Just 24 hours after unidentified people in Lilongwe stripped naked women and girls in trousers, the situation was on Wednesday replicated in Mzuzu where women in trousers were chased, booed and undressed.

The harassment paralysed business, shocked onlookers and turned the city into a male domain as women felt unsafe to walk around the city’s central business district.

Mzuzu police spokesperson Edward Longwe confirmed the development on Wednesday morning, calling the practice as barbaric.

“We were informed that some people are undressing women in trousers. So we deployed officers to patrol the streets as we wanted to ensure security of women regardless of whether they are putting on trousers or mini-skirts,” said Longwe.

“Every person has freedom of dressing and it is barbaric for people to be roaming the city and undressing women. They just want to spark commotion and take advantage of it to start looting shops.”

Eyewitnesses said the practice started around 8am at the city centre when a lady dressed in a pair of trousers was jeered and booed at while others attempted to undress her.

This prompted some ladies to run and hide in shops while others bought wrappers to wear over their trousers.

Police officers later stormed the streets to quell the pandemonium which saw Asian businesspeople closing shops prematurely for fear of possible looting.

Police Mobile Services patrolled the city to maintain peace and protect women from the harassment.

However, Mzuzu main market chairperson Juma Umar denied it was vendors behind the violence.

“I have heard that women are being undressed in town, but no vendor is there. It’s just some criminals doing that. They claim that women have gone overboard in dressing so they need to be slowed down,” said Umar.

An observer, who declined to be identified, said the actions were aimed at restoring Malawian culture by flashing out “western forms of dressing”, citing wearing of leggings as unMalawian and disrespectful.

“Women are misusing freedom of dressing. The leggings they are putting on disrespect Malawian culture,” he said.

“These leggings or trousers are usually tight and sometimes transparent. But women put them and start moving in town. What do they want men to do? Such practices have to be stopped forthwith.”

Meanwhile police said the number of women who suffered the harassment in Mzuzu was not known and no arrest had been made in connection with the malpractice.

It may look like a visit to a village in the touristic sense. Go there, meet the village and leave, never to be seen again.
But we just don’t go about our business like this.
Here we see part of a Self Help Group before their weekly meeting started. They began their savings scheme in January 2011, saving small amounts. They began lending to each other in March 2011 charging an interest rate of 20%, which goes back in to the kitty. They are involved in small business and at the end of November had a loan book of 1246 Euro. Now these are some of the poorest women in the area, some are widows and few can read and write. Brian, with the purple shirt, an employee of our friends at St John of God Services, is their mentor, educator and advisor, but they do everything else themselves. All this has been achieved by these 18 women with no financial input from outside. They have achieved all by themselves, a lesson to the rest of the World!!. After working successfully in these small groups, the progress to Community needs, forming a cluster representing 10 small groups
At this stage they presented us with proposals for clean water, preschools and adult education. We are now working with the first cluster on the building of 10 preschools which will double for Adult Education. Training has began is some and we are ahead of schedule.
When I say we, I mean that we support the community, but they do all the work and. In the preschools we supply some cement, and the metal for the roof, they do all the work. We also supply training and for caregivers in the preschools and work with the Ministry of Education for training adult education trainers.
This group have 34 wells/pumps and when we came along only one worked.
Later we will bring training in conservation farming and horticulture.
These now successful business women are ready to drive this agenda, having been empowered by their own success. They are not for turning and they will go upwards and onwards.
An amazing success story against all the odds.

Restoring Hope, Unlocking Potential… from The Water Project on Vimeo.

We are bringing clean, safe drinking to another 50,000 people this year and it will cost less than €50,000. If you can give just a little, press the donate button, and Wells for Zoë will do the rest. 100% of all the money we get goes to our projects; there’s no middle-man, nothing taken out. Can we get together and do it. Every Euro is another villager on the way to a better life.

You see: Clean Water changes everything
Wells for Zoë – Water for Life – Clean Water

This is an area called Kadambo. Less than a year ago we started helping the community here to set up a preschool. Mary brought most of the community, men and women on board and gave all training on the value of preschool education. The caregivers got one week of training and a weekly visit from our roaming headmaster. We did provide some books and rudimentary equipment, but they do it all themselves, and with very little help they have become very resourceful. It is a wonderful place, this rented church. They are now putting in foundations for a new building which will double as a preschool and an Adult Education centre. It’s amazing what this Bottom Up initiative can achieve, and maybe a new term might be coined, Inclusive Development. Why is the World imposing Top Down initiatives, that continue to fail.
These are the porridge ladies who built their own kitchen and have their rota.
The porridge consists of maize flower, soya, groundnuts, sugar and salt. we are working to reduce the sugar and salt content: not easy!!

Every trip is an up and down affair. We have successes and failures every day, but we only tend to think of the successes and gain energy from them. When I say failures they are in fact learning experiences for the whole crew. We have a motto, just don’t make the same mistake twice!!

Empowering, inspiring, educating and challenging, poor, rural people, with no history of a day’s work, is in itself challenging. They have to move up from low first gear into overdrive. It rarely happens in a day or a month or a year, buy by being there and sticking with them, particularly the women, positive movement is made. The piece includes a story of very poor women who have made giant leaps in 2011 and who are not for turning. We are really blown away by this success story.

Bringing clean water to villages enables us to meet and engage with villagers. Last year SJOG were selected to deliver a no input, self help, enterprise scheme, in the Northern Region of Malawi, with a population of about one and a half million. Spread over about half the size of Ireland. The programme will be delivered nationally by five organisations and one of these is SJOG. For all intents and purposes it’s a Credit Union, locally driven and managed, without Bankers, Bureaucrats or Ballyhoo. Twenty or so poor women come together, start saving small amounts; begin lending to each other from the pool at a 20% interest rate. The success has been phenomenal in twelve months doing small business. Later 10 such groups form a cluster to look at the needs of their areas, with representatives meeting once a month. We are invited to help at this level because of our expertise in the areas clean water, preschools, adult education and conservation farming. We are delighted to be involved with such a potentially powerful force for the future of Malawi. They make proposals to us and after long discussions we agree strategies on all three areas. We meet and thrash out a strategy for large local inputs so that they have ownership.

Adult education is very new in Malawi and we have seen its success in the groups we work with. We have a broad course covering woman’s empowerment, nutrition, health, literacy, numeracy. To this end we are working with the DEM’s (District Education Managers) to develop a programme, as they have just taken over this portfolio from Social Welfare. While we are working with women we also work with lead farmers to develop and mainstream a approach to conservation agriculture. At the moment, Benidicto and Dave are just about to head off to Ndola in Zambia at the invitation of our partners, Lifeline in Zambia, to study their very successful methods. Alfred and Robert will follow with a view to teaching and spreading the Gospel to about 150 villages we have planned for next year. Support for this approach is coming from the Danish and Australian Governments.

As we say to all our volunteers: Malawian people need their dignity restored, they certainly need a little help but they don’t need the drive by type help that has failed here for forty years. In our new areas, we, as far as is possible avoid districts that have become dependant on free external inputs, and go into the bush, looking for those who have no idea about begging.

Like all projects in Malawi, this will not be easy, but these women’s groups have made a great start just 12 months, and when we support them, on what they need, it will be upwards and onwards. We are working with one cluster so far, 20 women, where about 2500 villagers will be impacted. The area has 34 pumps, (all installed by reputable organisations) but only one worked until we recently replaced three non functioning pumps. The community have dug two new wells as part of their action plan for water.

When we have solved their major problem, that of clean water, a first prayer of every rural woman, they present us with other needs and challenges, like irrigation, seeds, fertilizer, food security and education. So if we are asked what we do now, we say that we do our best to meet needs. We try to Inspire, Educate and Challenge, working with communities who have already made a start themselves, but most of all we don’t do handouts.

Biggest news of this trip is a new Memorandum of Understanding with our most recent partner Lifeline in Zambia. Chris, one of the leading lights in LIZ, has already supervised the installation of a large number of pumps in Katete, Zambia, last year. He appreciated the simplicity and repairability of the pump, its ease of installation, its longevity and low cost. After last week’s meeting we are planning 1000 new pumps in Ndola. Initially we will make the pumps in Mzuzu and then look at a new factory in Zambia. Zambia has a different water need from Malawi, wells are up to 20 metres deep and very large numbers using each. If you like numbers, the next four years should see up to half a million Zambians accessing clean, safe drinking water from one of our pumps. What a frightening thought?

The Birthing Centre has now developed a grander future with the news that the Ministry has approved staffing for a Health Clinic there as well. Lilian and the traditional Authority made the case for a resident nurse and assistant, and got the go ahead.

The community have come to us to assist with cement and the roof, while they will supply the site for the house needed and the extension for the clinic. They will also contribute, bricks, sand, timber and all the labour. They will then take over management of the facility with Lilian, the birth attendant playing a leading role. By now, she has a new metal roof on her house, to keep the rain out!!

Very Latest: We had to buy a new (well, second hand) jeep. The Army tank is just about at an end and guzzling scarce fuel.

New Jeep to replace the old Army guzzler which is on the way out

A wee final note, Harisen’s mum was very ill. They drove to Zomba, (10 hours) to collect her. Charity has been taking good care of her for a week. Now she’s back walking and feeling better. So much so that she’s getting her hair done today.

The Africa Power and Politics Programme is a consortium research programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and Irish Aid for the benefit of developing countries. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of DFID, Irish Aid or the Programme as a whole.

The link is: http://www.institutions-africa.org/filestream/20111110-appp-background-paper-04-malawi-s-political-settlement-in-crisis-2011-by-diana-cammack-nov-2011

Preamble;
This paper explains the origins of Malawi’s mid-2011 political-economic crisis and subsequent events. While it traces some themes back to before the democratic transition of 1994, it highlights the actions that led up to the July 20-21 mass demonstrations which resulted in the death of 20 people; that contributed to the current national economic downturn; and that have fuelled on-going civil rights abuses, keeping national politics on the boil. It also looks towards to the 2014 elections.
It focuses on President Bingu wa Mutharika’s leadership style, recent economic developments and their socio-political impact, the various political settlements fashioned by the elite, some long-term political economy trends, and several economic and political constraints affecting stability. The ‘20 demands’ presented by civil society activists to President Mutharika in mid-July are explained, and the subsequent responses of government, outsiders and civil society are laid out. The paper concludes with a discussion of the political logics which undermine the possibility of ‘developmental patrimonialism’ in Malawi and portend unfair and violent elections in 2014. If the deteriorating situation is not turned around it may lead to Malawi becoming a failed state.

5 Conclusion
Thus far and in spite of the strengthening middle class, the nature of Malawi’s political parties has not changed. Those five or so parties now active are still centred on personalities rather than issues, and are sometimes staffed at senior level by individuals with documented histories of corruption and worse. Some of them are on record as having experience of orchestrating electoral violence and cheating. Thus far middle class and peri-urbanites’ frustration seems only to have fuelled civil society activism. The violence unleashed in July 2011 portends further unrest during the run-up to the 2014 election. Between now and 2014 the citizenry is likely to become increasingly angry about fuel and power shortages, which government has not been able to resolve,82 and the on-going use of state resources for prestige projects and politicking. In addition to the deteriorating economic situation, the political climate – where only very slow progress is being made on the twenty demands, where attacks on civil society activists are increasing, and where government and its security forces offer little expectation of either reform or protection – can easily result in Malawi becoming a truly fragile state.83
Aspects of the underlying, long-term political economy offer little hope either: from 1994 multiparty elections have incentivised politicians’ misuse of state resources to gain and retain power. At the same time democracy has been slow in creating the institutions needed to rein in such abuses. Thus, clientelism, corruption with impunity, and non-meritorious hiring and advancement in the civil service, are still successful avenues for attaining wealth and power.
Tackling Malawi’s deeply-rooted economic constraints requires a well-implemented, long-term vision. But two-term presidencies, introduced at the transition, in an environment where political parties are centred around big men and not issues, make it difficult for a development vision and programme to emerge in the first place, and make it harder to keep and implement a programme consistently across regimes. Furthermore, fiscal and programmatic discipline is still considered dispensable given the right motivation – such as winning elections or placating politicians. The institutions that would ensure steadfastness of policy, compliance, and predictability are therefore undermined by powerful people’s need to be flexible and unaccountable. The last few years have also shown that a more disciplined environment – which is required for economic growth – can, under the wrong leader, transmogrify into authoritarian tendencies.

While Mutharika’s autocratic leanings have been obvious since his first term, when he ignored the law and court rulings and began to centralise power, his economic successes then dazzled donors and voters. APPP researchers were also hopeful that some trends noted in 2009 – sound economic policies, more discipline and compliance within the civil service, reduced tolerance of corruption and more control over the abuse of government resources – would guide and spur long-term growth. We hoped to see him contain the forces that undermine developmental patrimonialism, but we have been disappointed.
Succession politics in a neopatrimonial environment has undone Bingu wa Mutharika’s good work. The desire to see Peter Mutharika and the DPP get into power in 2014
References has created a need for large (and expensive) cabinets and perks for ministers, corrupt deals that pad the pockets of clients, nepotistic civil service appointments, politicisation of public policy-making and stalled decentralisation. Old devices that are back in fashion include forms of ethnic politics that fuel national divisions. Where in 2009 voters supported Mutharika because he delivered development, in 2014 they will remember the nation’s ubiquitous shortages and his autocratic legislation and decrees, which are too much like President Banda’s for Malawians to forget. Who succeeds him in 2014 will depend less on development outcomes than on the strength of the opposition and the fairness of the electoral process. That the situation has already turned violent does not auger well for free and fair elections.
The full report is long but I have added the link