Richard Chirombo Writes About Street Children, and Malawi's Democratic Path

Taking the children ‘home’

RICHARD CHIROMBO

The street child’s life is rough and lonely.

They have wishes, hopes, passions, inclinations and secret dreams- but all these cannot alter the state of facts and evidence, which point to dread and gloom.

John Kaliveni, 12, was once a moving hope. He had decided, some seven years earlier, to grow up in his patrimonial home- Mtengo Village in the area of T/A Kalonga, Salima.

That was before his father, the last surviving parent of their family, died in August 2003. When death struck, he- four older brothers and a sister- entered into the shadows. Hope for quality education went with the winds of death. Their seemingly little world collapsed is sorrow and hopelessness. Today, some seven years later, life is yet to return to the basics.

John ‘stays’ in Blantyre, though he has nowhere to really call home.

“The most painful thing is that I don’t know where my brothers and sister are: They went to Lilongwe to look for alms in 2004, and I chose Blantyre. We have never met,” said Kaliveni.

During the afternoon of March 24 this year, LifeLine Southern Africa-Malawi chairperson, Mary Dzinyemba, watched Kaliveni gently set a mahogany box on dusty ground along Mudi River. He then opened the top end of the equally box, stuffed old newspaper clips, forming his idea of a mattress, and ducked in.

It is home for him; the boy who once had a home and enthusiasm, now replaced with perpetual fear of extreme weather conditions without, and the hunger within.

“It was such a sorry sight, yet these are our own children. The nation can do better,” said Dzinyemba.

LifeLine-Malawi is working with its mother body to establish toll-free lines for orphans, street and other vulnerable children. Dzinyemba said the initiative aims to give children suffering from various forms of abuse a life line.

“It’s about giving children facing abusive circumstances another chance; the chance to get out (of these problems),” said Dzinyemba.

However, it is not only LifeLine that is thinking in ‘second-chances’; government has now joined the fray.

It all started when Patricia Kaliati, Gender, Children and Community Development Minister, visited Chilwa Reformatory Centre in Zomba earlier this year. It is either she prepared to say what she did, or else she was prompted by circumstances.

“It is a pity that, while many other children go about in the streets of our cities and town assemblies, places abound in our reformatory centres. Our child reformatory centres are underutilized. This trend must change,’ said Kaliati.

So started the beginnings of a campaign to relocate street children to reformatory institutions by February, and Kaliati has been resolute.

Times come when the truth comes home to many, and people begin to think beyond the narrow isthmus of selfishness. This truth has come to her so many times, as most children at Mkando Trading Centre in Kaliati’s constituency testify.

They have more than a dozen times been the target of Kaliati’s charitable-self, receiving a wide range of goods including blankets, cooking oil, scholarships, and clothes, among others.

Now that she is responsible for all Malawian children as minister, the former teacher merely wants to make her love national; the combined love of a caring mother and professional teacher.

This truth has also come home for women such as Mary Woodworth, director for Mulanje-based Friends of Mulanje Orphans (FOMO). She lives in the United Kingdom, at least the physical form of her, her heart stays in Mulanje.

Like all winds, it started small for her, too. She married a British citizen, who invited her to Europe.

“The children (there) were, mainly, well dressed, well-fed, well-educated. Well-versed with matters of the world,” said Woodworth.

When she came back home for a breather around the year 2000, the truth came home for her right at the airport. Too many differences in infrastructure and technological advancements.

There was, also, the sorry sight of children on the streets of Blantyre. She thought the problem was only common in Blantyre and Lilongwe, but was shocked to find that the situation was similar in Mulanje, her home district.

“Even worse. The HIV and AIDS pandemic was breaking communities apart, challenges of poverty and resource constraints were clouding prospects for the future. There was also the issue of girls dropping out of school. Something had to be done, hence FOMO’s efforts,” said Woodworth, touched by the invisible hand of truth.

The children in Mulanje welcomed her, and her gesture; but Kaliati seems to be in trouble making her love ‘national’.

“Some street children have gone into hiding. Many are running away, and this is quiet surprising. How could people run away from assistance? The thing is, we will not stop mid-way through the road, we will look for them and go on with the exercise,” said Kaliati.

A tale of love gone bad. Can love really go ‘bad’?

“Yes, it does. Depending on the approach you adopt to solve a problem. After all, how can children run away from help? My submission is that the initiative is good, but has been hastily implemented,” said Kenwilliams Mhango, Country Director for African Network for the Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect-Malawi Chapter.

Mhango said there was no need for short cuts. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development would have carried out comprehensive publicity campaigns to rid the campaign of any huddles in understanding, invested heavily in reformatory centre infrastructure, and won civil society support.

Take, for instance, the issue of location. He says the way child reformatory centres are concentrated sends wrong signals about the existence of street children, and the challenges they face.

“Do we have a reformatory centre in the Northern region? No. Don’t we have street children there? We do,” Mhango answers his own questions.

Mhango blames short cuts for exacerbating the situation, saying most children would willingly offer themselves up to such “a positive, life-changing move’.

He had ready examples. Take, for instance, the issue of his organization’s name: African Network for the Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect- Malawi Chapter. It is such a long name, a winding road.

“Many people have suggested that we adopt a short name. They say the name is too long. But we say, “No, there is no need for short cuts when the name explains everything well. We are comfortable with both the name and the length of the name’,” said Mhango.

The short of it all is that there are times shortcuts pay, but mostly they do not pay.

The issue of reformatory and protective services for children has a long history, though the story is younger than when human life begun. In ancient times, when might was right, children had no right to live, and could be disposed of with little compunction.

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian during the late 1st Century B.C., bears witness that many people in that once great empire, including the Ceylonese, could discard of children perceived to have no courage or endurance. Such children, when not killed, rushed into streets and public places.

The Greeks did not want any physically challenged children to grow, also. Plato accepted this status quo and Aristotle recommended a law prohibiting parents from rearing physically challenged children, which led physician Soranus, a 2nd Century practitioner, to instruct midwives to examine each child at birth and get rid of those not fit.

In Egypt, on the other hand, parents who killed their children were merely sentenced to ‘hug’ the corpse continually for seventy-two hours, the punishers thinking that it was not fit those who gave life to the child to die, but that they should be punished in such a way as to create repentance and deter them from committing any such acts.

Children’s rights enjoyed secondary status to national interests, necessitating strategies to bail them out of such a quagmire.

During this very early period, Athens and Rome had orphan homes. The name brephotrophia (for these welfare centres) was mentioned in 529 in Justinian law, one of the most influential pieces of legislation. With the rise of Christianity, the church provided for foundlings and every village had a xenodochium- a hospice for pilgrims and the poor, which also embraced children without homes.

By the Sixth Century, the brephotrophium at Trier had a marble receptacle with which abandoned children could be safely deposited secretly. Similar institutions in France in the Seventh Century were the forerunners of the welfare system of the Nineteenth Century, with the establishment of the first such hospice by Datheus, the archpriest of Milan in 787.

In Mesopotamia, the strategy was different. Starting from 6000 years ago, orphans and vulnerable children had a goddess. Writer Rig Veda also mentions another deity among ancient Hindus who rescued vulnerable children and endowed them with legal rights to protection.

The gods reflected a mirror image of humanity, affording a picture of what went on among people, and how wrongs could be corrected. This was supplemented by more laws guaranteeing rights of the child to protection, and included the Laws of Solon in 600 B.C., which required army commanders to raise, at the expense of government, children of soldiers killed in battle.

Wives of Roman emperors, who initiated child welfare programmes, emulated this gesture. Around this same time, St. Nicholas Thaumaturgos- wonder worker of the 3rd Century, who was also Patron Saint of children and protector of the feeble minded- revolutionized the phenomenon of child welfare.

Main strategies of offering child protective services has consisted of placing children in government run institutions, private organisations or under foster care.
Russian and British law also initiated early involvement of government in public welfare, with the main reliance being on alms-houses where, to off set expense and save children from the ‘sin’ of idleness, children were forced to work, according to The Battered Child, a book tackling the issue of child abuse and neglect in the world.

However, child protective services have not been without blemish, and their impacts have continually been questioned. An1881German report on childcare services stated that 31 per cent of illegitimate children died under foster care, allegedly from natural causes (but really from freezing, starvation and deliberate destruction). The report discovered that foster care givers had ‘discovered’ that the best way of getting rid of the children was to give them nothing but pacifiers soaked in brandy!

This was negative, sure, but helped in making sure that the issue of childcare rose from a relatively obscure position to a matter of public and professional concern in the US in early 1960s.

In all these cases, there is no report of children escaping- as Malawi has come to learn.

Only that Kaliati never gives up, and has a clever way of summing things up: “We are all still learning from all this and, no matter how difficult it proves or long it takes, we will place these children home. Reformatory centres are the best ever place for them, where they will be nurtured and grow into productive citizens. It is as simple as that.”



Paved or thorny: Malawi’s democratic path to 2014

RICHARD CHIROMBO

Intolerance. Dissent suppression. Intra-party bickering. Suppressed egos. Hero-worshipping. Thin, if any, ideological differences. Twisted principles.

It does not take long to define the subject: Malawi politics.

Since multiparty politics of government came back home in 1994, and got three more turns of ‘welcome-home-parties’ in 1999, 2004 and 2009, the country’s political scene has become well-dotted with political events, most of which predictable.

Malawians have come to expect a stillness of political egos in ruling parties, especially when the incumbent president is running for the first five years, while intra-party bickering has become part of the ‘norm’ in opposition parties- a way, perhaps, of passing political sleep away in the long-wait for Sanjika Palace or New State House.

Long-wait because no opposition party has ever won Presidential elections since 1994, save, perhaps, for the unique case of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Former United Democratic Front (UDF) National Publicity Secretary, Sam Mpasu, had one political adage he so loved to press home: people, he argued, form political parties to win the golden ticket into government. That is common sense.

But some special breed of people, Malawians to our credit, went into government in order to form a political party! That fascinated Mpasu so much- much the same way as it reinforced the established point that Malawi is a country of great inventors (the likes of Gabriel Kondesi, William Kamkwamba and, after 2004, the political inventor that is State President Bingu wa Mutharika, among others).

As some form of artificial tranquility prevails in ruling parties, the parties in question soon ‘forget’ the contentious issue of succession, leaving all sense of judgment to ‘time’, which, they always argue, ‘will tell’. The reason for letting succession dogs lie is often that, because the leaders won their maiden Presidential contest, they will do it (win) again.

That is the reason nobody bothered former president Bakili Muluzi, within the ranks and file of UDF between 1994 and 1999, on succession plans; a honeymoon that continued between 1999 and 2004 when it became apparently clear that, while the driver was still enjoying the feel of the highway and wanted to continue cruising beyond legal speed, the road in front was fast disappearing into some peculiar, dusty path.

Such leaders quickly grow bigger than their sponsoring parties and develop quick-fire anger even to friendly advice. The end, in our case, has been a disaster for intra-party democracy because leaders are imposed on political parties to satisfy the insatiable anger of the powers-that-be.

Just such a disaster happened in the UDF, a party that once wore ‘mighty’ armor during its time of glory. Because it had everything at its disposal in those ‘mighty’ days, the party wore the ‘heavy suit of prosperity’ to withstand even the most volatile of forces; now, it struggles in the great sea of near-obscurity that it has adopted the weight-light life saving jacket to survive the stormy waters.

Ironically, the same argument that offers first-time ruling parties artificial tranquility has the opposite effect on opposition parties. Because their leaders lost one election, other aspirants begin to fume, saying chances are that they (losers) will loose again. Once beaten, twice shy; twice beaten? The answer is what they dread.

That answer is what Malawi Congress Party (MCP) presidential aspirants never wanted to be the unfortunate part of between 1994 and 1999, too. First President, Ngwazi Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, fell against Muluzi in the 1994 race to Sanjika, and never sought to rise again.

He took the white flag to Mudi State Residence in Blantyre, where he went to stay after getting unceremoniously booted out of Sanjika Palace, but left the wooden post with the green lights to Gwanda Chakuamba- his vice presidential running-mate in the monumental polls.

John Zenus Ungapake Tembo, the ever-ambitious Dedza South Member of Parliament, was chosen MCP vice president. Political analysts saw them as the perfect example of a strange political pair, doubts that soon back-rode the horse of reality when time came to choose a presidential running mate.

Chakuamba, aware of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) president, Chakufwa Chihana’s, discontentment with the UDF administration, wanted to outsmart the ruling cadres by forging a working alliance with Aford. While common sense had it that Chihana gets the running mate slot, Tembo could have none of it.

Chakuamba and Chihana? These were strange bedfellows, too; more so because Chihana had fought gallantly against the one party regime, efforts that paid dividends at the ballot box. It was a common choral cord Chihana and the likes of Muluzi had touched, and they got their just desserts.

But politics is not a duvet you get into in the evening, and hope to still be there by sunrise: it is dynamic, and changes with the times. Chakuamba and Chihana got this wisdom quite well, and wanted to use it for a free tough lesson on the ‘big-headed’ UDF.

Because Tembo did not whole-heartedly support the two, the alliance- like the conflict it created- was not symmetrical. The space left between escalating disagreements in MCP, confusion over the ‘real’ MCP’s stand on Aford, and the ruling UDF’s campaign tactics was too small for the articulation of a viable alliance agenda.

To some extent, Tembo’s reluctance was an admission of the inadequacies of decision making in political parties, as well as the general lack of real grass roots’ representation in such processes. On this line of thinking, the alliance’s failure at the polls was a form of ‘voice’ for grass roots communities, a message that had no other form than ‘failure’.

All this happened some 11 years ago, and people expected new things and challenges. It has not been so, though, because, instead of taking the exciting political road replete with twists and turns, our politicians have chosen to take the straight road to the nearest elections. This is worrying Amunandife Mkumba, Malawi Democratic Union (MDU) president. When Malawians last saw Kamuzu on a presidential ballot box, Mkumba was there. He acknowledges being one of the most hopeful people then.

“After all, we had worked so hard to reach that level of going to the polls to choose the Head of state and government and Members of Parliament. Some of us risked our lives writing and distribution secret letters in the middle of night,” said Mkumba.

Now, after some 16 years of multiparty democracy, what does he say? Are we there?

“Not yet; we are still trying. It is all the same everywhere. Some democracies such as the US have come a long way. In fact, when people realize that some things have been predictable politically, it is a sign of political maturity,” said Mkumba.

MDU is one of the parties whose predictable pattern includes its dependence on alliances with relatively larger parties. Others include Malawi Democratic Party (MDP) of Kamlepo Kalua, Congress for National Unity, Peoples Patriotic Front, Peoples Progressive Movement, Maravi People’s Party, Malawi Forum for Unity in Development, among others.

“This has been one of the weaknesses in our democracy. We have far too many political parties it is difficult to understand their ideologies. That, too, has been one of the most predictable things: more political parties, little, if at all, differences in political ideologies,” said Edward Chaka, executive director for Peoples Federation for National Peace and Development (Pefenap).

Chaka said the country needed influential parties that worked on incorruptible principles, contrary to current trends where courageous politicians wither when caught up in a net of adverse circumstances. They also often drop into a vacuum of political objectives and offer no clear direction.

“We don’t need leaders who are always busy buying time in a world where there is no spare time. Each time, and thus election, is important; parties should be talking of making new in roads,” he said.

Others, like Institute for Policy Interaction executive director, Rafiq Hajat, and Human Rights Consultative Committee chairperson Undule Mwakasungula, feel that the road is partly paved and partly thorny.

The thorny area is that of political tolerance, both in ruling and opposition parties. The issue of suspension of three DPP parliamentarians for airing their constituents’ views on quota system of selection to public universities comes to the fore, so does the recent public fight of UDF supporters at Chileka Airport.

“Political parties need to embrace tolerance to dissenting views. We can then claim that we have come off age,” said Maurice Munthali, Public Affairs Committee publicity secretary.

The other thing winning politicians are likely to pursue is the arrest of perceived enemies. It started with Muluzi, when his administration arrested an ailing Banda. Now the UDF is crying foul, saying DPP is targeting its zealots on trumped up charges. Just who will be on the ‘crying list’ next is unknown, depends on who wins.

“Otherwise. Why is it that only those in opposition are in the wrong. People linked with government and the ruling party is spared,’ queried Friday Jumbe, interim UDF president.

But one thing is for sure. What US Senator John Tyler once said is true: “The man of today gives place to the man of tomorrow, and the idols which one worships, the next destroys.”

Suppression of dissent in ruling parties continues; political bickering and position tussling continues in opposition parties; small parties continue to wait for national elections to hatch the same, old idea of alliances; popular representation remains a fallacy; and, somewhere, handcuffs are waiting for the next politician.

Nothing really changes, although political commentators also agree that Malawi’s road to destination-democracy has been paved on elections’ conduct. Peace has been the buzzword, prompting others to suggestively joke that the country should replace tobacco for peace as the Number One forex earner.

But peace is never for sale. Regional voting patterns are also being dismasntled, a mature sign of unity in purpose, said Hajat.

So far, it has been a game of equal chances: thorns here, pavements there.


Taking the children ‘home’

RICHARD CHIROMBO

The street child’s life is rough and lonely.

They have wishes, hopes, passions, inclinations and secret dreams- but all these cannot alter the state of facts and evidence, which point to dread and gloom.

John Kaliveni, 12, was once a moving hope. He had decided, some seven years earlier, to grow up in his patrimonial home- Mtengo Village in the area of T/A Kalonga, Salima.

That was before his father, the last surviving parent of their family, died in August 2003. When death struck, he- four older brothers and a sister- entered into the shadows. Hope for quality education went with the winds of death. Their seemingly little world collapsed is sorrow and hopelessness. Today, some seven years later, life is yet to return to the basics.

John ‘stays’ in Blantyre, though he has nowhere to really call home.

“The most painful thing is that I don’t know where my brothers and sister are: They went to Lilongwe to look for alms in 2004, and I chose Blantyre. We have never met,” said Kaliveni.

During the afternoon of March 24 this year, LifeLine Southern Africa-Malawi chairperson, Mary Dzinyemba, watched Kaliveni gently set a mahogany box on dusty ground along Mudi River. He then opened the top end of the equally box, stuffed old newspaper clips, forming his idea of a mattress, and ducked in.

It is home for him; the boy who once had a home and enthusiasm, now replaced with perpetual fear of extreme weather conditions without, and the hunger within.

“It was such a sorry sight, yet these are our own children. The nation can do better,” said Dzinyemba.

LifeLine-Malawi is working with its mother body to establish toll-free lines for orphans, street and other vulnerable children. Dzinyemba said the initiative aims to give children suffering from various forms of abuse a life line.

“It’s about giving children facing abusive circumstances another chance; the chance to get out (of these problems),” said Dzinyemba.

However, it is not only LifeLine that is thinking in ‘second-chances’; government has now joined the fray.

It all started when Patricia Kaliati, Gender, Children and Community Development Minister, visited Chilwa Reformatory Centre in Zomba earlier this year. It is either she prepared to say what she did, or else she was prompted by circumstances.

“It is a pity that, while many other children go about in the streets of our cities and town assemblies, places abound in our reformatory centres. Our child reformatory centres are underutilized. This trend must change,’ said Kaliati.

So started the beginnings of a campaign to relocate street children to reformatory institutions by February, and Kaliati has been resolute.

Times come when the truth comes home to many, and people begin to think beyond the narrow isthmus of selfishness. This truth has come to her so many times, as most children at Mkando Trading Centre in Kaliati’s constituency testify.

They have more than a dozen times been the target of Kaliati’s charitable-self, receiving a wide range of goods including blankets, cooking oil, scholarships, and clothes, among others.

Now that she is responsible for all Malawian children as minister, the former teacher merely wants to make her love national; the combined love of a caring mother and professional teacher.

This truth has also come home for women such as Mary Woodworth, director for Mulanje-based Friends of Mulanje Orphans (FOMO). She lives in the United Kingdom, at least the physical form of her, her heart stays in Mulanje.

Like all winds, it started small for her, too. She married a British citizen, who invited her to Europe.

“The children (there) were, mainly, well dressed, well-fed, well-educated. Well-versed with matters of the world,” said Woodworth.

When she came back home for a breather around the year 2000, the truth came home for her right at the airport. Too many differences in infrastructure and technological advancements.

There was, also, the sorry sight of children on the streets of Blantyre. She thought the problem was only common in Blantyre and Lilongwe, but was shocked to find that the situation was similar in Mulanje, her home district.

“Even worse. The HIV and AIDS pandemic was breaking communities apart, challenges of poverty and resource constraints were clouding prospects for the future. There was also the issue of girls dropping out of school. Something had to be done, hence FOMO’s efforts,” said Woodworth, touched by the invisible hand of truth.

The children in Mulanje welcomed her, and her gesture; but Kaliati seems to be in trouble making her love ‘national’.

“Some street children have gone into hiding. Many are running away, and this is quiet surprising. How could people run away from assistance? The thing is, we will not stop mid-way through the road, we will look for them and go on with the exercise,” said Kaliati.

A tale of love gone bad. Can love really go ‘bad’?

“Yes, it does. Depending on the approach you adopt to solve a problem. After all, how can children run away from help? My submission is that the initiative is good, but has been hastily implemented,” said Kenwilliams Mhango, Country Director for African Network for the Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect-Malawi Chapter.

Mhango said there was no need for short cuts. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development would have carried out comprehensive publicity campaigns to rid the campaign of any huddles in understanding, invested heavily in reformatory centre infrastructure, and won civil society support.

Take, for instance, the issue of location. He says the way child reformatory centres are concentrated sends wrong signals about the existence of street children, and the challenges they face.

“Do we have a reformatory centre in the Northern region? No. Don’t we have street children there? We do,” Mhango answers his own questions.

Mhango blames short cuts for exacerbating the situation, saying most children would willingly offer themselves up to such “a positive, life-changing move’.

He had ready examples. Take, for instance, the issue of his organization’s name: African Network for the Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect- Malawi Chapter. It is such a long name, a winding road.

“Many people have suggested that we adopt a short name. They say the name is too long. But we say, “No, there is no need for short cuts when the name explains everything well. We are comfortable with both the name and the length of the name’,” said Mhango.

The short of it all is that there are times shortcuts pay, but mostly they do not pay.

The issue of reformatory and protective services for children has a long history, though the story is younger than when human life begun. In ancient times, when might was right, children had no right to live, and could be disposed of with little compunction.

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian during the late 1st Century B.C., bears witness that many people in that once great empire, including the Ceylonese, could discard of children perceived to have no courage or endurance. Such children, when not killed, rushed into streets and public places.

The Greeks did not want any physically challenged children to grow, also. Plato accepted this status quo and Aristotle recommended a law prohibiting parents from rearing physically challenged children, which led physician Soranus, a 2nd Century practitioner, to instruct midwives to examine each child at birth and get rid of those not fit.

In Egypt, on the other hand, parents who killed their children were merely sentenced to ‘hug’ the corpse continually for seventy-two hours, the punishers thinking that it was not fit those who gave life to the child to die, but that they should be punished in such a way as to create repentance and deter them from committing any such acts.

Children’s rights enjoyed secondary status to national interests, necessitating strategies to bail them out of such a quagmire.

During this very early period, Athens and Rome had orphan homes. The name brephotrophia (for these welfare centres) was mentioned in 529 in Justinian law, one of the most influential pieces of legislation. With the rise of Christianity, the church provided for foundlings and every village had a xenodochium- a hospice for pilgrims and the poor, which also embraced children without homes.

By the Sixth Century, the brephotrophium at Trier had a marble receptacle with which abandoned children could be safely deposited secretly. Similar institutions in France in the Seventh Century were the forerunners of the welfare system of the Nineteenth Century, with the establishment of the first such hospice by Datheus, the archpriest of Milan in 787.

In Mesopotamia, the strategy was different. Starting from 6000 years ago, orphans and vulnerable children had a goddess. Writer Rig Veda also mentions another deity among ancient Hindus who rescued vulnerable children and endowed them with legal rights to protection.

The gods reflected a mirror image of humanity, affording a picture of what went on among people, and how wrongs could be corrected. This was supplemented by more laws guaranteeing rights of the child to protection, and included the Laws of Solon in 600 B.C., which required army commanders to raise, at the expense of government, children of soldiers killed in battle.

Wives of Roman emperors, who initiated child welfare programmes, emulated this gesture. Around this same time, St. Nicholas Thaumaturgos- wonder worker of the 3rd Century, who was also Patron Saint of children and protector of the feeble minded- revolutionized the phenomenon of child welfare.

Main strategies of offering child protective services has consisted of placing children in government run institutions, private organisations or under foster care.
Russian and British law also initiated early involvement of government in public welfare, with the main reliance being on alms-houses where, to off set expense and save children from the ‘sin’ of idleness, children were forced to work, according to The Battered Child, a book tackling the issue of child abuse and neglect in the world.

However, child protective services have not been without blemish, and their impacts have continually been questioned. An1881German report on childcare services stated that 31 per cent of illegitimate children died under foster care, allegedly from natural causes (but really from freezing, starvation and deliberate destruction). The report discovered that foster care givers had ‘discovered’ that the best way of getting rid of the children was to give them nothing but pacifiers soaked in brandy!

This was negative, sure, but helped in making sure that the issue of childcare rose from a relatively obscure position to a matter of public and professional concern in the US in early 1960s.

In all these cases, there is no report of children escaping- as Malawi has come to learn.

Only that Kaliati never gives up, and has a clever way of summing things up: “We are all still learning from all this and, no matter how difficult it proves or long it takes, we will place these children home. Reformatory centres are the best ever place for them, where they will be nurtured and grow into productive citizens. It is as simple as that.”



Paved or thorny: Malawi’s democratic path to 2014

RICHARD CHIROMBO

Intolerance. Dissent suppression. Intra-party bickering. Suppressed egos. Hero-worshipping. Thin, if any, ideological differences. Twisted principles.

It does not take long to define the subject: Malawi politics.

Since multiparty politics of government came back home in 1994, and got three more turns of ‘welcome-home-parties’ in 1999, 2004 and 2009, the country’s political scene has become well-dotted with political events, most of which predictable.

Malawians have come to expect a stillness of political egos in ruling parties, especially when the incumbent president is running for the first five years, while intra-party bickering has become part of the ‘norm’ in opposition parties- a way, perhaps, of passing political sleep away in the long-wait for Sanjika Palace or New State House.

Long-wait because no opposition party has ever won Presidential elections since 1994, save, perhaps, for the unique case of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Former United Democratic Front (UDF) National Publicity Secretary, Sam Mpasu, had one political adage he so loved to press home: people, he argued, form political parties to win the golden ticket into government. That is common sense.

But some special breed of people, Malawians to our credit, went into government in order to form a political party! That fascinated Mpasu so much- much the same way as it reinforced the established point that Malawi is a country of great inventors (the likes of Gabriel Kondesi, William Kamkwamba and, after 2004, the political inventor that is State President Bingu wa Mutharika, among others).

As some form of artificial tranquility prevails in ruling parties, the parties in question soon ‘forget’ the contentious issue of succession, leaving all sense of judgment to ‘time’, which, they always argue, ‘will tell’. The reason for letting succession dogs lie is often that, because the leaders won their maiden Presidential contest, they will do it (win) again.

That is the reason nobody bothered former president Bakili Muluzi, within the ranks and file of UDF between 1994 and 1999, on succession plans; a honeymoon that continued between 1999 and 2004 when it became apparently clear that, while the driver was still enjoying the feel of the highway and wanted to continue cruising beyond legal speed, the road in front was fast disappearing into some peculiar, dusty path.

Such leaders quickly grow bigger than their sponsoring parties and develop quick-fire anger even to friendly advice. The end, in our case, has been a disaster for intra-party democracy because leaders are imposed on political parties to satisfy the insatiable anger of the powers-that-be.

Just such a disaster happened in the UDF, a party that once wore ‘mighty’ armor during its time of glory. Because it had everything at its disposal in those ‘mighty’ days, the party wore the ‘heavy suit of prosperity’ to withstand even the most volatile of forces; now, it struggles in the great sea of near-obscurity that it has adopted the weight-light life saving jacket to survive the stormy waters.

Ironically, the same argument that offers first-time ruling parties artificial tranquility has the opposite effect on opposition parties. Because their leaders lost one election, other aspirants begin to fume, saying chances are that they (losers) will loose again. Once beaten, twice shy; twice beaten? The answer is what they dread.

That answer is what Malawi Congress Party (MCP) presidential aspirants never wanted to be the unfortunate part of between 1994 and 1999, too. First President, Ngwazi Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, fell against Muluzi in the 1994 race to Sanjika, and never sought to rise again.

He took the white flag to Mudi State Residence in Blantyre, where he went to stay after getting unceremoniously booted out of Sanjika Palace, but left the wooden post with the green lights to Gwanda Chakuamba- his vice presidential running-mate in the monumental polls.

John Zenus Ungapake Tembo, the ever-ambitious Dedza South Member of Parliament, was chosen MCP vice president. Political analysts saw them as the perfect example of a strange political pair, doubts that soon back-rode the horse of reality when time came to choose a presidential running mate.

Chakuamba, aware of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) president, Chakufwa Chihana’s, discontentment with the UDF administration, wanted to outsmart the ruling cadres by forging a working alliance with Aford. While common sense had it that Chihana gets the running mate slot, Tembo could have none of it.

Chakuamba and Chihana? These were strange bedfellows, too; more so because Chihana had fought gallantly against the one party regime, efforts that paid dividends at the ballot box. It was a common choral cord Chihana and the likes of Muluzi had touched, and they got their just desserts.

But politics is not a duvet you get into in the evening, and hope to still be there by sunrise: it is dynamic, and changes with the times. Chakuamba and Chihana got this wisdom quite well, and wanted to use it for a free tough lesson on the ‘big-headed’ UDF.

Because Tembo did not whole-heartedly support the two, the alliance- like the conflict it created- was not symmetrical. The space left between escalating disagreements in MCP, confusion over the ‘real’ MCP’s stand on Aford, and the ruling UDF’s campaign tactics was too small for the articulation of a viable alliance agenda.

To some extent, Tembo’s reluctance was an admission of the inadequacies of decision making in political parties, as well as the general lack of real grass roots’ representation in such processes. On this line of thinking, the alliance’s failure at the polls was a form of ‘voice’ for grass roots communities, a message that had no other form than ‘failure’.

All this happened some 11 years ago, and people expected new things and challenges. It has not been so, though, because, instead of taking the exciting political road replete with twists and turns, our politicians have chosen to take the straight road to the nearest elections. This is worrying Amunandife Mkumba, Malawi Democratic Union (MDU) president. When Malawians last saw Kamuzu on a presidential ballot box, Mkumba was there. He acknowledges being one of the most hopeful people then.

“After all, we had worked so hard to reach that level of going to the polls to choose the Head of state and government and Members of Parliament. Some of us risked our lives writing and distribution secret letters in the middle of night,” said Mkumba.

Now, after some 16 years of multiparty democracy, what does he say? Are we there?

“Not yet; we are still trying. It is all the same everywhere. Some democracies such as the US have come a long way. In fact, when people realize that some things have been predictable politically, it is a sign of political maturity,” said Mkumba.

MDU is one of the parties whose predictable pattern includes its dependence on alliances with relatively larger parties. Others include Malawi Democratic Party (MDP) of Kamlepo Kalua, Congress for National Unity, Peoples Patriotic Front, Peoples Progressive Movement, Maravi People’s Party, Malawi Forum for Unity in Development, among others.

“This has been one of the weaknesses in our democracy. We have far too many political parties it is difficult to understand their ideologies. That, too, has been one of the most predictable things: more political parties, little, if at all, differences in political ideologies,” said Edward Chaka, executive director for Peoples Federation for National Peace and Development (Pefenap).

Chaka said the country needed influential parties that worked on incorruptible principles, contrary to current trends where courageous politicians wither when caught up in a net of adverse circumstances. They also often drop into a vacuum of political objectives and offer no clear direction.

“We don’t need leaders who are always busy buying time in a world where there is no spare time. Each time, and thus election, is important; parties should be talking of making new in roads,” he said.

Others, like Institute for Policy Interaction executive director, Rafiq Hajat, and Human Rights Consultative Committee chairperson Undule Mwakasungula, feel that the road is partly paved and partly thorny.

The thorny area is that of political tolerance, both in ruling and opposition parties. The issue of suspension of three DPP parliamentarians for airing their constituents’ views on quota system of selection to public universities comes to the fore, so does the recent public fight of UDF supporters at Chileka Airport.

“Political parties need to embrace tolerance to dissenting views. We can then claim that we have come off age,” said Maurice Munthali, Public Affairs Committee publicity secretary.

The other thing winning politicians are likely to pursue is the arrest of perceived enemies. It started with Muluzi, when his administration arrested an ailing Banda. Now the UDF is crying foul, saying DPP is targeting its zealots on trumped up charges. Just who will be on the ‘crying list’ next is unknown, depends on who wins.

“Otherwise. Why is it that only those in opposition are in the wrong. People linked with government and the ruling party is spared,’ queried Friday Jumbe, interim UDF president.

But one thing is for sure. What US Senator John Tyler once said is true: “The man of today gives place to the man of tomorrow, and the idols which one worships, the next destroys.”

Suppression of dissent in ruling parties continues; political bickering and position tussling continues in opposition parties; small parties continue to wait for national elections to hatch the same, old idea of alliances; popular representation remains a fallacy; and, somewhere, handcuffs are waiting for the next politician.

Nothing really changes, although political commentators also agree that Malawi’s road to destination-democracy has been paved on elections’ conduct. Peace has been the buzzword, prompting others to suggestively joke that the country should replace tobacco for peace as the Number One forex earner.

But peace is never for sale. Regional voting patterns are also being dismasntled, a mature sign of unity in purpose, said Hajat.

So far, it has been a game of equal chances: thorns here, pavements there.



Taking the children ‘home’

RICHARD CHIROMBO

The street child’s life is rough and lonely.

They have wishes, hopes, passions, inclinations and secret dreams- but all these cannot alter the state of facts and evidence, which point to dread and gloom.

John Kaliveni, 12, was once a moving hope. He had decided, some seven years earlier, to grow up in his patrimonial home- Mtengo Village in the area of T/A Kalonga, Salima.

That was before his father, the last surviving parent of their family, died in August 2003. When death struck, he- four older brothers and a sister- entered into the shadows. Hope for quality education went with the winds of death. Their seemingly little world collapsed is sorrow and hopelessness. Today, some seven years later, life is yet to return to the basics.

John ‘stays’ in Blantyre, though he has nowhere to really call home.

“The most painful thing is that I don’t know where my brothers and sister are: They went to Lilongwe to look for alms in 2004, and I chose Blantyre. We have never met,” said Kaliveni.

During the afternoon of March 24 this year, LifeLine Southern Africa-Malawi chairperson, Mary Dzinyemba, watched Kaliveni gently set a mahogany box on dusty ground along Mudi River. He then opened the top end of the equally box, stuffed old newspaper clips, forming his idea of a mattress, and ducked in.

It is home for him; the boy who once had a home and enthusiasm, now replaced with perpetual fear of extreme weather conditions without, and the hunger within.

“It was such a sorry sight, yet these are our own children. The nation can do better,” said Dzinyemba.

LifeLine-Malawi is working with its mother body to establish toll-free lines for orphans, street and other vulnerable children. Dzinyemba said the initiative aims to give children suffering from various forms of abuse a life line.

“It’s about giving children facing abusive circumstances another chance; the chance to get out (of these problems),” said Dzinyemba.

However, it is not only LifeLine that is thinking in ‘second-chances’; government has now joined the fray.

It all started when Patricia Kaliati, Gender, Children and Community Development Minister, visited Chilwa Reformatory Centre in Zomba earlier this year. It is either she prepared to say what she did, or else she was prompted by circumstances.

“It is a pity that, while many other children go about in the streets of our cities and town assemblies, places abound in our reformatory centres. Our child reformatory centres are underutilized. This trend must change,’ said Kaliati.

So started the beginnings of a campaign to relocate street children to reformatory institutions by February, and Kaliati has been resolute.

Times come when the truth comes home to many, and people begin to think beyond the narrow isthmus of selfishness. This truth has come to her so many times, as most children at Mkando Trading Centre in Kaliati’s constituency testify.

They have more than a dozen times been the target of Kaliati’s charitable-self, receiving a wide range of goods including blankets, cooking oil, scholarships, and clothes, among others.

Now that she is responsible for all Malawian children as minister, the former teacher merely wants to make her love national; the combined love of a caring mother and professional teacher.

This truth has also come home for women such as Mary Woodworth, director for Mulanje-based Friends of Mulanje Orphans (FOMO). She lives in the United Kingdom, at least the physical form of her, her heart stays in Mulanje.

Like all winds, it started small for her, too. She married a British citizen, who invited her to Europe.

“The children (there) were, mainly, well dressed, well-fed, well-educated. Well-versed with matters of the world,” said Woodworth.

When she came back home for a breather around the year 2000, the truth came home for her right at the airport. Too many differences in infrastructure and technological advancements.

There was, also, the sorry sight of children on the streets of Blantyre. She thought the problem was only common in Blantyre and Lilongwe, but was shocked to find that the situation was similar in Mulanje, her home district.

“Even worse. The HIV and AIDS pandemic was breaking communities apart, challenges of poverty and resource constraints were clouding prospects for the future. There was also the issue of girls dropping out of school. Something had to be done, hence FOMO’s efforts,” said Woodworth, touched by the invisible hand of truth.

The children in Mulanje welcomed her, and her gesture; but Kaliati seems to be in trouble making her love ‘national’.

“Some street children have gone into hiding. Many are running away, and this is quiet surprising. How could people run away from assistance? The thing is, we will not stop mid-way through the road, we will look for them and go on with the exercise,” said Kaliati.

A tale of love gone bad. Can love really go ‘bad’?

“Yes, it does. Depending on the approach you adopt to solve a problem. After all, how can children run away from help? My submission is that the initiative is good, but has been hastily implemented,” said Kenwilliams Mhango, Country Director for African Network for the Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect-Malawi Chapter.

Mhango said there was no need for short cuts. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development would have carried out comprehensive publicity campaigns to rid the campaign of any huddles in understanding, invested heavily in reformatory centre infrastructure, and won civil society support.

Take, for instance, the issue of location. He says the way child reformatory centres are concentrated sends wrong signals about the existence of street children, and the challenges they face.

“Do we have a reformatory centre in the Northern region? No. Don’t we have street children there? We do,” Mhango answers his own questions.

Mhango blames short cuts for exacerbating the situation, saying most children would willingly offer themselves up to such “a positive, life-changing move’.

He had ready examples. Take, for instance, the issue of his organization’s name: African Network for the Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect- Malawi Chapter. It is such a long name, a winding road.

“Many people have suggested that we adopt a short name. They say the name is too long. But we say, “No, there is no need for short cuts when the name explains everything well. We are comfortable with both the name and the length of the name’,” said Mhango.

The short of it all is that there are times shortcuts pay, but mostly they do not pay.

The issue of reformatory and protective services for children has a long history, though the story is younger than when human life begun. In ancient times, when might was right, children had no right to live, and could be disposed of with little compunction.

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian during the late 1st Century B.C., bears witness that many people in that once great empire, including the Ceylonese, could discard of children perceived to have no courage or endurance. Such children, when not killed, rushed into streets and public places.

The Greeks did not want any physically challenged children to grow, also. Plato accepted this status quo and Aristotle recommended a law prohibiting parents from rearing physically challenged children, which led physician Soranus, a 2nd Century practitioner, to instruct midwives to examine each child at birth and get rid of those not fit.

In Egypt, on the other hand, parents who killed their children were merely sentenced to ‘hug’ the corpse continually for seventy-two hours, the punishers thinking that it was not fit those who gave life to the child to die, but that they should be punished in such a way as to create repentance and deter them from committing any such acts.

Children’s rights enjoyed secondary status to national interests, necessitating strategies to bail them out of such a quagmire.

During this very early period, Athens and Rome had orphan homes. The name brephotrophia (for these welfare centres) was mentioned in 529 in Justinian law, one of the most influential pieces of legislation. With the rise of Christianity, the church provided for foundlings and every village had a xenodochium- a hospice for pilgrims and the poor, which also embraced children without homes.

By the Sixth Century, the brephotrophium at Trier had a marble receptacle with which abandoned children could be safely deposited secretly. Similar institutions in France in the Seventh Century were the forerunners of the welfare system of the Nineteenth Century, with the establishment of the first such hospice by Datheus, the archpriest of Milan in 787.

In Mesopotamia, the strategy was different. Starting from 6000 years ago, orphans and vulnerable children had a goddess. Writer Rig Veda also mentions another deity among ancient Hindus who rescued vulnerable children and endowed them with legal rights to protection.

The gods reflected a mirror image of humanity, affording a picture of what went on among people, and how wrongs could be corrected. This was supplemented by more laws guaranteeing rights of the child to protection, and included the Laws of Solon in 600 B.C., which required army commanders to raise, at the expense of government, children of soldiers killed in battle.

Wives of Roman emperors, who initiated child welfare programmes, emulated this gesture. Around this same time, St. Nicholas Thaumaturgos- wonder worker of the 3rd Century, who was also Patron Saint of children and protector of the feeble minded- revolutionized the phenomenon of child welfare.

Main strategies of offering child protective services has consisted of placing children in government run institutions, private organisations or under foster care.
Russian and British law also initiated early involvement of government in public welfare, with the main reliance being on alms-houses where, to off set expense and save children from the ‘sin’ of idleness, children were forced to work, according to The Battered Child, a book tackling the issue of child abuse and neglect in the world.

However, child protective services have not been without blemish, and their impacts have continually been questioned. An1881German report on childcare services stated that 31 per cent of illegitimate children died under foster care, allegedly from natural causes (but really from freezing, starvation and deliberate destruction). The report discovered that foster care givers had ‘discovered’ that the best way of getting rid of the children was to give them nothing but pacifiers soaked in brandy!

This was negative, sure, but helped in making sure that the issue of childcare rose from a relatively obscure position to a matter of public and professional concern in the US in early 1960s.

In all these cases, there is no report of children escaping- as Malawi has come to learn.

Only that Kaliati never gives up, and has a clever way of summing things up: “We are all still learning from all this and, no matter how difficult it proves or long it takes, we will place these children home. Reformatory centres are the best ever place for them, where they will be nurtured and grow into productive citizens. It is as simple as that.”



Paved or thorny: Malawi’s democratic path to 2014

RICHARD CHIROMBO

Intolerance. Dissent suppression. Intra-party bickering. Suppressed egos. Hero-worshipping. Thin, if any, ideological differences. Twisted principles.

It does not take long to define the subject: Malawi politics.

Since multiparty politics of government came back home in 1994, and got three more turns of ‘welcome-home-parties’ in 1999, 2004 and 2009, the country’s political scene has become well-dotted with political events, most of which predictable.

Malawians have come to expect a stillness of political egos in ruling parties, especially when the incumbent president is running for the first five years, while intra-party bickering has become part of the ‘norm’ in opposition parties- a way, perhaps, of passing political sleep away in the long-wait for Sanjika Palace or New State House.

Long-wait because no opposition party has ever won Presidential elections since 1994, save, perhaps, for the unique case of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Former United Democratic Front (UDF) National Publicity Secretary, Sam Mpasu, had one political adage he so loved to press home: people, he argued, form political parties to win the golden ticket into government. That is common sense.

But some special breed of people, Malawians to our credit, went into government in order to form a political party! That fascinated Mpasu so much- much the same way as it reinforced the established point that Malawi is a country of great inventors (the likes of Gabriel Kondesi, William Kamkwamba and, after 2004, the political inventor that is State President Bingu wa Mutharika, among others).

As some form of artificial tranquility prevails in ruling parties, the parties in question soon ‘forget’ the contentious issue of succession, leaving all sense of judgment to ‘time’, which, they always argue, ‘will tell’. The reason for letting succession dogs lie is often that, because the leaders won their maiden Presidential contest, they will do it (win) again.

That is the reason nobody bothered former president Bakili Muluzi, within the ranks and file of UDF between 1994 and 1999, on succession plans; a honeymoon that continued between 1999 and 2004 when it became apparently clear that, while the driver was still enjoying the feel of the highway and wanted to continue cruising beyond legal speed, the road in front was fast disappearing into some peculiar, dusty path.

Such leaders quickly grow bigger than their sponsoring parties and develop quick-fire anger even to friendly advice. The end, in our case, has been a disaster for intra-party democracy because leaders are imposed on political parties to satisfy the insatiable anger of the powers-that-be.

Just such a disaster happened in the UDF, a party that once wore ‘mighty’ armor during its time of glory. Because it had everything at its disposal in those ‘mighty’ days, the party wore the ‘heavy suit of prosperity’ to withstand even the most volatile of forces; now, it struggles in the great sea of near-obscurity that it has adopted the weight-light life saving jacket to survive the stormy waters.

Ironically, the same argument that offers first-time ruling parties artificial tranquility has the opposite effect on opposition parties. Because their leaders lost one election, other aspirants begin to fume, saying chances are that they (losers) will loose again. Once beaten, twice shy; twice beaten? The answer is what they dread.

That answer is what Malawi Congress Party (MCP) presidential aspirants never wanted to be the unfortunate part of between 1994 and 1999, too. First President, Ngwazi Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, fell against Muluzi in the 1994 race to Sanjika, and never sought to rise again.

He took the white flag to Mudi State Residence in Blantyre, where he went to stay after getting unceremoniously booted out of Sanjika Palace, but left the wooden post with the green lights to Gwanda Chakuamba- his vice presidential running-mate in the monumental polls.

John Zenus Ungapake Tembo, the ever-ambitious Dedza South Member of Parliament, was chosen MCP vice president. Political analysts saw them as the perfect example of a strange political pair, doubts that soon back-rode the horse of reality when time came to choose a presidential running mate.

Chakuamba, aware of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) president, Chakufwa Chihana’s, discontentment with the UDF administration, wanted to outsmart the ruling cadres by forging a working alliance with Aford. While common sense had it that Chihana gets the running mate slot, Tembo could have none of it.

Chakuamba and Chihana? These were strange bedfellows, too; more so because Chihana had fought gallantly against the one party regime, efforts that paid dividends at the ballot box. It was a common choral cord Chihana and the likes of Muluzi had touched, and they got their just desserts.

But politics is not a duvet you get into in the evening, and hope to still be there by sunrise: it is dynamic, and changes with the times. Chakuamba and Chihana got this wisdom quite well, and wanted to use it for a free tough lesson on the ‘big-headed’ UDF.

Because Tembo did not whole-heartedly support the two, the alliance- like the conflict it created- was not symmetrical. The space left between escalating disagreements in MCP, confusion over the ‘real’ MCP’s stand on Aford, and the ruling UDF’s campaign tactics was too small for the articulation of a viable alliance agenda.

To some extent, Tembo’s reluctance was an admission of the inadequacies of decision making in political parties, as well as the general lack of real grass roots’ representation in such processes. On this line of thinking, the alliance’s failure at the polls was a form of ‘voice’ for grass roots communities, a message that had no other form than ‘failure’.

All this happened some 11 years ago, and people expected new things and challenges. It has not been so, though, because, instead of taking the exciting political road replete with twists and turns, our politicians have chosen to take the straight road to the nearest elections. This is worrying Amunandife Mkumba, Malawi Democratic Union (MDU) president. When Malawians last saw Kamuzu on a presidential ballot box, Mkumba was there. He acknowledges being one of the most hopeful people then.

“After all, we had worked so hard to reach that level of going to the polls to choose the Head of state and government and Members of Parliament. Some of us risked our lives writing and distribution secret letters in the middle of night,” said Mkumba.

Now, after some 16 years of multiparty democracy, what does he say? Are we there?

“Not yet; we are still trying. It is all the same everywhere. Some democracies such as the US have come a long way. In fact, when people realize that some things have been predictable politically, it is a sign of political maturity,” said Mkumba.

MDU is one of the parties whose predictable pattern includes its dependence on alliances with relatively larger parties. Others include Malawi Democratic Party (MDP) of Kamlepo Kalua, Congress for National Unity, Peoples Patriotic Front, Peoples Progressive Movement, Maravi People’s Party, Malawi Forum for Unity in Development, among others.

“This has been one of the weaknesses in our democracy. We have far too many political parties it is difficult to understand their ideologies. That, too, has been one of the most predictable things: more political parties, little, if at all, differences in political ideologies,” said Edward Chaka, executive director for Peoples Federation for National Peace and Development (Pefenap).

Chaka said the country needed influential parties that worked on incorruptible principles, contrary to current trends where courageous politicians wither when caught up in a net of adverse circumstances. They also often drop into a vacuum of political objectives and offer no clear direction.

“We don’t need leaders who are always busy buying time in a world where there is no spare time. Each time, and thus election, is important; parties should be talking of making new in roads,” he said.

Others, like Institute for Policy Interaction executive director, Rafiq Hajat, and Human Rights Consultative Committee chairperson Undule Mwakasungula, feel that the road is partly paved and partly thorny.

The thorny area is that of political tolerance, both in ruling and opposition parties. The issue of suspension of three DPP parliamentarians for airing their constituents’ views on quota system of selection to public universities comes to the fore, so does the recent public fight of UDF supporters at Chileka Airport.

“Political parties need to embrace tolerance to dissenting views. We can then claim that we have come off age,” said Maurice Munthali, Public Affairs Committee publicity secretary.

The other thing winning politicians are likely to pursue is the arrest of perceived enemies. It started with Muluzi, when his administration arrested an ailing Banda. Now the UDF is crying foul, saying DPP is targeting its zealots on trumped up charges. Just who will be on the ‘crying list’ next is unknown, depends on who wins.

“Otherwise. Why is it that only those in opposition are in the wrong. People linked with government and the ruling party is spared,’ queried Friday Jumbe, interim UDF president.

But one thing is for sure. What US Senator John Tyler once said is true: “The man of today gives place to the man of tomorrow, and the idols which one worships, the next destroys.”

Suppression of dissent in ruling parties continues; political bickering and position tussling continues in opposition parties; small parties continue to wait for national elections to hatch the same, old idea of alliances; popular representation remains a fallacy; and, somewhere, handcuffs are waiting for the next politician.

Nothing really changes, although political commentators also agree that Malawi’s road to destination-democracy has been paved on elections’ conduct. Peace has been the buzzword, prompting others to suggestively joke that the country should replace tobacco for peace as the Number One forex earner.

But peace is never for sale. Regional voting patterns are also being dismasntled, a mature sign of unity in purpose, said Hajat.

So far, it has been a game of equal chances: thorns here, pavements there.