The earlier summary of agricultural policy history in Malawi provides some insights into the
significance of the country’s politics in determining the policies that are given priority by
governments in power. Malawi has had just three heads of state since independence in 1964.
Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda ruled from 1964 to 1994 (30 years). After a referendum in 1993
and an election in May 1994, he was succeeded by Bakili Muluzi, leader of the UDF political
party, who won two successive elections in 1994 and 1999. In 2004, the UDF regained power
under the leadership of Bingu wa Mutharika, who due to the slenderness of his majority and
political infighting between the major parties, proceeded to move his government and
leadership into a new party, the Democratic Development Party (DPP) in 2005. Bingu has
subsequently won a second electoral term, which runs from 2009 to 2014.
2828
President Mutharika is popular and is known locally by praise titles such as Mose wa lero or Ngwazi. The former means ‘today’s Moses’ and connotes Dr Mutharika delivering Malawians from hunger. Ngwazi means ‘conqueror’ or ‘saviour’, the title with which Dr Banda also was bestowed for having conquered colonialism. A university in China in 2010 conferred on the president an honorary professorship. His official salutations have now become His Excellency Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika.
Dr Banda is regarded by most political science observers of Malawi to have entrenched what
is called neo-patrimonialism in the way government in Malawi tends to function (see, for
example, Cross and Kutengule 2001, Booth et al. 2006). Neo-patrimonialism is characterised
by excessive patronage, allegiance, cronyism, and rent seeking (Jackson and Rosberg 1984,
Kydd 2009). Under neo-patrimonialism, politics is the art of private wealth generation for
‘insiders’, and political control is achieved and sustained by using high office to ‘purchase’
loyalty and support. The alienation of land from the customary sector in the Banda era
exemplifies neo-patrimonial behaviour. The MCP regime encouraged its senior members to
engage in the transfer of land from customary to private tenure, mainly to produce burley
tobacco for export. The scale of this land alienation was considerable. In the early 1970s there
were some 229 estates covering 255,800 ha with an average size of some 1,000 ha each,
representing the historic pattern of commercial settlement in forestry, tea, sugar, coffee, and
tobacco. By the end of the Banda period in 1993, this had risen to 23,000 estates occupying
1.2 million ha, with an average size of some 50 ha, largely consisting of a clientelist class of
tobacco growers. By way of contrast, the same period saw a decline in plot size in the
customary sector from 70 per cent of producers owning 2 ha or more in 1969 to less than 15
per cent having more than 1 ha in 1995 (FAO/WFP 1995, Cross and Kutengule 2001).
Politics in Malawi does not only obey neo-patrimonial features; it also exhibits political
manoeuvring of more routine kinds such as keeping one step ahead of opposition politicians
and groups, making decisions that are reactive to claims put forward in the country’s media,
attempting to shift responsibility when things go wrong, and denying that an emerging
problem exists (Booth et al. 2006). In relation to fertilizer policy (and its relative success or
failure), several of these behaviours have been deployed at different points in time. Fertilizer
subsidies are hugely popular amongst the country’s small farmers, and elections in Malawi
are won or lost according to how convincingly the leaders of different political parties
represent their intentions regarding the future amount and scale of the subsidy (Murwira 2009,
Smiddy and Young 2009). However, if maize market behaviour indicates that the policy’s
impacts may not have been quite as positive as claimed, then scapegoats are sought (typically,
private maize traders if maize prices rise steeply), and the existence of a maize shortage may
be ignored or downplayed.
2929
This latter occurs quite often, but was observed at its most disingenuous in Malawi in 2002 when, confronted by mounting evidence of serious famine taking hold in some parts of the country, President Muluzi declared that no such problem existed (Devereux 2002a).
Malawi nowadays has a devolved public administration, following the decentralisation of
local government to districts that occurred in 2001. The national decentralization policy
introduced in 1998 provides for a unified system of local government with the aim of
enhancing local participation, eliminating duplication in service delivery, and promoting
transparency and accountability. In this context, districts, towns and cities are all denominated
district assemblies (DAs)
30. Figure 3.1 above provides an administrative map of Malawi
showing district assemblies.
The decentralized system comprises a hierarchy of committees constituted by elected or
nominated representatives. There is the District Assembly (DA), the Area Development
Committee (ADC) and the Village Development Committee (VDC). The DA is constituted by
elected ward councillors, but also includes a prescribed number of members of parliament
(MPs) and Traditional Authorities (TAs). The DA has the mandate to implement national
policies and is also able to formulate district specific policies. The ADC covers a TA (area)
and comprises representatives of all Village Development Committees (VDCs) under the
jurisdiction of the TA. The ADC is responsible for identification and prioritization of
community needs, supervising implementation, and mobilizing community input and
resources. A VDC can be the same as, or larger than, a group village head (GVH) which in
turn comprises several villages when village size is small.
These committees are supported by technical committees comprising staff from government
departments, NGOs and the private sector. A District Executive Committee (DEC) provides
technical backstopping to the DA. It constitutes the District Commissioner (DC) as
chairperson, the Director for Planning and Development as secretary, and heads of the local
offices of line ministries, as well as NGO technical officers. At community level, the Area
Executive Committee (AEC) supports the ADC and VDC in their roles. The AEC comprises
field extension workers such as Community Development Assistants, Health Assistants,
Agriculture field staff, and others (Government of Malawi 1998b, 2000a, 2001). But many
government departments have their own parallel structures of service delivery that both
departs from and overlaps this administrative and governance system.
30
There are 28 rural districts, 4 cities (Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu in Mzimba and Zomba), and 6 town assemblies (Balaka, Luchenza, Karonga, Kasungu, Mangochi and Salima). The DA for Mzimba district is known as Mbelwa DA.
Figure 3.1: Map of Malawi showing administrative districts of Malawi
Source: Benson, et al., (2002, p.6)
Note that as of 2002, there were 27 districts in Malawi. Neno was part of Mwanza district. Hence it is not shown here
Discussion on how the input subsidy programme and the Mchinji cash transfer scheme work
is deferred to later chapters (Chapters 5 and 6) but it is relevant to note here that despite the
presence of the unified local government structure, government departments, NGOs and
projects often continue to use their own parallel implementation structures and systems. The
case study of Mchinji district (Chapters 6 and 7) illustrates this point. The district has a
‘district social protection committee’ and ‘community social protection committees’
responsible for implementation and management of social transfers. In theory, all social
transfer activities should use these sub-committees for their implementation, but this does not
happen in practice. The Mchinji social cash transfer programme is implemented by
Department of Social Welfare in the Ministry of Women and Community services. At district
level, the Ministry has two separate offices: a community development office and a social
welfare office responsible for all social issues such as orphan and vulnerable children care and
disabilities.
31The two offices converge at community level where a community development
assistant (CDA), who typically covers a TA, coordinates activities of both offices. The social
cash transfer programme is implemented by a separate district social cash transfer secretariat
and community social cash transfer committees (CSCTCs) under VDCs.
Likewise, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MoAFS) implements the input subsidy
programme through district assemblies but lacks consistency. Some activities are
implemented through the DC while others are implemented through District Agriculture
offices. At community level, some activities are implemented through extension workers,
some through village heads and some through village input subsidy committees. An important
feature of local authorities in Malawi is their apparent inability to consolidate local
governance and development management. In fact, since 2004, the government has not held
local elections to constitute the DAs. There are also increasing cases and speculations about
tensions
between
different
government
departments,
corruption,
nepotism
and
mismanagement of public resources (especially agricultural input subsidy coupons), most
probably emanating from confusion created by the failure to establish institutional boundaries
in the decentralization (Hussein 2004, Patel et al. 2007, Tambulasi 2009a).
At the centre of this lack of clarity about institutional responsibility are traditional leaders
who comprise an informal but officially recognised administrative structure of traditional
31
Note that although the district social welfare office handles issues of disabilities, at national level there is a separate Ministry of Persons with Disabilities.
leadership (the chieftaincy system). Traditional leaders serve multiple roles and command
respect as custodians of legal, governance, security, administrative and development issues at
the community level. This structure has existed from colonial times and was strengthened
during the Banda era. The traditional leadership hierarchy comprises Traditional Authorities
(TAs) and sub-Traditional Authorities (STAs), known by the title of chief, who are
responsible for a catchment known as an Area. Below TAs and STAs are village heads
responsible for villages. Villages are the smallest unit of the traditional authority system, a
number of villages are brought together and have a group village head (GVH). A Chiefs Act
passed during the colonial era provides the legislative framework for traditional authority.
Although government holds the power to confirm or promote or reject a chief, traditional
leadership is inherited. A chief is answerable to the president through the District
Commissioner and draws a monthly honorarium. The traditional leadership system applies
predominantly in rural areas. Although urban areas have ‘chiefs’, governments have up to
now not recognized this arrangement, preferring to call them ‘block leaders’. Traditional
leaders in Malawi are influential and they act as the focal point for the social, cultural,
political, and economic aspects of rural life as well as the de facto system for local
participation (Kutengule 2000, Chiweza 2005, Muriaas 2009).
Evidence seems to suggest that traditional leaders in Malawi are more than in the past
involved in corruption, nepotism and theft of resources. Indeed it has been proposed that after
the police, traditional leaders (chiefs and village heads) are the most corrupt social group in
Malawi (Kasunda 2008, Tambulasi 2009b, Chipalasa 2010a). As just one example of this in
the context of this thesis, the number of registered villages has grown rapidly apparently with
a view to increasing the access of chiefs and their citizens to the free cash, inputs and other
resources in circulation (Chinsinga 2009). For example, in the social cash transfer project area
in TA Mlomba in Machinga district, Seaman et al., (2008, pp.7-8) noted a 60 per cent
increase in the number of villages listed by the Social Welfare Department compared to the
national census map of 1998. Some villages had as few households as four. The subdivision
of the villages appeared to have been partly due to disagreements within villages about
engagement with aid projects, but mostly to do with increasing the potential of receiving
social transfers from current programmes, especially social cash transfers. During the
fieldwork for this research (described in Chapter 7), it was observed that villages in the case
study sites were small and structured like hamlets (mudzi) or ‘clans’ of people related to each
other either by blood or affiliation through marriages. In particular one VDC called Kangwere
comprised one clan with Zulu as the common household name. The VDC called Mduwa
represented 33 villages with 1146 households (i.e. 34 households per village). Some villages
(Mdumpha, Jimu and Tachoka) had ten or less households. This background is important for
understanding how social transfers actually work at district and community levels.
In document
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