Social Objects and their "Handles"

Developing a science that measures, quantifies, illustrates relationships between various objects or phenomena, or seeks to find "natural" laws that underpin the order of the social has been the quest of many brilliant scholars. Fascinating arguments have been put on the table, luring much interest only to be found wanting and discarded for newer ones. Authors battled intensely within epistemologies pertaining to social "objects". Some constructed huge, overarching theorizations about how the social world operated (eg structuralists), while others focused on how the "micro" elements in specific settings generated meanings, and went on to characterize the fluid, creative aspect of social life (eg Phenomenologists, Ethnomethodologists, and Social Constructionists). Yet others attempted to bridge the gap between the seemingly stable forms that the "social world" maintained overtime with the human subject who is seemingly able to make choices, to reflect upon his/her actions, and therefore play a creative role in the social realm (eg Structurationists). Social theory, in its present state, is characterized by mammoth efforts to reconcile its various positions to each other. Some of us may have heard of terms such as postmodernism, antimodernism, modernism, post-structuralism, discursivity, reflexivity, reflexive culture, discourse and power, and other terms. The positions advance extremely difficult arguments as scholars attempt to arrive at some "form" of theory that could permit us to account for the seemingly amorpheous form that (post)modern society has taken. In its present form, social theory is at once reorganizing itself, reflecting upon its own adherents, and the society it seeks to examine. The process is extremely dense with sometimes very obscure or hard-to-understand reasoning.

 

The reason for coming forward with such an introduction is so that we can begin to appreciate the severe complexity that presides over any kind of social analysis or commentary. Furthermore, the world cannot be sold these philosophical dilemmas. There is a need for the academy to continue to provide answers, or where such answers are not immediately available, to illustrate possible ventures for interim remedies.

 

Blogging about Malawi stems from a deep passion I have for that country. The reasons for such passion could be merely as self-centred as simply wanting my country to do better than other countries. Or perhaps a sense of gratitude for being so lucky as to not to have been born on the wrong side of the socio-economic divide. By this I mean, if my parents had not been who they were, I most likely would not have been who I am. Such an act of fate reminds me that there is nothing special about me except for the fact that I was merely born in a household that could provide for my needs better than over 85% of other households in a country crippled by great suffering and poverty. That second realization forces me to be humble about my achievements, and most importantly to be more concerned - pragmatically - for the wellbeing of so many others whose only "sin" was to be born in poverty. As such, in my attempts to be pragmatic, I must force myself to think in ways that could usher in a better society, and some of those thoughts are what I have written about in my previous entries on this blog.

 

That being said, even with the very little I presently know, I am aware that the library of social theory from which I draw from in order to develop my own thinking is rife with so many problems, some of which I have very generally highlighted above. As such, my going forward is characterized by caution. A caution that accords due respect to the many unresolved and contesting positions within the domain of the social sciences, and subsequently, the uncertainty that becomes inherent within any argument and/or proposition as a result of those prevailing debates. In developing my commentary, I have attempted to take hold of social "objects" that are immediately apparent to my reader who probably has had some experience or has heard about this small country of mine that I so passionately talk about. These "holds" or "handles" so far have been the organization of the Malawi State, democracy, civil society, law and legislature, institutions (including texts such as the Constitution), the citizenry or public, and other "objects" that perform some function economically, politically or socially within the Malawi State. The reason for deciding to take such an approach in my commentary is to achieve a certain level of pragmatism or practically, thereby loading my blogs with political potential. The downside is that there might be an over-simplification of the greatly troubled waters that characterize social theory. But great minds such as J. Habermus, P. Bourdieu, J. Darrida and even M. Foucault, despite being competent social philosophers and epistemologists in their own rights, have had to surrender some of that raw, potent theorization for some down-to-earth political thinking in order to facilitate change. After all, the quest is to change society and not to merely think about it.

 

The society in Malawi is extremely politicized. And we have, in recent years, seen the emergence of powerful political actors within the public sphere. We have seen civil society hold a president underseige. We have seen how the public defied state security forces with firearms only to obey the paper power a High Court order "enforcing" an injunction or interdiction (which also speaks to legitimation between the public and various state institutions). We have seen the rise of powerful trade unions. And we have seen a citizen - who for a long time was considered illiterate and dum - demonstrate a firm grasp of what a democracy ought to be and subsequently mobilize himself or herself to demand their rights. The question then becomes, "how do we take stock of all these political elements with a view to develop a model for our country going forward?" This is what is at the heart of my commentary. For now, I believe that the answer resides not in a specific course of action. I believe the answer resides in a State system deliberately designed to function based on the continuous consent of its people. In so doing, we are all permitted to contribute to our development or downfall together. This position prevents my argument from falling into the trap of determinism, where my way becomes unintentionally portrayed as the only way. Furthermore, it is only through the installation of such an open society that my views can be heard and embraced, or even rejected. An open society permits me to be politically active as well even as a young, aspiring scholar. In short, these are some of the underpinning assumptions that govern the arguments I propose and the solutions I suggest when I engage on an expedition in this " Odyssey of Consciousness". And as it is a journey, they will evolve in the light of new learning and new evidence.

A Commentary on Political Rhetoric (2)

Political Rhetoric and Citizen Dependency: The Case of  the "Freedom Fighter" Ideology

By the time I was born, in the mid 1980's (seems like a long time ago now especially when you meet people who were born in 1996), Malawi had already been independent as a sovereign nation since the 1960s, some 20 years before I happened. Nonetheless, it was not uncommon to hear people talk about the Malawi Congress Party (the then ruling party) in close conjunction with anti-colonial sentiment. President Hastings Banda, the then ruler of Malawi, was said to have single-handedly freed Malawi from Colonial rule (which is untrue because we do know of the role played by the National African Congress before Banda was called from Ghana to take up the role of Prime Minister). Essentially, we were all indebted to Banda, and he was therefore the legitimate leader of Malawi. He had earned it. Seems like a far-fetched idea now.

In South Africa, a second and arguably more meaningful independence was finalized in 1994 when the new and progressive Constitution was ratified. The new document stipulated the end of all forms of segregation starting from race, to ethnicity, to gender and to politics. The promise of a new South Africa was particularly embodied by the iconic, larger than life moral figure of Nelson Mandela who became the first Black President of democratic South Africa. Everything seemed right for true transformation.

18 years later, notable progress has been achieved on several frontiers. The State has undertaken to roll back the massive disparities in social amenities, achieving giant strides in electrification projects, transportation infrastructure programmes, sanitation and potable water projects, the normalization and regularization of health and education disparities, housing expansion, and so on. However, the message embedded in the freedom struggle remains strong. That message is extremely rich in the history of South Africa as it brings back the memories of all that was incurred in order to bring about the free nation that South Africa is today. Furthermore, it is extremely useful for reconciling the numerous social groups back to each other as it preaches messages of togetherness and oneness - helping identify with one another on the basis of a common painful history. It is a vital tool for unity. However, politics is a game of gaining mileage over competitors, and what promises to resonate powerfully with the people will be pushed, sometimes, to the extreme in order to maintain or escalate a percieved political advantage.

The institutional order of the South African State resembles a Federation. There is a national government which seats in Pretoria and is responsible for bringing legislation through the National Parliament, developing broad national policies, and intervening in inter-provincial matters. Then there are nine provincial governments with premiers. They look into developing provincial policies especially aligned to meet provincial needs, pass provincial legislation through provincial parliaments, and oversee service delivery within provinces. They are, however, subject to laws passed at the national assembly level and bound by the Republic's Constitution. Beneath them are local governments which consist of municipalities whose objectives are, amongst other things, to provide democratic and accountable government for local communities, to ensure the provision of services to communities and to promote social and economic development. The government of South Africa is therefore reasonably decentralized, and on paper, it should be relatively straightforward in so far as figuring out how and where things are going array when they do go array. This is, however, rarely the case.

In returning to the issue under discussion, political rhetoric becomes a very powerful tool, in my opinion, for turning public attention from issues that should be looked into towards, on occasion, a seemingly  abstract enemy. It is crucial to point out that government systems and their consequences do not disappear immediately after a change in political power. Especially when you are looking at around a half a century (1948 - 1994) of oppressionist rule preceeded by close to three centuries of colonial rule, as is the case with South Africa. However, even when "backwardness" or a lack of progress is to be accounted for by a presently serving political regime, political rhetoric embedded in a deeply sensitive and sentimental subject as Apartheid and to a lesser extent colonialism can conceal the present regimes own shortfalls and defer the blame onto an enemy who is at that time not physically tangible but, call it, metaphysically vivid. However, as a consequence, there is a dampening of the individual's and community's ability to confront challenges in a progressive and creative manner thereby creating an attitude that is in stark contrast to the attitude that was prevalent and synonymous with South African citizens prior and leading up to the overthrow of Apartheid. Political rhetoric becomes a tool of creating a dependency even though the intended result might be to innocently gain political mileage, however way you may attempt to extricate those two conditions from each other.

In Malawi, similar rhetoric exists. For instance, the donor-dependency rhetoric. The subsidy rhetoric. The political sabotage rhetoric and so on. At the end of the day, a rhetorical sentiment generated by a dominant political party or outfit achieves its end in developing a dependency between those it wishes to cajole and itself. And this in spite of a clearly laid out structure of government that permits citizens to track and bring to account most malpractises in various offices. It is important to note also that these problems become more compounded when they are considered within a party government structure. That is, a system of government in which people vote for a party. After electoral success, the party then decides who fills what capacities in the various organs of State including the National and Provincial Assemblies. In the end, nonetheless, our gratitude is to the freedom fighter now serving within that party who will continue to preach the message of his or her victories in our past at the expense of his or her own accountability in our present, at the cost of a better society in our future. And we, the citizenry find ourselves developing a dependency, shedding our own will to develop and demand accountability, and looking up towards him or her who now serves beyond our reproach for our salvation.

Just a comment.

A Commentary on Hope, China and Wealth (1)

Preamble: Just an "Audacity" to Hope

Well, sometimes one has to take time away from blogging in order to re-examine the ideas one pushes in light of the trends manifesting within the social sphere which preoccupy one's thinking. My commentary has been one primary centred on what Malawi needs to do in order to maximize its potential for development. More specialized disciplines delimit much of such intellectual conversation to certain specific kinds of interventions. Several of my colleagues find that many of our problems manifest in the economy, others find that there is a disorder in the institutional design of Malawi including such institutions as the Republic's Constitution and so on. I concur with much of their thinking. What provokes my commentary is not necessary the question of growth, because undeniably Malawi continues to be amongst the fastest growing economies in SADC, and even in Africa. What provokes my commentary is what I consider a grave need to see an even more rapid growth (maturity) in the business is done within the social sphere generally. And that kind of growth requires a democracy concept that is deliberately designed to facilitate bargaining which should ultimately result in greater tolerance, more representative national goals, lesser political and economic inequality, better accountability from public and private officials, greater institutional integrity in government as well as it various organs, and so on. There is little doubt in my mind that Malawi will very likely cross-over into middle income status within the next 20 to 25years. That expectation might be utopian but I am more concerned with what size of the population will have been excluded or marginalized from the benefits of that economic growth. What proportion of the Malawian public will directly benefit from that growth?

China and Africa: Chinese Aid and Population Pressure

It was an interesting week of debates within the School of Social Sciences at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, here in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Clearly, the Chinese expansion into Africa is ruffling a lot of feathers. Nowhere do you find a deeper concensus of shared concern from amongst a very heterogenous group of African nationals at the University. Beyond just the day to day tussling around how Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe are grossly misrepresented by the international and even African media - the word China raises shared kinds of apprehensions and anxiety amongst younger scholars particularly. The concensus seems to be that China embodies a type of "colonization" that successfully masks itself from the attention of our old and tired African presidents who seem to see Chinses involvement in Africa as something completely different from early mercantilism, subsequent colonialism, and then the rise of the American emprialism, as a global political and economic hegemonic force, from the later 1940s.

Many of my colleagues see China as a nation that has cleverly played into the embrace of our old leaders by not commenting on the politics of individual African States. China does not even raise the question about democratization. Furthermore democratization is detrimental to the expansion of China on the African continent. The simple argument being that with democracy comes the decentralization of State power, and with that comes the requirement for Chinese investors to deal with several factions of a given nation before a license for business can be finalized. Usually, such a deal will consider the broad issues that surround the sorts of investments that Chinese firms seek to exploit in Africa, and therefore having rent implications on the business venture. To put it short, dictatorships are better for the Chinese expansion because only one person decides if a deal is good or bad for himself or herself and the country at large. This decision, it is alleged, is quickly arrived at with a few cheques paid to foreign accounts held by that dictator.

I agreed totally, or shall I say, the arguments move me because images of Bingu wa Mutharika flashed vividly in my mind as a result of those comments. My addition to the debate was two-fold. Firstly, Chinese investment into Africa is inextricable from population "exportation". The exported population safeguards the Chinese investment and repatriates profits back to the home country. Furthermore, pressure on social amenities is shed away from China into the host regions of Chinese investments. As a result, Africa gives China business and carries the weight of those businesses' heavy entourages of Chinese nationals on its already limited public sectors, such as hospitals, housing, education and so on. Secondly, the nature of Chinese aid is seldom in cash. Its often in infrustractural development or, recently as seen in the American and European cases, buy-ups of bad debts (or presently bad assets). With the poor human rights record of China, infrustratural development is heavily subsidized by labor that is severelly underpaid and overworked (eg, prison labor). Buying up bad-debts or bad assets means Chinese businesses are buying up huge assets in Europe and America for a fraction of the price they were before the credit-crunch and the subsequent financial meltdown. The long term returns from these expenditures by China heavily outweigh the costs they are presently incurring. In a nutshell, Africa needs to rethink the open-door policy it has to China. Our greatest assets to the reconfiguration of relations are the very minerals and raw materials China desperatly needs to feed its rapidly growing economy. African civil society needs to realize that activism is as much about gender and the protection of minority rights as it is foreign policy that are likely to impact in various ways on the lives of citizens.

Keeping Hard-Earned Wealth within the Family: A False and Naïve "Modernity"

This is just an observation. My parents grew up in rural Malawi. They were fortunate enough, and indeed greatly aided by their hard work, to have attained an education and moved into the urban place as professionals in Geology and Sociology. I was twelve years old when my mother died and twenty when my father died. I am forever indebted to them for having been steadfast in raising my sister and myself in line with those very same values that they used to get to where they were.

My father always insisted that it was important to embody both the ability to function anywhere in the world, and that ability to function within your own country. He insisted that my sister and I were to learn and be fluent in Chichewa, the main language in Malawi. At the same time, he had us put in a school that only allowed the use of English during school hours. The result was him and our mother successfully raised two bilingual children. Other illustrations are how he insisted that we learned to walk to school (despite having the means to drive us back and forth), learned to hand-wash our own clothes (despite having washing machines and dryers), and to go outside to play and not be glued to the television and video-games. The icing on the cake came when he put me in a public school so that I could attain the Malawi Primary School Leaving Certificate. While there I learned that life was not all rosy in my country. I realized just how fortunate I was.

When my parents died. My sister and I had been left with the necessary ability to survive. All the skills they had bestowed upon us came to serve as assets for surviving in one of the poorest countries in the world. I don't know how we did it, but somehow, today, my sister is in Europe doing here Masters in Law, and I am here in South Africa pursing a Masters in Social Science.

The interesting thing is this; people work so hard to remove themselves from appalling situations only to refuse to train their children the same skills by which they were able to survive when they were coming up. And not always, but many times you see a family especially in this part of the world quickly lose everything it had worked so hard to achieve because the next generation was denied the skills and abilities to keep that hard-earned wealth within the family. Instead children are raised to be in denial of their surroundings, of their people, of their languages, of their governments, and of their countries. Somehow it is seen as "backward" for a child to associate with a life that is rampant and unavoidable in a country whose population is predominantly poor. What a truly naïve notion of "modernity". Or perhaps I am just biased to my own experience? But who cares?

Finding the handle on "things"

Well, "things" have indeed changed in Malawi since the demise of the last President, which paved the way for what promised to be a "new" kind of leadership. I personally followed events attentively to see if there was indeed a tangible hope amidst the emotional expectation that had beguiled our small nation. I am certainly a newcomer and, in many respects, an infant to this field of Malawian politics. I do not know many of the heroes that laid their very lives down for the sake of the promise that Malawi represented right away from colonial period and then the Kamuzu Banda dictatorship.

However, since the onset of our democracy, we have witnessed a kind of politics that instrumentalizes democracy rather than one that consists within it as an ideology. The way I see it, our democracy means oppressive legitimation, and the reading of the constitutional order that contracts all state functions within Malawi clearly shows how it is that totalitarian kinds of politics intend to use democracy as a pacifier of the people for short changing them and getting them to accept a less than palatable condition. This is indeed where politics, and not necessarily politicians, is supremely crafty in Malawi. Many citizens, if not most, will tell you that some"thing", one or another, or even a set of "things", make it impossible for us to even think of an ideal, and therefore, our democracy does the best it can within the state of "things". This is not to imply that fingers are not raised and pointed at wrongerdoers and saboteurs of our valued democracy. Rather, wrongdoers are merely greedy opportunities in a less than able system of politics. Illustrative of this point is the fact that democracy as it is provided for in the national constitution is well articulated and implemented in the Office of the President, and where the President's rights are invoked or threatened, eloquent men and women of the political parties to which the President belongs, have been quick to articulate precisely what it is that the president is entitled to under the prevailing constitutional arrangement. The provisions granted to the President's Office are very clear and well-elaborated within the practise of Malawian politics. They are however less defined in the practise of politics in the Judiciary and the National Assembly. They are even more remotely defined where they touch on the liberties and freedoms of the citizenry.

The powers of the president are very extensive, and are quite blatant especially in their defiance of our constitutional democracy. But recall - and as already implied above - that these powers are wrapped into a "benevolence and goodwill". The president wants good "things" for Malawi but is hampered by those who are sabotuers and ill-wishers, so the rhetoric goes. Malawian politics has craftily aligned and conflated these extensive powers and their abuses in an appealing morality that very ably paints an unknown villain in the mind of the collective even though that villain remains without a face - the villain is expressed in the crippled state of Malawian politics. The arrogance of the executive is therefore appaling but at the same time expected because in this one institution are housed the very best intentions that require just a little more power to make "things" right. The President must become more power to override the self-inflicting and crippling politics. If Malawi were a wealthier nation, the ideology would sell like the hot-cakes of fascism in Europe and  Consumerism in North America. The problem however is the hunger in the belly. Very soon, the circumstances confronting the people on the streets become the loudest critique against the political rhetoric embodied in the personage of the president and his political party. I think here is where we begin to see how it is that the circle-effect continues to hit Malawi. We seem to have a fetish for dictatorships. Some argue that the problem is only systemic, and an appraisal and re-visiting of the arrangement of government, through a constitutional review, could fix many of the problems. I would not entirely disagree with that observation except that the "accents" of constitutionalism are not carried along across time in a "silent, apolitical and apathetical" wording of law, but in the cultural manifestation of the actual practise of politics which also constitute the reading of that law. For illustrations, Bingu wa Mutharika was criticized and praised simultaneously for his arrogance between 2009 and when he died. The problem people had with him was not merely the experience of his deviance, but more especially the object to which is was being deviant to. The principle was not in "whether it was right or wrong for the president to speak to citizens in a particular tone" but what it was he was speaking about or against in that tone. It appears therefore that leadership is expected to maintain a tradition of expansive authority provided that the circumstances prevalent in society are conducive towards it. Humbly I concede that no single interpretation will stick, but this is how I have experienced the democratic dispensation of Malawi. As the adage goes, "the president is our father or mother." This adage epitomizes the benevolence mentioned already and the tendency to expand powers into ever increasing spheres of social and economic life.

In view of the above, perhaps the answer therefore lies not in a new president with a new idea. Sadly (*sarcastically), Malawi has on its memory the promise of a democracy - however it may be defined - and with it, any leadership model that is deterministic will ultimately fail. A fast-tracked development agenda is very likely to be supported by its beneficiaries and objected to by its victims, and the institution of the Courts will continue to grant citizens relief from encrouching executive decisions. I use the Courts here only as a metaphor to express how it is that the arrogance and defiance of a leader is at once expected and yet opposed. The system is therefore only potentially democratic even though its checks and balances (*metaphor again), as Americans like to call them, would be the very "things" that would cripple a heavily top-down/Father-Figure approach. The system would create quagmires, and ultimately lead up to public discontent with the person of the president, which would subsequently be followed by a "Malawi Spring" similar to July 20th, 2011. However, if we can begin to place the decision-making process directly in the hands of the people with the government's technical support, perhaps we will not need to very keenly develop a precise development agenda rooted in a father/mother-figure, rather than one that emanates from discursive processes that become legitimated by popular participation. This allows for a further articulation of constitutionalism in practice in other arms of government as well, like the National Assembly. And perhaps the stakes would be lower in the office of the president for both the president and the Malawian people. With that, maybe presidential overtures - the figure/mother-figure tendencies - would become less necessary. For now, I will leave it there. I did promise an article on how Malawi can go on to develop a model of development that is people-embedded. I do have the general sketches of that proposal in my mind, and some of it is mentioned above but I am not yet able to precisely articulate it until I have a firm handle on "things".

Lets hope these "things" all work out in the end.

The Missing Nation

Malawi has been independent now since the early 1960's, and yet somehow, when I meet people from different parts of the world, I usually have to explain to them that Malawi is that country with a lake, that is located between Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. I then become rhetorical and begin to say things I do not personally believe in so as to quickly paint a pleasant picture of this great land that this person from another continent somehow missed. I slide into the obvious descriptions that depict Malawians as exceptionally warm and kind and loving. And then, when I discuss politics, I begin to describe an entirely different animal, one in which people cut other people's throats, tell blatant and fatal lies on the national broadcaster, and enrich themselves by embezzling public funds and entering into shady deals with multi-national corporations such as Mota-Engil, Group 5 and others.

Two issues emerge here, and perhaps more. One is that we love to call ourselves a peaceful people, and two is that despite our peace and warmth, we are notorious for corruption and fraud that has led to deaths, institutionally - as hospitals have not had drugs or working ambulances and even personnel; and brutally when police have shown up armed to the ends of their hair at public events such as protests. This dichotomy is intriguing. But more on this further down.

Public discourse has not helped Malawi's development of a nationalistic identity and agenda. I will use discourse in a watered-down fashion borrowed from the social sciences and it shall mean (in its watered down sense) the process through which society processes and develops eventual narratives that frame both the national view toward the plurality of the living and lived experience of a people (a national consciousness) as well as the basis upon which unspecified power can be unleashed without defaulting towards an analysis of say normative things such as the body of law, or the proper conduct of parliament. Basically discourse manifests as the knowledges in actual practise in society. This is crucial because discourse empowers and cripples national contracts. In Malawi, public discourse as an outcrop of the independence hysteria when Banda took over from the British and established the first presidency of independent Malawi. This hysteria did not materialize into a universal sense of oneness and freedom so much as it became a notion about who it was that freed Malawi and how they were then entitled to rule in a specific way having rendered that "priceless" service. The platform for a discourse for the use of power as well as a basis for authority was set. Throughout the years, way into the 80's and then the 90's Malawi continued to isolate the citizenry from the equation, and grew the presidency as equal to and even greater than the nation-state itself.

Notice should be paid to the fact that no constitution (pre or post referendum '93-94) vehemently spoke of these exaggerated rights of those who ruled, but discourse compelled the reading of the letter of the law in that direction. Come '94 and the ratification of a new constitution which had a very progressive bill of rights, and enter a new and extensively powerful Judiciary which the "right" to review any act or law for conformity to the new, democratic constitution of a reborn republic. The troubling question has always been, how have we continued to fail to tear down oppressive systems and modes of organization despite the many new grounds for contention afforded us by a new constitution. I shall not naively set aside issues of illiteracy and resources which unfortunately limit the extent to which citizens can prioritize human rights issues over sustenance issues. But even in the more affluent of our citizenry both educationally and economically, we find little evidence of agitation. The issue being, an internalized "knowledge" of what a citizen can or can not demand of their leadership is prevalent as a result of the long history under which public discourse was arrested and forced to take a certain direction and view of things. The issue is not so much about what is written in a social contract or constitution, rather it is really about how the Malawian Society can arrive to a place where the abstract notions of public service and citizen participation become disentangled from a form of thinking that eliminates certain possibilities before they even become an issue for public debate. Thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu have all suggested this notion of unthinking as emanating from the historical progression of the creation of knowledge and therefore standardizes practices with discourse determined accents. They implore society to critique their own processes of developing knowledge to see how discourse, rather than, call it, a natural progression of accumulation of knowledge, is responsible for the vivid, taken-for-granted, arrangements we now see in our modern societies. Nothing is natural, but society is prefigured on prevailing discourse which empowers and dis-empowers certain institutions, systems, agents and patterns of life, and thereby underpins the eventual look and feel of history. I will further state that rhetoric is vital for sustaining a nation, but the question is to have the right kind of rhetoric. In attempting to refrain sliding into another top-down deterministic political model we need to deliberately allow manageable conflict so that the sovereignty of the people of Malawi as they participate in political life freely becomes the legitimate stamp on our eventual discourse. And as long as discourse is free and open, we all have a chance to influence history and have a hold on it. Or at least to allow our various creations of evil and good to emanate from popular participation rather than the precedence that has dominated the past.

In arriving back to the issue that was raised, about a dichotomy, it becomes clear therefore how a warmhearted people can also be the sample from which ruthless, tyrannical leadership can be drawn. Warm-hearted people can expect tyranny from leadership as legitimate or as "expected". The outcry that blanketed Mutharika's presidency  from the public, mostly due to the crippled economy which made it hard for everyone to get by along with the human rights issues that were raised time and time again by the donor community and the civil society amidst their many fractures ushered in a different side to this discourse. And, all things considered, it is those exchanges that we hope will have brought about a new sense of empowerment and enablement amongst the citizenry that could curb excesses in the new presidency. Again, the matter is not about the letter of the law, but about the unthought processes that eventually constitute knowledge and standards at a later point in time ~ the discourses that will constitute political practises of Malawi at a later time.

My suggestion has been as follows, and I am not yet compelled to move from this position. We free discourse. We must deliberately nurture conflict so as to necessitate resolution (both conclusive and ongoing), and we must wake up to minorities and their rights for the simple reason that minorities and their "eccentricities" will cause the kind of confrontations we need to understand that their is not one Malawian view but several. Over and above this, we will free our discourse from the monotonous accent of how government and state are augmented to a pluralistic and self-reinventing accent. In doing so, we lock ourselves to the stern reality that the cost for not living in tolerance is likely more expensive than the cost for living in tolerance. This is will reflect in the formulation of more just and democratic institutions, greater individuality and creativity, and consequently a better system of government (which will have abandoned its patriarchal-father syndrome for one that is more embracing of diversity). Obviously, a reorganization of government is key to this process.

My next post will be to build a more concrete idea of how such a society could be jump-started and how certain reforms within government could be done so as to facilitate a dynamic re-conciliatory process which is also conducive for urgent development. I believe the answer lies in deliberately creating a government that cannot function without the continued and sustained endorsement of the citizenry via active, and even forced, discursivity. More on this shortly. Cheers