Amelioration is no cure

About 2.8 billion people - between a third and a half of the world's population - burn solid fuel such as wood, crop waste, charcoal, coal and dung to cook their food in open fires and leaky stoves. Inside those homes, cooking smoke is eye-stingingly visible, and it blackens the walls. But the invisible effect it has on the tiniest, branching airways of the lungs is what makes this a global crisis. Those smoke particles are taken up by cells that form part of the natural defences of the lungs. In doing that, they diminish the function of these cells, increasing the risk of infections and chronic illness. Crucially, smoke is a key driver of child pneumonia - a leading cause of death in children under five in many countries across the developing world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that four million premature deaths every year - in children and adults - can be attributed to indoor air pollution. That is why in 2010, the United Nations Foundation and the US State Department launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), with a mission to "foster the adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels in 100 million households by 2020".

Cleaner cookstoves, the alliance says "save lives and reduce illness". There is, however, a problem. A study run by Kevin Mortimer in Malawi over the last two years, and written up in the Lancet, shows that the cookstove alone does neither. A big clinical trial in Malawi was expected to show children are less likely to die of pneumonia if they live in a home where food is cooked on a smoke-free stove rather than an open fire. Instead it suggests the stove makes no difference. "We followed up and monitored the health of 10,000 children for this study, and our results basically show that there is no difference in cases of pneumonia between the intervention and the control group," he says. "The hard science - certainly from our study - is perhaps at odds with the claim that stoves along the lines of the ones we've used here save lives and reduce illness."

Where does this leave a huge UN-backed project to get 100 million clean cookstoves into homes in the developing world by 2020?

"Exposure to household air pollution is a problem of poverty," says Kevin Mortimer, a medical doctor and a respiratory health researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. "If you're not poor, you're not exposed."

A Malaise in Malawi

The World Atlas ranked Malawi as the poorest country in the world. Just last month, the Center for Strategic & International Studies reported that Malawi is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in its history as widespread maize harvest failures have created massive food shortages. Over half the nation’s population needs food relief to survive through the beginning of next year. In Malawi, poverty and hunger go hand in hand. In many ways, the nation is quite blessed — it has natural resources, a climate that isn’t extreme, a large and bountiful lake, and a peaceful history without threat of war. And still, Malawi forever clings to the top of the list of the world’s poorest countries.

The enemy is not poor maize harvests, poor healthcare, poor education, or even poor government. These are serious problems, but they aren’t the enemy. Thousands of Malawi villages are struggling with water sources that are close to disappearing and food supplies that have already run out. People are starving. Four decades of intervention, and look how far we haven’t come.

The real enemy is how the world tries to help. Specifically:

1. The system that demands foreign aid be funneled through the government or large NGOs

2. The system that creates a hierarchy of aid and government workers whose job security and quality of life depends not on their wanting what is good on the ground, but pleasing whoever is above them in rank

3. The system that discriminates against on-the-ground, local initiatives because of a lack academic credentials, English-speaking skills, and the ability to complete unwieldy applications and fulfill misguided metric targets

If Malawi is to win the war against poverty, it needs to face the truth and admit that the system has not not worked in Malawi.  In a country where local government clinics have no malaria medicines because it all gets siphoned off before it reaches the people on the ground, isn’t it crazy to stick to a system that hasn’t worked for decades? The world helps Malawi’s hungry population by distributing hundreds of thousands of bags of food. It’s a shame that the system is too unwieldy to accommodate a long-term, local, and low cost solution, no matter how well it has proven to work.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-wong/the-war-against-poverty-i_b_12025594.html

Magic, murder and money in Malawi

Witchcraft is big business in Malawi and this is bad news for albinos. Since January last year, there have been 17 recorded ”ritual killings” of people born with albinism: an inherited genetic condition in which the body fails to produce enough pigment or melanin in Malawi, and 66 cases of abductions and other related crimes. Albinism affects roughly one in 17,000 people globally, but in sub-Saharan Africa, the incidence is higher, typically as common as one in 5,000. In Tanzania, it is one in 1,400. Amnesty International said in a statement earlier this year that "it is deeply worrying that there’s poor security for people with albinism in Malawi despite an increasing number of attacks against them”.

"Anyone born with albinism in this country is living in fear of attack, no matter how socially connected one is," said Chipungu, a 32-year-old civil servant, can't remember the last time he went out at night. 

People with the genetic trait often experience taunting and discrimination. They can be accused of being "ghosts" or “witches” or derided in other ways for somehow being less than human. There is also a belief in the magical properties of their bodies. Their "difference" supposedly boosts the efficacy of potions or amulets made from their hair, eyes, skin, limbs and organs. People born with albinism are hunted, killed and dismembered, or their graves dug up by criminal syndicates in search of their bones. The belief – common in so many religions – is that literal or symbolic cannibalism allows communication with spirits and deities, and is used by those wishing power and money. These "occult economies" – the use of magical means for imagined material ends – mirror the mysteries of the 21st-century market, where money flows seemingly abundantly and effortlessly. In the almost literal worshipping of wealth, people turn to familiar arcane forces for a helping hand. This ultimate commodification of the human body is big business. According to a 2009 report by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, an intact body of someone with albinism in Tanzania is worth around $75,000 – suggestive of a trade only affordable for the already rich and powerful, whose wealth is probably not based on productive labour.

According to the police in Dedza, central Malawi, two "albino hunters", arrested for the kidnapping and murder of 17-year-old Davis Machinjiri, had smuggled the body across the border to Angonia in Mozambique, where they had been promised $66,000 by "witch doctors".

Jeremiah Banda, a Malawian traditional doctor, believes the wave of killings has spread from Tanzania. "The use of albino body parts in magical medicine is common among East African traditional doctors, mostly those from Tanzania, where there is a belief that albinos possess special powers and their parts can bring good luck when used in magic concoctions," he told IRIN.

Malawian police also seem eager to externalise the problem. Following the arrest of 10 men in connection with the abduction and killing of a 25-year-old woman with albinism in Lilongwe, police spokesman Kondwani Kandiado said, "our current information indicates that there is a Tanzanian link in the recent wave of albino abductions and killings in the country". Body parts are bagged, transported and sold in "underground markets".

Speaking at the end of a week-long, fact-finding mission last month, the UN's independent expert on human rights and albinism, Ikponwasa Ero, said the situation in Malawi was an "emergency" and people with albinism were threatened with systematic extinction. "The situation is a potent mix of poverty, witchcraft beliefs and market forces, which push people to do things for profit," she said in an interview. 

Malawi's albinos at risk

Albinism is a genetic condition that leads to little or no pigment in the eyes, skin and hair. In the United States, about one in 20,000 people have some type of albinism. But in countries such as Tanzania, the number can be as high as one in 1,500.

Malawi's albinos are at risk of "total extinction" amid escalating attacks against them for their body parts, the United Nations warned. The southern African nation has about 10,000 albinos, according to the U.N.

In some African countries, albinos' body parts are believed to bring wealth and good luck. As a result, attackers chop off their limbs and pluck out organs, and sell them to witchdoctors. Even after albinos are killed, some attackers go a step further and steal their remains from graveyards, said Ikponwosa Ero, the United Nations' expert on albinism. "Persons with albinism, and parents of children with albinism, constantly live in fear of attack," she said. "Many do not sleep peacefully and have deliberately restricted their movement to the necessary minimum."

Police in Malawi have recorded 65 cases of albino abductions since late 2014. About 20 people living with albinism have been killed so far, the latest case being that of a girl whose uncle played a role in facilitating her abduction and eventual killing. A court in Malawi’s rural district of Dowa on Thursday sentenced the uncle (Gerald Phiri) and his accomplice to 17 years imprisonment for aiding in the abduction of the 21-year-old Eneless Nkhata, who was later found murdered. The sentence is a landmark as it is the most severe delivered so far in cases relating to albino abductions and killings that are haunting Malawi. The stiff sentence comes after Association of People with Albinism in Malawi (Apam) protested a four-year jail term given by another court recently to two men who attempted to abduct and murder a 4-year-old child with albinism.

Ero said the fight should go beyond stiff punishments, as "addressing the root causes of attacks, in particular why they are happening, is indispensable to eradicating them. It is worrying to note that witchcraft beliefs and practices are widespread in Malawi, although often a taboo topic.”

Malawi Information Minister Patricia Kaliati has lambasted some witchdoctors for perpetrating the killings. "Some witchdoctors are fuelling the atrocities. We will take the battle against the abductions and the killings to their doorstep, even if it means stopping some of them from practising their trade. That is our serious warning," she said.

A safe haven in Malawi?

Imagine fleeing from your home because you feel unprotected by the people who are required to so by law. And when you get to where you feel safer, the very same people come to persuade your keepers to let you come back with them, claiming you are running away from nothing! Well, this is the situation some 5,800 Mozambican nationals have found themselves in. Hundreds of them, including unaccompanied children, have been fleeing from Tete Province, near the Malawi border, since late last year following renewed fighting between government forces and opposition Renamo fighters.

The province is said to be one of the strongholds of Renamo, and the people say they are running away because allegedly government forces have been attacking them for supporting Renamo. They have since fled to Kapise village in Mwanza district in Southern Malawi, 300 meters from the border. About two-thirds of the refugees are women and children mostly below five years old, as well as the elderly. The refugees, whose numbers continue to steadily rise every day, are living in desperate conditions at the camp scrambling for necessities with 150 local families there.

A statement from Medicines San Frontiers (MSF) says that refugees do not have enough water and sanitation facilities, have poor housing, and are at risk of diseases. They are also in fear of getting attacked by soldiers from their country. A two month-old baby died of diarrhoea at the camp last month. And last week alone, MSF, which set up a clinic at the camp, treated over 380 malaria cases. Even worse, the Malawi government is under pressure from Mozambique not to recognize the people as refugees, according to MSF. Doctors without Borders says Mozambique sent several delegates to the camp to try and persuade the displaced people to come back, arguing that there was no conflict back home. However Mozambican media reports indicate that tensions have increased in recent weeks in Tete, Zambezia and Sofala provinces, with daily attacks and shootings. MSF, which started its intervention there in November 2015, has since appealed to the Malawi government to move the people to a more spacious camp, 50 kilometers from Kapise, and also away from the border as required by international humanitarian standards.

The alternative location, Luwani, a former refugee camp, is said to be the best option for the displaced people as it has plenty of space, a school, medical centre and a better road. Furthermore, the move, according to MSF, would also allow humanitarian actors such as the UNHCR, to plan appropriate services to meet the needs of the displaced community. At a recent press briefing in Blantyre, MSF’s head of mission to Malawi, Maury Gregoire, said they are treating about 159 people every day, with half diagnosed with malaria and the rest having respiratory infections and general body pain. He said the refugees only have 14 latrines whereas the respect of minimum humanitarian conditions requires that at least 20 people have one latrine or in worst case scenarios one latrine for 50 people. According to Gregoire, people have only two boreholes for both domestic and general use: “Each person has on average eight litres of water a day, barely enough to drink and cook and well below the minimum 15 to 20 litres are recommended as a humanitarian minimum in emergency settings.”

MSF has since warned that the strain by the refugees could cause tensions with Malawian families living in the village, especially on access to water. But Malawian authorities are not yet decided on whether to move the refugees or send them back home. Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs Beston Chisamile told The Nation newspaper on Thursday that they were still discussing the matter with Mozambican authorities. “Our friends in Mozambique want these people to go back home, so unless a decision is made between the two parties that they should remain in Malawi, then we can start thinking about moving them to a different place,” he said.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-UNHCR representative to Malawi Monique Ekoko recently appealed to donors and other humanitarian organisations for more funding to help the refugees. Malawi has hosted refugees from Mozambique before. The Luwani Camp hosted over one million Mozambican refugees who fled from their country’s 16 year civil war between 1977 and 1992. The country is currently facing a tough economic situation of high inflation and interest rates which has left many people struggling to survive. It is estimated that about 2.8 million Malawians themselves are in need of food aid following last season’s dry spell and floods. A report by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee says about K23 billion (about US$18 million) is needed to feed such people up to the next harvest.

 From here

The Misery of Migrants in Malawi

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Maula prison, in the Malawi capital of Lilongwe was built to accommodate 800 prisoners, but now is bursting at the seams with 2,650 inmates. Amongst this desperate population, the most vulnerable are the nearly 300 undocumented migrants who were arrested as they travelled towards South Africa. These men represent the reality of our mobile world, where people are on the move, seeking refuge from violence and inequality or escape from chronic poverty. Lacking any kind of resources, they left their countries of origin in the hope of building a decent life in South Africa. A dream denied at home, that dramatically ended up in Malawi’s prisons.

Abeba, a man in his thirties from Durame, Ethiopia says “We are not criminals! But now, in prison, we are not human anymore.”

The number of foreign citizens, mostly Ethiopians, detained in Malawi for illegal entry has increased in the past few years, becoming a phenomenon of humanitarian concern. Most of them have been charged for three months, but the reality is that they have been locked away for more. The law requires they return to their homelands after their periods of detention, but bureaucratic delays impede any way forward. Moreover, they are supposed to cover their expenses for repatriation, a contradiction to their weak economic status.

A young boy explains “My dream is to reach South Africa; this is what I have worked towards for years. I knew it would be difficult, but I never thought I’d end up here. I thought Africans were all brothers. But here… here it seems different.”

Ethiopians follow a long-standing pattern of migration towards South Africa, their beacon of light. “Where we live, there is not enough land for everyone, we are too many in my family,” says Abeba, counting with the fingers on both hands the number of brothers in his family. “If I go to South Africa, after two or three years I can afford to buy a house. If you work for twenty years in Ethiopia you can’t buy anything,” he says. Another young Ethiopian adds, “If you need a job there, you have to belong to a certain family that has land. My family doesn’t have any.” For many, leaving the country wasn’t a choice. It was their last hope for survival.

Prisoners in Maula get food only once a day. They usually eat a plate of nsima - ground maize that fills the stomach but doesn’t give many nutrients. Beans are an occasional treat. Nutrition is so poor that last month Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had to treat 18 inmates for moderate-to-severe malnutrition

Gender Inequality And Land Tenure

At its 2014 Land and Poverty Conference in March, the World Bank highlighted the efficacy of producing computerised land-related data using satellites, drones, databases and other sources such as traditional surveys.
This makes it easier and quicker to register land and generate title deeds, and - being digital - it means poor smallholder farmers can access deeds from local land registration offices rather than having to travel long distances to a town where paper copies would otherwise be stored.
As SciDev.Net reported, some conference delegates pointed to potential complications. They are right to be concerned: creating and digitising land registries could exacerbate unfair land grabs or further marginalise people who may not have the right to claim land they live on or farm.


The topic of gender inequalities around land tenure is much discussed in development, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, for example, has a global database with up-to-date information and analysis on such inequalities.  (Gender and Land Rights Database here)

Although 70 per cent of Africa's farmers are women, patriarchal customary law often holds sway, excluding them from owning or controlling land. Even in matrilineal societies, where property and land inheritance follows the female line, such as those in Malawi, in reality the maternal uncle - or mwini mumba - will control the land.
Such discrimination in land access and decision-making is a key barrier to empowering poor women, lowering their status in the community and preventing them from borrowing money against collateral to improve their farming methods or to start small businesses.
Digitising land ownership is something of a double-edged sword. If land registry digitising projects were to blithely record the name of the head of the family as the proprietor of the land, this could further erode women's limited control over land.
But, done with sensitivity to the complex dynamics around land ownership, they could offer the chance to record women's rightful access to land officially, while also providing quick and easy access to title deeds.
The challenge is how to do this when land is so often considered the property of the male household head. One way could be to record the name of the person who farms the land, rather than the person who traditionally controls it.
To begin with, promoters of land digitisation projects should be aware of its potential to dispel one of the largest barriers to women's empowerment: their unequal access to land. To do this, digitising technology must be used wisely.

from here

Tony Blair, Malawi and Charity

 Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative rushed into Malawi soon after Joyce Banda's rise to the presidency. Tony Blair's presence at the Lilongwe state house was regarded as an important goodwill gesture. Malawi's first and Africa's second female president could only benefit from the governance expertise of Blair's organisation.

Eighteen months later as Malawians continue to suffer hardship in the wake of the biggest corruption and financial mismanagement scandal ever recorded, Blair has pulled out of Malawi amid allegations that Banda may have paid the former British PM millions of  taxpayer money for governance consultancy and advisory services. Three weeks ago, as pressure continued to mount on Banda's administration regarding her failure to deal effectively with the corruption scandal now christened "Cashgate", the former British PM announced he had severed all his ties with President Banda.

Newspaper reports published in Malawi allege that the payments made by Banda to Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative were made illegally as they were made outside the budget and without the approval of the parliament. In Malawi, Banda has come under fire from critics and civil society for not disclosing to Malawians the exact nature of Blair's presence in Malawi. Many are also worried that this impoverished southern African country's empty coffers may have paid the former British PM such huge sums of money, reported to be in excess of $5m when all along, Malawians have been made to believe that Blair's presence in the country was a charitable act.

 the Malawi government signed a contract with Tony Blair as an individual to be advising the Malawian leader on regular basis. The reports further claim that some of Blair's staff working under the AGI were placed in the Malawi president's office for regular monitoring of performance and evaluation of progress, and to play an advisory role in the absence of the former British PM. Additionally, it is alleged that Blair and the AGI staff, operating from the president's office in Lilongwe had access to the Malawian leader 24 hours through telephone and that face-to-face appointments with the president needed to be guaranteed to the Blair team at short notice.

According to the allegations, at least eight payments were made from the Malawi treasury at various points in 2012, just months after Banda took over the presidency. The Malawi government was paying Blair through various banks accounts in the names of  "the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative (AGI)", "Tony Blair Associates", "Windrush Ventures" and "Firerush Ventures". All the payment details were referenced to Blair's operating office addresses: PO Box 60519, London W2 7JU (Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, Central London.)

Blair's office, as well as the official spokesperson for AGI, released separate statements categorically denying receiving any payments from the Malawi government and insisting that Blair's presence in Malawi was humanitarian, and the presence of the AGI in Malawi was only for charitable purposes.

Nevertheless, Malawians are still left wondering what really were the interests of Blair in Malawi, considering that he appeared on the scene claiming that he would offer governance advice, and that it was during his watch that the Cashgate scandal has been exposed. Could it be that Blair, having allegedly been paid millions to advice on governance, a task he has demonstrably failed to do, is now deserting Malawi at a time when Malawi needs his advice the most? A growing number of people in Malawi now believe that Blair knew about the high level corruption, fraud and looting and that his only interest in Malawi was financial exploitation.

Nevertheless, Malawians are still left wondering what really were the interests of Blair in Malawi, considering that he appeared on the scene claiming that he would offer governance advice, and that it was during his watch that the Cashgate scandal has been exposed. Could it be that Blair, having allegedly been paid millions to advice on governance, a task he has demonstrably failed to do, is now deserting Malawi at a time when Malawi needs his advice the most? A growing number of people in Malawi now believe that Blair knew about the high level corruption, fraud and looting and that his only interest in Malawi was financial exploitation.

From AlJazeera

Malawi's Tobacco Child Labour

 Malawi has become one of the five largest tobacco producers in the world, largely due to low export tariffs, cheap labour and lack of regulations. Malawian tobacco is found in the blend of almost every best-selling cigarette brand available in Europe, Asia and the US. But few of the smokers who buy the end product know much about the conditions the tobacco they consume is produced under.

Malawi is one of the least developed nations in the world (ranking 153 out of 169 countries in the Human Development Index) with around half the population living below the poverty line of $1.25 a day and one of the highest numbers of child labourers in Africa – around 1.5 million.

With tobacco sales making up 70 percent of the country's income and a significant part of its industrial activity, it is sadly inevitable that many of these children (aged between five and 15) are being forced by economic necessity to work with their families in the tobacco fields, risking their health, safety, and future. There they are subjected to hazardous manual labour, physical strain, dangerous environments, and long hours; often charged with strenuous tasks such as clearing the land, building tobacco drying sheds, weeding and plucking raw tobacco.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs such as SOS Children, Plan International and others, when the children cut and bundle the tobacco leaves they are put at risk of absorbing toxic quantities of nicotine through their skin. Many suffer from a disease called green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning. Symptoms include severe headaches, abdominal cramps, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, high blood pressure and fluctuations in heart rate. Some are even given the task of applying pesticides with their bare hands – chemicals when handled incorrectly can cause serious neurological problems.

It also affects their development and education - children working in the fields cannot be at school - and so their involvement in the industry inevitably perpetuates a cycle of exploitation, illiteracy, lack of opportunity and poverty that will one day force them back into the fields as adults.

The cigarette manufacturers all insist that they are firmly opposed to the use of children working in their supply chain and that in Malawi. But critics claim that these initiatives are little more than window dressing from a multi-billion dollar industry that ultimately benefits from the country's low production costs.

Over the past two years only 49 tobacco farm owners have been prosecuted in Malawi for using child labour. Most received a $34 fine.

They are masquerading around the issue," says Mathias Burton of Malawi's Economic and Legal Social Services Centre. "To ease their consciences, that's why they have this kind of stuff. To say they are fighting child labour. And when they sell their own products ... the profits that they make, what they give out in social responsibility to these organisations is nothing at all compared to what they make."

Malawi's Farmers Say No To Government Decisions

Lilongwe (Malawi), 18 August 2013

Peoples Dialogue, Via Campesina, the Rural Women Assembly, together with other movements, have met for two days, and came out with alternative practical solutions to end rural poverty and promote people-driven development in the Southern Africa Development Community region (SADC). These alternative solutions on issues that affect directly lives of the small-scale farmers and rural women movements from across the region were handed over to representatives of the Heads of SADC states on Saturday.

The SADC Heads of States gathered in Lilongwe, Malawi, at their 33rd ordinary Summit, from 16th to 17th August 2013.

The President of Malawi and incoming SADC chairperson, Joyce Banda, highlighted in her opening speech that agriculture and free movement of people will be priorities during her term, however, she also emphasized a focus on agribusiness . The statement of Joyce Banda tacitly implies that the very same model, which has been taking away peoples’ sovereignty and control over their seeds and food production systems, will be promoted in SADC and will provide more opportunities for GMO seeds to further penetrate  into the region. Such a false solution to food crisis in the SADC and Africa, imposed from above, will only worsen the situation.

Small-scale producers and the rural women know that programmes such as the Green Revolution, the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the G8-New Alliance for Food Security & Nutrition are and will continue to destroy peasants if they sit back and allow Government Heads to make decisions on their behalf. In countries such as Mozambique land grabbing by the “profit before people” investors, continues unabated with the blessing and cooperation of the government (e.g. ProSavana for Soya beans, agro-fuels and other export crops). Land grabbing of perceived “idle” and “underutilized” land must be stopped and investments, which are pro-poor, environmentally and ecologically should be promoted.

Thus, in the document delivered to the SADC Heads of States, farmers’ movements have demanded a GMO free SADC and that companies such as Monsanto and ProSavana MUST get out of Africa. The SADC governments should subsidize sustainable peasant agriculture production systems and develop local markets for their produce and be linked to home industries, thus creating employment for both rural and urban populations, if inclusive development is to be achieved.

The small-scale farmers and rural women from the region had an opportunity to meaningfully engage, share information and farming materials, with their Malawian counterparts during a farmers exchange field visit in Lilongwe South, organised by the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM). They witnessed how the local small farmers organized the production and market systems of rice and groundnuts, which have evolved and became integral to their community livelihoods, including employment creation through value-addition processes.  This is a testimony that clearly illustrates that the small-scale farmers can produce food and contribute to wider development nationally if their social and economic endeavours are supported.

The SADC must implement the commitments of the Maputo declaration NOW and Food Sovereignty must be adopted as a policy by all SADC countries. Gender equity, particularly rural women and youths’ rights, control and access to arable land and natural resources must be enshrined in our countries’ constitutions and community ownership of natural resources should be promoted. Moreover, an integrated SADC mining charter to guide investment and stifle intra-competition by regional governments should be developed that would put an end to over-exploitation of mineral resources and labour within the region.

from farmlandgrab

The New Slave Trade

Malawi is to export up to 100,000 of its young people as migrant workers. It involves sending young Malawian men and women aged between 18 and 25 to jobs in factories and on farms in Korea. Opposition MPs in Malawi have called the deal "slave labour".

"We always cry about brain-drain and encourage Malawians in the diaspora to come back home and yet here we are exporting the cream of our labour force abroad. It doesn't make sense at all," Stevyn Kamwendo, for the DPP, told parliament .

traditional oppression in South Africa

The Traditional Courts Bill is meant to replace the Black Administration Act of 1927 with a law that is constitutional. As is stands, the bill creates a separate legal system for rural folk, geographically recreating the old Bantustans with no irony. If passed, it will in effect strip between 17 million and 21 million people living in rural South Africa of many of the rights we enjoy in the rest of the country.

The bill partly recognises what is already operational in many of these spaces. This includes royal patriarchs who explicitly endorse the kidnapping of girls into marriage – ukuthwala – as Chief Mandla Mandela does, to those who silently endorse it, such as Chief Mwelo Nonkonyana. Many rural communities organise against repressive patriarchal practices, resisting forced unpaid labour, refusing to pay tribal levies, and in countless ways refusing to be docile subjects of chiefs who are given absolute power by this bill. The bill will bestow the final say on the chief presiding over a dispute.

Legal researcher Dr Simiso Mnisi reminds us that ordinary rural Africans shape and reshape custom, culture and practice all the time. She calls this living custom. Living custom enables culture and custom to continue to work in the interest of those who own it.

Mamphela Ramphele challenged this false opposition often held up in conservative culturalist arguments between “foreign” legal systems at work in the rest of the country and “indigenous” legal systems that will be protected in the proposed bill. She points out that our specific legal framework is home-grown. We created our Constitution and legal framework. We did not import it from anywhere else. This is why it is the most progressive Constitution in the world and is globally recognised as such.

The Bill lists criminal offences that can be heard by a traditional court. The Bill allows for the minister to appoint a traditional leader as the presiding officer of the court—without community input. The Bill does not allow a defendant to have an attorney, nor does it give a defendant the option of being tried in a mainstream court.

Dr Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, senior researcher at the law, race and gender research unit of the University of Cape Town, said "It centralises power to a single individual who may have conflicts of interest.”
Mazibuko K Jara, of the Democratic Left Front, said that for the past month he had “listened to harrowing stories from many women and other rural dwellers about the conditions they face living under unaccountable and undemocratic chiefs. The struggle for democracy has only just begun again in rural areas.”
Nomonde Mbelekane, president of the Rural People’s Movement, testified in 2010 about injustices at the hands of traditional leaders. “Some of the chiefs in Peddie have said that women are impure, dirty and involved in witchcraft. In Prudhoe village, an eight-month pregnant woman was called to the Dabi tribal court. She had tried to claim damages from the man who made her pregnant. The court decided that she was just accusing the man and dirtying his name. The court said the man’s father is rich and important; he cannot just have his family name pulled through the mud. She was then sentenced to corporal punishment.”

Other activist groups such as the Association for Rural Advancement, The Rural Women’s Movement  and the Landless People’s Movement also expressed concern about the proposed law.

The situation gets even worse for women. In many traditional courts, women are not allowed to represent themselves or even speak during proceedings. This bill reinforces this by allowing for women to be represented by their husbands or family members (the bill prohibits legal representation in traditional courts) – entrenching existing discriminatory practices. Women’s groups and particularly rural women’s groups are justifiably outraged. 18 years into democracy, women in rural areas are about to be declared second-class citizens by their own government. In practice, many rural women already struggle with decisions by traditional authorities that regularly attempt to strip them of things like land access and inheritance rights. This will only get worse when women find themselves stuck in a system that refuses to recognise their right to speak for themselves or provide legal protections from the very people now making legal decisions. Other gaps include the fact that there is no explicit recognition of crimes such as physical and sexual abuse which are currently considered private or ‘domestic’ matters not fit to be brought before a public court.

There also appears to be no opt-out clause. Anyone whose civil or criminal matter arises in the jurisdiction of the traditional court (i.e. Chief) can be summoned to the court and failure to show up carries whatever penalties the chief sees fit, up to and including those he (and it will almost inevitably be ‘he’) could hand down in sentence. People living in areas control by chiefs won’t have the option of choosing to have their cases heard in a magistrate’s court, like other citizens, without first going through the traditional court process, and even then can only appeal on limited grounds. While everyone else in South Africa has one legal system, these people have another.

Those who support the bill vehemently argue that this is a necessary part of respecting traditional culture and that it is important because constitutional authority has undermined the power and authority of the chiefs. Those opposing it point out that the bill takes us right back to the era of a separate legal system for black people – an era that was problematic precisely because those living in the homelands, those who were deemed (through no will of their own) to fall under the authority of traditional leaders, were not equal before the law. South Africa is a complicated country and the careful balancing of the rights of different groups is inevitably necessary. For this democracy to work, however, the rights of an individual to have a say in his or her future, to be treated equally before the law and to be recognised as part of the same system as everyone else, rather than being regarded as a subject with no say in the matter, have to be secure.

10 problems with the Bill

1. It creates a second-class justice system for over 17 million South Africans.
2. It gives even more power to those chiefs recognized by the state law and nothing to all other legitimate traditional leaders.
3. It allows these chiefs to decide what custom means.
4. All other members of the community, including women and young men, are not included in decision making.
5. It removes checks and balances on power, creating room for corruption, including the power to demand illegal levies.
6. It confirms apartheid “Bantustan” boundaries.
7. It negatively affects women, especially by supporting rules that prevent women from representing themselves.
8. It allows for forced labour and removal of customary benefits as punishments.
9. It applies to everyone; you cannot opt out even if you have valid reason.
10.Regardless of what charge you are facing, you can never ask for legal representation

Last year the Malawi government was widely condemned over local courts bill that gave legal authority to ‘lay courts’. Part of the reason for the criticism was the bizarre crimes that were recognised, such as “writing or uttering words with intent to wound religious feelings” and “fouling the air”, but the more important problem was that it created a parallel, largely unregulated local legal system.

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82004
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-17-traditional-courts-bill-out-of-step/
http://www.africanscene.co.za/2012/03/traditional-courts-bill-a-travesty/

More land-grab in Malawi

The construction of an inland port at Nsanje meant linking land-locked Malawi with the Indian Ocean port of Chinde, 238 kilometres away in neighbouring Mozambique, through the Shire-Zambezi Waterway project. The aim was to reduce the high costs of importing and exporting goods by road via Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre and the Mozambican port city of Beria - a round trip of about 1,200 kilometres.

“There’s no evidence that Nsanje will ever be a big port city,” said Nsanje resident Rose Samuel  . “We’ve heard that down the river it’s so narrow that a ship can’t pass, so we don’t think [the port] will be in use anytime soon.” Samuel has more reason to be bitter than most. Her family was among about 300 that used to farm land now occupied by the port. “Those families affected had to uproot maize that was already planted,” said Samuel. “Some were old people who left crying - that was their only source of income.” Samuel’s family received a mere 5,000 kwacha (US$20) for one hectare of ancestral land, for which they had no title deeds. Her family now survive by doing piece-work and renting a small plot of land to grow food. Many others have yet to receive anything. “People are worried that if they can grab land without paying, what will stop them removing more people from the area.”

Townspeople have been told by the Traditional Authority not to build any new houses because the land has been earmarked for development, and Nsanje’s District Commissioner, Rodney Simwaka, told IRIN that his office has received 4,000 applications for land from developers who are banking on the port eventually becoming operational. Village headman Black Richman Khembo told IRIN, “Lots of land has been bought by rich people hoping to make money. So far they are letting people remain on the land, but someday they will probably kick them off.”

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95438/MALAWI-Dream-fades-for-inland-port-project

Malaise in Malawi

In Malawi, like most other countries in the region (with the exception of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe), more than 60 percent of land is customary, meaning that it is mostly untitled and administered by local chiefs on behalf of the government, with local communities merely enjoying user rights. The system has led to many abuses, with some government officials and chiefs selling off customary lands and dispossessing smallholder farmers who are already competing for dwindling arable land as Malawi’s population increases.

“There’s nothing [they] can do because they’re not protected in any way by the law,” said Blessings Chinsinga, a lecturer at the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College, who is researching the political economy of land grabs and land reform in the country. In a research report co-authored by Chinsinga, he notes that the issue of “land grabs” in Malawi dates back to Banda's transferring of large parcels of land from smallholder farmers to the estate sector, largely to the benefit of political elites who helped sustain his regime.

Dorothy Dyton, her husband and seven children used to make a living farming just over a hectare near the town of Bangula in southern Malawi’s Chikhwawa District. Like most smallholder farmers in Malawi, they did not have a title deed for the land Dyton was born on, and in 2009 she and about 2,000 other subsistence farmers from the area were informed by their local chief that the land had been sold and they could no longer cultivate there. They had already been removed once from the land during former President Hastings Banda’s regime in the 1970s and had not been allowed to return until Banda’s regime ended in 1994 and the cattle ranch established there by his political ally, John Tembo, had ceased to function. They continued to farm the land for another season. But in 2010, as they prepared to plant, they were met by a police van and the chief, Fennwick Mandala, who warned them not to come back. The next day, the farmers again set out for their fields, but this time they were met by tear gas and rubber bullets and that night six of them were arrested and charged with trespassing. With a game reserve on one side of the community and the Shire river and Mozambique border on the other, there is no other available land for them to farm and the family now ekes out a living selling firewood they gather from the nearby forest. The three oldest children have had to drop out of school to help their parents.The 2,000 hectares of land once farmed by Dyton and her neighbours is now owned by a company called Agricane, which is leasing it to Illovo for sugar cane production. Agricane’s country director, Bouke Bijl, explained that his company bought the land from a bank which had acquired it from John Tembo after he defaulted on a loan.  “Life has been very hard on us." said Dyton.

“People aren’t getting enough to eat,” said Isaac Falakeza, another community member. “Some are doing piece work on other people’s gardens, others are harvesting water lilies. You can see how malnourished the children are.”

Following the ousting of Banda and the transition to democracy, the government set up a Commission of Inquiry on Land Reform the findings of which formed the basis of a new land policy in 2002. The policy attempts to address smallholder farmers’ lack of security of tenure by allowing them to register their customary land as private property, but the legislative changes needed to implement the policy have not gone through parliament and the land reform process has effectively stalled.

“Politicians own massive tracts of land; they benefited from the previous system, so they’re reluctant to adopt a new legislative framework that would correct the land imbalances,” commented Chinsinga.

A 2010 report by Grain, noted that Malawi’s lack of land reform had resulted in increasingly inequitable distribution of land, with large tracts of farmland ending up in foreign hands. In 2009, the government allocated 50,000 hectares of farmland to the government of Djibouti. Another programme championed by Mutharika, the GBI aims to acquire 340,000 hectares of irrigable land along Lake Malawi and the banks of the Shire river with the goal of increasing agricultural production and national food security.
Several foreign companies have acquired land under the auspices of the programme which, according to Chinsinga’s paper, “views customary land as an unlimited reservoir that can be targeted for conversion for privatization”.

Chikhwawa District is already dominated by sprawling sugar plantations owned by South African sugar giant Illovo Sugar. According to several sources, Illovo is intent on expanding its presence in the area and enjoys government support because of the much needed foreign exchange it generates.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95363/MALAWI-Without-land-reform-small-farmers-become-trespassers

Climate Change in Malawi

Malawi has in the past six years enjoyed maize surpluses yet food production has been on the decline, a climate change study has indicated.

Rainfall distribution in Malawi has become more unpredictable to the extent that it has reduced crop production, Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development hydrologist Henrie Manford Njoloma has disclosed in his research study of over 60 years of rainfall data in the sub Saharan country. “Rainfall distribution is no longer uniform and predictable as it used to be in the past,” he says noting that maize, the country’s staple diet has been drastically affected by the erratic rainfall patterns.

Maize is a highly politicized crop in Malawi because of its nature as a main food crop. As such, government interferes either directly or indirectly in its production and trade at all levels. The private sector also responds sharply whenever there is a maize shortage. Malawi faces food insecurity problems despite having a lot of water resources in sub-Saharan region. It has Lake Malawi, Africa’s third largest lake, which takes up 20% of its land mass and is mostly in the central and northern parts of the country. There are smaller lakes of Chilwa and Malombe in the south and many rivers across the country.

Njoloma observes that despite maize output increasing by 1.8% per annum between 1961 and 1991, the yields have been lower than the 5-year annual average of 2,192,634 metric tons in the first three years, albeit increasing to above the 5-year average in the later years. The hydrologist says that the rainfall pattern in these rainfall seasons were some of the worst, punctuated with many longer than normal dry spells. He also notes that the production of maize per unit area also had increased. Government documents suggest that about 75% of the estimated increase in total production resulted from the expansion in maize area but does not indicate the role of favorable climatic conditions. “Overall, yields appear to have increased at a small but significant rate of 0.4% per year,” says Njoloma adding, “The per capita maize production, however, declined over the past half century as production lagged behind an exponential annual population growth rate of over 3.0%”.

He observes that various water schemes gather dust on the drawing board while less than 1% of the country is irrigated. According to a 2004-2005 Integrated Household Survey (IHS) report, modern methods of irrigation are almost nonexistent in most households in Malawi. “There has been low priority in irrigation agricultural production despite the increased publicity the sector has been given over the past 15 years,” notes the hydrologist urging government to initiate efforts that would ensure that rainfalls into the country’s catchments are looked at to recharge water resources such as wetlands, rivers, dams and lakes. “With the right infrastructure and proper institutions in place, erratic rainfall trends could easily be mitigated and maize grain shortages would be avoided,”

http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/24855

malawi's unrest

In April, the British ambassador to Malawi described the country’s President Mutharika as autocratic, saying governance in the country was deteriorating as rights violations increased. On Wednesday, thousands of Malawians took to the streets of several cities to demonstate against the government, defying a court injunction declaring the protests illegal as well as a presidential warning “not to be inspired by events in Egypt”. Private radio and television stations were banned from covering the protests.

A journalist in Malawi said that thousands of people took part in the marches in the capital, Lilongwe. The journalist, who asked to remain anonymous for her own safety described how “The impact of this demonstration on Bingu's government is that now the people of Malawi have realised the power of the masses. For several hours they took charge of the streets in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu, chanting, looting, and in some areas causing havoc and the authorities were helpless.”

At least two people have reportedly been shot dead by security forces.

The protests were a response to Mutharika’s increasingly autocratic governing style, which has seen restrictions placed on press freedom, intolerance of criticismnand the expulsion from the ruling party of the country’s vice-president Joyce Banda. Mutharika declared “Before you start faulting me for being intolerant because I have sacked Joyce Banda from DPP , fault God for sacking Lucifer from heaven.”

The country, already one of the world’s poorest, is experiencing a severe fuel shortage, with rises in the cost of goods and transport.

FAME AND CHARITY

In Malawi, about $3.8m (£2.4m) has disappeared and a school has been left unbuilt. Alone, that story would never make international headlines. The project belonged to Madonna's charity Raising Malawi. The message from the failed project appears simple: good intentions are not enough, and money in the wrong hands can be worse than no money at all. But the unbuilt school also points to much deeper debates about how development happens: can it come from outside and above? Or must it come from inside and below? A heated land dispute pits villagers against the wealthy western donor and the Malawian government, which takes her side: "Don't you know better? You need a school. You should be grateful." Not long after, allegations follow of private jets being flown into the country, laden with luxuries (exercise machines and expensive wines). But the project only truly begins to falter after auditors uncover "outlandish expenses" – salaries, private cars and golf memberships – and the charity's executive director bows out. Amid the brewing controversy, the project is pulled by the wealthy donor, who hopes to cut her loses.

In the aftermath, staff members are suddenly left without jobs, and file suit for lost wages, unfair dismissal and non-payment of benefits. As the "mismanagement of funds" is said to have happened overseas, those among the general public who answered the charity's call for donations can do little to hold it to account. Though Madonna had chosen education as her cause, she has now been forced to share her spotlight with the much more complex development challenges of corruption, accountability and disenfranchisement.

The development economist William Easterly said that part of the new millennium's explosion of interest in "saving Africa" could be explained by the mass advocacy celebrity campaigns spearheaded by the Bonos and the Geldofs of the world. But aside from the Malawi project's star-studded cast – Tom Cruise and Gwyneth Paltrow were also among Madonna's backers. Today, celebrities are much more than pretty faces for charity appeals. They're also out and about, lobbying politicians and setting up their own foundations. But, according to William Easterly, celebrities have been too quick to rub shoulders and hobnob with the powerful. And they overstep the line, he says, by claiming expertise on the basis of their stardom. In the process, say critics, attention is diverted away from the tougher, more nuanced issues in development.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/30/madonna-malawi-charity

demand pensions before you die

Hundreds of workers have marched in the Malawi capital, Lilongwe, against a bill which seeks to set the retirement age at 55 for women and 60 for men.

Average life expectancy is about 50.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11797117

food but no money again

In Malawi there is food but no money to take it to the people. Another year with a surplus harvest of maize, the staple food, is good news for Malawi which has the capacity to provide "all the maize needed for humanitarian response for the year, thanks to this surplus," the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) said in its latest report. Dry spells in the south have left around 700,000 people in need of food assistance. But the bad news is that distributing the food aid has been delayed because funding for operational costs has not yet been made available. Malawi's Department of Disaster Management Affairs does not have a budget for this aspect of its response.

Children of the Tobacco Fields

From November's Socialist Standard

We all know that tobacco harms those who smoke it. Few are aware of the damage it does to those who pick and process it.

The “children’s organisation” Plan International recently issued a report about children in Malawi, some as young as five, who toil up to twelve hours in the tobacco fields for an average daily wage of 11p. (Hard Work, long hours and little pay).

The finding that has attracted most attention is that these children are being poisoned by the nicotine “juice” they absorb through the skin – and also ingest, as they have no chance to wash hands before eating. Many of the ailments that plague them -- headaches, abdominal and chest pain, nausea, breathlessness, dizziness – are symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness.

But much of their suffering has nothing to do with nicotine. All have blisters on their hands. All have pains – in the shoulders, neck, back, knees – caused by overexertion of their immature muscles. About a third of the children are coughing blood, which suggests TB.

Many of the children examined had been beaten, kicked or otherwise physically abused by estate owners or supervisors. Many of the girls had been raped by them. One boy had deep knee wounds as a result of being made to walk across a stony field on his knees as punishment for “laziness”.

Who owns the estates?
Who are these estate owners?
Commercial tobacco farming in Malawi began late in the 19th century, when it was the British colony of Nyasaland. White settlers seized much of the best arable land for plantations of tea, coffee, tung trees (for their oil, used as a wood finisher) and – mostly -- tobacco. Even today the majority of owners of large estates are descendants of the colonial settlers, although now there are also black owners.
In 1948 some tung and tobacco plantations (estates) were taken over by the Colonial Development Corporation, funded mainly by the British Treasury. After Malawi gained formal independence in 1964, these came under state ownership. Later they were reprivatised. Another recent change is the direct acquisition of some estates by international tobacco companies.

The estates were established on land stolen from traditional peasant communities. The process began in colonial times but continued even after independence, under the Banda regime. Land theft impoverishes local communities and compels those worst affected to offer themselves – or their children! – to the estate owners as wage slaves.
Tobacco is also grown on many small family farms. Here too, children work and suck in nicotine juice, alongside their parents.

The tobacco cartel
Malawi’s tobacco market is dominated – through subsidiaries -- by two international corporations, Universal Corporation and Alliance One International. These corporations operate a cartel, refusing to compete and colluding to keep tobacco purchase prices low. This in turn intensifies the pressure on farm owners to minimise costs by exploiting cheap or free child labour – a practice that the corporations hypocritically claim to oppose.

Representatives of the corporations sit on several committees that advise the government of Malawi on economic policy. By this means they ensure that their interests are served and block any initiatives to diversify the economy and reduce the country’s dependence on tobacco.

The main reason why child labour is so prevalent in Malawian agriculture is the poverty – in particular, land hunger -- of most of the rural population. This reflects not any absolute shortage of land but rather the highly skewed pattern of land ownership. Large tracts of land lie fallow on the big estates.

A pathetic contrast
How does Plan International propose to help the children on the tobacco farms?
Well, it will “educate farm owners and supervisors” and persuade them to provide the children with protective clothing. Taking the tobacco companies’ PR at face value, it will urge them to “scrutinise their suppliers more closely”. It will not, however, support a ban on children picking tobacco because that is “unrealistic” – as indeed it is if you refuse to challenge underlying social conditions.

But what a pathetic contrast such “realism” makes with Plan International’s “vision” of “a world in which all children realise their full potential in societies that respect people’s rights and dignity”!

Environmental degradation
Besides ruining people’s health, tobacco degrades the environment. The tobacco monoculture that dominates much of Malawi depletes the soil of nutrients. It also causes extensive deforestation, as trees are felled to provide firewood for curing the tobacco leaves, and this in turn further erodes the soil. Water sources are contaminated. After over a century of tobacco cultivation, all these processes are already far advanced. (For fuller analysis, see the chapter by Geist, Otanez and Kapito in Andrew Millington and Wendy Jepson, eds. Land Change Science in the Tropics: Changing Agricultural Landscapes, Springer 2008.)

Tobacco in socialist society?
Will tobacco be grown in socialist society? On a small scale, possibly, by addicts for their own use. But it’s hard to imagine socialist society making planned provision, within the framework of democratic decision-making, for tobacco production. People aware of all the harm caused by tobacco will surely prefer to halt cultivation of this noxious weed. They will seek to restore soil fertility, reverse deforestation and enhance local food supply.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we suppose that the decision is made to continue producing tobacco, will it be implemented? Will the free people of socialist society, no longer spurred on by economic necessity, voluntarily poison themselves just to feed others’ addictions?

STEFAN