Malawi

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Surrounded by countries rich in diamonds and gold, Malawi is known for humbler resources: fertile albeit densely populated land, a vast lake, and an abundant labor supply. Historically, the fortunes of Malawi’s primarily agrarian societies have been shaped by regional patterns of trade, warfare, and conquest but also marked by the careers of ambitious, if paternalistic, “saviors.” In precolonial times, years of violent slave raids were followed by the arrival of the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, determined to rescue the region’s peasants from enslavement and paganism. British colonialists followed, taking away farmland and imposing high taxes, but they were eventually pushed out by Malawian nationalists, led by the Western-educated physician Hastings Kamuzu Banda. During the three decades’ rule of this self-proclaimed “paternal despot,” the chasms between rich and poor, ruler and ruled, grew wider than anywhere else on the continent. Multiparty elections in 1994 finally replaced the ailing Banda, but Malawi still suffers from economic inequality and poverty.

Early History

Archaeological evidence suggests that Malawi has been inhabited for over 50,000 years. The earliest human remains—dated to between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago—together with linguistic evidence, suggest that these early residents were foragers and the ancestors of Twa, Fula, and perhaps contemporary Khoisan speakers, such as the San of southern Africa. Bantu-speaking immigrants settled in the area of present-day Malawi approximately between the first and fourth centuries C.E.., probably displacing the existing populations. The Bantu migrants relied primarily on shifting (or “swidden”) agriculture and are thought to have introduced ironworking as they spread throughout the region during the following centuries. Sometime between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries C.E.., a second wave of Bantu migrants, possibly of Shaba and Luba origin, reached Malawi from areas to the north.

Shifting cultivation, while still practiced in some areas, gave way to more sedentary, intensive forms of agricultural production. This shift, combined with the resulting increase in population density, fostered the development of allied kingdoms, beginning with the fifteenth-century Maravi (or Malawi, in Portuguese) Confederacy. The Maravi kings formed a federation of several distinct kingdoms, including the Lundu, located in the present-day Shire Valley, and the Undi, who lived west of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi). They came to rule over most of the territory that is now known as central and southern Malawi as well as parts of Mozambique and Zambia. These hereditary kings came from the Phiri clan, and their principle charge was to collect and store grain as tribute and to redistribute it during times of famine. The kings also controlled the trade in ivory and iron, materials that were in particular demand among Swahili traders.

Portuguese merchants arrived at the lower reaches of the Zambezi River in the sixteenth century. Along with arms, ammunition, textiles, and glass beads, the Portuguese introduced manioc (also called cassava), a carbohydrate-rich tuber, which, unlike millet and bananas, could be stored for significant periods of time. Manioc quickly spread throughout Africa and became one of the dominant subsistence crops.

More immediately, however, Africans in the Zambezi River region were faced with Portuguese efforts to gain control over the river’s lucrative gold and ivory trades. In response, Maravi kings sent troops north to establish alternative routes to the Indian Ocean, conquering a large section of Makua territory in Mozambique. The cannibalism of the Lundi soldiers, in particular, terrorized their neighbors into subjugation. Portuguese troops sent to quell the Lundi in 1592 met with defeat. Ultimately one king, Kalanga, collaborated with the Portuguese to help defeat the Lundu in 1622, in return for unhindered access to Indian Ocean markets.

Toward the close of the seventeenth century, Yao and Ngoni moved into the region from the south, acting as brokers of slaves, firearms, and other commodities between European, Swahili, and Arab merchants and various African suppliers. With its trade monopoly undermined, the Maravi Confederacy disintegrated into numerous independent chiefdoms. Its people also fell prey to slave raiding by the well-armed Yao. In the eighteenth century a group of Mavari, known as the Chewa, split off and migrated to the west. The Chewa would eventually become the largest ethnic group in modern-day Malawi.

The slave trade between the Lake Nyasa region and Indian Ocean ports such as Mombasa expanded rapidly during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Maravi communities continued to suffer from slave raids by neighboring groups, particularly the Ngoni. By the mid-nineteenth century, Swahili, Ngoni, and Yao traders had introduced Islam to the region, and 10,000 slaves were passing annually through the slave depot at Nkhota Kota, ruled by an Arab sultan. The merchants had also introduced vast quantities of firearms, making struggles for control over diminishing supplies of ivory and slave labor increasingly violent.

The Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone remarked on this violence when he first arrived in the region in the 1850s. He and other members of the London Missionary Society established the Livingstonia Mission in the northern highlands as well as several mission schools. The missionaries won many converts among the groups subjected to slave raids and conquest, and they encouraged them to take up “legitimate” forms of entrepreneurial activity, such as cultivating cotton and other cash crops. They also lobbied European government officials to intervene in order to abolish slavery. In the late nineteenth century, other missionary groups also became active in the region, including the Free Church of Scotland, the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, and the Roman Catholic Church. Today approximately 35 percent of the population practices Christianity.

Colonialism

In 1889 the British South Africa Company (BSAC), headed by Cecil Rhodes, received a royal charter to find and exploit Malawi’s mineral resources, in return for a commitment to hedge Portuguese influence in the region. The Crown took control when it created the Nyasaland Districts Protectorate in 1891. Many groups preyed upon by Yao slave raiders welcomed British intervention, but the Yao, Chewa, and others resisted colonization. Captain Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, a notorious colonialist, was called upon to establish control over the sultan of Karonga, who fought to maintain his valuable trade in slaves. In 1893 the region was renamed the British Central African Protectorate and finally Nyasaland in 1907.

Nyasaland’s mineral resources proved disappointingly scarce, leading the British colonial administration to focus instead on agricultural commodities, especially tea. White settlers were given large tracts of land in the fertile highlands to establish tea, coffee, and tobacco plantations. During the early colonial period, large numbers of Lomwe refugees, fleeing Portuguese rule in Mozambique, arrived in the British colony, where they remained to become the second largest ethnic group of contemporary Malawi. The landless Lomwe immigrants had no choice but to work as laborers in return for minimal tenancy rights on European plantations, a system referred to as thangata. People from the less-productive lands of the north also migrated to work on European estates, driven by the need to pay colonial taxes.

In addition, many men (and a few women) from Nyasaland migrated to Rhodesia and South Africa where they worked in and around the gold, diamond, and copper mines. These populations were actively recruited by both the Rhodesian and the South African Native Labour Bureaus, even after the governor of Nayasaland enacted legislation in 1911 to curtail the colony’s labor outflow.

Massive land appropriation by white settlers, labor outmigration, and high taxes combined to create conditions of hardship and discontent in much of Nyasaland. These conditions, as well as more immediate outrage at World War I conscription, led the African clergyman John Chilembwe to mobilize followers in an armed rebellion. It was quickly put down, and Chilembwe was killed, but he was remembered as a hero by later anticolonial activists.

In 1944 a multiethnic coalition of independent African churches and associations formed the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC). The NAC demanded rights to organize labor as well as to have direct representation in the Nyasaland legislature. The NAC also adamantly opposed Britain’s proposed creation of a Central African Federation, a political entity encompassing Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia, where some 100,000 Nyasa workers had migrated to work in the mines. While colonial authorities argued that the federation would facilitate regional economic development and allow Africans greater political representation, the NAC believed it would simply strengthen the foothold of southern Africa’s white settlers and re-create Colonial rule in a more permanent guise.

Despite protests in both Nyasaland and Rhodesia, the Central African Federation was established in 1953, with several seats in the Legislative Council allocated to Nyasas. The NAC, having so far failed to achieve many of its demands for reform, became increasingly militant during the 1950s and ultimately committed to independence. In 1957 the organization’s youthful but disorganized leadership invited the respected Nyasa-born physician Kamuzu Banda, who was in Ghana at the time, to become NAC’s president. Within two years the charismatic Banda had transformed NAC into a mass movement. In 1959 work stoppages and other forms of civil disobedience led the colonial administration to imprison Banda and other NAC leaders, ban the NAC itself, and declare a state of emergency.

Independence, Nationhood, and the Banda Regime

Upon their release several months later, the NAC leadership quickly created the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), with Banda as its chief, and resumed its campaign of civil disobedience. By this time, Great Britain had accepted decolonization as inevitable and agreed to universal adult voting rights. In the first assembly elections held in April 1961, the MCP won a majority of seats.

Nyasaland won internal self-governance in January 1963 and became the independent nation of Malawi in July 1964. Banda became the prime minister and quickly established a highly autocratic government, staffed by a large number of European expatriate bureaucrats and advisers. Within months of coming into office, Banda’s cabinet members were accusing him of being too slow to “Africanize” the government. In response, Banda fired three ministers, and three others resigned. Of these six, five ultimately fled the county, and the other one remained under house arrest. Disenchanted citizens led a small revolt in 1965 and again in 1967, only to be quickly suppressed by security forces.

Banda instituted constitutional amendments in 1966, establishing Malawi as a one-party republic; he named himself president and head of the military. With the ability to dissolve the legislative assembly at will, Banda had consolidated power to the point where he was, in effect, the state. In 1971 he became “life-president.” Political opposition was ruthlessly stamped out, the press was heavily censored, and Banda continually reshuffled his government to prevent any minister from cultivating a power base. As head of the MCP, he also dictated who ran in the single-party elections.

Until 1994 Banda reigned over Malawi; he was often portrayed in the Malawian press as a benevolent monarch or even as a savior. He pursued a pro-Western, anticommunist foreign policy and attempted to nurture a market-based economy. During the 1970s there was an influx of foreign capital, much of it from South Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia, in the plantation and manufacturing sectors and the construction of the modern new capital in Lilongwe.

Yet despite substantial financial assistance from abroad and a relatively stable political climate, Malawi remained one of the world’s poorest countries. While a small elite prospered under Banda’s rule, the majority of the population worked in agriculture and suffered from droughts in the late 1970s and the early 1990s. The country’s economic decline was exacerbated when Mozambique, itself suffering from civil war, dramatically increased the export taxes it charged on freight transported through the county. This effectively eliminated Malawi’s primary access to world trade, the Indian Ocean port of Nacala.

Banda’s relations with South Africa isolated Malawi politically from the rest of Africa. Arguing that Apartheid could only be overcome through dialogue, Banda ignored international sanctions in allowing thousands of Malawian workers to migrate annually to the South African mines. He also allowed South African tourists (who were barred from traveling almost everywhere else in Africa) to enter Malawi. Banda also initially established relations with the Portuguese colonial government of Mozambique, in return for the construction of the Nacula railway and other investments, yet he later welcomed a representative of the anticolonial Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) to Malawi. During Mozambique’s drawn-out civil war, Malawi also hosted thousands of refugees.

For years, Banda’s ability to maintain power and sustain the economy depended on his pragmatic regional diplomacy as well as on the international community’s willingness to overlook his record of corruption and brutality. But this era ended abruptly when donor agencies declared in 1992 that non-humanitarian aid would be conditional upon Malawi’s compliance with international human rights standards. Earlier that year, organizations such as Amnesty International and the Roman Catholic Church accused the Banda government of executions, torture, and the use of detention without due process. Civil unrest grew, and newly formed opposition groups, including the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) and the United Democratic Front (UDF), demanded multiparty elections. In January 1993 over 100,000 people staged an anti-Banda demonstration in Blantyre.

Period Following Banda

Banda agreed to a referendum, which was held in June 1993; the results left no doubt that the public wanted a return to multiparty politics. Shortly thereafter, the constitution was amended, first permitting opposition parties to register and then later rescinding the office of life-president. In October of that same year, Banda became ill and was hospitalized in South Africa. A three-person presidential council took control and made several additional constitutional amendments, including the elimination of detention without trial.

Multiparty elections were held in May 1994. Banda, receiving only a third of the vote, finally stepped down after more than three decades as leader of Malawi. In his place, Bakili Muluzi became president, representing the UDF.

The ailing Banda, along with other MCP members, were arrested in 1995 and charged with the 1983 alleged murders of political opponents; all were ultimately acquitted within the year. The Muluzi administration was slow to institute real policy changes; the police were still charged with detaining and torturing dissidents without trial, and the press remained largely influenced by government interests. The government also continued to control the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), the sole radio station. In June 1999 Malawi held its second democratic elections. An internal power struggle between MCP president Gwanda Chakuamba and vice president John Tembo weakened the party’s position against Muluzi. Amidst violence and rumors of electoral fraud, Muluzi was reelected for another five-year term, defeating Chakuamba by only a small percentage of votes. But the UDF failed to secure a majority in the National Assembly, winning just less than half the total seats. Bingu wa Mutharika was elected in May 2004 and subsequently led substantial economic reform; however, political gridlock in the legislature slowed down any passage of significant legislation, and anticorruption measures are continuously stalled.

Although the Banda era is over (the former president died in 1997), Malawians’ struggle with poverty is not. The economy remains one of the poorest in the world, exacerbated by the extreme disparities between the country’s rich and its poor. Despite Malawi’s ongoing effort to attract foreign investment, agriculture still employs about four-fifths of the working population and provides most of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. In 2000 the nation qualified for relief from the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HPIC) program. Two years later the World Bank allocated a $50 million drought recovery package to provide famine relief in Malawi.

Today, as in the past, the fortunes of this small landlocked nation are tied to those of its neighbors and especially to South Africa’s capacity to generate regional trade and industrialization. In 2005, five million people needed emergency food aid after another disastrous corn harvest, but in 2007 Malawi was exporting hundreds of tons of corn to Zimbabwe. Mutharika decided to use money for fertilizer subsidies to farmers rather than buy more food; Malawi’s soil had been depleted by over-farming and drought years that resulted in loss of topsoil to wind erosion. Deforestation by individuals selling firewood continues to destroy the ecosystem.