Chiefs and Everyday Governance: Parallel State Organisations in Malawi

Abstract

The combination of direct and indirect rule in Africa during late colonialism created a dual state where, broadly speaking, rural areas were under indirect rule through chiefs while urban areas were subject to direct rule. This article explores the developments that in Malawi have led to a state in which most individuals are exposed to both forms of rule simultaneously. Nowadays, people in most areas experience two parallel state organisations, and individuals are simultaneously citizens of the state and subjects under a state-enforced chieftaincy system. Recently indirect rule has also experienced institutional expansion: the chiefly hierarchy, which previously reached only to district level, now extends all the way to the president, making the choice between the two parallel organisations relevant at higher levels of the state hierarchy. For those able to straddle the two forms of rule, this means a wider scope of opportunities for interacting with the state. Yet, for others it means a dissonance between the rhetoric of civil, rights-based governance and the practice of chiefly rule. For state agencies, it makes available more options for effective governance, and the president in particular can choose between two separate institutional hierarchies in the execution of state power. For academic studies, the case of Malawi demonstrates that research on state building and governance should not equate bureaucratic capacity with state capacity. The chieftaincy, standing outside the bureaucracy, constitutes a key component of state power and everyday governance, and it is difficult to imagine it being replaced by any part of the formal government in the foreseeable future.

Notes

¹ M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1996).

² ‘Chiefs’ in this article refers to all levels of the hierarchy, including local levels, for example, headmen/women, often termed differently in official as well as local languages.

³ F. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1922).

⁴ Lord Hailey, Native Administration in the British African Territories, Vol. IV (London, HM Stationery Office, 1951).

⁵ Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, pp. 289–90.

⁶ Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, p. 21.

⁷ See, for example, Lugard, Dual Mandate, p. 207.

⁸ Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, Chapter 7.

⁹ Or its equivalents, like District Officer or Cercle Commander.

¹⁰ See, for instance, Hailey, Native Administration, pp. 58–60.

¹¹ Lugard, The Dual Mandate, in particular Chapter X.

¹² These include observations during several work assignments since 2003 involving close interaction with municipal and district assemblies and a substantial number of chiefs and village groups in about half of the districts in Malawi.

¹³ See, for instance, F. Bayart, The State in Africa (London, Longman, 1993).

¹⁴ H. Duff, Nyasaland under the Foreign Office (London, George Bell and Sons, 2001), Chapter X.

¹⁵ J. Mitchell, ‘The Political Organization of the Yao of Southern Nyasaland’, African Studies, 8, 3 (1949), pp. 141–59.

¹⁶ C. Baker, ‘Tax Collection in Malawi: An Administrative History, 1891–1972’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 8, 1 (1975), pp. 40–62.

¹⁷ Annual Report for 1912–13, quoted in Hailey, Native Administration, Vol. II, p. 25.

¹⁸ J. Mitchell, The Yao Village (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1956), p. 47.

¹⁹ Hailey, Native Administration, Volume II, pp. 26–7.

²⁰ T. Woods, ‘Capitaos and Chiefs: Oral Tradition and Colonial Society in Malawi’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23, 2 (1990), pp. 259–68.

²¹ Hailey, Native Administration, Volume II, pp. 27, 51, 67.

²² Hailey, Native Administration, Volume II, p. 27.

²³ Mitchell, The Yao Village, pp. 48–9.

²⁴ M. Chanock, ‘Ambiguities in the Malawian Political Tradition’, African Affairs, 74, 296 (1975), pp. 326–46.

²⁵ Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, p. 110.

²⁶ K. Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985) demonstrates the limited power of the colonial government vis-à-vis local leaders in the context of religious revivals as vehicles of political opposition.

²⁷ J. Power, Political Culture and Nationalism in Malawi: Building Kwacha (Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2010), pp. 62–4.

²⁸ R. Rotberg, The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: the Making of Malawi and Zambia 1873–1964 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 116–24.

²⁹ J. Power, ‘“Individualism is the Antithesis of Indirect Rule”, Cooperative Development and Indirect Rule in Colonial Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 18, 2 (1992), pp. 317–47.

³⁰ Rotberg, Rise of Nationalism, p. 122.

³¹ A. Chiweza, ‘Participation: Reality or Rhetoric in Rural Communities of Malawi?’, Tanzanet Journal, 5, 1 (2005), pp. 1–8.

³² A. Chiweza, ‘The Ambivalent Role of Chiefs: Rural Decentralization Initiatives in Malawi’, in L. Buur and H. Kyed (eds), State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa. A New Dawn for Traditional Authorities? (New York, Macmillan, 2007), p. 59.

³³ O. Kalinga, ‘The Production of History in Malawi in the 1960s: The Legacy of Sir Harry Johnston, the Influence of the Society of Malawi and the Role of Dr Kamuzu Banda and His Malawi Congress Party’, African Affairs, 97 (1998), pp. 523–49; P.G. Forster, ‘Culture, Nationalism and the Invention of Tradition in Malawi’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 32, 3 (1994), pp. 477–97.

³⁴ See, for example, J. Kaunda, ‘State Centralization and the Decline of Local Government in Malawi’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 65 (1999), pp. 579–95.

³⁵ Malawi Government, Chiefs Act, 1967.

³⁶ I employ the titles most commonly used, rather than the terms used by the Act.

³⁷ P. Short, Banda (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 272.

³⁸ Kaunda, ‘State Centralization’.

³⁹ Chiweza, ‘Participation: Reality or Rhetoric?’.

⁴⁰ D. Kaspin, ‘The Politics of Ethnicity in Malawi's Democratic Transition’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 33, 4 (1995), pp. 595–620.

⁴¹ Reported by informants to my fieldwork old enough to remember, supported by anecdotes still flourishing.

⁴² S. Cross and M. Kutengule, ‘Decentralisation and Rural Livelihoods in Malawi’, in F. Allis and H. Freeman (eds), Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction Policies (London, Routledge, 2005).

⁴³ P. Englebert, ‘Patterns and Theories of Traditional Resurgence in Tropical Africa’, Mondes en Développement, 30, 118 (2002), pp. 51–64, in Buur and Kyed (eds), State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa.

⁴⁴ Chiweza, ‘Ambivalent Role of Chiefs’.

⁴⁵ E. Kanyongolo, Malawi Justice Sector and Rule of Law: A Review by AfriMAP and Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Johannesburg, Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, 2006).

⁴⁶ Chiweza, ‘Ambivalent Role of Chiefs’; this is supported by my observations during fieldwork.

⁴⁷ Female chiefs are common. According to the National Statistics Office (Zomba), Welfare Monitoring Survey 2008, 12 per cent of households are located in villages that have female chiefs.

⁴⁸ Female chiefs are common. According to the National Statistics Office (Zomba), Welfare Monitoring Survey 2008, 12 per cent of households are located in villages that have female chiefs

⁴⁹ G. Anders, ‘Like Chameleons: Civil Servants and Corruption in Malawi’, in G. Blundo and P. Le Meur (eds), The Governance of Daily Life in Africa. Ethnographic Explorations of Public and Collective Services (Leiden, Brill, 2009), pp. 119–41.

⁵⁰ Lord Hailey, Native Administration, II, p. 61.

⁵¹ D. Cammack, E. Kanyongolo and T. O'Neil, ‘Town Chiefs in Malawi’, Africa Power and Politics Programme, Working Paper no. 3 (2009), available at www.institutions-africa.org/page/publications.

⁵² See, for instance, Duff, ‘Nyasaland under Foreign Office’, p. 193.

⁵³ During the period between 1994 and 2010, only one local election has been held. This took place in 2000, with little local relevance. Another local election is planned for 2011, although there is some uncertainty about its implementation.

⁵⁴ G. Anders, ‘Civil Servants in Malawi. Cultural Dualism, Moonlighting and Corruption in the Shadow of Good Governance’ (Ph.D. thesis, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, 2005).

⁵⁵ T. Mkandawire, Targeting and Universalism in Poverty Reduction (Programme Paper no. 23, Social Policy and Development, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 2005).

⁵⁶ See, for instance, B. Oomen, ‘“We Must Now Go Back to Our History”: Retraditionalisation in a Northern Province Chieftaincy’, African Studies, 59, 1 (2000); Englebert, ‘Patterns and Theories’.

⁵⁷ This is, for example, implicit already in Lord Hailey's Native Administration from 1951.

⁵⁸ R. Chirambo, ‘Democracy as a Limiting Factor for Politicised Cultural Populism in Malawi’, Africa Spectrum, 44, 2 (2009), pp. 77–94.

⁵⁹ H. Englund, Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006).

⁶⁰ A. Swidler and S. Watkins, ‘“Teach a Man to Fish”: The Sustainability Doctrine and Its Social Consequences’, World Development, 37, 7 (July 2009), pp. 1,182–96.

⁶¹ My knowledge of the case builds on the reports of the parents of some of those children. The accused woman was living in a nearby village.

⁶² The Witchcraft Act of 1911 does not recognise witchcraft as ‘real’, so the formal courts are not seen as suitable forums for such cases.

⁶³ The survey was carried out by group interviews with representatives of the borehole committees (in most cases with the chief present) for all boreholes – in total six – found along a more or less randomly selected stretch of a rural road near Zomba. In all cases the boreholes had been defunct for periods, sometimes over months, during recent years. Other cases brought up by informants indicate a similar diversity in strategies elsewhere.

⁶⁴ See ‘How Costly is Traditional Justice?’, Malawi News, 17–23 October 2009.

⁶⁵ National Statistics Office, Population and Housing Census (Zomba, 2008).

⁶⁶ L. Vail and L. White, ‘Tribalism in the Political History of Malawi’, in L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989), p. 169.

⁶⁷ E. Alpers, ‘Trade, State and Society among the Yao in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of African History, 10, 3 (1969), pp. 405–20.

⁶⁸ ‘Mutharika Elevates Chikowi to Paramount Chief’, Nyasa Times, 15 February 2009. See www.nyasatimes.com

⁶⁹ M. Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in G. Burchell, G. Colin and P. Miller, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991).