"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."

Highlights of a summer in malawi

Conversations with Malawi

Mr. Thomson discusses his political life and the turbulent, but courageous changes his country experienced from a dictatorship to a multi-party democracy.  The following Conversation with Malawi consists of 3 video segments.

Harry Thomson

Former Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

What influence did your parents have on you?

 

I was born in Zomba, the capital of Nyasaland in 1934.  My parents were very stern people, very religious people, and always thought of doing better for their children then what they had as a start-up in life.  So at the early age of six I was sent to a boarding school in Rhodesia, where I was till I finished my secondary education, and returned to Malawi in 1950.  During this time, my dad being a medical person, we were 5 children, 4 sons and 1 daughter, one of them, at least, should follow in his footsteps and become a medical person.  Parents always have high esteems, high expectations for their children.  But I never aspired to doing any of those things.  What I wanted to do, was become a motor mechanic.  And I pursued that.  I worked as a motor mechanic for many years, until I became more interested in management, and did a lot of studying in the management side – marketing, international management.  That exposed me to a lot of what is going on around the world.  But whilst all of this was happening I was very community minded.  I remember at school I became a boy scout.  I in fact led a scout movement in the last 2 years of my secondary school and that made me get a feel of working with the community, and I wasn’t surprised that I ended up in politics.  Because as a community worker, I developed styles and systems and then ended up in businesses.  I had been running my own businesses.  I became Chairman of the National Chamber of Commerce of Malawi, a post which I held for 10 years, being elected every year, not being nominated or appointed.  And in fact, I was Chairman of the Southern Regional Business Council for 6 years.  And that exposed me a lot to what is happening in the southern region.

 

Any particular life events that motivated you to enter politics?

 

Well, in my growing up times, we used to have what was known, and what interested me – Conventions of Associations.  This unfortunately exposed us to a lot of things, and amongst this exposure was the fact that Nyasaland was a British Protectorate.  Rhodesia, as we knew it, and Southern Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwe, and Northern Rhodesia which is now Zambia, and South Africa and various other countries around, had settler communities.  These settler communities were European, western European, predominately English, French, Portuguese, and they came and settled in those countries, left an identity in those countries.  Whereas here in Malawi, which was then Nyasaland, we never had that kind of thing, because, as a protectorate, the British government was responsible for the affairs that took place.  Even the day to day type of running of government, these were appointed civil servants from the United Kingdom, were appointed to come and become secretary for Transport, Secretary to the Treasury, and so forth.  So we had a group of foreign civil servants leading the government, settlers we had very, very few of those, still in the country as planters, either in tea or tobacco.  Now coming back to the point I had raised about Convention of Associations, you will find that the colonizers or colonial masters always leave their mark.  You can tell when, who, colonized which country.  Now South Africa as we knew, and as we have experienced, had a very nasty apartheid system.  This followed likewise, to some extent, maybe not as much as it was in South Africa, but Rhodesia was also the same, and so was Zambia.  And I do remember becoming involved in one or two instances of that nature – because of the color divide. 

    Nyasaland as such, we never had those kind of problems.  The problem we had, was not between black and white, we had problems amongst ourselves, as a small community of mixed blooded people.  We would have for instance, my background is that of European, Scottish grandfather and African, black grandmother, so we called ourselves the EuroAfrican.  To have an identity so that both the European and the African, that they are responsible for the way we are, and there was another group called the IndoAfrican, of Indian and African parentage.  Somehow, our colleagues, the IndoAfricans, didn’t like to have this difference of Euro, Indo, African, and said why don’t we become colored, same as what they’ve done in South Africa and in Rhodesia too.  But we didn’t want that to happen.  So my politics became exposed, or politics exposed itself to my thinking during that time, because I unintentionally became a leader of the Young Federals.  Because we were then living in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.  And as a young person I was called a Young Federal.  And during this time, there was the change of rule from colony to independence.  Our friends from the Indo African community identified with the Malawi Congress Party which was led by the late Dr. Kamuzu Banda.  We sort of sat on the fence, we didn’t identify ourselves with that, but because we were EuroAfrican, and the IndoAfricans said we are here, therefore they must be against us.  And lined us up with the Federal side.  Because the federal government was fighting elections to run this country from the colonial masters.  So my exposition to politics began at that time.

 

Given the divide in ethnic identity, how important was the transition to multi-party politics?

 

It was very important.  By this time, when multi-party politics were being talked about.  These were all happening underground.  In 1963, Malawi became a self-governing country, and the late Kamuzu Banda was appointed, or elected Prime Minister.  In 1964, we had general elections which were won by the Malawi Congress Party.  And in 1966, we became a republican state, so the Prime Minister, namely Kamuzu Banda, became President.  And the next 30 years changes took place.  From a democratic country, which was elected in 1964, we saw that it became throughout the years, a dictatorial country.  With strong, stern leadership – you could do this and you couldn’t do the other.  And any opposition was not looked upon favorably.  In fact, it became so drastic that people were detained, people were arrested, businesses were forfeited, and the country became really an empire led by one person and benefited by maybe 3 or 4 others in a family.  With time, that did not go down well.  I was a businessman at that time.  I was involved in 2 or 3 of my own businesses.  As Chairman of the local Chamber of Commerce I traveled a lot and seeing what is happening outside and strange as it may seem, a group of us who were elected to run the Chamber of Commerce and industries, started talking underground, acting underground, and one such person who was influential through this was past-President, Bakili Muluzi.  He was in the Chamber, heading the Transport Association, because he was a transporter at that time, having resigned from the Cabinet of Dr. Kamuzu Banda he left becoming a businessman on his own and he joined the chamber.  So it was indicated later on that we had used our good offices of the chamber to become business people and to form the United Democratic Front.  Be that as it may, we started agitating first underground, people were arrested, people were sent away, we agitated, we called for friends outside to help us.  It became clear, something had to be done in this country, so the President then, agreed there should be a national referendum to see if the present government, a one-party state, should be continued or to go into multi-party.  Multi-party government had been rejected over the past 30 years because when Malawi became independent it was a multi-party state, but one or two elections down the road, the opposition parties fell away, because of the strength of the Malawi Congress Party.  The elections held after that were meaningless, because everyone had been a member of the national party, that of Malawi Congress Party.  Multi-party system fell on the way side, an act of Parliament was passed that this become a one-party state.  Dr. Banda became Life-President.  Now with multi-party system coming in, we decided that we should call for a referendum, and thank God that Dr. Kamuzu Banda saw the wisdom of calling for a referendum.  The predominant parties forming oppositions and going for the referendum, predominant were the United Democratic Front and the AFORD.  There were other parties.  We traveled the country telling people the advantages of multi-party as opposed to the disadvantages.  Malawi Congress Party, being in government had the helicopters, had the transportation, they had everything in their power to go and tell people what they have done and promise them better and so forth.  Elections were held, I think it was 63 or 64 percent of the country voted for multi-party, that was in 1993.  So parties were set-up, laws were set-up, people were registered.  In May of 1994, elections were won by the United Democratic Front, with Bakili Muluzi as the first democratic president of Malawi.  That was the change that took place.  AFORD, Malawi Congress Party, 2 or 3 others, also had members, but what we came up with, was a new constitution.  This new constitution made us become very mindful of where we came from and where we want to be.  One predominant issue was that we knew we did not want to repeat what had been taking place in the last 30 years under Malawi Congress Party.  So the constitution that was rewritten was really to cover, to make sure no leader, no party would take us back to where we were before.   And of course with that we tied ourselves up with certain points which we discovered later that the constitution stopped us from doing this, this, and this, but it opened us up to various other issues so that our constitution, like the constitution of any country is a moving constitution – we have to keep changing it.  This in some cases did not go down well in some peoples minds – “why are you changing this book, why are you changing these laws?”  These written laws are there, but if you are going to live with a constitution like we had, and especially with the type of government which we had, then changes must come up.  Because we had neither a full republican constitution or republican government, nor a Westminster type.  The constitution we came up with was a cross breed between western type government and the republican type government.  So our President is elected independently same as you do in America and other countries.  You have a presidential election running side-by-side with a parliamentary election.  It is unlike the western…But we chose to elect a president and to elect the Prime Ministers.  Our government was really a two system in one government.

 

Did the change in the international environment (greater role of IMF, World Bank) and internal changes with multi-party politics make development a more difficult task to accomplish?

 

With the coming of multi-party, obviously everybody thought now, there would be no restriction.  That Spartan type of rules which existed in Malawi were going to be open.  There will be freedoms, there will be no restrictions to the press, to anybody having any type of business.  People were free to live their lives.  Now what struck me as impressive is the way we Malawians, overnight, assumed and grappled with independence, almost over night, the transitional period was so smooth.  It’s as if we had been practicing a democratic government for years.  It was not anything strange.  But to nurture it, that was the thing.  Because then, everybody felt that yes I’m independent, we have freedom, the Freedom Charter, the rules have changed, now everybody is free to do what they want, say what they want, the press could do what they want.  Not realizing sometimes that your freedom, and your utterances, which you are free to utter, should not impinge on the next person.  And there were these sort of teething problems which came out.  When Malawi became democratic in 1994, and we had this system of government, the change was coming, Cold War was coming to an end.  Malawi, or Nyasaland as we knew it, was a blue-eyed country of the western world, and of America.  Dr. Banda, he was there blue-eyed boy.  In fact it was indicated at the Organization for African Unity and in large important quarters of that nature, that Malawi, particularly Dr. Banda, was out of step with the rest of Africa.  Dr. Banda’s way of life, was one in which, for example communists did not exist.  Even in the end, the Arabs, if they were wanting to transit Malawi they needed a visa.  Otherwise they would not get a visa to come here, it was closed.  This was a capitalist state, and of course the Americans and the western powers liked that.  So they supported Malawi, they gave Malawi almost everything, hence being dubbed out of step with the rest of Africa.  Malawi had diplomatic relations with South Africa.  The only black African country to have diplomatic relations with South Africa was Malawi.  When the civil war was being fought in Mozambique, our neighbors, Malawi was supporting the Portuguese.  There were economic benefits derived from this kind of association.  When multi-party came up, Cold War was coming to an end, everybody was talking the same language, Malawi’s blue-eyed status, began to fade away, and Malawi had to stand on its own.  And that was the time changes were coming in politics as well, so it wasn’t a transfer of good to the multi-party state, no these were the realities, look at the basket of currencies.  At the time this was happening, I think Malawi was holding a conversion rate of 2 kwacha to a pound, in some cases, Malawian kwacha was stronger than the Rand, now these were all artificial make-ups.  But when the reality came, we find ourselves where we are now, the true basket, we were not pegged on any individual currency, we had to stand on our own.  And in that basket today there is 240 kwacha to the pound, 130 to the US dollar.  So the realities have come with multi-party systems, but those are the prices one has to pay.  You can’t have everything your way, and these are the prices you have to pay to develop your economy.  I said earlier it is amazing how Malawi developed its democratic system as if it had been democratic all the time.  But if we look at what our inheritance was at independence and at democratization of this country you will find that there was no settler work other than tea estates and tobacco, which the colonial masters had left for us.  There was nothing, we did not have an economic position like the people in Zimbabwe had, like the people in Zambia had, they had an economic development behind them.  We were just struggling along, and that is what our biggest problem has been.  Instead of working hard to develop our nation, we became experts.  We are still trying to become experts at becoming political rather than developmental minded.  We are more political minded, fighting, and this is unfortunate, but it is not what it should be.

 

What effect has the IMF had on development in Malawi?

 

I think what the IMF can be blamed for is having one cure for all illnesses.  I believe, and we have talked to IMF, when I was in government we said this many times.  Look at Malawi’s conditionality, which is known, and try and cure it from its ailments for Malawi.  Don’t come up with an answer for everything, one shoe size fits all, that sort of thing does not work.  Because our stages of development are different, so let us have a cure that will look after Malawi, get it out, cure it first, than nurture it so that it will get us where we want to go.  But if you treat us with the same cure you want to cure Nigeria and countries of that nature, it won’t work.  We are different economies and therefore we need different treatments for those economies.

 

Are African governments corrupt because they are poor, or poor because they are corrupt?

 

I think in both cases one has to look at the positions.  One acceptable point is that Malawi is poor, we can not get away from it.  Having said that Malawi is poor, are we saying that Malawi as a country is poor, or are we saying that the people of Malawi are poor?  Again, you may have to look and find very fine differences between these two that I have just mentioned.  But certainly there is poverty.  If you look around, where are the mines that have been found in Zambia, Rhodesia, Mozambique, and Tanzania?  I mention those countries because they are bordering.  Geographically, one would think that the geography of Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, should be the same as Malawi.  Therefore what dividing borders do we have?  We don’t have distinct borders, we just have a line, an acceptable point, this is where Zambia starts, this where Malawi ends.  Now if you look at the geography of the two, there shouldn’t be any difference.  So what’s found in Zambia, should be found in Malawi.  So too in Mozambique, so too in Tanzania.  But we haven’t had significant finds.  We know from my information in the ministry I headed; mining and all that…we know that there was gold.  But where is it?  We know that this needs to be done, but until we are out of that poverty trap.  We need to get the support to come out of that trap so that we can go and investigate and look at geological surveys, resurvey the whole country, geologically, and see what minerals we have.  And also to get out of the system we have of saying, mines are only gold, silver, and diamonds.  No, there are other types of mineral wealth in sands, in coal, and various other ways which can be developed, and that is what we are trying to do.  So yes, the country per se, is poor, because we haven’t discovered anything, other than the very rich agriculture land we have.

 

Why do you think the West doesn’t help?

 

I wish there was an easy answer for that.  When you hear of all these calamities, the tsunamis and all these shortcomings other countries in the Far East and Southeast Asia are going through, you can be sure the aid going to them is greater then what would come, had the same calamity befallen Malawi, or befallen a country in Africa, you’ll find…the uptake is slow.  We have to fend and fight for ourselves.  Maybe our track records are not as attractive.   Our fairy god-fathers are not looking out for us as well as from Southeast Asia or Latin America.  Certainly, this continent of ours doesn’t get the recognition that we think we deserve.

 

Does the Western world hold a responsibility?

 

We do hear references to say the world has now become one global village, World Trade Organization, United Nation Development Program and projects, the whole world is one village, yes.  But then we also hear that Africa must resolve its problems:  “African problems to be resolved by Africans”.  I am sure that given the same economic background, given the same economic muscle, Africa would look after itself, if it had the means.  Africa has the willpower to do this, but willpower on its own can not answer the demands of what is required to develop a country.  So we will for some time need donor support that is not conditional.  But that’s another area again.

 

How do you convince people otherwise who blame corruption as the cause of Africa’s ills?

 

That is a general statement.  My experience is that politically, a country like Malawi, politically and economically we are young.  If we look at democracy, one’s understanding of democracy must be defined.  Everybody is free to become a member of parliament, to become a leader, a minister, to become a president.  What are the qualifications?  In some cases there are qualifications highlighted, in other cases there are no highlights of this.  It is not unusual to find someone campaigning to become a member of parliament whilst he’s still in school.  He has his people going out; his friends, his relatives, and we’ve had one or two of such people serving in Parliament of Malawi.  So their background information is somewhat limited.  They’ve got no experience, they’ve got no ideas how to go about community mindedness, how to look out for others.  You yourself are a young person, and I’m not saying this because I’m much older than the others, but I’m just saying that is one way of looking at this.  That is how I think.  Leadership of a country must be somebody who has been tried.  He’s got the experience of working with the community.  Because, gone now are the days where you make yourself.  The politics of today, it’s the people who make you.  And the only way the people will make you is they will sell you, not you selling yourself to them.  And until we bring those kinds of thoughts into our minds…Everybody has the aspiration of being the top most position, everybody has.  But do you have the expertise, the know-how, the respect.  Are you there to look after yourself, or are you there to look after the people that you profess.  These are very nice words I know that I’m saying.  To put them into practice, we’ve all at one-time or another have said, “If I am in government, I will do this…” - that wishful thinking.  But in some cases, it’s what we feel is required.  We get elected into those positions with very strong beliefs we are going to make changes in our country, but when the time comes, you find that the hardships, the impediments you come across are such that your good wishes are slowly fading, and you yourself are having to fight for survival.  So yes, you find in instances, yes.  You find those that have been there, have gone in with good intentions and a very deflated pocket or bank balance, but years later you see that bank balance blossomed to such an extent that you seem to worry.  Even yourself you begin to say, “Where did all of this come from?”  And you look at yourself and say, “Mine is depleted!”  I came with something, and now I am going away with nothing.  Now these are the kinds of issues where a common statement which is generalizing, “Yes, if you give aid to Africa, you are really giving it to individuals.  That individual, who is already rich, now becomes richer.  Those for whom it is intended, the poor, get poorer.”  Look at the statistics of most countries, even my country here in Malawi.  You will find that in the last ten years, peoples’ life standards have dropped.  People have less disposable income in their pockets, and that is what we are fighting for.  There are no targeted developmental drives.  There are a lot of things that can be said about it, but these are good intentions, that sometimes remain good intentions with no beneficial outcomes.

 

What advice would you give someone interested in development issues in Malawi?

 

Yes, you know as I mentioned earlier on, I come from a business background.  In fact, most of my colleagues in the cabinet of the United Democratic Front are former business people.  And it was questioned when we took over government, “How are these business people going to run government?”  And our answer was simple - we hope that we will be able to run government like we do a big business.  What are the objectives?  You have to set up the plans and objectives to be successful, whether you are running government or business.  To us, at that time, we felt, we did well.  And I’m sure, given the experience we have today, there is very little difference between the business of commerce and the business of government.  Your parameters have to be defined.  You have to set up your goals and see where you want to go.  As such, I would advise somebody to say, let us look at where is the growth area in Malawi.  Let us look at the 20 / 80 syndrome.  The 20 percent living in urban areas know what they want, there businesses are flourishing and they are doing well.  They will not go out to visit the biggest market, where the 80 percent live, because the costs may sound prohibitive.  I have said, that if I was in the position… because being in government, being a cabinet minister doesn’t influence the rest of the cabinet, doesn’t mean you are on the par with the thoughts of the leader.  He has his own, and that is how it’s going to be.  Even though you are in his cabinet, you want to talk about various other things, they remain your dreams.  But if I was to advise, I would say, go out to that 80 percent.  Go out to the rural area.  That is where the population is.  Develop the rural areas.  They will need expertise; they will need to go to the urban area to entice them to go to the rural area where the raw material is.  And until you start developing the rural areas, your efforts to develop the country of Malawi will remain wishful dreaming.