Year: 2014

Tough road ahead for Malawi’s Mutharika

(Pic: AFP)

After days of confusion, court injunctions, accusations of vote rigging and a series of irregularities with the voting process, Malawi finally has a new president. Peter Mutharika, an academic and a younger brother to Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s former president who died in office in 2012, was sworn in on Saturday and inaugurated on Monday, June 2. He is Malawi’s fifth president.

Mutharika’s victory, with only 36% of the national vote, does not represent a total change in local politics; it is more of a continuation of his brother’s presidency, which was punctuated by Joyce Banda’s two-year rule. Bingu wa Mutharika died while lining up his young brother to succeed him. Peter’s victory has accomplished that mission, which seemed improbable when a heart attack cut short Bingu’s life on the morning of April 5 2012.

Joyce Banda, then state vice president, replaced the late Mutharika, in line with a constitutional provision.

On May 20 this year, Banda led her own party into an election for the first time. She lost badly, finishing a distant third with 20.2%, after Mutharika’s 36% and Lazarus Chakwera’s 27.8%. It is the first time in Malawi that a sitting president has lost an election since the country held its first democratic election in 1994.

Mutharika’s much-anticipated inaugural speech on Monday did not live up to most Malawians’ expectations. It lacked the weight and clarity of the speech his brother delivered 10 years ago. But then it touched on almost every sector of the economy, from tomato vendors to foreign policy. Perhaps this underlines the fact that Peter Mutharika is more of an academic than a politician, unlike his brother. In fact, it’s unlikely that Peter Mutharika would be in politics today had his brother not ruled Malawi first.

Most parts of his speech were a carbon copy of his party’s manifesto. The promise of a small cabinet of no more than 20 ministers, for instance. This is a big deal in Malawi, a country that is used to having up to 40 cabinet ministers, including their deputies.

Mutharika made it a point to clarify that he has no axe to grind with his rivals. Singling out his arch-rival Joyce Banda, Mutharika expressed his disappointment at her absence at the inauguration ceremony even though she had been invited

The rivalry between Mutharika and Banda dates back to the time when Banda deputised Bingu. Banda is on record saying that Bingu promised that she would succeed him, but this changed when Peter Mutharika came into the picture. Bingu opted for his young brother as a successor. The row led to Banda’s expulsion from Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Banda and few colleagues then formed their own political group, eventually registering it as the People’s Party (PP). Bingu’s death meant that Banda would form a government, taking her party with her and therefore relegating DPP to opposition benches.

Peter Mutharika and few DPP top officials tried in vain to prevent Banda from succeeding Bingu. Their attempt to stop her from ascending to the presidency later resulted in Peter Mutharika and his colleagues being charged with treason – charges that still stand. With the recent turn of events, however, the treason charges against Mutharika are unlikely to stick as sitting presidents in Malawi have immunity from prosecution.

In fact local analysts believe the tables will be turned, and it will be Joyce Banda facing prosecution now, most likely on corruption charges. Many unresolved high-profile corruption cases happened on her watch, most notably the colossal looting of over $100 million from government coffers by senior civil servant and politicians, known as “Cashgate”. The fact that Mutharika says he wants to bury the past and move on may be assuring but history shows that every former president in Malawi has faced a court case of some kind. Joyce Banda will be aware of this.

Foreign policy
The other key issue to emerge from Mutharika’s inaugural speech was foreign policy. It’s clear that the new president is not sure of western donor support. He said foreign policy would be based on “what is best for Malawi”, adding that Malawi would continue with traditional relationships with donor countries and organisations “but we are now looking for new friends in the emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Russia”.

It is a loaded and multifaceted statement but it shows that Mutharika is accurately aware that he has his work cut out insofar as winning confidence of traditional donors is concerned. To start with, at the time of Bingu’s death, most donor countries had deserted Malawi due to Bingu’s undiplomatic tendencies, poor governance and his increasingly autocratic behaviour. Crucially, Peter Mutharika was foreign affairs minister at the time; he must have been involved in diplomatic negotiations one way or another. It is most likely that most donors have grown cold feet at Peter Mutharika’s victory. Mutharika’s emphasis on looking for “new friends” suggests that he is worried about it.

Furthermore, Mutharika has inherited a government that has lost 40% of annual budget support which comes from donors. Donors decided to withhold this support late last year in response to the “Cashgate” revelations. Convincing donors to release the cash will be Mutharika’s first task. The president needs no reminding of how much Malawi suffered economically under his brother’s rule when donors froze budgetary support. Bingu died with Malawi’s economy on the verge of collapse – Peter Mutharika cannot afford to start his presidency on this note.

Irrespective of his victory, Mutharika still needs to win the confidence of a lot of Malawians. Sixty-four percent of Malawians voted against him. He won the election via the country’s shambolic first-past-the-post voting system, which does not require a re-run even if the leading candidate fails to get more than 50% of the vote. Bingu Mutharika initially came to power in 2004 with only 35% of the national vote. However, his excellent performance in his first term won him a second term with a landslide of 63%. Peter will be looking to achieve the same, albeit under different circumstances.

Jimmy Kainja is an academic, lecturing at Chancellor College, University of Malawi. He’s also a current affairs and political analyst and blogger. He is interested in news media, communications and political & social changes, particularly in Malawi. He blogs at www.jimmykainja.co.uk. Follow him on Twitter: @jkainja

11 years ago

Niger’s first slavery conviction: Man jailed for 4 years

A man has been sentenced to four years in jail in Niger’s first conviction for slavery.

Elhadji Djadi Raazikou (63) was convicted of having a “fifth wife” – a practice in which girls, usually of slave descent, are treated as property because local Islamic law permits only four wives.

Known as wahaya in the local Tamasheq language, they are seen as a sign of prestige among wealthy buyers in Niger and northern Nigeria’s Hausa ethnicity. No marriage takes place, depriving the woman of legal rights, and men have several wahaya.

“They are treated solely as property and face a lifetime of regular rape, physical and psychological abuse and forced labour,” said Jakub Sobik of the international pressure group Anti-Slavery International.

Touareg girls, claimed to be slaves, attend a ceremony where their chief, who had promised to release 7 000 slaves, denied slavery exists. Picture taken March 5 2005. (Reuters)

Raazikou allegedly bought the girl for 200 000 CFA francs (£248) and put her to work as a domestic drudge for one of his four other wives. He had been detained in the town of Birnin Konni since the local anti-slavery organisation Timidria alerted authorities in 2010.

“We hope this latest success will be a catalyst for others to start coming forward,” said Abankawel Illitine, a Timidria board member.

It is the first successful such prosecution since a Nigerian woman challenged her former master in the Court of Justice of the West African regional body Ecowas six years ago.

The girls are often born into slavery in a rigid caste system where “noble-borns”, usually lighter-skinned Moors, indirectly or directly own darker-skinned Moors or black Africans. The girls, almost always sold before they turn 15 and frequently as young as nine, sometimes change hands several times.

Up to 130 000 people are trapped in modern slavery in Niger, with women and children bearing the brunt. Some wahaya are forced to wear a heavy brass ankle ring. In neighbouring Mauritania, those old enough to cover their hair are often forced to leave their arms bare – against rural tradition – to enable them to carry heavy burdens.

Much of the abuse comes from the other wives, whose position depends on being able to remain a spouse. “A wahaya can regain their freedom if their first-born is a boy, because the husband will then either divorce another of his wives or he must liberate the mother,” Illitine said. In Raazikou’s case, he tried to divorce one of his other four wives to marry a fifth, the court heard.

Slavery has existed across the Sahel and Sahara since Arabic-speaking Moors raided African villages and launched the trans-Saharan slave trade centuries ago. Some proponents justify its continuation through Quranic texts that permitted the enslavement of women captured in jihad (holy war), although it is practised even in countries that never experience jihad.

Talak inherited her slave status from her parents, who were captured in a raid by Tuaregs against their village. “My work load was awful, unimaginable … [My master] considered me to have no soul. He would use me for pleasure while hate burned in my heart,” she told rights activists after running away.

Mauritania was the world’s last country to abolish slavery, in 1981, but campaigners say it is difficult to overturn a deeply engrained custom among rural communities across the several Saharan nations.

“Wahaya goes on with the consent of traditional chiefs, who are in fact the ones who own the most women,” said a local chief in the northern Nigerian state of Sokoto, which borders Niger.

The chief, who asked not to be named, said nomadic Tuaregs frequently crossed the Sahara to reach the former Islamic caliphate, where the custom of buying girls was well established. “There are villages where 80% of girls came to Nigeria so young they don’t know anything about where they come from, or anything about their birth families,” he said.

11 years ago

Where are our girls? African leaders are late to the party – again

“We’re here!” This is what is embodied in the statement that African nations, in particular West African ones, made when they declared war on Boko Haram at the conclusion of a security summit in Paris. Nigeria and neighbouring countries are to share intelligence and border surveillance in order to track the group’s movements.

African states have finally come to the party – they’re late but at least they have arrived. It was already discouraging that it took this long for our leaders to heed the call. How could Britain’s plan to tackle Boko Haram be released with more force and precision than an African one?

Technically, the fight against Boko Haram should be a Nigerian-led, African-supported initiative with the West providing a helping hand. This was the idea that emerged from the summit – the European Union, the UK and the United States would support the regional effort. When little British girls go missing in Portugal we don’t have Ghana stepping up to the United Kingdom, saying “Steady back, we got this”. When the Malaysian Airlines plane went missing we did not have anyone calling Tanzania’s president, saying “See, thing is we have this little Boeing 77-200ER that seems to have vanished…”

Your problem, your rodeo.

But alas it is not the case here.

The deputy chairperson of the African Union has called for a united international force, citing terrorism as a new phenomenon and one that needs a multi-lateral approach. This is in fact code for “USA and UK, let us borrow some soldiers and technology”.

US troops and intelligence officers have been sent to Nigeria to aid in the search for the missing girls and it is Americans who are analysing the video released by Boko Haram. They have also sent manned planes and drones within the area. The British plan consists of sending military advisors.

It seems that even before this new plan, countries outside Africa were giving a little bit more than ‘support’.

This was the decision taken during a summit held in Paris by French President Francoise Hollande (the same country siphoning extraordinary amounts of resources from its ex-colonies).

Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou, Chad’s President Idriss Deby Itno, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan, France’s President Francois Hollande, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, and Benin’s President Thomas Boni Yayi pose for a photo during an African security summit to discuss the threat of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram to regional stability, at the Elysee Palace in Paris on May 17 2014. (Pic: AFP)

The United Kingdom is to host the follow-up meeting to review the action plan.

So Africa is to lead the endeavour when we could not even organise the venue and snacks to come up with the plan? Why was this meeting not held at the African Union headquarters or somewhere else on the continent?

Again, we are in that precarious position where we want to be the life of the party but end up just turning up late, slightly drunk and dancing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

The Nigerian army has gone from blunder to blunder since the start of this debacle, initially claiming that the girls had been returned when they hadn’t and then having to recant the statement. Even western allies have expressed reservations, saying there is a concern surrounding the Nigerian state’s inability to provide decisive leadership to the military. The Nigerian government has also previously stated that they will not use force to get the girls back, and also backed out of talks to have some of the girls released.

Reservations about Nigeria’s efficiency are also shared within the country. Senator Ahmed Zanna of Boko, in a television interview with Al Jazeera, said he was disappointed in the Nigerian government who, despite having been given 1.2-trillion Lira since 2012 and having a lot of resources, has handled the situation badly.

In light of all this we now have the Global North stepping in. But the question is: do we really need this level of hand-holding?

South Africa has advanced weapons (this is a country that used to have a nuclear weapons programme), Ecowas has boots on the ground, Nigeria’s force includes 20 000 troops and aircrafts. Kenya is fast-gaining knowledge on counter-terrorism due to its own hot mess called al-Shabab.

I am pretty sure we can cobble something solid together if we put our minds to it and the West can simply add a little flavour to an already complete meal, not provide all the ingredients.

This should have been the conversation at the African Union HQ at the beginning of the crisis in April:

Goodluck Jonathan: “We have lost some girls, this is a travesty! It cannot be allowed.”
Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma: “Let me rally the troops.”
Other members: “We are on it.”

Paul Kagame would slowly swap his glasses for prescription aviators, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would tie her bandana tighter, someone else would cock a gun while Miriam Makeba played in the background.

Yes, it sounds like a script from a Justice League comic but the truth is we need superheroes and not sidekicks when we face situations like this. The above conversation between African leaders unfortunately didn’t take place, and what has happened is far too little a bit too late.

As a continent we cannot keep being late to our own party, feigning incompetence and coming up with half-baked resolutions. When situations like this arise on the continent, we need to say “We got this, thank you”, not sit back and depend on outside help when we have the capabilities. There are more than 200 girls still missing. We need to stop being reactive and be proactive. Having summits in Paris and meetings in London and releasing the odd statement is clearly not working to curb Boko Haram and bring our girls back.

Kagure Mugo is a freelance writer and co-founder and curator of holaafrica.org, a Pan-Africanist queer women’s collective which engages in activism and awareness-building around issues of African women’s identity, experiences and sexuality. Connect with her on Twitter: @tiffmugo

11 years ago

Book review: Nigerians in Space

Wale had already decided what he would do when he landed on the moon.

“He wouldn’t hit golf balls like the American astronauts” did. Instead, he would play the talking drum, “squeezing out” its rhythms “into the blackness between the stars”.

“He would bind the stars with the drums. There would be dancing.”

Wale’s dream of heading a Nigerian lunar program is the heart of Deji Olukotun’s debut novel Nigerians in Space (2014, Unnamed Press). Wale is a brilliant lunar geologist. For some reason, his rise through Nasa’s bureaucratic hierarchy is stuck at a mid-level research position. This bureaucratic injustice has left him a jaded and bitter man.

But here is Mr Nurudeen Bello – the mysterious mastermind of the Nigerian lunar mission called Project Brain Gain – offering him the chance to walk on the moon.

He has never met Bello in person. He knows Bello only through hushed conversations on pay phones. Bello was a man who existed only in the sound of his voice and the strange power of his words to charm his listeners.

Despite his strong misgivings about the whole enterprise, Wale steals a piece of moon rock from his lab in Nasa, as instructed by Bello, and skips town, taking his wife Tinuke and their little son, Dayo. The plan is that he will meet Bello in Washington DC and officially begin the heroic odyssey to space.

What Wale cannot foresee, however, is that he is about to feature in a classic noir fiction. He will not meet Bello and what follows will be a sky-high pile up of disasters taking place at break-neck speed.

Nigerians in Space is so much a novel of our time that it helps us track how far we’ve come from mid-century African novels. We’ve come a long way from novels like Things Fall Apart, novels that presents life as it takes place in a single locality.

Olukotun’s novel is set in Houston, Stockholm, Basel, Paris Abuja, Bulawayo, Lagos, Cape Town and Johannesburg. These days, African novels are built on the life of the global African nomad.

From Teju Cole’s Julius to Chris Abani’s Sunil, contemporary African fiction is defined by characters for whom mobility is life. They traverse global spaces and force us to think of Lagos and Abuja in the context of Basel and Bulawayo.

Some novels hand the reader one unbroken spool of narrative thread to unravel. The thread may twist and turn as the plot requires, but it is never broken. Nigerians in Space holds the reader’s attention, somewhat counterintuitively, through the stupefying incoherence of the plot.

When Wale’s meeting with Bello fails, his increasing paranoia and desperate attempt to unravel the mystery around Bello and the botched space mission take him through a dizzying array of spaces – from Houston to Stockholm, to Basel, to Cape Town. The first chapter ends, and the reader, who is as confused and breathless as Wale is, turns the page hoping to take comfort in some explanation or a plot movement that takes the story forward.

Instead the reader is transported 21 years to the present day with a sentence that reads: “Thursday Malaysius had worked at Abalone Silver for two years.” No explanation of how Thursday is tied to Wale, Bello, or Project Brain Gain. But then no sooner you fall in love with Thursday, you’re introduced to Melissa, and Mrs. Niyangabo and so on.

These sharp, unpredictable turns in a plot moving at lightning speed is exhilarating and will leave you delightfully lightheaded. I let myself freefall down this zigzagging tunnel of stories. I suggest you do the same. It’s a literary trip of sheer delight. The fragmented portraits and incidents do come together in a stunning collage.

Brittle Paper is an African literary blog featuring book reviews, news, interviews, original work, and in-depth coverage of the African literary scene. It is curated by Ainehi Edoro and was recently named a ‘go-to book blog’ by Publisher’s Weekly.