Struggling economy: A boy sells chips on the side of the road in Malawi. (Photo by: Angela Jimu/Majority World/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“TThe Commission has thoroughly investigated all complaints about the presidential election and we declare that the election was free and fair and that these results are the true results of the will of the people of Malawi,” the Malawi Election Commission said on 31 May 2019.
A man listened intently as he sold second-hand clothes on the side of a road in Lilongwe. He, like many Malawians, had hoped that his voice would help bring about regime change, but his dream was shattered.
According to the Chr Michelsen Institute for Development Research, the election results were challenged in the streets by the people and in court by Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party and Saulos Chilima of the United Transformation Movement.
Social media was abuzz with calls for immediate action from activists and people fed up with fighting the dire economic crisis.
There were endless demonstrations from May 2019 to February 2020. Would we really be ruled by Peter Mutharika and his Peoples Democratic Party again? A nightmare that most of us did not look forward to.
Typical of any demonstration, some people began looting shops, destroying private property and causing costly damage to public infrastructure. Police used tear gas to suppress the noisy protesters. Chaos reigned in the streets.
Malawi’s Constitutional Court ruled on 3 February 2020 that the voting process was plagued by widespread fraud, including the use of Tippex to alter ballot papers, angering the majority of Malawians who had braved the wintry weather to vote early and anxiously awaited the announcement of the final voting results.
The elections were held again on 23 June 2020. Chakwera and Chilima led a coalition of nine opposition parties, forming the Tonse Alliance, to fulfil the constitutional 50+1 rule for the winner of the election. This time, the vote counting process was seriously controlled, with no Tippex on the ballot papers.
All eyes and ears were turned to social media, television and radio, hoping that the new alliance would take us to the promised land of less suffering.
I remember my excitement on 27th June when Chakwera was declared the 6th President of the Republic of Malawi. People took to the streets and chanted with excitement until dawn. We forgot the first wave of Covid, with its rising number of cases. The new dawn for Malawi had dawned.
During the campaigns, the Tonse Alliance had merged their manifestos and one of the promises was to create a million jobs for the youth. This attracted the attention of many unemployed youth, many of whom were graduates.
But today, the one million jobs are nowhere to be found. Instead, nepotism seems to be on the rise. Could the failure to create jobs be a result of poor execution or were the manifestos meant to lure the desperate electorate without a concrete plan? Was it the economic stress that caused the electorate to be so naive to read no further than the manifestos? I still wonder. The employment situation was worsened by the pandemic, forcing many companies to adjust their employment strategies, resulting in job losses.
Malawians were also promised a significant reduction in the passport application fee from MK90,000 ($51.92) to MK14,000 ($8). The extension has not yet come into effect. There are long and winding queues at the immigration office applying for this travel document. The livelihoods of cross-border traders in neighbouring countries have been devastated as they cannot renew their passports when they expire. In addition, the passport supplier’s contract has been terminated with no immediate alternative.
This has caused a lot of pain for the Malawian who wants to seek greener pastures in the diaspora. Think of the sick who need urgent medical attention and students who want to continue their education outside Malawi but cannot get a passport in time. The list of those affected is endless.
Inflation is biting hard and there is no immediate relief. Agricultural exports to increase foreign exchange reserves were touted as the solution, but the export base is very low. Good sales of tobacco, the main agricultural export, still fail to meet the annual import demand. The importer has to wait patiently for the banks to make the much-needed forex available.
The dishonest retailers are taking advantage of the situation by increasing their prices more and more. Redesign is affected as manufacturers often miss their production schedules and starve the market in the process.
Natural disasters such as Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which caused unimaginable damage, and the current El Niño drought have also tightened their economic grip on the Malawian population. The cost of living continues to rise, with employers often having to explain to their employees why they cannot increase wages.
It doesn’t stop there. Recently, Malawi experienced an acute shortage of fuel, which threatened to bring the economy to its knees. The situation now seems to have stabilised, but the cautious will always wonder if a permanent solution has been prescribed.
President Lazarus Chakwera (above) was elected in a rerun of the 2019 election, along with Saulos Chilima, who died in a plane crash. (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
Recent reports that the national fuel importer has only one month’s worth of fuel left in stock have worried commuters and motorists alike. Motorists are still recovering from the trauma of spending nights stuck in traffic jams at petrol stations or surfing media sites for fuel supply updates.
The first devaluation of the Malawian kwacha after Tonse Alliance took over was in 2022 — 23% — with the hope that there would be a reversal of the trend in the exchange rate, but the following year there was another devaluation, this time of 40%. This was done without any accompanying social protection measures to protect vulnerable populations and control inflation, leading to an increase in the cost of living and greater economic hardship for Malawians.
During the campaign season, we were promised “Kudya katatu pa tsiku”, which means three meals a day. But the impact of Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023 and El Niño in 2023-24 has made food insecurity worse than it was. Malawians rely on maize as a staple food and are involved in small-scale farming to sell agricultural produce locally or for export.
Fertilizer, which was promised to cost MK5,000 ($2.46) a bag so that everyone could afford it, now costs MK95,000 ($54). With insufficient safety nets to support the poor, the majority of Malawians have become extremely poor and continue to struggle with hunger and malnutrition.
We are just a few months away from the next elections in 2025 and there is a need to reflect on these socio-economic issues. The gap between the promises made by the government in 2020 and the reality four years later is a serious concern.
The question most Malawians fear is what other disasters can we expect if the Tonse Alliance fails to take responsibility for these broken promises and always blames the previous government?
Never did we imagine that our last hope for a better Malawi would be lost in 2025 due to a plane crash on June 10, 2024. This has left us with more questions and speculations about the death of Malawi’s Vice President Chilima and a bleak vision of Malawi’s future.
Malawians need to hold our leaders accountable and be given a platform to be heard and not be threatened to remain silent. There is a need for the government to take concrete steps to address these issues.
Despite the numerous economic and social hardships, there is the economic blueprint that we hope will reverse the economic losses. This is in the Malawi Vision 2063 master plan, which requires a holistic change of mindset for a better Malawi.
Let us forget nepotism once and for all and create synergy by creating the Malawi we want: a country with experts who have the experience and skills to improve administrative efficiency, ensure stable fuel supply, implement effective agricultural policies, create more jobs for the youth and manage the economy in a way that prevents damaging devaluations.
The time for finger pointing has to stop; it is now time to fix these problems. Give me hope to vote again in 2025.
Tsogololathu Itaye is a Canon Collins PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of Cape Town and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Population Studies at the University of Malawi. This article was originally submitted as part of the Canon Collins Troubling Power essay competition.
