Spring of discontent

They say they are protesting elections. They say the anger being witnessed in the streets is over a mismanagement of elections.

Maybe yes, it is about elections. Perhaps, no, this is not about elections.

In the summer of 2017, the Southern region almost went up in flames. Young men mostly started barricading roads, stoning cars and properties, demanding payments from road users. A few people ended up killed in the hands of that ravenous mob.

Reason? They said that they were protesting bloodsuckers. They claimed that their communities were being terrorised by bloodsuckers. And, as a revenge, they were targeting anyone strange in those communities.

However, those who attempted to understand that wave of violence beyond what was presented doubted the narrative. The violence was mostly in peri-urban areas. Places where there had been no report of bloodsucking. What was worse? These protestors could be bought off: if you had money, pay them, then they would let you use the road.

In that discontent, the Central and Northern regions of the country were almost at ease. There was hardly any upheaval.

For those who aimed to present the violence as a symptom of a deeper and more complex discontent, they could have been forgiven if they were to ascertain that the other two regions were content. But, now we know, they were just waiting for time.

A rallying cause

Immediately after the elections were announced, pockets of protests erupted – especially in the Central region. At first, they appeared as all those other protests before it.

In 2004, when Bingu wa Mutharika was announced the winner quite to the chagrin of many voters, there erupted violence. As is mostly the case, it was in the urban areas.

The opposition parties then, chief of them the alliance that was led by Gwanda Chakuamba, declined to accept the outcome. Chakuamba threatened war. The spokesperson of that alliance, Kholiwe Mkandawire, again rallied for something akin to a war.

Hours after the poll was called, it appeared the war was coming.

It was a war, maybe, but it never lasted long. Tyres were burnt, shops were ransacked, a few bullets were showered. Epiphania Bonjesi, the young daughter of Zingwangwa, became a symbol of state violence. She was murdered in cold blood, with state apparatus.

It was 2004. Access to social media – that hub of fake news – was low. The levels of discontent were quite amenable. In days, the protests were put off. Peace retained.

In 2014, there was no violence. An opposition party won and, although there were claims of rigging, nobody considered them seriously.

When the protests erupted this gone May, a few might have thought it would be the same: the protest will go to bed after the setting of the sun. It has not been.

If you want to believe the organisers, these protests are about the mismanagement of the elections. If you want to believe the songs at the protests, these protests are after Jane Ansah. If you want to believe Peter Mutharika, these protests are elements of the opposition wanting to get in power through a back door. If you, also, want to believe the posters from the protestors, these protests are about anything and everything really – the other day one carried a placard calling for the fall of FAM president Walter Nyamilandu.

However, the rage witnessed is not just something that would be expressed in a single narrative.

The single narrative that is being sold to us, now, is just so that we fail to confront the actual issues our society is dealing with – or, more aptly, has failed to deal with.

It is just a rallying point.

For long, Malawi has been a ruin of structural violence, class discrimination and tribal exclusion – at all levels. The occupants of the ruin, bothered and bugged by poverty, have reached a stage that they can hardly take it.

Time to eat the rich

There was a placard at one of the protests from elsewhere that read One day the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich. The beauty, of it, was in the ambiguity. The wonder in it was in the presentation of the coming despair. The despair we are at, in Malawi.

In one of the videos from the protests, people are filmed ransacking a shop.

If a book would have to be judged just by the cover, the people ransacking the shops are not the customers of the shops. They are people who see the shops from far, wish they could buy from it – or just step their feet in it – but they know the society that has raised them would never let them.

The only opportunity these people are getting to be closer to the shop of their dream is through protests. Violent protests.

For them, the call to non-violence by the organisers of the demonstrations does not resonate with them. That call, to non-violence, is reserved for those complaining electoral mismanagement. Not to those fighting for survival.

Let us burn together

The sad thing about the violent demonstrations we have witnessed is the target on equally small businesses and individual properties that have nothing to do with elections or politics.

In brief, it is the indiscriminate reign of terror it is visiting upon communities and markets.

It appears that the demonstration has simply become an attack on anything – and anyone – different from us. Starting from targeting people of particular localities, it is now about targeting people of particular classes.

Our society has come to a stage where beauty cannot be seen in diversity. At first, it was a diversity of opinion and choices that intimidated us. However, in its metastasis into a cesspool of violence and anarchy, even the diversity of class has become an enough justification for terror.

A stitch in time?

The clergy and former President Bakili Muluzi indicate they have initiated a dialogue. They are about to convince us that if, today, the warring parties would agree to a gentleman’s agreement then peace will resurface.

It is a beautiful proposition, I say, but also just a dream.

Building peace on the illusion that the wave of violence we are witnessing is over electoral management sounds more like plastering a festering wound just to create an impression of good health care.

Not that we do not need the peace. We do need the peace. However, we do not need it to keep building the same system that has bred young people whose only currency of communication is violence. Rather, we need peace to start having an honest conversation on tribe, class and social justice.     


This article was published in The Daily Times of 13 August 2019 under the Politics and Governance Section