FLAGGING ECONOMY, ETHNIC DIVISION, MULUZI'S IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES
| It's about nine o'clock on a chilly Tuesday morning in Blantyre's sprawling industrial
village of Limbe. Emily Maziwire (32) is leaning against the wall of one of the derelict
classroom blocks at Kanjedza Primary School, gazing at a meandering queue of patient
voters. She has just cast her vote in Malawi's second pluralist elections. She refuses to divulge the candidate she has voted for. "That's my secret," she says. Not when you ask her how she feels about Malawi today. "In 1995 you needed MK75 to travel to Lilongwe by bus, now it costs MK200 (approx. US$5)," she says of the 300km-journey from Blantyre to Malawi's administrative capital. "This is the school that my three children go to . no windows, no doors," she says pointing to one of the classrooms used as a polling station, almost on the verge of collapse. "If (Dr Hastings Kamuzu) Banda was alive today, I would have voted for him," says the mother of four. "Things were better during his time. They say he was a dictator, but he would get the job done." These may just be Emily's nostalgic sentiments - many Malawians who experienced the wrath of Banda's 30-year dictatorial rule may beg to differ. But Bakili Muluzi, eventual winner of the hotly contested June 15 election, knows it too well that he has a monumental task of putting the economy back on track. Economic indicators for this southern African country do not look impressive. With the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as low as US$180, inflation above 50 percent and the cost of borrowing at 48 percent, many would agree Muluzi's administration has a very short honeymoon. The Malawi kwacha plunged by more than 60 percent against the US dollar over the last two years, bringing with it a host of other problems including spiraling inflation. "There is no question Malawi is a poor country. As such poverty eradication is the preoccupation of the government after the elections," says Dr Exley Silumbu, Chief Economist of the Malawi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI). Malawi's economy is largely dependent on agriculture, which accounts for 40 percent of GDP and is the source of 80 percent of all export earnings. Tobacco, which brings in just less than two-thirds of Malawi's export earnings, has slumped on the world market, plunging the country into a foreign exchange crisis. Latest projections from MCCI indicate that tobacco sales in 1999, at US$176 million, will be 16 percent shy of 1998 figures. In 1998, tobacco sales fell by US$80 million. The only hope, says Dr Silumbu, is on the promised aid from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Bretton Woods institutions recently pledged a record US$1.3 billion for the southern African country, a move analysts described as a seal of approval for Muluzi's commitment to economic reforms. On assuming power in 1994, Muluzi introduced sweeping socio-economic changes. He consolidated the politics of democracy, allowed free market economics to rule supreme and introduced free primary education. But while Muluzi played by the rules of the international financial institutions, critics remain adamant the country lost more than it gained. Poverty is widespread and afflicts more than 60 percent of the country's estimated 11 million people. "We thank him (Muluzi) for introducing free education," says Emily, "but where are the teachers, where are the schools?" Muluzi hit international headlines when he announced free education barely two months after ousting Banda in the May 1994 elections. The following year, enrolment doubled. But it turned out not enough homework had been done. The teacher/pupil ratio fell, as low as 1:100 in some instances. Pupils, such as those at Kanjedza share few textbooks and sit on dusty floors. The result has been a severely compromised standard of education. Seeking to enhance his profile, Muluzi also abolished the death penalty during his first term. He was showered with praises from local and international human rights organisations, what with the country's human rights record under Banda! However, some Malawians saw Muluzi's meek rule as the cause of the country's escalating crime. "It's not safe any more to drive at night here," says a Blantyre taxi driver. Muluzi's problems are not only on the socio-economic front. He has to unite the ethnically divided country. As predicted by most analysts, the 5 million registered voters maintained ethnic and regional loyalties exhibited in the country's first multiparty polls of 1994, a factor that worries the younger generation of technocrats and leaders. "This pattern will not change until the current generation of leaders fades away. Regional voting does not always give you the best leader," says Law Society President Max Mbendera. Muluzi, running on a United Democratic Front (UDF) ticket, won the June 15 election with 2.4 million votes, while his closest rival Gwanda Chakuamba of the opposition alliance constituting the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) got 2.1 million. On the parliamentary front, UDF took 93 seats, MCP 66 and AFORD 29, to an increased national assembly of 193. Four seats were won by independents. The regional phenomenon was pronounced in the 1994 elections when Malawi moved from 31 years on one-party, strong-handed rule of the late dictator Banda, to a pluralist system of government. The UDF under Muluzi won the majority seats with 85 seats, MCP 56 and AFORD 36 in the 177 seat national assembly. Fortified by sheer weight of numbers, Muluzi surged ahead of trade unionist Chihana, the more internationally renowned figure. Muluzi hails from Malawi's most populous region, the south, and drives his staying power mainly from the strong ethnic base. The ruling UDF's stronghold is, hence, the southern region which has 4.6 million people while the MCP - the biggest opposition party - commands the central region which has 4 million people. One million people are domiciled in the north, AFORD's enclave. On the five million registered voters, 2.4 million were in the south, 1,975,203 in the central and 678,906 in the northern regions. Because this was an election largely dependent on the power of ethnic consciousness rather than issues, the coalition of the MCP and AFORD was the mathematical answer to dislodging UDF and Muluzi given the combined numerical superiority of north and central regions put together. Chakuamba, who was contesting the presidency, took AFORD's Chihana as a running mate, a strategic pairing that the opposition expected would yield a superior tally of votes. The strategy fell short of success and analysts point several factors. Though a southerner and a former detainee under the one-party regime, Chakuamba's biggest mistake seems to be his embrace of the MCP, a political organization tainted by alleged human rights abuses under Banda. Although MCP has increased its seats to 66 from 56 in 1994, benefiting from sections of the electorate disgruntled by the pains of structural adjustment programme, it was unable to cover enough ground to gain power. Chihana's AFORD slid from 36 seats in 1994 to 29 seats probably because of the what some local political observers see as an unhealthy linkage with the old order. The frailty of the opposition alliance leadership (Chihana viewed as favouring his more educated northerners and Chakuamba lacking charisma and fore-sightedness) denied the pair a very real chance of taking the presidency. Historians and political scientists hold that the people's adherance to ethnic consciousness is rooted in the societal order schemed by the colonialist. Malawi, a former British colony independent in 1964, was divided into three regions - central, southern and northern - by the British. As in much of Africa, the divisions were not entirely for administrative purposes but reflected different economic, social and intellectual experiences. The northerners, who got the benefit of the first Scottish mission schools after 1878, enjoy a higher academic profile than the rest of the country. Political analysts believe Banda's government further accentuated ethnic fragmentation by trying to re-arrange the political order where the Yao speaking southerners (Muluzi's ethnic group) and the Tumbuka-Henga speaking northerners were explicitly marginalised. There was, on the other hand, an affirmation of the special authenticity of the culture of the Chewa-speaking people of the central region-Banda's home area. The coming of a new dawn, of a liberal society, kept people tethered to their parochial realms and has today yielded a result reflective of self-exclusive tendencies. It will not be an easy second term for Muluzi given the parliamentary strengths of the opposition assuming of the course, that the MCP-AFORD alliance endures. In his first term, he managed to pass legislation in parliament through careful negotiation with the opposition. This time, he must begin with the more immediate headaches: petitions over disputed election results. And with the national budget scheduled for July, Muluzi will have to muster the skills of engagement with a bitter opposition to raise the country above the uncertainties that haunt it. (SARDC) Read more on elections on our Elections Page. |
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