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Concerned civil society organisations observations on statement by the office of the president and cabinet in defence of Zimbabwe's president's state visit to Malawi
Concerned Civil Society Organizations (Malawi)
May 03, 2006

The undersigned Concerned Civil Society Organizations are reluctantly compelled to comment on the statement issued in the print media of the Nation and Daily Times Newspapers of last week by the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) in connection with the public disbelief and criticism provoked by the government’s regrettable decision to invite, as the President wa Mutharika administration’s first State Visitor, the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. To add insult to injury, the statement tries, in our view, unsuccessfully, to justify the government’s further decision to name a major national structure, the recently reconstructed Midima Road, after the Zimbabwean President, a decision that was made without seeking the views or concurrence of the citizens of Malawi, through their representatives in the National Assembly. The statement is but the latest in a series of incidents that point to a worrying characteristic of the national leadership, namely that of deliberately misleading the nation through disinformation.

The OPC statement seems to have been crafted by individuals whose knowledge of the developments in relations between the two countries during the past 26 years is surprisingly limited. Or was prepared with the deliberate intention to misrepresent the real history and nature of Malawi-Zimbabwe relations on the evident assumption that the majority of the Malawian citizenry comprises of" unknowing…younger generation of society", who therefore are unaware of developments, especially since 1980. If this was indeed the case, then this was very unfortunate because, contrary to popular belief, not all Malawians, as a people, have a short memory.

We the concerned CSOs will not presume to be knowledgeable about such relations as might have existed between the extinct empire of the Maravi, which occupied most of what is today’s Malawi, and that of Zimbabwe, the ancestors of present Zimbabwe, which existed prior to the 17^th century the earliest historical references either empire were recorded.. However, even a cursory study of regional development since the late 19^th century, following the coming of White settlers to the former Rhodesia and the arrival of the British colonialists in the old Nyasaland shows a picture of not so harmonious relations between the peoples of the two states. The written and remembered history of our times does not fully coroborate the glorified picture that the OPC would want the Malawian public to believe, of mutually beneficial and harmonious "pre-colonial" relations.

For the benefit of the "unknowing younger generation" of Malawians, the history of relations between Malawi and Zimbabwe is a sad tale of abuse of the Nyasas of old for the benefit of the old white colony of Rhodesian. This country was for a long time a reservoir of cheap labour for the mining and farming industries of Rhodesia. It was, in large part, thanks to the renowned characteristics of the people of this country as "hard-working and reliable" that the mines and farms of old Rhodesia grew into the thriving economy inherited by President Mugabe and his "comrades" 1980 following a protracted war of liberation.

We believe the OPC is aware that Malawi was generally unwanted but necessary partner in the doomed Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland established in 1953 as part of a plan by the White settlers of Southern Rhodesia and of the copper-rich Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia) that would have culminated in attainment of the status of a self governing dominion under the 1933 British Commonwealth Act. Under this Act, the former British colonies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Union of South Africa had been granted autonomy as self-governing nations, with the British monarch as their Head of State. Many of the early Nyasa labourers never returned to their homeland and, for various reasons, remained in Rhodesia even after the collapse of the Federation and the unilateral declaration of the white ruled "state" of Rhodesia in the early 1960s. It is these mainly entrapped Malawians to whom the existence of "long established cultural relations" is usually attributed.

Relations between independent Zimbabwe and Malawi have never been "alloy strong." as claimed by the OPC statement in the early years after independence, Zimbabwean officials tried hard to have Malawi politically isolated at the International level. During the latter years of the late Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi Congress Party regime, when the Mugabe administration’s democratic and human rights record increasingly began to be questioned, an open closeness of sorts began to develop between the two countries as per the old adage of "birds of a feather flock together".

Despite the fact that many of the young men and women of Malawian parentage fought, and some lost their lives, on both sides of Zimbabwe’s long and bitter liberation war, it was common to hear Zimbabwean leaders declare, in justifying their antipathy to wards Malawi to their followers, that "hurumende ne vanhu vekuMarawi havana kutibatsira ( the government and people of Malawi did not assist us in our struggle)" because the Banda administration, in defiance of United Nations (UN) imposed sanctions and Organization of African Union (OAU) resolutions, maintained economic and political ties with Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, this is an open secrete.

At various international fora, including at the UN in New York, some Zimbabwean diplomats openly campaigned for the marginalization of Malawi’s diplomats in matters pertaining to the African group of countries. In 1982, Zimbabwe is reported as having questioned the refusal to accept a request by Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) to become a member of the Southern Africa Development Coordinating Conference (SADC), the precursor to the Southern Africa Development Community, founded in April 1980. Zimbabwean described as unfair the denial of Zaire’s request, noting that even though, like Malawi, Zaire maintained relations with South Africa but, at least its government contributed financially to the OAU’s Liberation Council, unlike Malawi which steadfastly refused to support the Council. When the first President of Mozambique, the late Samora Machel, died in a late 1986 aircraft crash widely suspected to have been caused by South Africa saboteurs, Malawi was accused of complicity. In Zimbabwe, irate members of ZANU’s youth wing attacked the Air Malawi offices in downtown Harare, causing much destruction. Shortly after the Zimbabwe High Commission was established in Lilongwe, the Malawi government had to ask the Zimbabwe authorities to withdraw one of their diplomatic staff on grounds of "activities incompatible with his diplomatic status"- in plain language, for spying.

The OPC should also take note that Zimbabwe banned the importation of Malawi rice and fish, among other items, in 1982 without prior notification or consultations with the Malawi government. And when some of the country’s mines closed down due to the effects of the ZANU government’s socialist policies, the majority of labourers laid off were Malawians who had to be repatriated home; some had to wait for years before receiving their terminal pay and had to endure dire economic hardships. In recent times, many Malawian farm workers found themselves without jobs or money to support their families.

Malawian labourers and their families were adversely affected when the Zimbabwe government began the enforced eviction of White farm owners and expropriation of their lands and properties in the run-up to the 2002 Parliamentary elections. Only last year, during the Zimbabwe government’s controversial urban "clean-up" campaign, thousands more families, many of them Malawi nationals or Zimbabweans of Malawi origin, were left homeless and their properties demolished.

The OPC should have records that during the Commonwealth Summit held in Harare, the Harare Declaration was adopted which allowed for the exclusion from the Commonwealth gatherings of any member country with poor governance and human rights records. Malawi was amongst the main targets of the Harare Declaration. Ironically, when the Commonwealth judged Zimbabwe in 2003 against the standards set by the Harare Declaration, Mugabe pulled his country out of the Commonwealth

Whilst the Zimbabwe government publicly portrayed itself as anti-Malawi, secretly members of the ruling party’s leadership accepted, and sometimes actually solicited, assistance from Malawi. It was not unusual for a senior ZANU official, having completed his mission in Malawi, to speak favourably of Malawi and its leaders to news reporters on departure at Chileka Airport, only to hear the same individuals, upon landing in Harare after an hour later flight from Blantyre, castigating Malawi for its betrayal of the African cause.

It might surprise the " unknowing younger Malawians" of whom the OPC is so concerned, to learn that besides children of Malawian parents who died fighting for Zimbabwe’s independence, many others who elected not to join the war but, instead, to pursue academic and professional studies abroad, passed through Malawi on their way overseas and elsewhere.. Many of them were granted Malawian passports, whilst others assisted in obtaining British travel documents and, yet others more, were assisted in getting the UN laissez passé, ordinarily issued to refugees.

It might also surprise the officials at OPC who crafted the press statement questioning the wisdom or moral, not to mention the political, grounds for civil society’s questioning of the invitation to Mugabe to visit Malawi at this time and the decision to name the one of the country’s newest national roads in his honour. In the first instance, there already exists in the capital, Lilongwe, a road named after Mugabe, namely, Mugabe Crescent, so named in commemoration of his visit to Malawi at the invitation of Dr. Banda’s government; is it to be assumed, therefore, that every time the Zimbabwean leader may come to Malawi in future a national structures will have to be named after him?

In the second instance, this would not be the first time for the Zimbabwe leader and for Malawi, to be involved in denial of hospitality a national leader to the other. In April 1980, with only a few days before the ceremony for the granting of independence to the new state of Zimbabwe, Mugabe as Prime Minister-designate sent President Banda a very brief but blunt message that he should not attend the celebrations. The language used to explain the revocation of a previously extended invitation did not hide the fact that the presence of the leader or representatives of Malawi, then regarded internationally as a pariah for its relations with South Africa and the out-going Rhodesian white settler government, would be an embarrassment. The government found a way in which to explain to the Malawian people why their President Kamuzu Banda would no longer be traveling to Zimbabwe to attend the celebrations, as had previously been announced. Thus a revocation of the invitation to President Mugabe would not have been surprising to him; he would have understood the reasons. It is also on record that during Mugabe campaign in 2002 he openly said does not value those nationalities from other neighboring countries although they helped build Zimbabwe economically.

The Concerned CSOs are surprised at the economic argument put forth by OPC as one of the major reasons for maintaining good relations with Zimbabwe. The whole world has followed with sadness the total collapse of the once thriving economy of Zimbabwe. Any pretence at Malawi benefiting from Zimbabwe economically is farcical. As for the Zimbabwe corridor for Malawi’s exports to South African ports and imports through South Africa, one would wish to remind the OPC, in case the officials there had forgotten. When the Mozambique government closed its border with Rhodesia in 1976, Malawi was forced to use the long route through Zambia and, despite the high cost this meant in terms of transportation, the country survived until the route was re-opened after the end of the civil war in Mozambique in 1994. The situation is different today as Malawi now has more options than it had in 1976. The Port of Nacala in Mozambique as well as that of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania still offers cheaper options than Durban and Port Elizabeth in South Africa. It is Zimbabwe that would suffer more in the event that Malawi stopped using the Zimbabwe route.

As for the "growing rift between Zimbabwe and the West", we the concerned CSOs wonder rather that our President would have first sought ways to end the conflict between his administration and the opposition parties and thus bring to an end the tensions and divisions that have gripped the country over the past 23 months. Given President Mutharika’s adamant rejection of any initiatives to reconcile his administration and the opposition, one hand, and between him and his Vice President, on the other, we do not believe that either Mugabe or the Western countries would consider him as a credible inter-locuter.

On the matter of financing for the Midima Road, we the concerned CSOs would have wished the OPC to have explained in detail how the government had managed to save money, from its own resources, whether tax payers or not, sufficient to cover the cost of constructing such a major road project, is the Malawi government really prepared to bear the consequences of allowing the country to be turned into a platform from which the Zimbabwean President would turn into a platform for blasting some of the donor countries on whose financial and other assistance Malawi so largely depends.

In concluding, we the Concerned CSOs wish to reiterate the plea that the awarding of national honours, whatever they may be and in whatever manner, should be done in a transparent manner and, preferably, after wide consultations. For, in our view, such honours are presumed to be made by the government on behalf of the people of Malawi. Clearly, the decision to honour President Mugabe with a state visit and the naming of the Midima Road after him do not have the concurrence of all the Malawi people. State guests are guests of the country’s citizens, not personal guests of the Head of State and his government alone. In this context, the concerned CSOs would propose that we in Malawi might benefit by learning from the British custom whereby the monarch, as Head of State, informs the nation well in advance, through the monarch’s address to Parliament, of planned visits abroad and proposed invitations for state visits to be extended to foreign leaders in the coming year. Such a practice, we believe, would save both the government and nation, on one hand, and the intended state guests, on the other.

We the Concerned Civil Society Organizations namely:-

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