Nkhani Newsletter the Malawi Chatterbox - February 2006
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Hunger and hope “FAMINE IN MALAWI” has come and gone in our media.
Now the headlines are “BUMPER CROP FORECAST”. There are real grounds for hope.
After a late start, it has rained almost every day, except on the southern
lakeshore. In Nsanje the rains washed away the crops. As a UK visitor said,
“The weather here is too bloody wholesale!” The new crop looks very good:
there has been a notable response to the 147,000 tonnes of fertilizer sold to
farmers at half-price.
For the poor, it is still a hungry year, especially in the Southern Region.
Shops have had only rice for sale, beyond their reach. Maize bought in S.
Africa was railed through Zimbabwe – and got no further. It is now being sent
by sea to Nacala and the first supplies are arriving in Malawi. Having to
import maize has been a blow to the economy. £26m was budgeted for maize
imports; £41m has already been spent and more will be needed. The over-run
will come from ministries that ‘have a surplus.’
The education secretary for Upper Shire, Richard Bushili, is responsible for
34,000 pupils in 36 primary schools. Eight of his schools on the lakeshore
which have been very hard hit are being looked after by the World Food
Programme. He is determined that his other 28 schools should also be able to
provide a meal every day: maize porridge fortified with Likuni phala – a
protein-rich supplement used in clinics to combat kwashiorkhor. He has started
with eight schools, using funds provided by MACS. Any gifts sent to the MACS
treasurer will be turned at once into porridge.
Southern Malawi Diocese says:
With help from the USA, USPG and well-wishers within Malawi, 50kg farmers’
packs with fertilizer, seed, beans, Likuni phala and flour, have been
distributed jointly with the District Cmmissionmer in 8 rural parishes, and
food to a few in Blantyre City. In Chikwawa & Nsanje houses were swept away by
the floods. Some slept in our churches.
Malaria: a new weapon?
The numbers are impossible to digest, writes Jon Snow in The
Guardian. He continues: 3 million die each year; most sufferers contract it
two or three times a year – and then they can neither work nor tend to their
families for several weeks at a time. In a dilapidated tin shack on the banks
of the Nile in Uganda, I asked the congregation what they wanted. “Bibles,
prayer-books and mosquito nets,” they said with one voice – that of the
pastor. Since I taught there as a VSO in the 1960s, Namasagali has retreated
back to the bush. Jobs have evaporated and disease, in particular malaria, has
taken hold. It is children like Atim, aged nine months, tossing feverishly on
a table in the village clinic, and pregnant mothers who are the frontline
victims.
All our lives, the war on malaria has been about eradication. In America and
Asia, spraying and drugs have largely succeeded. In Africa it has failed
because of the scale of the disease and the lack of resources. Eradication has
given way to personal protection. Here the mosquito net has become the key.
The Japanese pharmaceutical company Sumitomo wanted us to see an extraordinary
project in Usa, a village of 167 people close to Arusha in Tanzania. A year
ago each of the villagers was given a long-life mosquito net. Since then,
cases of malaria have dropped to nil.
The source? The A-to-Z plastics factory in Arusha. This revolutionary net is
being produced here on a dramatic scale. It is made of extruded resin.
Mosquito repellent is introduced into the resin compound which enables the
chemical to bleed very slowly out of the yarn – so slowly that it remains
effective for 5 to 7 years. Standard nets need ‘reproofing’ every 6 months and
are rendered useless by the lack of funds and organization to re-dip them.
Namasagali is to be the next ‘upscaling’ of net testing. This village, ten
times the size of Usa, is to be netted up for a year to see whether blanket
net
provision can make as startling a difference on a bigger scale.
Inside the A-to-Z factory, blue long-life netting cascades from 50 huge
industrial looms. There are about 1,200 African workers working to save the
lives of other Africans. Anuj Shah who runs it is currently producing 3
million of these nets a year. He expects his new factory, under construction
nearby, to start producing 7million a year by April. After that he hopes to
expand to 20million – a tenth of Africa’s entire need.”
Dr. Vera Chirwa LLD
“MALAWI CAMPAIGNER STILL FIGHTING”, says BBC
News. Her husband Orton was the first Minister of Justice in Malawi. Ten years
older than the others in the independence cabinet, Orton was widely respected
for his wisdom and moderation, together with Dunduza Chisiza, the economist
who died in a (genuine) car accident in 1962. Orton was co-founder of the
Malawi Congress Party. After the 1964 cabinet crisis, Orton and Vera went into
exile in Tanzania, and later Vera studied law in London.
Banda never forgave them. In 1981 they were both abducted in Zambia, taken to
Zomba and in 1984 convicted of treason and sentenced to death by a Traditional
Court ‘trial’, at which they were not allowed to call witnesses for the
defence. Banda commuted their sentence to life imprisonment.
Though both in Zomba prison, they were not allowed to see each other until
eight years later in September 1992, when a delegation of British lawyers
visited them. Orton, “nearly deaf and almost blind from untreated cataracts”
died in prison the next month. He had frequently been placed in leg-irons.
Vera was not allowed out of prison to attend his funeral. By this time she was
the “longest serving African prisoner of conscience known to Amnesty
International.” She was released three months later.
Carers and Women’s Voice have been the two bodies through which Vera has been
working. Sadly, US funding for the one has ceased and an employee absconded
with the funds of the other.
But at 73 her resilience is tremendous. She told BBC Africa, “I will keep on
fighting for the people against the huge democratic challenges – poverty,
corruption, insecurity and shortages of food.” She says she may still come
back to seek Malawi’s top job at the next election, but critics say she is too
independent to be a successful politician.
BBC News & Colin Baker Revolt of the Ministers.
Vera’s postal address is: Box 31797, Blantyre 3
Professor Geoffrey Sachs –
- is internationally renowned as economic
adviser to Kofi Annan. St. Paul’s Cathedral was packed to capacity in October,
largely by the young, when he shared his thoughts on poverty around the world.
Our world, he said, has been wilfully standing by while millions perish every
year of utterly solvable conditions. This is not only a profound moral crisis:
it’s at the very centre of our global security crisis. We are letting millions
die for want of a few cents a year to fight malaria. How can we expect to find
security on the planet when we contribute to this profound under-valuation of
human life?
There’s no evidence for the proposition that it’s Africa’s governments that
are so uniquely to blame. I work in plenty of African countries of desperate
and unrelenting poverty that rank far higher on the list of good governance
than many Asian countries that rank far higher in economic growth. Would that
it were simply a moral story that we could preach! The IMF has done a lot of
preaching and it hasn’t ended the problems. When I visited Africa this summer
– Mali, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malawi, Uganda – all of them in famine today – what
are the characteristics they all share?
1. They are all landlocked countries, they are all a thousand miles or more
from a port. Adam Smith already said it in 1776 – ‘Woe be it to the
land-locked regions of the world – they will be the last to develop.’ Check it
out – Book 1, chapter 3.
Africa has the largest proportion of its population farthest from the coast.
Why? It’s the highlands where food-growing is easiest and where the malaria
burden is the least. So people came to the highlands, but then found
themselves outside the world trade system. But that’s not all.
2. All those villages I visited were gripped by drought. Growing food is a
hazard unless there are modern inputs for water management, improved seeds and
soil-nutrient management. 96% of the agriculture is rain-fed and the rains are
too unreliable, the population densities too high and the soil nutrients too
depleted to provide for reliable crops if we don’t help.
3. Every region I visited was gripped by malaria, as it has been from time
immemorial. With high temperature and the specific mosquito species of Africa,
the intensity of transmission is greater than in any other part of the world
for objective ecological reasons.
Step out of the blame game and look at the hard facts –how to grow more food,
how to fight malaria, how to overcome physical isolation. My word, these are
problems that have the most practical solutions on the planet.
The agronomists have in their bag of tricks ways to triple Africa’s farm
yields in all parts of the continent. There are low-cost means with improved
seed varieties, soil nutrient replenishment and small-scale water management
to raise yields from about one tonne per hectare in a reasonable season (and
zero in a bad season) to perhaps 4 tonnes in a good season and maybe 1 – 2 in
a drought. That would lift all regions of the continent above the hunger
threshold.
Malaria will kill 3 million children this year, to the best of our count. For
$3 from each of us in the rich world – that’s 3 billion dollars – the malaria
burden could be reduced by between 75% and 95%. We don’t yet have the tools to
eradicate it; we do have extremely powerful tools to control it. Nobody knows
that better than the wonderful scientists at the London School of Tropical
Medicine – the world’s experts on malaria control. Professor Curtis writes to
the governments of the world every few months: “Help me get bed-nets for free
to the people of Africa!”
Lack of transport. I keep saying to the World Bank – “Don’t just patch the
roads, help finance proper highways: a hundred plus lives depend on them!”
You are going to make it happen. We don’t need a single penny more than what
we said; we just need to do it. The whole European Union has not only
reconfirmed its commitment to 0.7%; it has made a timetable, thanks to you.
Our President, George Bush, did not do that but he did educate the American
people as to the meaning of 0.7%, because that’s exactly what we’re paying for
the war in Iraq each year.
We have two rendezvous with destiny – by 2015 we need to be half way to our
goal, the Millenium Development Goals. By 2025 we can see it – the very end of
extreme poverty on our planet.
See also Jeffrey Sachs’ magnificent “End of Poverty”, published by Penguin at
£8 – ISBN 0-141-01866-6
In gaol without trial Abbreviated from THE LAMP, first
printed in THE NEW YORK TIMES
Since 10 Nov 1999 Lackson Sikayenera has been incarcerated in Maula Prison,
just outside Lilongwe. Officials have lost his case file. As far as the courts
know, he does not exist. “For how long should I stay in prison, just because
my file is not found?” he asks. This is Dickens in the tropics.
By African standards, this is not the worst place to be. Black Beach Prison in
Equatorial Guinea is notorious for torture. Congo’s prisons house children as
young as 8. In the Central African Republic, officers deemed 50 prisoners
incorrigible. So they executed them. Vera Chirwa says, “I’ve seen the prisons
in France. In Africa they would be hotels.”
Malawi’s prison population has doubled since dictatorship ended in 1994. But
its justice system is so badly broken, it is hard to know where to begin
repairs. Malawi’s 12 million citizens have 28 legal aid solicitors and 8
prosecutors with law degrees. Except for murder and manslaughter cases, all
almost accused go to trial without lawyers.
Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda says, “We get convictions that aren’t supposed
to be convictions, and acquittals that aren’t supposed to be acquittals.” The
High Court did not hear a single homicide case last year. There is no money to
assemble lawyers, judges and witnesses; no money to empanel juries; no money
for the written record needed for review.
Mr. Sikanyera was sent here after he killed his elder brother Jonas. Their
father had given him a choice tobacco plot which Jonas claimed was his. Jonas
threatened to kill him if he did not hand it over. He refused and Jonas
attacked him. “To protect myself, I took a hoe handle and hit my brother. Then
I went to the police to report that I had harmed him.” The police moved him to
prison. That was more than 2,100 days ago. “I have not seen my family since
1999,” he said. “I was the only productive person in my home and they are too
poor to afford transport.”
Mr. Sikanyera is the magistrate of Cell 3. “So there is no chaos. And it’s
effective. In most of the cells, there is no fighting. People don’t break the
rules.” In prison, elevated by fellow inmates’ respect, he metes out mercy and
retribution with an even hand. And without delay. “When a case comes up,” he
said, utterly without irony, “it is dealt with. Right there!”
The Diocese of Lake Malawi –
- has now been nearly two years without a bishop to give it pastoral care.
Nkhani cannot deal with the complex issues. To find out what the Malawi papers
are saying, go to www.nationmalawi.com or ask a grandchild to help. The real
work goes on, as Frank Dzantenge, the new Vicar-General, reports:
The College of Christian Ministry, beautifully built near the bishop’s house,
has its full complement of trainees for ordination and lay ministry. It hopes
soon to offer the University Diploma in Theology.
It is also a centre for 60 TEE students.
St. Andrew’s Clinic, Mtunthama, near Kamuzu Academy, has built an operating
theatre and an orphanage, was designed for 22, bur now holds 60. Six of them
are infants whose mothers died in childbirth. It has also added a daughter
Health Centre, St. Faith’s, now officially recognized.
Kamwala, Ntchisi, has built a fine new house for its priest. Santhe, Kasungu,
is rearing pigs and fish to support itself. Kayoyo, Ntchisi, has built an
orphan centre to help vulnerable children. It is also planning its centenary
in 2007, celebrating the first church work away from the lakeshore. This was
led by Petro Kilekwa, a priest who had been captured as a slave in Zambia,
sold on an Indian Ocean coastal market and finally rescued by the Royal Navy
in the Persian Gulf in 1885.
St. Anne’s Hospital, Nkhotakota, now led by Dr. Peterkins Kalungwe, is
building new male wards and a Consulting & Testing Centre for HIV which will
also administer ARV drugs.
News from Northern Malawi will be in our next edition.
Two Problems & a Solution
Dr. Anne Bayley ends a paper on Children, AIDS & Healing with a practical
suggestion:
Huge numbers of teenagers in Africa finish secondary school (and more could do
so if secondary schooling was expanded and free!) – yet cannot get into
tertiary education or find jobs. They hang around villages and townships,
bored, feeling unwanted by adult society, with few means of finding identity,
other than casual sex.
Instead, school leavers could be trained as clinic assistants (with prospects
of going on to full nursing, laboratory or medical training for the most
able), or as educators, village health workers, pre-school teachers, or
agricultural assistants to promote soil conservation and agroforestry.
This list of potential paid work could be extended.
Organization, money and training staff would be needed, in large quantities,
but basic requirements – people to train and urgent need – already exist.
Healing the serious wasting diseases of chronic unemployment, low self-esteem
and depression could not be more important for the true well-being of young
people in Africa.
In brief
President Bingu wa Mutharika is now able to focus on the future.
The threat of impeachment by ex-president Muluzi’s party, which was
bedevilling politics and caused the death of the Speaker, has been withdrawn.
The President is stepping up the war against corruption on which he came to
power, Yusuf Mwawa, Muluzi’s Minister of Education, has just been gaoled for 5
years for graft. As an economist, Bingu knows that the vital date is early
March, when the IMF decides whether Malawi’s external debt of 3 billion US
dollars, inherited from Bakili Muluzi, can be written off.
The paramount need for food security will dictate the President’s next budget;
this will focus on farming. The hoped-for maize surplus in April has raised
his hopes of self-sufficiency in a normal year.
USPG has produced an excellent Lent course, based on life in Malawi, Life in
all its Fullness. If you have another course this Lent, it could be used later
in 2006. Apply to USPG, 157 Waterloo Rd SE1 8XA Tel: 020 7803 3422
Hilfe für Malawi is a German charity founded by Dr. Harald Braun, once Medical
Officer at St. Anne’s, Nkhotakota. Emmanuel Pemba, the accountant, has been
visiting Germany as a guest preacher to thank Harald’s church for all the help
Hilfe für Malawi is providing.
Cheques for any funds raised for the work of the church in Malawi should be
made out to MACS and sent direct to Roger Flambert at the address below.
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