Malaise in Malawi

I’m learning to love alliterative blog-titles, even if they are completely inappropriate and don’t really mean much. Both apply here.

Anyway, I read with interest a new BBC article regarding Malawi’s President Bingu regarding foreign donors who are, according to him, plotting to have him overthrown.

It is difficult as an outsider to gauge exactly the threat that Bingu is for the Malawian people. He arrived in the post-Banda era of a new-found multi-party politics as a talented civil servant, educated in India and Los Angeles who quickly advanced through the ranks to be elected President in 2004 before his successful handling of the economy had him reelected in a landslide in 2009.

He inherited a nation ravaged by AIDS with over 50% below the poverty line and fast fuel and food shortages despite growth in neighbouring Zambia and Tanzania. Bingu was and still is keen on his relationship with Western powers and still is a capable economic technician. Whilst aid has declined over the last few years, the situation in Malawi in terms of fighting HIV, food supplies and fuel shortages has drastically improved.

Sadly, Bingu’s technocratic micro-management of the economy is often reflected in his social views. Homosexuality was made illegal in 2010 but despite describing it is ‘bad in the eyes of God’, the Malawian government promised to review the law in December 2011.  Discrimination against homosexuals is par for the course in certain parts of the world, which is a cheap shot to make, but I only bring it up because it was asked of me by a Malawian native when I visited last July.

Actually, a lot this post is going to be based on things people said to me, but for someone who visited only once and drew from that everything that I know about the country I have little else to go on.

Malawi is a nation stretched around the vast Lake Malawi. It provides a major route for resources being transported through East Africa and forces a strange sort of local town planning. Unlike much of South-East Africa where towns are clumped and easily discernible, in Malawi settlements stretch along the road side intermittently, a few shacks here, a couple of houses there, slowly building into a larger settlement. People string the roadside too, mainly children. Life expectancy here is low and the lack of adults means that a good amount of these kids are orphans, many of whom have formed their own social strata and town life.

Most of the tourist attractions are to be found round Lake Malawi, an awe inspiring stretch of freshwater with a lot of tourist destinations attached to educational missions. Khandi beach in particular is attached to a lively town, obsessed with soccer like most of Africa and home to a number of educational establishments and clinics.
Khandi beach is also the home of Chibuku festival, a yearly dance party that brings European and global DJs together to dance on the lakeshore. The name is taken from a product incongruous to the country, the wheat beer Chibuku, a disgusting but strangely moorish local drink.

I was at Khandi beach when the president himself arrived, motorcade in tow for a supporters rally. Despite his calls for youth-league members to crack down on protest, local Malawians were vocal in their disliking of the man.

“He is just stupid,” said one, “He promised much when we re-elected him, but he has not done these things.”

I asked whether they thought things had got better under Bingu, “Yes,” they said. Credit where credit is due I suppose, but there was a caveat. “He has done some good things, but not enough. He does not like how little we care about him.”

That lack of care became apparent rather fast. I do not know what numbers the president expected to turn out for his rally, but most people were happy to simply get on with their day once the motorcade had gone past. The rally was televised I am told by locals, with crowd noise added.

There are two points to be made at this stage: Malawi did elect Bingu, and from an outsider’s perspective at least, his leadership has done a lot of good things in Malawi. He is worrying autocratic, but has delivered a surplus in food supplies and increased attempts to fight HIV. Moreover, it is not always clear that Western tactics of decreasing aid and in the case of the UK, pulling out diplomats are working. Malawi’s national identity is only just establishing itself and it would not do necessarily to encourage anti-UK nationalism when there lives a sizable minority of Europeans and Indians in the country. Also, for all his bluster, the president seems keen to keep his allies sweet in order to get Malawi growing again. The capital shows signs of growth, complete with a lively affluent shopping centre, bookshops, gyms and a Nando’s though naturally these are way out of the reach of many citizens still.

If this is sounding too much of a ‘I saw things on my Gap Yah’ then feel free to tell me. I’m not trying to impose my opinion on the situation, I’m just telling it how I saw it at the time and for the most part what I saw was this: Malawians are relatively optimistic about their future but with major caveats. There did not seem to be much rebellious sentiment about their current government, more a healthy opposition and from many, complete ambivalence. Of course for people in power, to be ignored is often a worse crime than outright hostility and the current president must be watched.

Malawi is a beautiful place and like any number of curious, sometimes disruptive and sometimes observant western explorers before me, I was bewitched by the place.

I can only hope that something good will happen.

NB Photos to follow.

A Little Late- But these are my arbitrary opinions on the Leveson.

A little like a new computer, the Leveson enquiry was out of date before it even started. I read with interest that Paul Dacre would like to see a the introduction of a ‘kite-mark’ system for journalists. However, surely any such move, aimed only at “members of print news gathering organisations or magazines” is a move aimed at justifying the existence of such organisations rather than attempting to fix any ethical wrongdoing? 

Actual Daily Mail headline probably. 

By the time the News of the World finished last year, its circulation had fallen to 2.7m copies, easily the most popular of the sunday papers and as such, an excellent example of the changing way in which we now consume news. 

There is absolutely no doubt that media organisations have used underhand methods to break stories before, perhaps even more so in the pre-internet days when breaking a story quickly could give your paper up to a full day’s advantage over your competitors. Today the competition is even more fierce, with hundreds of thousands of online blogs and news outlets existing to circulate content. Of course ‘content’  is the key word here. Often what is produced is nothing more than comment or rumour which is then seized upon and parroted ad-infinitum by the other blogs, by the dailies and by news organisations globally until often the source of the story completely disappears. 

This situation surely gives some sort of credence to Paul Dacre’s argument. Whatever one might think of the Daily Mail, at least his idea of a ‘kite-mark’ brand for journalism allows a future for real ‘reporting’. After all, despite the existence of hundreds of thousands of news organisations globally, most people are still relatively loyal to a few established brands. It is telling that MailOnline and the BBC are still the most popular deliverers of news in the UK. 

Yet to claim that outlets such as Mail, Guardian or even the BBC are entirely or even primarily ‘reporting driven’ is a fallacy. Moreover, who gets to regulate what constitutes good reporting? Dacre has suggested that this kite mark be self-regulating but is that not, like many independent bodies, essentially the same as cronyism? Where would this ‘self-regulated kite mark’ leave upstarts like The Huffington Post? The newspapers would like a mark of journalistic quality to guarantee them privileged access to police reports and so on. They also want the government out of the business of regulating the press. Yet this is surely contradictory. By allowing a fatuously self-regulated group official access to privileged information, the government will be involved whether they like it or not and if there is one thing we really do not need, it is the government, especially spooky Labour shadow cabinet ministers suggesting that bad journalists should be ‘struck off’. 

There has not been a single suggestion for how the press should conduct itself in this enquiry that has not come with a whiff of desperate nostalgia. They are fighting less for some debatable notion of press ethics than they are for their own lives. There are no laws that could have prevented last years scandal that are not already in the books. If anything, we could do with less rules, especially in regards to UK libel law. 

Wouldn't mind seeing a bit of this. 

What we are seeing as a shift of power. Whilst it is true that most people still use formal news organisations, they were far from the first to report on the Arab spring, the financial crisis and so many other stories. They act as a useful filter for information, a quality control, but here their position is as precarious as ever. If they do not provide us with what they want, they will swiftly decline to be replaced by something new. In some ways that is all the regulation we need. That is until you look and see what sort of news is most popular. But to fight our new world is to be like King Canute fighting the incoming tide. Useless. 

The Old Lib

In 1935, George Dangerfield published a book entitled ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’ explaining the decline of the British Liberal Party before and after the First World War. 

Whilst it is true that today, 75 years on the Liberal Democrats have staged a sort of comeback, the minority partner in a government lead (by all accounts) a liberal Conservative, the electoral success and the root of these problems are all well detailed in his book. The rise of unions, though now diminished have created a powerful voting block from whence Labour can draw from and in truth, the Liberal party of the early 20th century were nowhere close to evolving beyond a certain type of liberalism- an effete, rather paternalistic brand that could never capture the imaginations of the people when confronted with the firebrand tradesmen and their upstart Labour party or the backlash of the morally outraged Conservatives. Again, in many ways not much has changed. 

As a philosophy, Liberalism has never died. It waxes and wanes of course and is subject to only one absolute rule. It is always favoured in opposition more than government.

'Paddy Pantsdown' The Sun. Also a damn nice fella.

I’m going to hitch my flag to the mask. I am a liberal. That’s with a small ‘l’. I am an individualist and a crackpot and frankly I think it’d be a lot better if more people thought the way I did because then the bastards wouldn’t get away with so much. 

Anybody who has taken the most basic politics class knows this. There are two types of liberalism: social liberalism and economic liberalism. The former is often associated with left-leaning economics, compassionate statism, welfarism, social democracy or as some would have it- 'soft socialism'. The other side is economic liberalism. Taking their cues from absolute individualists, from Adam Smith and Gladstone to their logical conclusion in Hayek and Friedman these were the inspiration for Thatcher, David Lawes and an awful lot of post-Berlin Wall eastern Europe. 

I heard this woman once ate a child's skin. The child was cute and had big eyes.

No smoke without fire. 

Sounds confusing does it not? Almost as if these two sides were diametrically opposed? Seems like it makes a little more sense now that, given that both these groups existed within the modern Liberal Democrat party, they’ve been able to say pretty much whatever they liked pre-election and not have to worry about putting it into practice afterwards. 

Though I should not tarnish my yellow friends too much. Boris Johnson has referred to the Liberal Democrats as having a form of schizophrenia. Imagine what he must have felt when his boss David Cameron pronounced himself a liberal Conservative? 

Cameron can do this by the way . He can say ‘liberal’ because to a lot of the public that is synonymous with other lovely words like: nice, but in his mind I reckon he thinks he can absolutely justify it. I think he rather means those other liberals, Gladstone and Hayek who inspired his predecessor Margaret Thatcher to change this nation forever. Oh by the way, Maggie ain’t no Liberal. And neither is Dave. 

Perhaps I should not have diverged. My point is this, whilst liberalism as a philosophy is held by people who on the surface vary across the political spectrum, it is still a deeply founded vision and a coherent one to boot. 

To its core, liberalism is about individual rights. To an extent, both major political parties in the UK support individualism, to sometimes a greater extent they do not. Despite the Liberal Democrats hold on power, their dalliance with the Conservatives means that even under their eyes, illiberal legislation is passed. 

The ultimate difference between social liberalism and economic liberalism is this. To what extent does the coercive nature of government and the practices of unscrupulous business hinder the development and ultimately the freedom of the individual to live as they wish, to have a life of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Will Smith always seems like a happy guy. So happy he doesn't know how to spell happiness.

That's real happinuss. Har har har. I'll stop now.

Take for example Scandinavian social democracy and compare it to the constitution of the USA. I’m not going to go in to what is or is not corrupt about the USA, you have Michael Moore for that, or if you’re a little more sensible, your own research. But suffice to say we are all familiar with the limits of the scope of individualism in the USA economically. We also know though, that unlike here were community order offences are used as an excuse to block the demonstrations of poppy burners, far-right rallies and even basic protest by harmless old beardies, in the states anybody can pretty much say whatever the hell they like. It is often difficult for Europeans to get the 2nd amendment too, the right to bear arms, but for Americans it grows from the very soul of their being: the right of someone to defend themselves, raise their own family and live as they so choose. Of course it is more complicated than that. The USA was built on the back of thousands of slaves, her are elections hampered by special interest groups and her tolerance of alternative lifestyles is often tested. 

Sweden on the other hand runs a little differently. Unlike the USA, taxation rates are purposefully high to spend on a vast welfare state and the government owns an awful lot of infrastructure. Denmark even more so. Yet as happy and collectivist as lots of Anglo thinkers like to believe them to be (it is often hard for them to imagine differently in a world where politics is formed through the endless struggle of industry and class division), the Scandinavian nations are as nakedly ambitious, individualist and free trading as their transatlantic cousins. They keep their state manageably in check through a brutally open system of government where members of parliament are kept as open as it is possible for them to be and through their investment in the sciences and education, monoliths like Nokia and Ericsson have formed. Again, this is not the whole story. Nationalism is rife in Scandinavia, the state is often sluggish in its response and has tied its hands in investments it cannot wholly afford, though it should be noted nowhere near the level of most of the rest of Europe. 

Google Images says this is what Swedish people look like. 

Don't believe that brunette bird's from anywhere near Scandinavia though.

I’m going to be a dreadful fence sitter here and not come down on the side of either. Denmark rarely has to keep up on the big ticket items like a national defence, and it really is not worth expounding on problems with the USA. 

All people from Denmark look similar to this. 

Both of these nations are on my side in their own ways and since I’ve been such a fantastic fence sitter beforehand, I’m going to tell you straight up if you’re on my side. 

If you do not believe in freedom of expression, then you are not on my side. I’m not saying that you should feel free to be a dick... oh wait actually, I absolutely am. Feel free to say literally anything that comes into your head. A good amount, in fact most is complete nonsense but as I think I’ve made clear in my previous posts, that’s something to be celebrated or derided or both. 

Two. The moment you start dealing with people you’re going to make a few judgements based on them. That’s fine, but tell me what’s wrong with this next sentence. ‘Speaking as someone with an unconventional background I can see that your assumptions are bullshit.’ 

See what I did there? I basically just assumed that all people with ‘unconventional backgrounds’ whatever the hell that means think the same way as me. We’re all going to succumb to groupthink at some point, but if you decide that “as a man who is also a builder and a Russian I have the following opinion...”, you’re not on my big groupthinky side. Please, at least back that shit up with something else. 

Of course liberalism doesn’t deal with that intense joy that you find in being part of something together. One good experiment to test this is to sit underneath a television in a packed testosterone fueled sports bar and watch the strained faces of a hundred men collectively ejaculating over a particularly good goal.

What liberalism is good for, is in examining those eccentricities of character- those joyful little things that makes everyone just that little bit different to the next. It can create a mindset of incredible empathy because, if you don’t just relegate someone else to some group and assume that because of this they will behave a certain way, you might start assigning more complex human processes to them and who knows where that might lead...

This is just a little overview into the way I think of course. If you want to really run a state then obviously the choice I threw up earlier between libertarianism or social democracy is a big one, and one that I’ll go into at a later date in a post called something like ‘My Uninformed Views About How People’s Lives Can Be Made Less Shitty. Specifically Mine. Give Me Some Free Stuff.’

But for now, I'll say goodbye.