The Inverse Relationship Between Patronage and Political Power

Last month I wrote a polemic in which I argued that the only way Malawi is to rise out of its debilitating state is to channel its antagonistic energies motivated by greed into a grand nation building formula. The arguments can be seen in that previous post entitled Reconciling Our Problematic Concepts.

This week, we have seen the president of Malawi heighten her efforts to consolidate power via the old formula of patronage. And this is an interesting one because as already demonstrated in previous posts, patronage is an inherently insufficient strategy to achieve the consolidation of power precisely because insatiable greed is the motivation at the core of most of Malawian business. The State which is heavily donor dependent has no means in and of itself to sustain that heavy weight of patronage and therefore, the more people the president calls up into her bloated team of patrons, the less resources are available to appease the vast majorities who are outside her circle to sustain the very power she craves. In the last instance, Malawi will revert to the same situation that undid Kamuzu, undid Muluzi, and was undoing Bingu. That situation occurs when the country becomes so polarized along the lines of “those within the gravy train” and “those outside it”. This formula simply does not work.

The only way to silence a country saturated by greed in the absence of a heavily greased military is to level the playing field, make transparent the business of the State, and effectively give people no reason to think that some are being offered more without merit than others. That simple formula automatically galvanizes two sets of activities;

Firstly, it raises the collective consciousness to a level at which there is an obsession with protecting the just order because only through that order can the greed of others be curbed. In this fashion we use the very venom of our greed to police ourselves into a just and fair order.

Secondly, it raises the agency level of the citizens because when everything is transparent, activities engaged by various actors are more ascertained, less risky and therefore more profitable to the greed motivator that induces those activities in the first place. Economists have expanded this basic Social Theory to generate the vast field of study Economics is today, looking at means and ends, demand and supply within a context of insatiable appetites and limited and contested resources. With less speculation, there is an automatic adherence to the status quo which in economics theory is called the equilibrium: there is no inherent tendency to want to alter it.

These two simple pillars would be the foundation of building a new Malawi.

Rhetoric about God and justice, good governance, and other ideals which do nothing to symmetrize the greed machine via the imposition of an institutional order that is everywhere symmetrically experienced by the citizenry will not take the country anywhere. They will only serve to continue to create ideological bases from which various forms of injustice can be accounted for as normal and acceptable. For instance, to fear God is to fear the leadership he ordains (check your Bible, or if you are like me, borrow one and check). Another for instance: to respect your elders is to be morally right in the numerous cultural forms of the Malawian nation. Usually the elder in this case is the president, our Amayi or Mother. In the end, these two randomly selected edifices only provide a basis for why citizens who feel cut off from or marginalized by the State should keep quiet and trust the God-given leader or respect the Mother of the Nation who knows exactly what she is doing. This is why, in my view, a State based on secular ideals is for me the best kind of State. It is realistic in the sense that it holds no ideals or sentimentalism higher than any others, it accepts the human condition for its rotten state, and seeks to institute regulations that must apply to everyone regardless of whether they worship Mbona, Allah, Jehovah or whoever they so please to.

So in returning to the crux of this topic, as the desperation grows within the party of the President, we must expect to see bigger and bigger webs of patronage which will be coupled by greater financial mismanagement, and ultimately a weakening ability of the State to render its core functions. As the State collapses in its abilities, we will see greater efforts to expand the patronage in order to consolidate power, which will go on to further weaken the State’s abilities. Ultimately, we will see a loss of power just as we have seen it in the past, and….and here is the thing; another one who promises a new future for Malawi will arise to whom we will all rally only to be taken back into the same cycle again. The principle is clear, a poor country cannot sustain any government on the basis of patronage. It can only do so by institution a form of indifference that makes everyone feel that they are equal to everyone else in terms of its regulations, its opportunities or whatever citizen affordances it bears on its written code.

The answer to our problem is thus staring us in the face. Patronage does not maintain power especially in a country whose development budget is almost completely donor financed. Malawi’s revenue is only barely able to keep up with its recurrent costs of salaries (inclusive of the luxurious living in high government) and operations in the state service. Development financing however is almost entirely sourced externally; that is the 40 per cent of the budget that is donor funded constitutes over 80 per cent of development expenditure, while the 60 per cent is predominantly recurrent State costs, such as State Houses and Allowances, and salaries. So Malawian taxes only barely cater for our recurrent budget, while roads, hospitals, schools and other assets that require capital investment are externally financed. Such is the enormity of our herculean crisis.

But we can trust Joyce Banda to follow the failed script to the bitter end whence from she too could meet her political demise. We just hope that that end will not take the entire nation along with her as seemed to be the aspirations of her predecessor, one Bingu wa Mutharika.