Political Culture and Nationalism in Malawi: Building Kwacha (review)

This book outlines the development of Malawi's political culture, particularly the dominance in politics of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and President Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda. It therefore necessarily starts from the colonial period, tracing the growth of nationalism around the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) as a nascent anti-colonial movement. The narrative takes in the formation of the MCP - replacing the NAC, proscribed by the British colonial government during the State of Emergency in 1959 - and the emergence of an independent Malawi; and it follows the fortunes of the country in the post-colonial era. More importantly, Power shows how Dr Banda increasingly occupied the centre of politics through both the NAC and MCP periods, assuming the role of the central - indeed, the 'only' - figure of nationalist politics after independence, around whom Malawi's political culture evolved. This historical narrative is chronological in presentation and aims to show the onset of an incremental and developmental order.

Joey Power makes no startling new findings and draws no bold conclusions. He carefully avoids making any large claims based on his research or teasing out the implications of his research and his reading of Malawi's politics. He opts instead to describe and explain, an approach that extends to the critical subject of the book - the political culture in Malawi, with its wide and far-reaching influence beyond the period under study and into the present politics of that country.

Like historians, social commentators and political analysts before him, Power easily and readily subscribes to the argument that Malawi's political culture is unproblematically defined by the use of force, including violence, by the MCP and Banda, and by the leader's personality cult. This proposition has rarely been seriously interrogated as an explanation of the MCP and Banda's politics in Malawi. This is not to deny that violence was an integral part of the MCP/Banda regime, but rather to question the oversimplification that force was sufficient and effective enough to enable Banda and the MCP to govern for nearly 30 years (1964-94) without being challenged by serious and organized opposition in Malawi. The tendency in this book, as in similar previous accounts, is to point to the 'acquiescence' of Malawians to Banda's rule in the face of intimidation backed by violence. Even when considering patrimonialism and politics of patronage, Power treats these topics as more or less tangential to the politics of violence - though they not only complemented the use of force but also enabled Banda and the MCP to cultivate the consent of those they governed, thus establishing a hegemonic dictatorship. A discussion of Malawi's political culture must therefore necessarily take into account cultural ideas and practices that Banda and MCP promoted and propagated to prop up their leadership as hegemony.

In Chapter 9 on Dunduzu Chisiza's road accident, Power presents a refreshing account based on commendable archival and oral research. He is the first to offer a detailed discussion of the archives relating to the accident, examining police reports and photographs of the scene of the accident which he then pits against popular public perceptions and interpretations, gleaned from interviews. Power has picked on a significant episode in the development of the politics of suspicion and secrecy that characterized the reign of Banda and the MCP, and continues into Malawi's present. Chisiza's accident, as Power rightly suggests, became a metaphor for the use of violence to deal with political enemies and opposition.

Two factual corrections need to be made. Power claims (p. 10) that the Ngoni under Inkosi Mbelwa settled in present-day Rumphi District: it was actually present-day Mzimba District. And he claims (p. 191) that Chief Mwase was deposed and banished to Mlanje after the 1973 MCP Convention in which he supported Manowa Chirwa's request to return. The chief was actually banished to Nsanje, where he died in the mosquito-infested Penu Prison. The...