Another African miracle that never was

Back in 2003 when I was in Malawi to attend a Commonwealth Press Union training seminar, it looked deceptively stable for an African country that had only recently taken to multiparty democracy.

Although the newspapers carried the hot story of the emerging political competition between President Bingu wa Mutharika and his predecessor, Dr Bakili Muluzi, it came off more as the case of the proud winner and a sore loser than a potential source of future political tumult.

When I asked a local journalist familiar with Kenyan politics from his days as a student at Daystar University in Nairobi if they, too, experienced tribalism in public life, he put it to me curtly: “Yes, there are tribes here. But things are not as black and white as they are in your country [Kenya]. It is not like the Kikuyu and Luo thing here.”

Traditional political fault lines, he explained, existed between the southern and northern regions.

But even then, a powerful president only needed the blessings of the elders to control the politics.

President Mutharika appeared to be learning fast; he was deftly exploiting the social dynamics in Malawian society to assert his own authority and consolidate power.

But there were a lot of positives to pick from the new administration already.

The University of Malawi was set to graduate its first medical doctors since independence later that year.

Apparently, the brainwashed anglophile Kamuzu Banda had in one of his bizarre displays of eccentricity decided for his people that it was impossible for an African country like theirs to train a medical doctor.

Under Mutharika, a food security programme that would see Malawi export maize to its neighbours and other African countries like Kenya was also being rolled out.

I left the country with the impression that Malawi was set to miraculously overfly the hills and valleys of tribalism, corruption, and tyranny where many a promising African democracy plane has crashed into as soon as it took off.

The current political unrest which saw 18 people killed on Thursday shows I was rather optimistic.

Not that there weren’t warning signs though.

The government was busy cracking down on democratic institutions perceived to present a threat like opposition parties and the media.
In one bizarre incident the previous year, some soldiers left the barracks and attacked a media house in the commercial capital, Blantyre for reporting on the high prevalence of HIV/Aids in the military.

The story of another African miracle that never was had started unravelling.

jkotieno@ke.nationmedia.com