Exploring an African Civil Society: Development and Democracy in Malawi, 1994–2014 by Clive Gabay (review)

This volume explores the significance of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Malawi over the last twenty years, with special reference to their role in economic development and democratization and their relationship to the state and the international community. Gabay asks three main questions: specifically, to what extent does civil society (1) check state power, (2) serve as an extension of state power, or (3) serve as a “market driven limitation on the state’s power in the economy” (98)? His answer, developed over three substantive chapters, an introduction, and conclusion, seems to lead toward the third position. Gabay argues that CSOs, as recent arrivals on the Malawian political stage (since 1994), are the product of historical processes both internal (the Banda regime and its legacy) and external (the Cold War, its end, and the neoliberal dispensation that followed), and this has led to a peculiarly extroverted CSO community. That is, CSOs, while purporting to champion Malawian needs, are driven by the same external economic agendas that influence the workings of the Malawian state and its governing elites. Arguing for Malawi’s exemplary status as a postcolonial state and also its uniqueness as one of the continent’s most impoverished countries, Gabay suggests that the country’s experience might have more general lessons to teach.

Gabay devotes an entire chapter to the ways in which international organizations, and particularly the World Bank, have come to adopt a certain type of neoliberal development strategy since 2000 in light of criticisms of Structural Adjustment Programs. This strategy manifests itself in a commitment to the realization of United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and an emphasis on “good governance” (26) to support development along capitalist free-market lines. Preferring operational CSOs (those linked to specific development projects) over advocacy CSOs (those that advance particular causes associated with historically disadvantaged groups), civil society is also supposed to “keep an untrustworthy state in check” (30).

Gabay then turns to a consideration of how this policy plays out in Malawi, where extreme poverty has meant a heavy reliance on foreign funding for internal development and the running of the state. Consequently, both CSOs and the Malawi state must dance to the tune set by the World Bank and the MDGs, which may not address the fundamental issues at the heart of poverty (gender inequality, urban–rural and other regional divides, lack of economic diversification, economic extraversion, unequal access to land, and uneven income distribution). This subject leads into a discussion of CSO involvement in the move from a single to a multiparty system in Malawi that has been characterized by democratic elections contested by political parties with little ideological difference and an adherence to an externally driven “development” agenda for legitimacy. Corruption abounds, and not surprisingly CSOs, while they do sometimes critique administrations and individual politicians, are also deeply implicated in the system they support. If they want funding, CSOs are obliged to “perform” or pay lip service to MDGs. Even though they may be aware that doing so undercuts their original raison d’être. In a kind of self-loathing performance, CSOs blame their constituents and themselves for not doing enough to check “corrupt” politicians and failing to realize MDGs (70), rather than critiquing the international system that sets the agenda. Far from it. Gabay argues that CSOs only criticize corrupt practices when these threaten the neoliberal economic agenda. He cites CSO silence about the rising corruption of the Bingu wa Mutharika’s administration until the president insulted donors and refused to devalue the kwacha (making Malawi’s exports and investment opportunities less attractive to foreign business). He also notes how the Joyce Banda administration was a poster child for democratic and economic reform until an assassination attempt revealed the extent of government pillage.

Malawi’s state and governing elites cannot be anything but predatory, Gabay argues, as long as Malawi...