There is need for a sequel to my recent Joyce Banda article on this deliberative forum because, looking at some of the responses especially that of Mrs. Jesse Kabwira-Kapasula, I have been grossly misunderstood and hence badly misinterpreted. I believe the Nyasa Times's deliberative forum is not a vent for vendetta and mudslinging, a playfield for cheap, inimical and emotivistic exchanges – which have the risk of the tabloidisation of the Nyasa Times.
My response to Mrs. Kabwila-Kapasula's response to my Joyce Banda article is in the spirit of critique as in public argumentation. I am respectful of her and other participants to this forum just as I am respectful of the public and political figures and their political organizations. For example, when I argue that Chair should vanish and leave the UDF to Brown Mpinganjira, Friday Jumbe, George Nga Ntafu, Aleke Banda et al, I don't attack the person of Chair for I have respect for him. Nor am I interested in gaining political favours.
Thus, to my view, all critical analysts, including Kabwira-Kapasula and myself ought to respect leaders of Malawi's political organizations as is required by the communication ethics of public critique. A deliberative forum cannot be used to attack and disrespect leaders, for example, calling them stupid – insinuating and committing innuendos. Moreover, critical analysts must guard against the ad hominem fallacy lest the Nyasa Times risks tabloidisation by publishing views that are communicatively unethical - views that show disrespect for political leaders and public figures.
In counter response, I have three points to make. One, I don't have to parade a sample of women leaders in various institutions of Malawi to prove that Malawi is ripe for a female state president. As I have shown already, women have been leaders in Malawi from time immemorial. For example, the Chewa, Yao, Mang'anja, Lomwe, among others, are 'matriarchal' in important ways. The historical accidents of colonization and (Christian and Islamic) evangelization undermined our pre-colonial record of female leadership to the extent that even in traditional public and political spheres women leaders are weakly present but not totally absent today.
As regards colonialism, the district-level emblem of colonial power and domination – the white male district commissioner- imported an all-male administrative structure from his home country and imposed it on all our traditional political structures, leading to the 'masculinsation' of traditional leadership in most of Nyasaland. At political independence, the African leaders, in the crucible of the MCP, inherited, without modification, the patriarchal colonial administrative structure. The DC preferred to work with male traditional authorities (TAs) and so did his superiors in the capital Zomba. As for the church and the mosque, it is obvious that their leadership structures are rooted in patriarchy.
The question of women leadership in Christianity, for example, is a centuries-old struggle that is not yet over in most denominations worldwide. On both the political and religious fronts, male domination in the public and political spheres of Malawi is rooted in and reinforced by these two historical accidents; it is not originally Malawian.
Therefore, a significant proportion of the population of Malawi won't be led by a woman for the first time in their lives when Joyce Banda ascends the throne of state president in 2014.
Joyce Banda's source of support and hence her vote won't be women exclusively; her driving force won't be gender or womanism let alone feminism. While gender, womanist, and feminist critical analyses remain forceful in this democratic moment in the southern African postcolony such as Malawi – due to incessant abuse of and violence against women, there is need for focused attention to the context and relevance of such a critique to avoid a totalizing, universalizing, homogenizing approach to the question of women emancipation and liberation or what are viewed in these critical analyses as oppression and injustice suffered by 'woman' as a gender category.
Gender, womanism, and feminism are class-based critical endeavors; classist, discriminatory and exclusionary as they are, these critics of male domination do not speak to and for all women across all strata of society. For example, both in the West and in Africa, the drivers and mobilizers of such critical endeavors are middle class women– elite-officials (the bourgeoisie) already in socio-politically privileged and professionally advantaged positions in society. These are bourgeois critics with a specific goal. Theirs is an exclusive, sectarian and provincial struggle for what they view as soft spots in the public and political spheres of labor and employment. Their chief enemy is patriachalism – a western and not an African sociological category.
Thus, rather alien and limited as it is, a gender critique cannot win Joyce Banda any substantial vote in 2014. She and the DPP must cast the net wider to accommodate the expectations and hopes of all voter Malawians. She doesn't need a gender ticket to be Bingu's successor. Once the majority of Malawians have confidence in her and they are ready to vote her into the topmost position of state presidency, gender propaganda is obviated and unnecessary.
Two, while it makes sense that there will be a legitimate expectation in Malawian women for the female presidential candidate to pay attention to the conditions of women, the candidate's vision and mandate will necessarily be much broader, covering both women and women.
The DPP will commit a gross error in thinking that by featuring Joyce Banda as a female presidential candidate in 2014 the party will draw women to vote for her. Perhaps due to intra-womenfolk jealousy, women may not feel persuaded to vote for her at all. The DPP will commit a gross error by 'womanising' the winning vote of Joyce Banda. Hers won't be a women's vote but rather a national (Malawians') vote. That is the reason why Banda won't need the sympathy, or empathy, of middle class women such as gender, womanist, and feminist critics – who fight their own battles.
Three, Joyce Banda stands for a third wave in Malawi's history of the liberation struggle. Kamuzu Banda stands for the first wave - political independence from British colonizers. Banda's rule never guaranteed and never gave Malawians political freedoms and rights. His mission was limited to the attainment of political independence.
Thus, the MCP needs to overhaul itself from a political independence party to one befitting the current democratic moment (more on this below). Bakili Muluzi stands for ufulu- liberation from autocracy and dictatorship under a single-party regime. Muluzi's mission was limited to the freeing of Malawians by ensuring that Malawi has conditions for people's freedoms and rights including a sense of political security for all Malawians especially those individuals and groupings that were the target victims of the atrocities committed by the MCP. Although Muluzi saw himself also as the poverty alleviator and developer of Malawi socio-economically, that was not integral to his mission as a second wave liberator. He erred fundamentally by trying to extend his term thereby outliving his mission.
His lingering on the political scene today does him severe damage on the dialectic of political waves. Sam Nujoma, Ketumire Masire, Joachim Chissano, Benjamin Nkapa, Nelson Mandela, among others, are adequate examples for Muluzi to retire from active party politics now. Muluzi's mission was accomplished in May 2004. Also in May 2004, state president elect Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika heralded the third wave- the socio-economic developing phase of Malawi. In this third wave, we take it for granted that Malawi is politically independent from Great Britain; Malawi has conducive conditions for the protection of freedoms and rights of the people. Malawians are politically secure.
Even the age-old MCP has no chance of oppressing and repressing Malawians. Its leader John Tembo knows too well that he can't afford those old rumors of being blood stained. No enemy of any Malawian political leader can end up plunged in the Shire River to be devoured by chronically hungry crocs. In the third wave, we can't have intelligent and competitive political leaders being accidentalized in Thambani. The MCP ought to be an overhauled not just reconfigured political party for it to flourish in the third wave.
Socio-economically and infrastructurally, Malawi is undeveloped. For example, Bingu and the DPP have a gargantuan task to turn Malawi from agrarian agriculture to mechanized and capital-intensive agriculture. Hoeing won't eliminate hunger and poverty from Malawi. Malawi's education system has gone down since 1994 – and it is the duty of the DPP to rejuvenate it primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The DPP needs to show commitment to the improvement of the University of Malawi, Kamuzu Banda's initiative.
The development mission of Joyce and the DPP in the third phase of the dialectic of the democratization of Malawi will necessarily be as challenging as that of de-colonisation and that of the introduction of political freedoms and rights. The conceptual framework for critically analyzing and interpreting such an onerous duty – the duty to develop Malawi materially and economically – transcends the gender critique, its force and conviction notwithstanding. So, Malawians will vote for Joyce Banda as state president in 2014 and they will be voting into power a female leader and not 'woman' as a gender category.
It is important to read and understand articles and arguments before making responses that are off the mark. Joyce Banda's vice presidency would be the second most historical development in multiparty Malawi, the first being Muluzi's electoral victory over chipani chankhaza, MCP.
Malawians should celebrate the fact that Joyce Banda is a running mate, because it testifies to how far Malawi has developed democratically. Rather than try to discredit her for misunderstood feminist concerns and theories.
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