Governance and Aid in Malawi: A Minor Comment

So, Madam Joyce Banda inherits a government on the brink of financial ruin, and a nation equally burdened by regressive politics and economics. Donor confidence is virtually non-existent, and in short, the Malawi economy is bone-dry given that government spending as a driver of growth stalls, while heavy taxes on businesses and consumers alike further hamper investment and consumption spending, respectively. Politics has by this time inflitrated into virtually all spending outlets of the government from the ministries to parastals, all the way down to districts. Tenders are awarded based on political alignments, and yet, even within that premitive model of politics, there is simply not enough juice to cater for all party functionaries. The society becomes fragmented and polarized. Political rhetoric from the then ruling party employs messages loaded with threatening language to deter opponents, and in some instances, the state security forces "act-out" the content of those messages. However, violence is not a private good, but a public one - no one has monopoly over the use of violence. Society follows suite as the resolution of desputes is decided on the streets. In my view, all the crises carrying on in the country are really the result of "bad" governance that had especially managed to choke at the livelihood of Malawi's people. As I have argued before, the Malawian public does not necessarily oppose unconstitutional governance. It really opposes, on the one hand, good governance that negatively affects livelihoods, and on the other, bad governance that also affects negatively livelihoods, even though the potential for political action is skewed towards urban citizens. A case in point is Bingu wa Mutharika's first term. It was not necessarily one that adhered to the precepts of democracy as enshrined in our Constitution. Rather, it was a term in which the ends justified the means. As long as the politics didnt tamper with livelihoods, the unconstitutional governance was "fine".

 

Enters Madam Joyce at a time when it was clear that Malawi was paying for the sin of deporting the Ambassador to Malawi from the United Kingdom. The suffering emanated from an acute shortage of foreign exchange which rendered the country unable to purchase production inputs, petroleum products, drugs, and other necessities. The shortage of forex itself emanated from the freezing of UK aid by the British government, and the subsequent aid freeze from other bilateral partners such as Germany and the United States. And aid freeze itself emanated from "bad" governance. That was the argument. Bad governance had put Malawi into this position. But this was only for arguments sake, because recall, bad governance is only that kind of governance that threatens the livelihood of Malawi's people, and not necessarily that governance that violated Constitutional order. But hey, the Civil Society and the Opposition had to work with something. The bad governance argument perfectly linked donor aid freeze to Malawi's crisis as a result of the prevailing mode of governance. Well and good. Joyce Banda comes in, quickly undoes the various policy positions that indicated bad governance. She reversed certain laws, indicated her intentions to reverse yet other more controversial ones, opened up space on the public broadcaster to opponents, opened up the airwaves to more radio and television stations, and frequently engaged with the media and civil society. The aid taps - due to her magic wand politics - burst open, and Malawi's liquidity crunch begins to ease. Despite the immediate pains of some of her "reforms", citizens still patiently rally behind her, fingers crossed, banking on the flowing liquidity. Hope is percieved in the future, and she instantly obtains the mantle of a good and prudent "governor" all under one hundred days.

 

Now enters a "new" kind of problem. "New" because Bingu, her predecessor, was so beguiled and embroiled by it, that when he (and I give him the benefit of the doubt when I say this) finally saw it for what it was. He tried to step back and re-assert himself as the president of Malawi, and not the president to Malawi commissioned by the donating world. What do I mean? During his first term, and the first ten months of his second term, Bingu was the world's darling. He flew everywhere collecting awards and accolades for wearing the best gentleman's shoes (*sarcasm) to being a champion for Africa's food security. Meanwhile, amidst all his efforts, he was focusing on the wrong audience. He mistakenly assumed that our aid masters (donors) and his actual masters (Malawians) could be seated in front of the same stage, and made to enjoy his same performance. He forgot a defining distinction between the two and that was, donors were not the recipients of his estranged policies. Malawians were. Put simply (*yeah I keep saying that...lol) governance and aid are not the same thing despite the ways in which their respective discourses are inextricably intertwined with and within each other. And now slowly, I see Madam Joyce slipping into the same old "new" problem. She assumes that donor confidence and support is indicative of Malawian confidence and support even though those donors sit in London, Berlin and New York while most Malawians languish under the bare sky, night and day, in poor shelter, going to poor schools and hospitals, wondering about where their next meal will come from. But the question now is why? Why does this old problem remain "new"?

 

Well, the answer is somewhere within the political-historical narrative of Malawi. That is, we all "know" that Kamuzu's decline emanated from donor aid freeze. We "know" that Muluzi's political demise emanated from donor aid freeze. And we know Bingu's administration - saved by his death - was most likely heading towards a catastrophic political implosion due to donor aid freeze. And therefore, if you want to stay in power, by all means, keep the donor aid flowing because - in the politicians opportunistic mind - there is a mystical relationship between staying in power and presiding over social tranquility, and donor aid inflows. The magic wand to keep the aid taps open - again according to that same opportunistic thinking - is somewhere in those words called "good" governance. Good governance keeps the money flowing, and keeps the political agenda to retain power going. This is why I earlier stated that when Bingu - and I gave him the benefit of the doubt - realized the fallacy of such leadership. He immediately turned on the donors and attempted to whin back Malawi's support. The missing piece however was that the economic crisis had been felt too deep in the gut and belly of every Malawian for anybody to listen to him. He found himself locked up in a "bad" governance corner. He had lost both the international audience and the Malawian audience. He was on stage facing an empty auditorium.

 

My comment is not to despute the relationship between the two conditions of aid and governance. My point is to expose it so that our politicians and leaders can appreciate the double-edged nature of that style of leadership. The aspirations of Malawians may not always align perfectly with donor requirements. Frequently, aid comes with it the requirement to implement projects that dont always bode well with nationals. However, the liquidity that accompanies aid pacifies those resistances for the meantime. However, when you proliferate development programmes as a result of increased volumes of aid, and hope to sustain political viability via the liquidity condition of aid, you quickly realize that you plant, with that aid, the very real potential for violent opposition when the liquidity condition is stalled. Here is where donor power sits. In which case, the politician is his or her own biggest enemy in the long run. I do not yet know the immediate political solution to this problem. However, in the long run, it is clear that political stability can be better maintained when the principle sources of government revenue originate from within the state than from without. Bingu attempted to do this upon realizing the fallacy of donor-tune-led politics. However, because of the extreme liquidity crunch in Malawi, he had nothing politically viable to pacify an already agitated people - people he himself had alienated from himself when he danced to the tune of the world while he ignored the realities of his own country. Secondly, political stability is more certain in environments in which sovereignty is exercised directly by the legitimate arms of our democratic government. For president Joyce Banda, it would assist her a great deal to turn away from the international commitments and focus more on the audience that ultimately decides her fate - the Malawian people. If she can successfully identify herself with them, then she will find herself better able to sell her reformist message, and minimize rhetorical polarizations, and ultimately find strong support even in times when the her governance might be considered "bad" or hard on the belly. I believe therein lies a sustainable form of good governance. And man! it sounds so familiar. In fact, it sounds like "constitutional governance" doesnt it?

Therefore, ironically, political leadership in Malawi has more to lose from being undemocratic than being democratic. Democracy enhances citizen-sovereignty, connects leadership more realistically with the citizenry via institutions, and disperses responsibilities more broadly and away from them being concentrated on the person of the president. Furthermore, it sustains the much needed inflows for the aching bellies in our country. And in the long run, places our country on a sustainable path towards self-sufficiency, a further condition for political stability. But hey, thats about it on Governance and Aid in Malawi as I presently see it. Our political leadership need not dance to the tune of external actors more than they need to commit themselves to the just and moral implementation of our Supreme Law - The Constitution of the Republic of Malawi. Hmmmm... Just a thought.