma border. If you would like to learn more about these projects, visit i-live-here.com. You can view the whole book here with detailed background information. It is hard to read this book and not be moved and impassioned to stand up and help.

The first book is Ingusheia, which is located on the border of the Russian republic. There are approximately 15,000 children who live as refugees there. In 1994, Chechnya tried to declare itself independent from Russia, which led to a “dirty war” against Chechnya. There was a great loss of life. Although Moscow in Russia has declared the war over, many people fear to return to their homes. Imagine not being able to return to a life at home because of fearing for your life.

Burma is located on the Thailand border. Many Burmans flee into Thailand due to a dictatorship that has plagued Burma since 1969. There has been much upheaval due to the governing system in place. Sadly, the Thai government is in no hurry to help facilitate a fix for this problem, since the refugees on the border provide much of the manual labor, domestic work and sex trade that is seen in Thailand. Michael Simons, one of the authors of the book, spoke about his trip over to Thailand.

“Mia and I both took three week trips to the region separately. I collected as much material as I could for the stories,” Simons said. “The stories are theirs. Some of the visuals were created by them, and other visuals were in collaboration with artist back at home.”

In Ciudad Juárez, located right across the border from El Paso, Texas, the center of factory productions, drug trafficking and the disappearances of women. Many of the women who come to work at the factories end up disappearing, only to be found a while later murdered with signs of rape and torture. Many cry out for a stop to the violence, pleading that so many murders could not be possible without the police and authorities turning a blind eye.

The fourth and final book is set in Malawi, Africa. AIDS has a strong grasp in Africa. Malawi, one of the poorest nations in Africa, has become the center for refugees to come to when displaced by this terrible disease. “AIDS turns villages into ghost towns, orphans children, and empties schools and hospitals of children,” according to the book. In the capital city, Lilongwe, one in five is infected with HIV. Due to the high death rate in Malawi, there are 41 coffin shops in a single district. The demand for coffins is so high that deforestation of soft pine in Malawi is a growing concern.

Shoebridge described the overall appearance of the book as something that he was most proud of.

“The book was very labor intensive. All the pages had to be put together by hand,” Shoebridge said.
This book is visually stunning and emotionally moving. “The thing that this book points towards is we are connected by these stories,” Kishner said.

It is so important to understand the world in which we live in; that we are all interconnected one way or another. “College students, high school students junior-high students are the most important people that I want the book to reach because you guys are the very people that will have the energy and drive to go out and talk about this- to start a grassroots movement,” Kishner said.

The book is now on shelves and all the proceeds from the book go to Amnesty International. Go pick up a copy today, or go look at it online, and make a small difference in the world around you that is in desperate need of some change.

“These stories are about us.”