Baum: Its very difficult for us

Malawi should forget about getting balance of payment support from its key donors any time soon in the absence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, Alexander Baum, the EU envoy to Malawi, has said.

Malawi has been hit by an aid freeze since last year when it’s key donors withheld budget support aid and the IMF suspended the Extended Credit Facility programme due to concerns over Mutharika’s creeping autocracy, which has resulted in economic mismanagement.

“Without an IMF the fear is that money from the donors to support the budget would not be used in an appropriate and effective way,” Baum said.

“It’s very difficult for us to have confidence and resume support in the absence of an IMF programme,” he said.

Since January last year, Malawi has not received any budget support which normally accounts for about 40 percent of the budget. The aid embargo has created a fiscal contraction of about 6.5 percent in both revenue and grants expected in the current financial year.

The collapse in donor funding and tobacco revenue has also put pressure on the local currency forcing a 10 percent devaluation last year to K165 to the dollar but the IMF wants another devaluation to stem a flourishing black-market

A further devaluation of the kwacha is one of the conditions set by the IMF if the southern African nation is to get the IMF programme back on track.

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Ken Lipenga told Parliament that the IMF mission is expected in the country next month (March) and Malawi hopes to persuade the team on some topical issues like devaluation.

The country’s President Mutharika has said that he will not devalue the kwacha because it may hurt the poor more.

“Food inflation has gone up by 6.1 percent as compared to 5.2 percent recorded in the previous month due to price increases in cereal and cereal products and other food commodities,” the NSO said in a statement.

Malawi has been by hit an aid freeze since last year as international donors withheld funds due to concerns about creeping autocracy under President Bingu wa Mutharika. His actions are now attracting calls for his removal

The collapse in donor funding, which normally accounts for 40 percent of the budget, has put pressure on the kwacha, forcing a 10 percent devaluation last year to 166 to the dollar although it remains well shy of a black market rate of 250.

Lipenga told Reuters the decline in donor funding was turning out to be worse than projected in the June budget, which forecast total taxes and foreign assistance of $1.8 billion.

“It appears there is no end yet in sight to our economic woes,” he said. The government was still in talks with development partners such as the IMF and World bank, he added.

The aid freeze has compounded an acute dollar shortage caused by a sharp decline in tobacco sales, Malawi’s main source of foreign exchange.

The IMF has a $79 million, 3-year loan programme with Malawi, although it is currently on hold due to disagreements between Lilongwe and Washington over Mutharika’s handling of the economy.

In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.

“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”

Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.

“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.

I told him mine with a precautious smile.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Zambia.”

“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.”

“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”

“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected King Cobra as your president.”

My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.

“I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”

“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.

“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”

He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”

Quett Masire’s name popped up.

“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”

At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.

“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.

From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.

“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”

I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”

He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”

The smile vanished from my face.

“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”

“There’s no difference.”

“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they

were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”

I gladly nodded.

“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”

For a moment I was wordless.

“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”

I was thinking.

He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”

I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.

“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.

He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”

I held my breath.

“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”

He looked me in the eye.

“And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”

I was deflated.

“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”

He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”

He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”

At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.

“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”

He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”

Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.

Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.

But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.

I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.

“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)

Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.

A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter.

Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease.

The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.

Field Ruwe is a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate with a B.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and an M.A. in History.

Atupele Muluzi greets leader of opposition JZU in parliament

Malawi’s leader of opposition John  Tembo on Monday poked fun at President Mutharika for asking the IMF to give him three more years before devaluing the kwacha against the dollar.

The Fund wants Malawi to devalue the kwacha to K250 against the dollar to help stem a flourishing black market and bring back the suspended extended credit facility programme – crucial to unlocking budget support which is being withheld by western donors.

But  Mutharika last Friday asked the IMF and  Western donors  to give his administration a  space of three years to try to put in place policies that will restore resilience in the country’s external balances.

“If we fail, then we can try devaluation. Western donors should help government in its attempts to find lasting solutions to these problems instead of chocking our throats,” Mutharika said effectively dumping the Fund’s recommendations .

Tembo likened the President to a  patient on a hospital bed asking his doctor to allow him not to take any medication for a period of three months and see whether his condition can improve without treatment

“Allow me to express my surpise at the request by the Head of State to the IMF to give us an additional three years to continue on the disastrous path which we have taken. This is simply unworkable and will just result in further increased suffering on the part of the people of this country,” Tembo said.

The former ruling party UDF’s deputy leader in parliament Atupele Muluzi said that 18,000 jobs have been lost as a result of bad economic policies being pursued by Mutharika.

” Malawians are being  highly taxed resulting into companies folding up within the last few months…experts estimate that 18,000 jobs have been lost in the process,”he said.

“Getting Malawians to work must be government’s central goal… we
must create wealth, people centred policies that would result in gainful employment,” said Atupele said.

The dabate on the Presidents speech was started by Salima Central MP Benjamin Mangira and seconded by Zomba Chingale MP Lonnie Chijere Chirwa both of whom hailed Mutharika for presenting a speech that reflected the real state of Malawi.

Running for dear life as police fire tear gas

After police locked down Lilongwe’s old town, violence spread to townships in the capital forcing police to make over 40 arrests.

Chinsapo, Likuni, Kawale, Mchesi, Area 22, 23 and 36 witnessed riots as angry vendors broke into shops belonging to Burundi nationals.

“After they were chased from the market centre these people went into townships and started breaking shops especially those belonging to Burundians. Some even put up road blocks stopping vehicles to demand money,” said John Namalenga, police spokesman for the region.

Police in Lilongwe dressed in new anti-riot gear locked down Lilongwe’s busiest area of Malangalanga and Bwalo La njovu to stop angry vendors from destroying property in protests.

The lock down saw tear gas being fired, as vendors blocked roads with stones and burning tyres. This is the fifth time police have clashed with vendors in the last six months

To stop the imminent violence, Police blocked all four entry points into Bwalo La njovu starting from Lilongwe Bridge.

They also blocked the road on the Mosque leading into Malangalanga where the main bus terminals and the biggest kaunjika (second hand) market are situated..

As police fired teargas, vendors could be seen pouring water on the canisters and throwing them back.

Lilongwe police spokesman John Namalenga said no arrests have been made. He also said that police are going to be in the area until peace returns.

Unregistered vendors in Bwalo La njovu and Malangalanga came under fire  last month when they  imposed a dress code striping women dressed in trousers and mini-skirts naked.

Mutharika is angry with donors

Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika took on the country’s donors withholding millions in budget support, civil society organisations (CSOs), opposition and religious leaders accusing them of working to topple his rule.

The southern African nation’s key donors are in agreement with religious leaders, activists and opposition parties that Mutharika’s bad economic policies have left the country teetering on the brink of collapse.

“I want to bring to the attention of the House and the nation to that some external forces are encouraging our detractors to bring about chaos, lawlessness, disobedience so as to foster regime change in our country.

“These external forces are working through civil society organisations which number over 550 in our country of only 13 million people. Such a proliferation of CSOs has never brought drugs to our hospitals, nor has it alleviated the fuel and forex shortages among us,” said Mutharika.

He said there is little Malawians have benefited from huge resources donors channel to NGOs “to forment chaos in the country.”

“I would propose that Parliament must find effective means of providing legislative oversight on the CSOs utilisation of resources they receive from donors. In other words, legislation must be passed to make CSOs accountable.”

On devaluation, which the IMF has recommended to be implemented to stem the flourishing parallel market, Mutharika  reiterated that it is difficult for government to devalue the kwacha unless there is guarantee to protect the poor from high commodity prices, resulting from devaluation.

The IMF wants the kwacha devalued  to about K250 to a dollar to help Malawi win back the suspended IMF programme – crucial to unlocking donor support.

“Devaluation is not a panacea for solving our problems. Even in advanced countries devaluation is used only as part of the solution. Which country has ever had meaningful development just by devaluing its currency?

“My ardent appeal to the IMF and the western development partners is to allow my government a short time space of three years to try to put in place policies that will restore resilience in our external balances.

“If we fail then we can try devaluation. Western donors should help government in its attempts to find lasting solutions to these problems instead of chocking our throats,” said Mutharika.

Mutharika however attracted boos from the opposition bench when he said the Nsanje World Inland Port project was one of the achievements his administration has made. He added his administration has also successfully fought hunger and reduced HIV/Aids related deaths, among others.

“Instead of despising these achievements, we should all own them regardless of which political camp we belong to and be proud of them. These constitute our national heritage to be handed down from generation to generation.

“Those who say that Malawi is a failed state or that the country is sinking or that the country is off-track simply because we face temporary fuel and forex shortages do not have the truth in them,” said Mutharika.

He said sentiments that Malawi is off-track are based on evaluation standards that have not been explained Malawians, insisting that through implementation of home-grown policies, the country has achieved an average annual growth rate of 7.5 percent over the past seven years.

Mutharika said it was improper for his critics to use the media to fight laws that Parliament has “duly” passed.

“A new trend emerging in our country is that the Law Commission and Law Society have begun to challenge the passing of laws by this August House. I submit that Parliament is the only legitimate institution to champion the process of making laws for Malawi.

“Civil society organisations are gradually usurping the mandate to legislate and seem to support individuals who can challenge any legislation passed by Parliament as bad laws or draconian laws,” he said.

Mutharika said as a sovereign state, Malawi has its own customs, cultures, religions and laws, which he said are not subservient or inferior to any systems prevailing elsewhere.

“My prayer is that the people of Malawi will stand up for what is right for us and not give legitimacy to strange and unwelcome practices from other lands simply for a few dollars.

Mgombo is Zimbabwean and has not been seen since the incident. Police are now treating him as the main suspect. He is currently on the run.

Rudo, a Malawian passport holder, had been living in Ireland for the past two years in Rathmines, on Dublin’s Southside.

The murder is receiving prime time coverage in Irish media since the body was discovered this week.

Rudo, according to police, had been due to visit her friends at some stage that day. Her body was found at 8.30am off Blackhorse Avenue, at St David’s Terrace.

Detectives are exploring the theory that the killer was on foot and on his way to dump the body in the Phoenix Park when he decided to abandon the suitcase.

It is believed that this happened at around 7pm on Saturday. There have been no reports of anyone unloading luggage from a car in the area, which was closed off to traffic yesterday as Garda forensic experts examined the scene.

Deputy State pathologist Dr Michael Curtis carried out a preliminary investigation of the scene. An initial examination of the body at Dublin’s Beaumount Hospital showed no visible signs of injury.

The remains were then taken to the city morgue for a post-mortem examination. It found that she had died from asphyxiation.

The result, according to a 2003 study, has been intermittent power supply causing trade and industry sectors to be losing an estimated K40 million ($230,000) per day.

Increasing demand for water because of needs in agriculture, industry, energy, transport, fisheries and forestry, leaves the southern African nation with no choice but to find a way of how policy makers can work with communities.

The latest state of the environment report says the only solution available to policy makers include development of public-private partnerships in ecotourism, which could provide financial incentives for poor people to conserve biodiversity.

“Gender mainstreaming into conservation programmes since women typically collect forest products, extending and improving the payment for Ecosystems Services program, in which businesses in power generation pay communities for maintenance of catchment area ecosystem services,” says the 2010 environment report

Mutharika has already refused one IMF demand

The UK and the USA took to task Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika blaming him for the current political and economic problems  the southern African nation is facing.

Malawi lost an IMF programme last year, and its key donors have been withholding balance of payment support since January last year.

Mutharika, said on arrival from Addis Ababa, that  he met UK’s Secretary for State for International Development Andrew Mitchell and USA Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson who told him that he was the problem.

“I told them I am not the problem, I am the solution. It is sad how Malawians have turned from being honest people. They even lied how I voted at the African Union for the Chairmanship,” said Mutharika.

Mutharika has been facing the heat from the British who stopped balance of payment support  last year and the US who are withholding a $350 million energy grant over human rights concerns and restrictive laws.
“I listened to their concerns and I took an opportunity to explain what we are doing about all the issues. What is sad is that people from here continue telling lies. When I said that the devil is sitting on some of you, it is clear from the lies that you create,” said Mutharika.

He said Carson told him that the resumption of the suspended Millennium Challenge Account funding for rehabilitation of electricity supply system was dependent on the resumption of the IMF programme.
“We are in dialogue with the IMF and I have assured them all that their concerns will be addressed. We have set up commissions of inquiry, we have a team on dialogue and I am asking what next do you want me to do,” said the President.

This was a sudden departure from his earlier comments that he will not devalue the kwacha, one of the most immediate issues the Fund want addressed.

The IMF wants Malawi devalues the kwacha to help stem a growing black-market which is hurting the economy.

The aid freeze, low earnings from tobacco have worsened the shortage of forex in Malawi. This has resulted into massive fuel shortages across the country and forced government to revise it GDP and inflation figures downwards.

Mutharika has blamed the devil for all what Malawi is going through.