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069 The Implementation of Beneficial Return to Work Practices in Victorian Organizations Policy and Governance considerations
Un Pan 039653
Political Science 102
The Governance of the IMF in a Global Economy
Kaya Natin Selection Criteria and Scorecard
Experimenting With Clinical Legal Education to Address the Discon
Principles for Good Governance
MV New
Guido Bertucci
tbui-growthnarrative-final
Politicization of Professionals and its Impact on Governance
WBI_GovInd
Andres Valle Aldo 2008 Jb f
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Aid and Trade Legacy of Colonialism
Participatory Governance in Pune & Berlin
In the shadow of good governance:
An ethnography of civil service
reform in Africa
Afrika-Studiecentrum Series
Gerhard Anders
Glossary and abbreviations ix
Map of Malawi x
1 INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING GOOD GOVERNANCE 1
Civil servants as implementers and target population 1
The dysfunctional African state 3
Good governance as technology 5
Field sites 8
Studying up, follow the policy 9
Basic information about the civil service 11
2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 15
Bandas rule and the New Malawi 16
The results of two decades of structural adjustment 19
The civil service from localisation to good governance 24
3 CONSTRUCTING COUNTRY OWNERSHIP 28
The emergence of a concept 30
Conditionality and country ownership 34
The normativity of numbers 40
The discovery of the C word 42
Conclusions 47
4 THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS 49
Deconstructing policy implementation 49
Retrenchment of employees made redundant 51
The introduction of new housing allowances 55
Increasing fragmentation of the civil service 60
5 ERODING SALARIES AND DOING BUSINESS 70
The African entrepreneurial spirit 70
The meaning of having a job in the civil service 73
How to make ends meet 83
Winners and losers of economic liberalisation 89
6 DISTANCE SAVES ME 99
Kubwerera kumudzi 101
Education and social stratification 110
The importance of associations 111
The nature of kinship duties 115
Conclusions 120
7 THE DEMOCRATISATION OF APPROPRIATION 122
Bad politics 124
The office mores a parallel social and moral order 130
A primoridial public sphereor a patchwork of moralities? 135
8 CONCLUSIONS: THE STATE IN SOCIETY 141
The paradoxical policies of the World Bank and the IMF 142
A note on theorising the postcolonial state 148
References 151
This book is based on my doctoral thesis Civil servants in Malawi: Cultural
dualism, moonlighting and corruption in the shadow of good governance,
which was defended on 14 April 2005 at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Chapter 3 appeared in a different form as The normativity of numbers: World
Bank and IMF conditionality, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology
Review 31(2) (November 2008): 187-202, copyright American Anthropological
Association, 2008. Substantial parts of Chapter 3 also appeared as Good
governance as technology: Towards an ethnography of the Bretton Woods in-
stitutions, in The aid effect: Giving and governing in international develop-
ment, eds, David Mosse and David Lewis (London: Pluto Press, 2005). Parts of
Chapter 4 appeared in Redimensionner la fonction publique au Malawi:
Prceptes des organisations internationals et ralits administratives, Critique
Internationale 35: 85-99, copyright Presses de Sciences Po, 2007. Sections of
Chapter 7 appeared in Like chameleons: Civil servants and corruption in
Malawi, in The governance of daily life in Africa, eds, Giorgio Blundo and
Pierre-Yves Lemeur (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
The material presented is mainly based on fieldwork carried out in Lilongwe
and Zomba from November 1999 to November 2000 and February to March
2002. A brief follow-up visit to Lilongwe in November 2007 was used to
collect new material for Chapter 7. Except for the visit in 2007, this research
was funded by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical
Research (NWO/WOTRO) (grant number W 52-841) and Erasmus University
Rotterdam.
I am also grateful to Director Stanley Khaila and Senior Registrar Felix
Msamba at the Centre for Social Research in Zomba for granting me the status
of affiliated researcher. Further, I would like to thank Renate Kirsch from the
German Agency for Technical Cooperation GTZ for her help during the prepa-
ration and the initial phase of my research. I am particularly grateful to Sandra
Stohl, of the German Embassy in Lilongwe, for her support when I was charged
with an act likely to cause industrial unrest after my arrest at a peaceful
demonstration calling for debt relief, which was organised by the Malawi
Congress of Trade Unions (MCTU) on 15 May 2000. After what was probably
the shortest trial in Malawis history, I was acquitted by the magistrates court
in Lilongwe on 19 May 2000.
Milton Kutengule was extremely helpful in refining my research questions
during an intensive week in Norwich before my trip to Malawi. I also want to
thank his colleagues Chris Paine and Cliff Chiunda at the National Economic
Council in Lilongwe. The local World Bank office and the Department of
Human Resource Management and Development kindly allowed me to use their
libraries. I am also grateful to Mercy Kanyuka at the National Statistics Office
and Fidelis Edge Kanyongolo at Chancellor College. Special thanks are due to
Mrs. Kholowa for the patience she displayed during our Chichewa lessons.
In Lilongwe, I owe thanks to Dieter and Lidet Horneber for their generous
support. Among all the Malawians who helped me during my research, I am
most indebted to Orison and Jean Chaponda. I could always count on their
hospitality, support, critical comments, and very entertaining company. I am
also grateful to Akwere, who acted as my good-humoured teacher during my
initiation in the secret science of nyau at the foot of ngala ya pakamwa, his son,
the young chief Chipaka, and chief Liwonde
The participants of the International Conference on Historical and Social
Science Research in Malawi, held at Chancellor College in Zomba from 26 to
29 June 2000 were so kind to provide insightful comments on my preliminary
research findings. Harri Englunds comments on my contribution to the confer-
ence volume (Anders 2002) were much appreciated and guided my further re-
In the Netherlands I benefited from participating in the activities of the
CERES Research School for Resource Studies for Development and the Afri-
canist Ph.D. seminar organised by Peter Geschiere and Jan Jansen. My thesis
supervisors Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Ellen Hey were always prepared
to discuss my work, and provided invaluable support and guidance throughout.
I am also grateful to my thesis committee members, Joyeeta Gupta, Nick Huls,
Peter Pels, Wim van Binsbergen and Rijk van Dijk for their comments and
questions. In Zurich, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Institute of
Social and Cultural Anthropology and especially Shalini Randeria for their help
when I was revising the manuscript. Celine Cullum proofread the entire manu-
script. Any remaining mistakes and inaccuracies are, of course, my responsibili-
Glossary and abbreviations
amalume maternal uncle (Chichewa)
ACB Anti-Corruption Bureau
ADMARC Agricultural Development Marketing Association
bwana master, boss (Chichewa)
CSCU Civil Service Census Unit
CSTU Civil Servants Trade Union
ESAF Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility
FRDP Fiscal Restructuring and Deregulation Programme
HIPC Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative
IC Industrial Class
ID Institutional Development Programme
IDA Institutional Development Association
katangale corruption (Chichewa)
mbumba local sorority group consisting of a group of sisters,
their children, and their maternal uncle (Chichewa,
Chiyao)
MCP Malawi Congress Party
MHC Malawi Housing Corporation
MPSR Malawi Public Service Regulations
MTEF Medium Term Expenditure Framework
mudzi village (Chichewa)
MYP Malawi Young Pioneers
NFRA National Food Reserve Agency
NSO National Statistics Office
PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
PSCMA Public Sector Change Management Agency
SAF Structural Adjustment Facility
SAL Structural Adjustment Loan
SC Subordinate Class
SGR Strategic Grain Reserve
UDF United Democratic Front
ufiti witchcraft (Chichewa)
Map of Malawi
Unpacking good governance
Civil servants as implementers and target population
According to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) there
is little doubt that African bureaucracies are inefficient and unsustainable.
Corruption and mismanagement of public resources are identified as the main
impediments to economic recovery. Good governance is being promoted by the
Bretton Woods institutions
as the instrument for removing these obstacles to
economic growth. The term good governance denotes a set of policy meas-
ures intended to transform dysfunctional public institutions into efficient and
transparent service providers that will be accountable to the public and subject
to the rule of law. It is hailed as the solution to the impasse in development.
Good governance manifests a shift in development discourse. It differs from
classic development interventions based on the modernization paradigm, since
it is neither about building roads nor transmitting superior scientific knowledge
for the purposes of development; for example, in order to increase agricul-
tural production. Good governance seems to be about the transmission of a
The World Bank and the IMF are also referred to as Bretton Woods institutions.
Both organisations were established by the Bretton Woods agreements, signed by
delegates from 44 Allied governments in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July
1944. Another term used in this book is International Financial Institutions (IFIs).
2 CHAPTER 1
different type of knowledge. Its objective is the establishment of systems of
management and self-control to improve efficiency and transparency.
Since the early 1990s, good governance has become the dominant shibboleth
of development discourse; without uttering this password it has become impos-
sible for governments to receive financial support. Except for countries with
substantial oil reserves, such as Nigeria and Angola, there is virtually no Afri-
can country left where the principles of good governance do not guide public
policy. To some observers it appears as if the World Bank and the IMF have
succeeded in establishing an all-encompassing system of surveillance and
control, which has replaced the ideological antagonism of the Cold War that
cunning Third World leaders were so adept at exploiting (cf. Abrahamsen
Malawi is no exception in this regard. Since the introduction of multi-party
democracy in 1994, the government has implemented a whole range of World
Bank and IMF-supported programmes to improve governance. A central ele-
ment of this reform process is the reorganisation of the civil service with the
objective of improving efficiency and transparency, deemed essential precondi-
tions for better governance. Civil servants
have been in a peculiar position with
regard to the implementation of the civil service reform and related measures,
as they are both executors and addressees of the reform process, its agents and
its subjects. Their response has ranged from various forms of resistance and to
the occasional pursuit of illicit extra-office income-earning activities activities
that lend little support to the notion that World Bank and IMF programmes are
efficacious. What appeared on paper to be an all-encompassing system of
control provoked unanticipated responses by civil servants who had become
accustomed to enjoying privileged and safe positions under Bandas autocratic
rule between 1964 and 1994.
The reorganisation of the civil service at the turn to the 21
century cast a
shadow over civil servants lives. They struggled for security at a time charac-
terised by an overwhelming sense of crisis and uncertainty. In a bid to manipu-
late the reforms to their advantage, civil servants responded in unforeseen and
often illegal ways to protect their positions of relative privilege. Apart from this
reorganisation, their everyday experiences were already characterised by ex-
treme uncertainty. HIV/AIDS, malaria, and the pauperisation of rural kin all
contributed to their sense of insecurity. Of course, there was no uniform res-
ponse to the reforms. The experiences of a high-ranking official in Lilongwes
ministerial headquarters were obviously different from those of a watchman
I.e. government employees working in the civil service and the army, including
temporary workers. Employees of state-owned companies are excluded, as different
terms and conditions apply for them.
with five children, who was the only salaried employee in his family. In
recognition of the diversity of experiences the following chapters describe a
wide range of civil servants responses to civil service reform, democratisation
and the economic crisis including several case studies of individual civil
servants.
To understand civil servants unanticipated reactions to the civil service
reform I followed two lines of inquiry: a vertical and a horizontal one. The
vertical one follows the policy from the individual civil servant up to the
ministerial headquarters that issues circulars, and from there to loan documents
signed by representatives of the Bretton Woods institutions and cabinet minis-
ters. The horizontal line of inquiry casts a wide net over the everyday life of
civil servants, which encompasses both, the public and the private sphere. In-
stead of presenting an account limited to either of these, I present an analysis of
the ways people connected these spheres and crossed the boundaries between
This ethnographic study of the manifold ways Malawian civil servants
negotiated civil service reform and social change constitutes a contribution to
the anthropology of the postcolonial state in Africa. There are very few studies
of what African bureaucrats actually do, both at their workplace and in their
private lives, which arguably accounts for widespread misconceptions about
corrupt African civil servants and dysfunctional states. This book addresses
this gap. It is based on a fine-grained ethnography of the everyday life of civil
servants in Malawi and how they dealt with the implementation of the good
governance agenda promoted by the World Bank and the IMF.
The dysfunctional African state
The good governance agenda and civil service reform in Africa, in particular,
are based on the idea of the dysfunctionality of African states, stemming from
an imagined disconnect between transplanted modern state institutions and
traditional African society. The latter is assumed to subvert the proper func-
tioning of the bureaucracy. The idea of a divide between state and society is, of
course, not new and has been at the heart of modernization theory, which views
the state as an engine of social change. Ironically, this dichotomy also informs
the IFIs good governance agenda although, according to the neo-liberal dogma,
the dysfunctional state constitutes a serious impediment to development. In line
with the Washington consensus, good governance heralded the end of the inter-
ventionist state and promoted its reduction and transformation into the protector
of private property rights, thus enabling society to engender economic growth.
These ideas reflect a long-standing debate among Africanist scholars about
the nature of the postcolonial state in Africa. The notion of dysfunctionality is
often employed to describe the relation between the state bureaucracy and
society (Bayart 1993; Bratton & van de Walle 1994; Chabal & Daloz 1999;
Cohen 1980; Diamond 1987; Mbembe 1992, 2001; Mdard 1982, 2002). Early
studies of the African state usually adopted a Weberian approach. Cohen
(1980), Diamond (1987), Ekeh (1975) and Mdard (1982), for example, meas-
ure the bureaucracies in Africa against criteria derived from Webers ideal type
of rational-legal power, and find that African state institutions are dysfunc-
tional and corrupted by patronage and tribalism in other words primor-
dial ties of affection, although the term itself has become unfashionable lately.
Mdard adopted Eisenstadts (1973) concept of neo-patrimonialism to describe
the hybrid nature of the African state. In the neo-patrimonial state, the bureau-
cratic logic was artificially applied to a patrimonial logic based on primordial
sentiments, according to Mdard (1982: 179). Although the concept of neo-
patrimonialism has its merits, it is also flawed, since it considers social relation-
ships only in terms of their patrimonial character and their deviation from an
ideal model of rational-bureaucratic order, usually equated with the advanced
Western democracies. From the neo-patrimonal perspective, African society is
responsible for the states pathological nature, with its peculiar mixture of sup-
posedly modern and traditional elements according to Webers typology (cf.
Weber 1990).
The studies by Chabal & Daloz (1999), Bayart (1993) and Mbembe (1992,
2001) challenge the notion of a transplanted state that is alien to African soci-
ety. According to these authors, the postcolonial state in Africa is a complex
hybrid in which ethnic and clientelistic networks have appropriated the colonial
state apparatus and have transformed it into an instrument that serves parti-
cularistic interests. Due to their focus on the rational-legal model of the state,
however, these studies usually do not differentiate between the so-called
clientelistic relations that usurp the state institutions and thus, unwittingly,
reproduce the dualism between the Weberian legal-rational order and African
society, lumping all types of social relationships, from kinship to various volun-
tary forms of association, under the latter.
Recent anthropological studies of the postcolonial state (Blom Hansen &
Stepputat 2001; Das & Poole 2004; Ferguson & Gupta 2002; Gupta 1995;
Nuijten 2003) have recognised the danger of reproducing state thought, the
state categories of thought produced and guaranteed by the state, according to
Bourdieu (1994: 1). Instead they investigate popular imaginaries, ideas and
theories, of the state. This goes a long way in transcending the dichotomy
between state and society, which is at the heart of most social-scientific
approaches to the state. However, it also presents a distorted image of the state.
First, as a consequence of the focus on popular representations of the state only
little attention is paid to the practices of those representing the state, the tens of
thousands civil servants who crowd government offices, neighbourhoods, mar-
kets and churches. Second, studies in this vein concentrate on the margins of
the state and attempts of the population to make it legible (Das & Poole
2004) but pay much less attention to the denizens populating the centre of the
state, so to speak, and their unforeseen responses to policy implementation.
By contrast, the present study builds on a careful ethnographic account of
civil servants individual trajectories, connecting the relationships with col-
leagues, neighbours, friends, relatives and kin in the home village, and often
revealing considerable differences in the moral principles governing the con-
duct in these spheres, a phenomenon I refer to as a patchwork of moralities.
This book thus shows the manifold ways in which state and society, public
office and private life, are actually intertwined (cf. Herzfeld 1992; Blundo &
Olivier de Sardan 2006; Gupta 1995; von Benda-Beckmann & von Benda-
Beckmann 1998).
Good governance as technology
As elsewhere in Africa, good governance, the fight against corruption, market
liberalization and democratic reforms in Malawi have to be considered in the
context of the countrys dependence on foreign aid and the far-reaching influ-
ence of mainly Western donor agencies, most notably the World Bank and the
IMF, on government policy. In Malawi, the governments policymaking has
been dominated by multilateral and bilateral donor agencies since the early
1990s. The objectives of the government that came to power after the end of
Bandas authoritarian regime and the multi-party elections in 1994 included the
reduction of poverty levels and addressing the economic crisis. It was, there-
fore, particularly responsive to the demands for reform made by the donor
community, spearheaded by the World Bank and the IMF. This, of course, was
a consequence of the countrys dependence on foreign aid. Government figures
for 2001 confirm, for instance, that 90 per cent of the development budget, the
financial resources for development projects, and about 30 per cent of the
current budget were paid by donor agencies. These estimates do not include the
regular balance-of-payment payments made by the IMF and national donor
agencies to compensate for overspending.
A burgeoning body of literature has formulated a scathing critique of the
Bretton Woods institutions and other Western donor agencies for protecting
their own economic and political interests under the cover of advancing econo-
mic and political liberalism. By drawing on postcolonial studies and Foucault,
these authors interpret development as an instrument of Western hegemony,
framing countries as underdeveloped and in need of development assistance
(Abrahamsen 2000; Escobar 1991, 1995; Ferguson 1994; Mitchell 2002). Fer-
guson even draws a parallel between development discourse and Foucaults
genealogy of the prison (1994: 20). From the critics perspective, good
governance is a discursive transformation that, while claiming to liberate the
poor, enables the West to continue its undisputed hegemony over the African
continent under the changed conditions of the new world order (Abrahamsen
2000: 44).
While these studies succeed in showing how categories such as underde-
veloped are actually social constructions that reify evolutionist and Orientalist
assumptions they fail to account for disjunctions and contradictions within
development discourse, on the one hand, and flawed programme design and
haphazard implementation, on the other (cf. Harrison 2003; Mosse 2005a). By
relying mainly on textual sources, its critics often present an image of develop-
ment discourse that unwittingly echoes the claims to efficiency made by devel-
opment agencies. My analysis avoids the determinism of these studies and fo-
cuses more on social practice and social relations, which produce and reproduce
policy ideas and concepts such as good governance. Policy and textual self-
representations can neither be isolated from the practices of consultants and
negotiators, as Mosse argues (2005a: 14-15), nor from the people charged with
the implementation of policy reforms. In line with other studies it examines in
detail how tools such as ownership, partnership, community participation
and conditionality are actually operationalised on the ground (Gould 2005;
Mosse 2005b; Murray Li 2007; Mosse & Lewis 2005).
In an attempt to understand how the good governance agenda is inserted into
the national polity by means of conditionality, this book traces the construc-
tion of country ownership through the loan documents signed between the
international financial institutions (IFIs)
and the government of Malawi. The
grey area of letters of intent, memoranda, mission statements, technical proto-
cols and terms of reference of development projects has not received the atten-
tion it deserves. The legal dimension has been conspicuously absent in studies
of development discourse, and only a handful of studies explicitly address its
significance with regard to development policies and projects (Moore 2002;
Randeria 2003; von Benda-Beckmann 1994; von Benda-Beckmann 2001).
This neglect of the legal dimension might be attributed to the materialistic
perspective of many studies in the fields of political science and anthropology
that mainly view the legal form in terms of superstructure. To consider the legal
dimension in these terms, however, would ignore the ways in which power
relations not only shape legal rules but are also, in turn, shaped by them. Legal
techniques focusing on notions of country ownership and conditionality are
The World Bank and the IMF are the two major international financial institutions
also known as Bretton Woods institutions.
crucial in expanding the influence of the IFIs and in ensuring the reorganisation
of Malawis state apparatus according to the principles of New Public Man-
agement and neo-liberal institutional economics. This entails an analysis of the
forms of knowledge used to unify ownership and conditionality by means of a
set of tools employed to promote good governance. Chapter 3 therefore fo-
cuses on mundane bureaucratic practices and the idiom of policy documents
that legitimise the neo-liberal political agenda of the Bretton Woods institu-
Drawing on an account of the implementation of civil service reform and
fine-grained ethnographic case studies, this book then shows that what on paper
initially appeared to be an all-encompassing and efficacious system of control
and surveillance, dissolved in the messy practice of policy implementation, pro-
voking unanticipated responses from civil servants who tried to co-opt or adapt
to the reorganisation of their workplace. In order to understand the responses of
civil servants, it is necessary to go beyond the sphere of the public office and to
include all aspects of their social lives.
From the perspective of individual civil servants, the civil service reform did
not constitute a grand and comprehensive plan but only one aspect of their daily
lives, experienced as mundane practices, such as getting ones pay-check,
securing a salary advance or leaving work early to take care of a private
business. Other issues not related to work were also very important to my
informants. Their everyday lives in Malawis urban and peri-urban areas were
fraught with tension. They experienced conflicts between their obligations
towards a wide circle of kinsfolk and their own middle-class dreams. The civil
servants privileged positions raised expectations among their kinsfolk who
expected to benefit from this. Yet, under the pressure of high inflation rates and
the economic crisis, many civil servants found it difficult to satisfy the needs of
their relatives in their home village and therefore preferred to keep a safe
distance, as they put it.
Recent studies of Africa have pointed out that the experience of crisis
constituted a dominant feature in the everyday lives of modern Africans during
the 1990s (Ferguson 1999; Mbembe & Roitman 1995). Indeed, the sense of
crisis was overwhelming during my fieldwork. If I had to sum up the everyday
experiences of most civil servants in Lilongwe and Zomba in the late 1990s and
the early 21
century, I would be compelled to choose the words uncertainty
and crisis. The civil servants I encountered in the offices in Lilongwe and
Zomba experienced an acute anxiety in the shadow of expenditure control
and job evaluation. This feeling transcended material insecurity and should be
understood in terms of existential uncertainty and anxiety. In their study of
Cameroon, Mbembe & Roitman note a lack of coincidence between the every-
day practice of life (facticity) and the corpus of significations or meanings
(ideality) available to explain what happens, to act efficaciously (1995: 325).
Like the Cameroonians observed by Mbembe & Roitman, the Malawian
civil servants I encountered during my field work were struggling to come to
terms with the crisis, and developed new ways of making do in de Certeaus
sense (1984). By invoking de Certeaus The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) I
would like to emphasise that civil servants mundane day-to-day activities, both
in and out their offices, do not constitute a residual category but should be
central to the social-scientific study of the state. Following de Certeau, this
book conceptualises their everyday lives in terms of improvised or errant tra-
jectories that remain heterogeneous to the systems they infiltrate and in which
they sketch out the guileful ruses of different interests and desires (de Certeau
1984: 34). While de Certeau developed his theory to account for the poetics of
the modern consumers subtle ways of resisting the rationalized, expansionist,
centralised, spectacular and clamorous production (1984: 31) of consumerist
capitalism I argue that his concept of making do contributes to a better and
de-exoticised understanding of the workings of the postcolonial state when
applied to civil servants trajectories and ruses.
This study focuses on civil servants in urban and peri-urban areas in the central
and southern regions. Lilongwe, the capital, and Zomba, were selected as field
sites for one obvious reason: both towns contain sizeable populations of civil
servants. Fieldwork was conducted between November 1999 and November
2000, and again in February and March 2002. In November 2007, I returned for
a follow-up visit. Except for Chapter 7, which deals with events until the end of
2007, this book presents ethnographic evidence collected between 1999 and
2002. In colonial times, Lilongwe was a small administrative post with a few
South Asian traders who had come as contract labourers. The town was de-
clared the new national capital in 1974 and the population grew considerably
after the establishment of the ministerial headquarters. In the late 20
century,
there were approximately 400,000 inhabitants. All ministries have their head-
quarters in Lilongwe, where a large proportion of the staff is concentrated.
According to my own estimates, roughly 20,000 civil servants lived in Lilong-
we during the late 1990s (GoM 1996a).
My research in Lilongwe was concen-
trated on Capital Hill and the township Biwi. In addition, I regularly visited and
It is important to note that the civil service census in 1995 only presented numbers
on civil servants in the districts of Lilongwe and Zomba. Hence, the estimates given
here for the towns are lower than the numbers in the census to account for civil
servants who live in the district outside town (GoM 1996a).
talked to primary and secondary school teachers in Nathenje and Likuni, two
peri-urban settlements to the east and west of Lilongwe.
Zomba was the colonial capital and the capital of Malawi until 1974. In
2000, it numbered about 70,000 inhabitants, making it one of the four major
urban areas in mainly rural Malawi. Zomba hosts Chancellor College, the
largest constituent college of the University of Malawi, the headquarters of
several government departments, and a large army base. Zomba town probably
numbered about 10,000 civil servants in the late 1990s (GoM 1996a). Research
in Zomba focused mainly on the National Statistics Office, Geological Surveys,
the General Hospital and the district administration. Most informants lived in
Mable Lines and the new township of Matawale, which was built with financial
assistance from the World Bank, about five kilometres east of Zomba. Others
lived in Sadzi, a township located on the road to Blantyre. I also worked with a
group of extension workers employed by the Ministry of Health in Domasi, a
peri-urban area about 15 kilometres east of Zomba.
The two cities were very different in character, reflecting Malawis past and
present. In Lilongwe, new buildings were under construction all over town in
2000 and 2002. Many of them were built around City Centre, the business part
of town, to house government departments and development agencies. In spite
of the precarious economic situation, belief in some kind of development and
progress seemed to be common and Lilongwe was the place where things
happen; it was more vibrant, with expensive hotels and nightclubs. Develop-
ment agencies and foreign diplomatic missions were based here. This was even
more conspicuous in 2007, after a number of roads had been improved and
numerous new office buildings had been built.
Zomba, by contrast, was a quiet town, breathing the air of decay and past
glory. Its physical appearance was dominated by its colonial heritage, with most
government offices in dilapidated buildings that used to house the colonial ad-
ministration. Many officers were housed in colonial houses, dating back to the
early 20
century, while very little construction activity could be observed in
town. The only exception was the Central Hospital, which was being rebuilt
with support from the German development agency GTZ. The main reason for
these differences was money, or rather the lack of it. Lilongwe had become the
entry point for development aid and the national centre, while Zomba was cut
off from direct access to development aid and was degraded to a provincial
centre in shoes too large to fit.
Studying up, follow the policy
During my fieldwork I often commuted between the tidy and air-conditioned
offices of the World Bank and development agencies, the crammed offices of
10 CHAPTER 1
ministerial headquarters where a fan was a highly valued commodity, district
administrations and hospitals where clients crowded every available space,
waiting for their grievances to be addressed and where long forgotten files filled
rusty cabinets, and primary schools in townships where a chair and a desk were
the exclusive privilege of the headmaster. I met senior officials in sharp suits,
shining shoes, playing with a cell phone and their car keys. But I also met
gardeners and watchmen who could not afford the bus fare and had to walk
barefoot every day from their grass-thatched houses in peri-urban areas to the
office to protect their only pair of shoes from dust and dirt.
Civil service reform affected all civil servants and ministries. I therefore had
informants in all salary grades and in various ministries, ranging from senior
officers in the Superscale (Superscale is the technical term for the highest salary
grades), professional officers, senior technical officers, technical officers,
nurses, primary and secondary school teachers, messengers, cleaners and watch-
men in the Subordinate Class (SC) and Industrial Class (IC) (the former com-
prising support staff; the latter labourers on temporary contracts). Most of my
informants worked for the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the
Army, the Veterinary Department, the District Administration, the National Sta-
tistics Office, Geological Surveys, the Ministry of Gender and the Ministry of
About half of my informants were women. Virtually all informants, except
for the very young, were married and had children. The typical female infor-
mant was usually married to a man who also worked in the civil service or had
other formal employment, often in a higher position than his wife. With regard
to the male informants, the picture was more mixed: sometimes the wife
worked for the government, although usually in a lower position, and some-
times the wife would be a housewife, by which people meant that she was
involved in subsistence farming and small-scale business to earn some cash of
her own and, if possible, contribute to the household income.
Although all people working in the public sector were affected by policy
reforms, such as retrenchment and privatisation, my study is limited to those
working in the civil service and the army, and excludes staff of state-owned
companies (so-called parastatals), such as the Malawi Post and Telecommuni-
cations (MPTC) and the Malawi Development Corporation (MDC) and the
university. The conditions of employment for the staff of these organisations
differed from those of the civil service and were more similar to the private
It is important to note that civil servants are not a homogeneous category. Civil
servants are defined by their employment in the civil service, it is merely an occu-
pational category differentiated by factors such as grade, department, age, gender,
function, education and training.
sector. Furthermore, these organisations were not targeted by the civil service
reform, although all of them were forced to implement austerity measures and
reorganise in preparation for privatisation.
In order to understand the process of policy implementation and the links
between these different sites, it was necessary to study up and investigate
processes whereby power and responsibility are exercised (Nader 1972: 284).
In her study of the influence of government and companies on children, Nader
speaks of taking a vertical slice by studying up, as opposed to horizontal
studies of marginalized groups and networks (1980). Thus, I moved up the hier-
archical ladder and talked to senior civil servants in the ministerial headquarters
and local World Bank staff in Lilongwe.
When studying up the researcher cannot rely exclusively on localised
methods to study a translocal phenomenon, such as the state (Gupta 1995) or
organisations such as the World Bank. To fully understand the process of policy
intervention it is necessary to draw on newspapers, policy papers, official
documents, government circulars and legislation as well as more conventional
ethnographic data (Gupta 1995; Nader 1972; Shore & Wright 1997). In her
study of womens rights activists from Fiji, Riles (2001) points out that docu-
ments are an integral element in the ethnography of international NGOs and
international organisations and should therefore be treated as ethnographic arte-
facts. By this she means that documents are constitutive elements of the expert
cultures studied by contemporary anthropology. My study combines the ethno-
graphy of civil servants everyday lives with that of the policy documents
prescribing the civil service reform to contribute to a better understanding of the
dynamics of policy implementation.
In a variation of Marcus conceptual vision of multi-sited fieldwork my
method could be described as follow the policy (1995: 105-113). I was
continuously moving up and down the ladder of the bureaucratic hierarchy, with
occasional forays into relevant localities such as the church or the home village.
This movement between different places led me to appreciate the heterogeneity
within the civil service and the complexity of implementing the civil service
reform. And, were it not for the often exhausting and difficult journeys between
these locations, I would have felt as if I was zapping from channel to channel,
like switching from Dynasty to a grim documentary.
Basic information about the civil service
In 2001, the government of Malawi had a total estimated expenditure of ap-
proximately US$ 421 million (MK 45,874 million). The total budget consisted
of statutory expenditures for public debts, pensions and gratuities, recurrent
expenditures voted by parliament, and capital or development expenditures. The
former roughly denotes the cost of running the government apparatus, whereas
the latter denotes projects implemented by the government. As a rule of thumb,
the former is mainly financed by the government, whereas the latter is financed
up to 90 per cent by donor agencies. In 2001, statutory expenditures were esti-
mated at roughly US$ 100 million (MK 10,729 million), voted (recurrent) ex-
penditures at US$ 197 million (MK 21,469 million) and capital or development
expenditures at about US$ 125 million (MK 13,676 million). The government
employed about 120,000 employees and served a total population of about 11
million people (ratio 1:100) (GoM 2002). In absolute numbers this is very little.
For example, in the same year the city council of Amsterdam had total expen-
ditures of about US$ 5000 million and employed about 14,000 employees,
serving a population of 700,000 (ratio 1:50 not counting regional and federal
civil servants and government employees). According to the Malawi civil
service census conducted in 1995, the civil service numbered 112,975 civil
servants (28,706 women and 84,269 men) (GoM 1996a).
By 2000, the total
number of civil servants had grown to approximately 120,000, mainly due to an
increase in primary school teachers. The largest ministries were the Ministry of
Education with nearly 60,000 civil servants, the Ministry of Health with 15,300
civil servants, the Ministry of Agriculture with 10,000 civil servants and the
Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and Environmental Affairs with 8,000 civil
servants (GoM 1999a: 67). In 2000, the army numbered around 10,000 and the
police force about 6,000.
Salaries were generally quite low. In 1999 and 2000, the time of my first
fieldwork, the most junior staff like security guards, gardeners and messengers
earned about MK 1000 (US$ 25) per month. Extension workers and primary
school teachers earned between US$ 30 and US$ 45 per month. Even officers
with higher qualifications, like a diploma or a bachelors degree, rarely earned
Formally, only government employees in established positions were civil servants,
as opposed to temporary staff and Industrial Class (IC) workers in non-established
positions. Established positions were centrally administered by the Public Service
Commission (PSC) and the Department for Human Resource Management whereas
non-established positions were administered by the respective ministries and depart-
ments. Army and police personnel were not formally regarded as civil servants.
However, police officers, temporary staff and IC workers were counted as civil
servants in the civil service census. Usually all employees of the civil service,
whether they held established or non-established posts, were considered to be civil
servants (cf. Malawi Public Service Regulations (MPSR), Public Service Act). One
of the measures of the civil service reform was to incorporate the IC into established
posts. Hence, when I speak of civil servants I usually mean all government em-
ployees holding established and non-established posts in the civil service, the police
and the army.
more than US$ 80 per month. Secondary school teachers with a Bachelors
degree, for example, had a monthly salary of US$ 50-60. The highest grades, in
the so-called Superscale, earned no more than US$ 250 per month. This is not
much considering that rents for houses in the better areas of Lilongwe and
Zomba were between US$ 500 and US$ 800 and on the rise. Even so-called
servants quarters, basic-single rooms in a backyard, cost about US$ 100 rent
per month in Lilongwe and in Zomba only slightly less. Because of the high
rents most civil servants were forced to live in outlying townships (in Lilongwe,
for example, Area 23 and Area 25) where rents were still affordable. Yet to
reach their work they had to use public transportation, the so-called mini-buses,
on which they easily spent US$ 20 per month. These numbers should suffice to
give a preliminary indication of the value of salaries. Chapter 5 addresses in
more detail the consequences of inflation on salaries and the way civil servants
dealt with the resulting uncertainty.
In October 2000, the terms of work and the remuneration for the higher
grades in the Superscale (S4/P4 and above, Deputy Secretary up to Principal
Secretary) were radically changed. Officers in those grades had the option of
retiring from the civil service and being employed on contract. The scheme was
supposed to improve the performance of officers in managerial positions and to
make their remuneration more attractive, so that they would be more likely to
remain in the civil service. It directly followed recommendations of the World
Bank (World Bank 1994b). The officers got three-year contracts that could be
terminated at any time, with one months notice, if the officers performance
was unsatisfactory. These contracts offered a much higher level of remuneration
than before. In 2000, an officer in the S2/P2 grade S2/P2 (Principal Secretary)
earned almost MK 200,000 per month (US$ 3000), including more than MK
150,000 in allowances that were not subject to income tax. By 2002, most
officers eligible for the performance-based contracts were on contract, although
there was fear of so-called political retrenchments. Under the old conditions,
Superscale officers could not be easily dismissed but their salaries were signifi-
cantly lower.
In addition to their salaries, civil servants also enjoyed various benefits,
including institutional housing and travel allowances. The value of these bene-
fits was substantial and could be many times higher than the salary. Especially
senior officers who regularly attended workshops and travelled outside Malawi
enjoyed allowances which by far exceeded their salaries. Senior civil servants
were also equipped with telephones, mobile phones and vehicles. Since January
2002, all civil servants have been receiving housing allowances exceeding their
salaries up to 100 per cent. The impact of the introduction of the new housing
allowances and the conflicts surrounding it are described in more detail in
Chapter 2 sketches the historical context of the civil service reform in Malawi,
including Bandas rule since independence and Malawis democratic transition
during the 1990s and the effects of Structural Adjustment and economic liber-
alisation. The third chapter deals with the planning phase of the civil service
reform. It presents a detailed analysis of a range of connected documents,
signed between 1994 and 2002 between the Bretton Woods institutions and the
government of Malawi, on the civil service reform and related policy measures
to improve governance. The fourth chapter describes the implementation pro-
cess of the civil service reform and shows how various actors in the deeply
fragmented civil service manipulated, frustrated and subverted the reform to
protect their own particularistic interests. It traces the implementation of the
civil service reform by studying up or by taking a vertical slice.
The subsequent chapters then present different horizontal slices. Chapter 5
presents various aspects of the everyday life of civil servants in Lilongwe and
Zomba and addresses central issues such as the importance of the salary, allow-
ances, business and farming. The sixth chapter deals with changing kinship ties
in the context of modernity and economic crisis. Chapter 7 is a post-script of
sorts, covering events until the end of 2007. It discusses the moral and
normative ambivalence associated with the corrupt behaviour of civil servants.
The discourse on corruption and the alleged increase of corruption is seen in the
context of the profound political and economic changes Malawi has been
experiencing since the early 1990s. Summing up the findings of the previous
chapters, the final chapter formulates a fundamental critique of the policies of
the Bretton Woods institutions and conventional theories of the African state.
The implementation of the civil service reform between 1994 and 2002 has to
be seen in its historical context. For a long time Malawi was perceived to be a
beacon of stability in an otherwise tumultuous region of Africa. Dr. Hastings
Kamuzu Banda
ruled the country almost single-handedly from the time it at-
tained independence from Britain in 1964 until 1993, when a referendum ended
the one-party rule of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). The end of Bandas
rule is closely connected to the countrys economic decline, which began in the
late 1970s. Three consecutive generations of Structural Adjustment Program-
mes did not succeed in restoring economic growth. On the contrary, economic
decline worsened in the late 1980s. Due to the economic crisis Bandas regime
disintegrated quite quickly during the early 1990s and in 1994 the first free
elections since 1961 were held. Banda and the MCP lost the elections and a new
government under Bakili Muluzi took office. However, democratisation did not
bring welfare. Since 1994, the political system has become highly fragmented
and the economic crisis has deepened.
The volatile political situation and economic difficulties Malawi experienced
after its transition to multi-party democracy stand in marked contrast to the
promising years following the countrys independence. When the British pro-
tectorate Nyasaland became independent, in July 1964, the British High Com-
missioner described Malawi as follows:
Politically the country was under the firm paternally despotic control of Dr. Banda.
Politics here had gained a certain monolithic appearance that suggested security and
In the following referred to as Kamuzu Banda or Banda.
permanence. There was no real opposition. The Malawi Congress Party seemed
popular and deeply rooted [] Stability, moderation, realism and firm leadership
seemed to be Malawis distinguishing characteristics. The [] Government of Dr.
Banda [] seemed to promise stability, anti-communism, realism and moderation in
foreign policy, and slow but sensible progress in its internal political development.
Would the British High Commissioner have visited Malawi thirty years later
he would not have recognised the countrys political landscape. The presidents
authority was continuously challenged and the political arena was fragmented
with politicians selling their votes to the highest bidder. The country was in the
grip of a severe economic crisis and food security had become precarious.
Things became even worse in 2002 when large parts of the country were af-
fected by a famine compared by many to the Great Nyasaland Famine of 1949.
Bandas rule and the New Malawi
Civil service reform in the late 1990s has to be seen against the background of
Malawis transition to multi-party democracy after 30 years under the firm,
paternally despotic control of Dr. Banda. In the 1980s, his iron grip on the
country loosened and in the early 1990s civil unrest and donor pressure
eventually led to free elections in 1994. Bandas party, the MCP, was defeated
by the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Alliance for Democracy
(AFORD) and a new government headed by Bakili Muluzi (UDF) took office.
Due to a growing disenchantment because of the lack of economic growth, the
electorates support for Muluzi soon waned but he and the UDF were able to
win the presidential and parliamentary elections in 1999. During my fieldwork
in 2002, there was a widespread feeling of disappointment in the government,
fuelled by the dire economic situation.
The dramatic changes of the 1990s are remarkable considering that for thirty
years there had been no need to adjust the High Commissioners description of
Malawis state of political affairs. Banda had eliminated all potential political
competitors already in 1964 during the Cabinet Crisis when he ousted the
majority of the cabinet ministers and forced them into exile. In subsequent years
he tightened his grip on the MCP, the only legal party, and the state institu-
In 1971, Banda declared himself President for Life and oppression of
suspected opponents grew. Especially people from Malawis northern region,
who had previously benefited from missionary education during the colonial
period, were targeted by Bandas campaign to suppress any potential threat to
his rule. At the time of independence most white-collar jobs in government and
In Baker (2001: 88).
On the Cabinet Crisis, see Baker (2001). See also Rotberg (1972), Vail & White
(1991), Short (1974: 179-230).
the private sector were held by Northerners. Banda perceived this situation as a
distortion of the ethnic representation and he promoted the Chewa of the central
region, his home region, and gave them better access to education and govern-
ment jobs (Vail & White 1991; Rotberg 1972; Kaspin 1995; Chirwa 1998).
During the mid-1970s the oppression against so-called confusionist and
separatist elements increased and thousands of people were imprisoned with-
out trial, many from the North. The MCP and the youth paramilitary organisa-
tion Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP) had established an efficient web of control,
even in the rural areas. In 1977, the political climate improved somewhat but
Banda and his inner circle maintained a strong grip on power, the MCP and the
economy through a centralised system of patronage focused on Banda. In this
sense, Malawi differs from other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi,
political patronage remained restricted to Banda and his inner circle, consisting
of top party cadres and senior civil servants. Banda always managed to prevent
the development of patronage networks from operating independently of him.
He did so already in 1964, during the Cabinet Crisis, and he continued to
strike hard and fast at anyone who had the ambition to create his own patronage
network. This is markedly different from other African countries, where a more
polycentric political patronage structure emerged at all levels of the state hierar-
chy soon after independence (Bayart 1993; Chabal & Daloz 1999; Mdard
2002: 385).
Under the heavy oppression of one-party rule, everybody was afraid and
perceived the walls to have eyes and ears. No one dared to talk about politics in
public or to attract attention, so that the illusion of the four basic principles of
unity, obedience, diligence and loyalty could be maintained. The poet Jack
Mapanje alluded to the survival strategies of Malawians in those years as
chameleon-like behaviour, always changing colours for fear of being detained
or worse (Mapanje 1981, 2002).
Malawis monolithic appearance began to show its first cracks in the late
1980s. Banda was getting old and was not able to maintain absolute control in
the same way he had. This was further exacerbated by the country slipping into
an economic crisis. Eventually the cracks tore open in the early 1990s. The end
of the Cold War resulted in a more critical stance of Western donors towards
Bandas autocratic regime. The loss of international support coincided with a
loss of domestic legitimacy. Domestically, the undercurrent of discontent that
had been building up since the late 1980s finally surfaced. In March 1992, the
Catholic Bishops of Malawi issued a Lenten letter that was highly critical of
Bandas regime and made him responsible for poverty and oppression, which
was read in Catholic churches throughout Malawi. This triggered wider protests
against Banda and his one-party rule. Students and vendors demonstrated in
Zomba and Blantyre and the workers at the Whitehead textile factory in Blan-
tyre went on strike. Soon, other workers and civil servants in Blantyre and
Lilongwe joined them and went on strike to demand better working conditions
and political change. When the bilateral donors stopped development aid due to
concerns about the violation of human rights and democracy in Malawi, the
pressure on Bandas aid-dependent regime intensified.
The pressure became so strong that he agreed to hold a referendum on the
introduction of multi-party democracy. The referendum was held in June 1993
and more than 60 per cent of the population voted in favour of multi-party
democracy. The country seemed to change over night, critical newspapers
mushroomed, people started discussing politics more freely and an elated
feeling about imminent change spread through the population. At last, things
seemed to be changing for the better. The general elections in May 1994 were a
clear rejection of Banda and the MCP. The UDF became the strongest party in
parliament and its leader, Bakili Muluzi, was elected president. Malawians had
very high expectations nourished by the promises of the UDF and Muluzi
during the election campaign. Muluzis credo was change, zasintha, and in the
beginning things did indeed change. Political prisoners were released, a
constitution with a bill of rights was introduced, the army disbanded the MYP,
primary education became free of charge and the government launched a
development programme with the aim to reduce poverty, the Poverty Allevia-
tion Programme. After the elections, the donors resumed their assistance and
even expanded their activities until 2002 when several donor agencies scaled
down their programmes due to concerns about government corruption.
1994 proved to be a crucial year and generally the people I spoke to during
my fieldwork made a sharp distinction between the time prior to 1994, under
Bandas oppressive rule, and the period after 1994, the year of general elec-
tions. During the first years following the transition to multi-party democracy
there was a general atmosphere of reform but by the late 1990s people seemed
to have lost faith in the ability of the new leaders to improve the miserable
economic situation. This was illustrated by the local government elections in
November 2000, considered to be a hallmark of the decentralisation pro-
gramme, which only had a turnout of 17 per cent of the eligible voters. Instead
of doing something for the country, politicians were perceived to be selfish and
corrupt. The populations disenchantment with democracy can be largely attrib-
uted to the failure of the economic reforms to address the economic crisis and
deeply entrenched poverty. During my fieldwork in 2000 and 2002, many
people expressed nostalgia for the security under Bandas rule, whose spectre
was still lingering, whilst they had little faith in the new democratic leaders.
The results of two decades of structural adjustment
After independence, Malawis economy grew substantially, as a result of the
expansion of the tobacco sector, promoted by Kamuzu Banda. However, in the
1970s, economic performance deteriorated because of the oil and debt crisis. In
the 1980s, Structural Adjustment Programmes were introduced to counter eco-
nomic decline. However, economic recovery remained elusive and the econo-
mic crisis became more severe in the late 1990s. In 2002 the situation worsened
when large parts of the country were affected by severe food shortages, result-
ing in several hundred hunger-related deaths. Malawian government officials
and NGOs blamed the famine on the sale of the Strategic Grain Reserve (SGR),
advised by the IMF, and the reduction of the World Bank-funded Starter Pack
Programme. The latter had distributed seeds and fertilizer to almost three
million people. The World Bank terminated funding for this programme and in
2000 it was replaced by the Targeted Input Programme (TIP), which only de-
livered supplies to 1.5 million households.
At independence in 1964, there was moderate optimism concerning
Malawis economic future heralded as a new dawn, kwacha. And indeed in the
beginning there was hope for a better future. Under Bandas firm leadership
Malawi seemed to be set for economic development. And development was
badly needed. The territory, established as a British protectorate under the name
of Nyasaland in 1891 during the Scramble for Africa, used to be one of the
poorest and least developed possessions of the British Empire. In colonial
circles, Nyasaland was referred to as the Cinderella of Africa, a quiet colonial
backwater serving as a labour reservoir for the more industrialised regions in
Rhodesia and South Africa, and supporting a small number of European
planters producing mainly tobacco and tea for export, hampered by high
transport costs to the coast because of the long routes through Mozambique
(Kydd & Christiansen 1982: 355-358; McCracken 1983; Pryor 1990; Vail 1975,
Soon after independence Kamuzu Banda succeeded in gaining control of the
economy through Press Corporation, a private company owned by himself.
Press enjoyed a near-monopoly in the industry, finance and trade sectors and
became by far the biggest company in Malawi. In the early 1970s, Banda
appropriated and distributed a large number of tobacco estates to his followers
in the MCP. Banda fully acknowledged Malawis unfavourable starting position
and chose a somewhat unusual development strategy. Instead of following the
path of industrialisation pursued by other African countries, his policy concen-
trated on the expansion of the agricultural production of cash crops, mainly
tobacco and tea. The agricultural sector can be divided into large-scale commer-
cial agriculture on estates, on the one hand, and peasants producing mainly for
subsistence and, to a smaller extent, for commercial purposes, on the other.
Bandas policy was squarely aimed at the expansion of the estate sector at the
cost of the smallholder sector. Kydd & Christiansen (1982) have argued that the
development of the estate sector was financed by imposing heavy taxes on
peasants through the state crop marketing corporation Agricultural Develop-
ment Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), a strategy already used by the Native
Tobacco Board during the colonial period (McCracken 1983). This develop-
ment strategy appeared to be successful during the first years after independ-
ence. Malawi was quoted as an example of economic development and enjoyed
impressive growth rates between 1970 and 1979 because of the estate sector
producing tobacco and tea for export. (Harrigan 1991: 207-208, 1997; World
Bank 1981). Although Malawis economy performed very well, Bandas devel-
opment strategy had detrimental long-term effects on the equitable distribution
of wealth and the improvement of living standards of the majority of the
population, as Kydd & Christiansen (1982) point out.
Economic growth came under pressure in the late 1970s. In the wake of the
oil price hike and reduced prices for tobacco and tea, the main cash crops, the
terms of trade deteriorated dramatically in the late 1970s and the interest rates
on external debts exploded. The negative effects of these shocks were com-
pounded by a severe drought in 1979 and 1980 and the closure of the railway
connection to the sea due to the civil war in Mozambique. The governments
budget deficit increased due to the high level of government expenditure. The
parastatal sector and Press Corporation faced severe financial difficulties, thus
putting more pressure on the government on which they depended for loans
(van Donge 2002; Harrigan 1991: 11, 212).
Responding to the crisis the government entered a stand-by agreement with
the IMF in 1979. In 1981, the government took one step further and accepted a
first Structural Adjustment Loan (SAL) from the World Bank followed by a
second SAL in 1982 and a third one in 1985 (Harrigan 1991: 217-223). By
accepting these loans Malawi entered a vicious circle of increasingly detailed
policy measures prescribed to restore growth and debt servicing to the debtors.
Of course, development aid had been a feature of Malawis budget since
independence and even during colonial times but, with Structural Adjustment, a
new dimension was reached in terms of scope, objectives, donor involvement in
national policy-making and the amount of loans provided.
Malawi was one of the first countries to receive Structural Adjustment sup-
port and implemented three consecutive SALs during the 1980s. However, the
Structural Adjustment reforms that came with these loans did not succeed in
restoring economic growth. On the contrary, the economic crisis deepened
during the 1980s, as in most other African countries (World Bank 1989, 1994a).
The adverse effects of the economic crisis were increasingly felt by the popula-
tion during the late 1970s and the 1980s. By 1982, the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) per capita was 12 per cent lower than in 1979. In the mid-1980s, eco-
nomic decline intensified even further. People were mainly affected by the
higher prices for their staple food maize, the loss of real income, the removal of
subsidies for fertiliser, the closure of ADMARCs depots and higher consumer
prices (Kaluwa et al. 1992: 49-57).
The 1990s did not bring the recovery predicted by the World Bank (1989,
1994a). On the contrary, despite continuing structural adjustment, the economic
situation deteriorated even further (Ngalande Banda et al. 1998). The economic
crisis was certainly an important factor in the popular support for the emerging
opposition to Bandas and the MCPs dictatorial regime in the early 1990s. For
example, according to government figures, annual inflation was at 22.8 per cent
in 1993 and rose to 34.7 per cent in 1994 (GoM 1995a: 5-8). The opposition
parties promised to reduce poverty and improve public services in the 1994
election campaign. Difficulties were compounded by severe droughts that hit
Malawi in 1990/1991 and 1993/1994. Consequently, expectations were high
when the new democratically elected government of Bakili Muluzi came to
power in 1994. Together with the donors, led by the World Bank and the IMF,
the new government embarked on a Poverty Alleviation Programme in August
1994 (GoM 1995b).
After the suspension of development aid, between 1992 and 1994, by most
bilateral donors, though not by the World Bank, aid was resumed after the
democratic elections. However, the new government did not really succeed in
reducing poverty as it had promised. Following the depreciation of the cur-
rency, inflation rose to an estimated 42 per cent in 1995 and to 50-70 per cent in
1996. Actual losses in income and savings were even more sudden and dra-
matic. The monthly inflation rate in April 1995 (inflation rate for a specific
month compared to the same month in the previous year) was 79.1 per cent
(Ngalande Banda et al. 1998: 78-79), for instance.
Since 1995, the government has been implementing the World Banks and
the IMFs vision of a deregulated economy, open market reforms, less active
involvement of the state in the economy, privatisation of state-owned enter-
prises and the reform of state institutions (World Bank 1994, 2000). However,
the hope for economic recovery that would eventually result in higher standards
of living and poverty reduction was soon to be bitterly disappointed. Especially
since 1997, annual inflation has remained continuously high, at about 30 per
cent. In October 1998, the currency was again depreciated and lost 80 per cent
of its value against the US dollar. In 1999, the World Bank and the IMF phased
out Structural Adjustment lending and introduced the Poverty Reduction and
Growth Facility. Malawi was also included in the Heavily Indebted Poor
Country (HIPC) initiative for debt relief. In co-operation with the World Bank
and the IMF, the government drew up a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP) and launched the first Poverty Reduction Programme in August 2000,
aimed at further market deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation and the re-
duction of the budgetary deficit.
My fieldwork in 2002 was overshadowed by a severe famine that affected
large parts of the country and the densely populated South, in particular. So far,
no exhaustive explanation has been presented but the available data suggests an
unfortunate mix of trigger factors, such as the drought and the sale of the
Strategic Grain Reserve (SGR) as well as other underlying causes, such as
population pressure and deteriorating soil fertility (Devereux 2002). During
Bandas reign, the government would intervene in the food market and build up
a strategic food reserve to guarantee food security. This interventionist policy
was strongly criticised by World Bank and IMF who demanded market liberali-
sation (Harrigan 1991, 1997). While Banda had been able to exploit the Wests
fear of Communism to his advantage and resist the pressure of donor agencies,
the new government under Muluzi proved to be more susceptible to the donor
agencies advice. Under donor pressure ADMARC, the state-owned agricultural
marketing board, scaled down its operations in many rural areas in order to
work more cost-efficiently. ADMARC was also responsible for the manage-
ment of the Strategic Grain Reserve (SGR) but, in 1999, the National Food
Reserve Agency (NFRA) was established to manage the food reserve independ-
ently and on a cost-recovery basis.
Following two good harvests in 1998/1999 and 1999/2000, the NFRA
bought maize with loans from commercial and government banks. In 2000, the
SGR was stocked at almost full storage capacity of 180,000 metric tons. In
order to purchase the maize, NFRA had borrowed MK 600 million at an interest
rate of 56 per cent per annum. By June 2000, the NFRA had a debt of MK 1
billion. This raised donor concerns, and the World Bank and the IMF advised
the government to reduce the emergency reserve to 30,000-60,000 metric tons
and export the excess stocks to service the debt (IMF 2002). Furthermore, the
grain reserve had to be renewed anyway, because the maize had already been
stored for two years. Hence, in accordance with these recommendations, NFRA
started to sell maize at the end of 2000. However, instead of selling only the
excess stocks, NFRA sold the whole stock and by the first half of 2001 the SGR
was virtually empty. The World Bank and the IMF had recommended exporting
the maize in order to avoid distortion of the domestic market and earn badly
needed foreign currency. Despite some sales to Kenya and Mozambique, a large
part of the reserve was sold to domestic traders who hoarded maize in
anticipation of rising prices at the end of the year, when most households would
have depleted their stocks.
In February and March 2001, floods hit many parts of the country, especially
the central and southern regions. These floods washed away plants and soil in
the affected areas. As a consequence, maize production was reduced by 32 per
cent. However, the authorities expected sufficient maize production and ample
production of other crops. Based on the information provided by the Ministry of
Agriculture and the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET), ADMARC
and NFRA did not replenish their stocks. According to preliminary studies, the
floods were not the only factor responsible for the agricultural production
shortfall. It appears that the reduction of the Starter Pack Programme, higher
interest rates for input loans and rising fertilizer prices further compounded the
problem (Devereux 2002).
The decision to sell the maize and not to replenish the SGR, because of
predicted food surplus, proved to be fatal when agricultural production (maize,
roots and tubers) was much lower than expected. Due to the shortfall, prices
shot up in the second half of 2001, making it impossible for many people to
purchase maize to replenish their depleted stocks. In some areas the consumer
price for maize went up by 400 per cent. After the price hike, the traders, who
had hoarded maize, started to sell their maize, but many people could not afford
the exorbitant prices. By February 2002, the food shortages had turned into a
full-blown famine in many parts of the country, especially in the central and
southern regions. The government and donor agencies reacted very slowly. The
end of February, President Muluzi finally declared a state of emergency. But the
government was not the only party reacting slowly to the crisis. The donor
agencies appeared to be more concerned with the sale of the SGR than with
providing immediate support (Devereux 2002).
The government had started to import 150,000 metric tons at that moment
but, due to logistical problems and delays, the maize arrived in March 2002
too late to be distributed in time to all the affected areas. The situation only
gradually improved with the arrival of food aid from donors and the purchase of
maize from South Africa. However, prices remained high and people were not
able to purchase the necessary supplies (primarily seeds and fertiliser) for the
2002/2003 season. According to the affected people and the analysts, the 2002
famine was worse than the Great Nyasaland Famine in 1949.
World Food Programme (WFP), more than 3 million people were threatened by
starvation in 2002, and, according to estimates, at least 300-500 but probably
1000-3000 people died as a direct result of the famine (not counting people
dying from cholera or HIV/AIDS who were weakened by malnutrition) (Deve-
reux 2002: 18).
On the great Nyasaland famine of 1949, see Vaughan (1987).
The civil service from localisation to good governance
Chanock (1998) points out that the legal system constituted one of the most
persistent and influential legacies of British colonialism. The same can be said
about the civil service in Malawi. After independence, Malawi retained the
structure of the British colonial civil service. The colonial administration was
characterised by the strict division between European expatriate officers and
Africans. Until the late 1950s, only few Africans served in the colonial civil
service. Under the localisation or Africanisation programme
of the last years
before independence, the number of Africans increased and by 1963 most junior
staff were Africans, while expatriates still held the senior posts. Even after in-
dependence, Africanisation was implemented very slowly in comparison with
other African states, and many expatriates continued to hold high positions in
the civil service of Malawi (Baker 1972).
According to informants, who had served in the Nyasaland colonial service,
the first years of independence were characterised by high morale and motiva-
tion. According to one of them there was great pride in the service, although
relations between white superiors and African subordinates were characterised
by racism and distrust. Soon after independence, in 1964, the shadow of a
different type of oppression and politicisation fell on the civil service. Under
colonial rule people from the northern region, who enjoyed better access to
superior missionary education, had dominated the civil service. Banda was
suspicious of the Northerners and wanted to assert Chewa-identity his own
ethnic group as the national identity. In the wake of the Cabinet Crisis,
many civil servants, mainly from the North, were imprisoned, dismissed or
went into exile. The climate of oppression and political influence intensified in
the following years and reached a climax during the mid-1970s, when thou-
sands of officers, many of them from the North, were arrested and dismissed.
Until the end of his rule, Banda and the MCP exercised strict control over
the civil service. The civil service became highly politicised and any suspected
opposition against the regime could provoke dismissal or detention. Bandas
distrust of the civil service can be traced back to the first days of his rule. In
September 1963, civil servants protested in Zomba against the reduction of pay
proposed by the Skinner Commission and Bandas reluctant Africanisation of
the senior positions in the civil service, and went on strike (Baker 2001: 133,
185-186, 190). Banda never forgot this open resistance and took every opportu-
Localisation is the technical term used by the British to denote the transition from a
civil service run by expatriate officers to a civil service run by Africans. Sometimes
the term Africanisation was also used.
On creation of tribalism and assertion of Chewa as national identity in general see
the seminal article by Vail & White (1991).
nity to criticise civil servants greed and lax attitude. In order to prevent any
resistance within the civil service against his rule, Banda established a tight
system of control and oppression. Civil servants spoke of a culture of fear
when referring to the civil service under Bandas rule a time when any real or
perceived dissent or disloyalty could result in dismissal and detention without
trial.
Between 1994 and 2002, the government implemented far-reaching reform
programmes under the guidance of the World Bank and the IMF focusing on
privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation. One component of the institutional
reforms was the civil service reform. Consistent with the World Banks and
IMFs focus on promoting good governance, this reform was aimed at im-
proving efficiency and transparency. Measures taken under the Institutional
Development Project included a civil service census to eliminate ghost wor-
kers (fictitious employees existing only on the payroll), public expenditure
reviews, institutional reviews, privatisation, the introduction of meritocracy and
a retrenchment exercise.
Efforts to increase efficiency concentrated on removing crucial parts of
public administration and policy implementation from the civil service. Devel-
opment policy, for instance, was mainly implemented by the Malawi Social
Action Fund (MASAF), a parastatal agency whose employees worked on a
contractual basis. Democratic reforms were formulated and supervised by the
Law Commission and the Human Rights Commission who also worked with
contracts similar to the private sector. This was possible since several of these
bodies, such as the Human Rights Commission and the Anti-Corruption Bureau
(ACB), were largely funded by donors who had a keen interest in the imple-
mentation of reform policies. The higher salaries paid to the employees of these
agencies did not constitute a major burden on the budget because of their rela-
tively small number of staff compared to the large ministries. In February 2000
the Departments of Customs, and Excise and Income Tax were dissolved and
replaced by the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA). This new agency worked
on a cost-recovery basis; it operated outside the civil service structure and had
its own terms of service.
Since the 1990s Malawis civil servants have become more assertive in
voicing their concerns and demands. There were major strikes in 1992, October
1994, January 1996, April, May 1997 and 2001. Only few of these strikes
such as in 1992 and 1994 were supported by a large majority of the civil
servants, while strikes in specific ministries and for particular professional
groups have become very common, regularly disrupting the operation of
ministries and departments. Labour unrest, especially among junior officers,
started in May 1992 and culminated in the strike of October 1994. The strikers
complained about insufficient salaries and demanded salary increases. The
strikes of the early 1990s played a crucial role in bringing Bandas regime
down. In 1992, shortly after the workers at the Whitehead textile factory in
Blantyre went on strike, civil servants also laid down their work. Although the
strike had political undertones, their main demand was a substantial revision of
the salaries that they deemed insufficient to meet the rising cost of living.
In response to the strikes in 1992 and 1994, the newly elected president
Bakili Muluzi decided to establish a commission to address the complaints
made by the civil servants and make suggestions for a better salary structure.
The commission, headed by Judge Chatsika, delivered its report in March 1995.
The main recommendations concerned hefty salary increases. The commission
proposed to raise the salaries of the lowest grades in the Industrial Class by 236
per cent, of the middle grades by 120 per cent, and of the top functionaries in
the Superscale by 263 per cent. The commission conceded that the imple-
mentation of this proposal would result in a 100 per cent increase of the wage
bill and stated with remarkable indifference to the demands of the World
Bank and the IMF that the Commission is convinced that the increased wage
bill is far outweighed by the impact the increase would have on the morale of
the civil service (GoM 1995c).
Not surprisingly, considering the pressure from the donor agencies and the
low revenue base, President Muluzi was unable to implement the proposals of
the Chatsika Commission right away and instead promised to increase the
salaries by 25 per cent (Manda 2000: 87). In April 1997, civil servants, who
demanded salary increases and the implementation of the recommendations of
the Chatsika Commission, went on strike again. This time the strike was mainly
led by professionals in hospitals and the civil aviation department. However, the
1997 strike was not successful and ended after two weeks, without having
reached its objectives. This was largely due to insufficient support and internal
quarrels between the trade unions (van Donge 1998). The recommendations of
the Chatsika Commission were never implemented. Instead the government
simply chose to increase all salaries by 25 per cent per year to counter inflation
and appease the unruly civil servants.
During Bandas rule, any form of independent employee organisation was
forbidden. The Teacher Union of Malawi (TUM) was the only officially recog-
nised trade union of government employees. During the 1994 strike, civil ser-
vants were only informally organised. In subsequent years, several trade unions
were formed: the Civil Servants Trade Union (CSTU), the Customs Workers
Union (CWU) and the Local Government Workers Union (LGWU). The CSTU
led the negotiations with the government during the 1997 strike but was unable
to realise most demands (van Donge 1998). By 2002, the trade unions had not
managed to function properly as representatives of employees interests yet.
They were fairly loosely organised and had no membership administration. For
example, it was said that the CSTU had no more than 800 members. They
suffered from factionalism and internal power limiting their impact.
It is difficult to assess the level of politicisation in the civil service since
1994. Compared to the culture of fear, during the days of one-party rule, at the
beginning of the 21
century civil servants seemed to enjoy considerably more
freedom and leeway. The frequent strikes and open criticism of the government
bear testimony to these new freedoms. Prior to 1994 it would have been simply
unthinkable to go on strike, form a trade union or write letters to the news-
papers, complaining about mismanagement or corruption. Yet there certainly
has been a degree of political influence on the civil service since 1994. The
highest positions in the civil service (S4/P4 and above) are appointed by the
President and are therefore political. As a consequence, there were indications
that appointments to the top positions in the ministerial headquarters in Lilong-
we and the District Commissioners, the central governments representatives in
the districts, were often associated with support for the ruling UDF party be-
tween 1994 and 2004.
During my fieldwork, civil servants were in a somewhat ambivalent situa-
tion. On the one hand, they did not have to fear for their lives anymore and
enjoyed considerable economic and political freedom; on the other hand, the
economic situation was very unstable, levels of crime had risen sharply and the
restructuring measures threatened job security. Civil servants who had served
during Bandas time often expressed nostalgia for the good old times when
the civil service was still respected, salaries had not been eroded by inflation
and crime was practically non-existent. Despite its oppressive character, civil
servants generally associated Bandas rule with a sense of material security,
which has been replaced by a sense of insecurity and anxiety about the future.
The following chapters explore the various aspects of civil servants responses
to the civil service reform and the ambivalence and insecurity they were
experiencing between the late 1990s and 2002.
In March 2000 four trade-unions including the CSTU broke away from the um-
brella-organisation Malawi Congress of Trade Unions (MCTU) and formed the
Congress of Malawi Trade Unions (COMATU). Background were differences
between the CSTU-president Banda and the MCTU-president Antonio. Then an
internal power-struggle between Banda and the majority of the members who re-
sented Bandas decision erupted and the CSTU joined the MCTU again end of April
2000, Daily Times, 28.4.2000: 1, 3.
Constructing country ownership
[D]uring the 1980s a new approach was developed, namely conditionality. Aid was
provided in return for explicit negotiated commitments to policy reform. The obvi-
ous theory underlying this was that aid could be an incentive to policy change.
However, an implication of this theory was that governments would be undertaking
policy change against what they considered to be their interests, except for the
receipt of aid. Policy change was the price which governments would have to pay
for aid; or equivalently, policy change would be what donors bought with their aid
(Collier 2000: 9).
The implementation of the civil service reform programme was one of the
central measures to improve governance after Malawis democratisation in
1994. First steps to improve the performance of the civil service had already
been taken by the old regime, under Kamuzu Banda, in the early 1990s
. These
initial steps were feeble and limited in scope but they laid the foundation for the
latter measures. When the new government, under Bakili Muluzi, took office,
the reform of the civil service gained momentum. Between 1994 and 2002 a
whole set of reforms was introduced: The government signed agreements with
Through the Institutional Development Programme I (ID I) the World Bank fi-
nanced the establishment of the Malawi Institute of Management, an institution to
train senior officials and private sector managers in the techniques of New Public
on Institutional Development Programmes II and III (ID II and
III) in 1994 and 1996 and the Fiscal Restructuring and Deregulation Pro-
grammes I and II (FRD I and II) in 1996 and 1998 and agreed to implement the
Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangement in 2001. World
Bank and IMF documents presented these programmes as necessary measures
the government of Malawi would have to take to get the country back on track
to development. According to this perspective, economic recovery would re-
main elusive if the government failed to improve governance by implementing
the civil service reform and curbing corruption.
Civil service reform was one of the conditions for the financial support of
the World Bank and the IMF. And yet representatives of both organisations
have consistently pointed out that the resultant reforms must be owned by the
borrowing government. According to their legal advisors, conditionality, the
technical term for the policy measures financed with a loan, does not contradict
country ownership. The term ownership means that the government request-
ing a loan from the World Bank and the IMF is fully responsible for the policy
measures and their implementation. Country ownership is presented as a neces-
sary precondition for the success of policy reforms. Of course, representatives
of the World Bank and the IMF concede that ownership cannot be forced on a
government. It has to come from an ill-defined within and manifest itself in
the political will to implement certain reforms. The lack of ownership is usually
identified as one of the main impediments to development programmes. Critical
evaluations of the Banks and Funds operations, such as the one quoted above
hold the lack of ownership responsible for the failure of many a development
project (Botchwey et al. 1998; Collier 2000). This common observation, how-
ever, has not changed the policies promoted by the international financial insti-
tutions that deem ownership of reforms essential and present conditionality as
the logical consequence of ownership. For example, a recent fact sheet states
conditions reinforce the level of country ownership (IMF 2002a).
It would be deceptive to dismiss this claim simply as clumsy attempt at new
speak only thinly veiling the Bretton Woods institutions neo-colonial or neo-
imperial agenda. Such unmasking would fail to take into account the way good
governance and other development policies are actually inserted into the na-
tional polity. In order to understand the implementation process of the civil
service reform programme in Malawi between 1996 and 2002 and how civil
Actually with the International Development Association (IDA); in the following
referred to as the World Bank, the umbrella name by which the International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (IBDR), the IDA and the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) are known.
servants responded to the reorganisation of their workplace, it is important to
follow the transformation of external advice into self-imposed conditions.
This chapter analyses in detail how the notion of ownership is reconciled
with the far-reaching conditions set by the World Bank and the IMF with regard
to the reorganisation of Malawis civil service. This is achieved through a set of
legal techniques that places the responsibility for policy reforms with the
government and transforms economic data into conditions, which the govern-
ment agrees to adhere to in order to improve efficiency and transparency, a
phenomenon I refer to as normativity of numbers. The chapter further shows
how the latest development programmes, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
(PSRPs) introduced in 1999, supplement the normativity of numbers with high-
ly sophisticated conditions addressing corruption.
The emergence of a concept
Good governance emerged as the central concept in development assistance in
the 1990s. With the end of the Cold War, the relationships between the West
and African governments were reconfigured. During the Cold War, anti-com-
munism used to provide the most important criteria for Western support, as
massive Western support given to autocrats like Seseke Mobuto and Kamuzu
Banda demonstrates. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the attitude of
Western governments changed dramatically. In the early 1990s, adherence to
human rights and democratic values became the benchmark for Western support
in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The 1990s concept of good governance heralded an era of much bolder inter-
ference in the domestic affairs of governments of developing countries. Until
the late 1980s, the state was considered to be the prime actor in developing the
national economy and society. State institutions were to be part of the solution
rather than a cause for underdevelopment. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s,
the tone of World Band documents changed. A radical overhaul of the state
institutions according to the neo-liberal dogma was demanded to create favour-
able conditions for economic development. Good governance was promoted as
the principal tool or instrument, which would contribute to sustainable eco-
nomic and social development (World Bank 1992: 5) and macroeconomic
stability, external viability, and orderly economic growth (IMF 1997: 1).
The booklet Governance and Development published in 1992 was the World
Banks first general statement of the new development agenda. It defined
governance as the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a
countrys economic and social resources for development (1992: 3). According
See also World Bank (1989, 1994a).
to the World Bank, the key dimensions of governance are public sector
management, accountability, the legal framework for development, and infor-
mation and transparency (1992: 6). Although this publication was the first to
be exclusively devoted to issues of good governance, the Bank had addressed
the problems of state bureaucracies in developing countries earlier on. In 1989,
a World Bank report on Sub-Saharan Africa mentioned deteriorating govern-
ance as one of the main causes of the crisis in Africa. It held the expansion of
state services and the dominant role of the state in the economy after independ-
ence responsible for elusive economic growth:
At independence Africa inherited simple but functioning administrations. They were
managed largely by expatriates and were not geared to the development role as-
signed to them by African leaders. The responsibilities of the state were enormously
expanded. But at the same time the rapid promotion of inexperienced staff and the
gradual politicisation of the whole administrative apparatus led to declining effi-
ciency. A combination of administrative bottlenecks, unauthorized fees and com-
missions, and inefficient services imposed costs on businesses that have progress-
ively undermined their international competitiveness. The gradual breakdown of the
judicial systems in many countries left foreign investors doubtful that contracts
could be enforced. [] Authoritarian governments hostile to grassroots and non-
governmental organizations have alienated much of the public. As a result economic
activity has shifted increasingly to the informal sector. Too frequently ordinary
people see government as the source of, not the solution to, their problems (World
Bank 1989: 30).
In line with this neo-liberal critique of the developmental state, World Bank
experts designed instruments to transform the inefficient African state institu-
tions. From their perspective it was only logical to push back the state in order
to make room for the private sector. From this unfavourable assessment of the
postcolonial state followed the plan to change government institutions in order
to create the envisaged enabling environment by defining and protecting
property rights, providing effective legal, judicial and regulatory systems, im-
proving the efficiency of the civil service as the World Development Report of
1991 stated (World Bank 1991).
Governance and Development (World Bank 1992) identified four key as-
pects of the World Banks policy on governance: improvement of public sector
management, accountability, the legal framework, and information and trans-
parency. The first included public expenditure management, civil service re-
form and privatisation of state-owned enterprises. The second emphasised the
need to hold public officials and political leaders accountable for their actions.
Accountability entailed making comprehensive and timely information avail-
able, classifying expenditures in a manner consistent with budget and pro-
grammes, doing appropriate analyses for decision-making, comparing budget
and actual results, improving the organisation and responsibility for accounting
in the finance ministry, and increasing the legal requirements for financial
reporting. Third, the booklet emphasised the need to create a legal framework
for development by promoting the rule of law. The rule of law is presented as a
necessary prerequisite for economic growth; to create a sufficient stable setting
for economic actors through the uniform application of rules, the limitation of
officials discretionary powers of and an independent judicial system (Ibid: 30-
39). All depended on better information and transparency by transparent
budgets and public expenditure programmes, the preparation of environmental
assessments and improving domestic and external procurement mechanisms
(Ibid: 39-47, 49, 50).
In 1990, the General Counsel of the World Bank, Ibrahim Shihata, issued a
memorandum on governance placing good governance firmly within the scope
of the World Banks mandate. According to Shihata, the Bank should refrain
from any political intervention in the affairs of a country and should not be
influenced by the politics of other countries. Shihata argued that good govern-
ance should only be of concern to the Bank as long as it is instrumental in
promoting sustainable economic growth and social development, the Banks
mandate as it is laid down in the Articles of Agreement (Shihata 1990).
same limitation applies to the operations of the IMF: its Articles of Agreement
also explicitly prohibit political interference.
In subsequent years, World Bank staff and researchers developed a whole
range of instruments to operationalise the concept of good governance, such as
the governance approach (Dia 1993) that provided an analytical framework
for civil service reform in Africa. This approach recognised the failure of prior
attempts to reform the civil service in Africa and attributed this to the patri-
monial character of the state in Sub-Saharan Africa where recruitment [is]
based on subjective and ascriptive criteria; public employment managed as a
welfare system; pay levels that are unrelated to productivity; loyalty of officials
to the person of the ruler rather than to the state; and formalism of admini-
strative rules and procedures (Dia 1993: ix) was the norm. The governance
approach proposed a model of three ideal types of the African state based on
its patrimonial profile: countries with a high patrimonial character, countries
with a medium profile and countries with a low patrimonial profile (Dia 1993).
The patrimonial character determined the necessary instruments to modern-
ise the state bureaucracy. Highly patrimonial countries would be in need of the
Art. V Sect. 10 [Art . V Sect. 6 with regard to the IDA] Political activity prohibited
The Bank [The association] and its officers shall not interfere in the political
affairs of any member; nor shall they be influenced in their decisions by the political
character of the member or members concerned. Only economic considerations shall
be relevant to their decisions, and these considerations shall be weighted impartially
in order to achieve the purposes stated in Article I [of this agreement].
comprehensive approach with the aim [] to effect the structural and func-
tional changes needed to correct the patrimonial distortions affecting the institu-
tional environment, incentives framework and the performance of core govern-
ment functions (Dia 1993: 2). The enclave approach would be suitable for
countries with a low patrimonial profile according to Dia. In these countries
the aim would be to build or reinforce the organizational, managerial and
technical capacity to improve the performance and productivity of existing
institutions (ibid: 3). The third approach, referred to as the hybrid approach,
mixed elements of the two former ideal types by combining a comprehensive
public sector reform and isolating a few government core functions that would
function as motors of development. This approach was applied to countries
with an average patrimonial profile.
Malawi was considered to fall under the third category. Key functions such
as revenue collection, customs and pre-shipment inspection were removed from
the civil service and became the domain of new autonomous government
agencies and private companies. In March 2000, the Malawi Revenue Authority
(MRA) was established to replace the departments of customs and excise and
income tax. The new agency operated on a commercial cost-recovery basis,
with its own board of directors and conditions of service. Pre-shipment in-
spection was awarded to the private company Socit Genrale de Surveillance
(SGS). These measures, aimed at creating enclaves, were supplemented by the
civil service reform programme, the outsourcing of non-core functions, such as
gardening, security services and carpenter workshops, and the privatisation of
state-owned companies.
While the World Bank was the forerunner in putting good governance high
on the agenda in the development debate, the promotion of the concept was by
no means restricted to the World Bank. In 1997, the IMF adopted its Guide-
lines Regarding Governance Issues. Like the World Bank, the IMF explicitly
limits its role to economic aspects of governance. The IMF Managing Director,
Camdessus, stated in an address to the United Nations Economic and Social
Council that good governance is important for countries at all stages of devel-
opment [] Our approach is to concentrate on those aspects of good govern-
ance that are most closely related to our surveillance over macroeconomic
policies namely, the transparency of government accounts, the effectiveness
of public resource management, and the stability and transparency of the
economic and regulatory environment for private sector activity (IMF 1997).
Of course, Camdessus, like his counterpart at the World Bank, did not fail to
point out that the responsibility for governance issues lies first and foremost
with the national authorities (IMF 1997: 2). The following analysis of the loan
documents and the way they designed the civil service reform process traces in
detail how the notions of country ownership and good governance are recon-
ciled.
Conditionality and country ownership
Good governance and other reforms require slots to be inserted into the national
polity. These slots are the conditions for a loan, the governments commitment
to implement specific policy reforms. The loans of the World Bank are referred
to as credit agreements and those of the IMF as loan agreements or loan ar-
rangements. Credit agreements and loan agreements are split into two separate
parts: a letter to the World Bank or the IMF signed by the government re-
presentatives (usually the Minister of Finance or the President of the Reserve
Bank), and the credit agreement or loan agreement. If this letter is addressed to
the World Bank, it is referred to as the Letter of Development Policy; if it is
directed to the IMF it is called a Letter of Intent. The letter is a document in
which the government seeking financial assistance describes a set of policy
measures it intends to finance with the requested loan. These policy measures
are the conditions for the credit or loan, respectively.
After the Bank or the Fund decides to honour the governments request, a
credit agreement (World Bank) or loan arrangement (IMF) is signed. The
agreement includes clauses on the undertakings of the borrowing government
and the IFIs, the terms of the loan, and the repayment obligations of the bor-
rower. In addition, the borrowing government declares its commitment to the
objectives of the Project [], and, to this end shall carry out [] the project
with due diligence and efficiency. However, the agreement does not include a
description of the projects to be financed with the credit or loan. Instead, the
governments intention to implement a specific programme and its exact
description are embodied in the Letter of Policy or the Letter of Intent. In other
words, it is the government, not the World Bank or the IMF, that sets the
conditions for the loan in the letter which is a government document. The
Bank or the Fund then declares its intention to disburse the money as long as
the government honours the intention stated in the letter.
The splitting of the loan documents is crucial for the construction of owner-
ship and conditionality. According to the World Bank, conditionality links the
Banks financial support to implementation of a program of reforms critical for
the countrys economic and social development []. [C]ommitment to reform
is essential, and conditions usually reinforce the level of country ownership
needed to ensure the implementation of reforms supported under adjustment
loans (World Bank 2003). The position of the IMF is similar: When a country
borrows from the IMF, its government makes commitments on economic and
financial policies a requirement known as conditionality (IMF 2002a). From
the perspective of the representatives of the Bretton Woods institutions, the split
into the Letter of Policy or Intent, on the one hand, and credit or loan agree-
ment, on the other hand, guarantees country ownership of the reforms, since the
conditions of the loan are set by the government.
The World Bank and the IMF deal differently with the ramifications arising
from ownership and state sovereignty, although the result is similar. According
to the World Bank lawyers, the credit agreement signed with a member state
includes the conditions at the request of the government applying for a loan,
whereas, according to the IMF lawyers, the conditions do not constitute a
legally binding agreement at all. Credit agreements signed between the World
Bank and borrowing member states are considered to be agreements between
two parties governed by public international law (Broches 1959; Delaume 1982;
Head 1996). The credit agreement includes a provision that gives the World
Bank the right to suspend disbursement if the programme described in the
Letter of Policy is not carried out with due diligence and efficiency. Since the
conditions are spelled out in the Letter of Policy, a government document,
characterising ownership as a consequence of conditionality seems logical
from the perspective of World Bank representatives.
In referring to arrangements rather than agreements, the IMF has gone
even further than the World Bank to avoid any contractual implications. Gold
has argued, in one of the few discussions of the legal character of the Funds
stand-by arrangements, that the term arrangement does not imply any inten-
tion to contract by the IMF (1980). Gold states: the adoption and performance
of a program are the responsibility of a member (1980: 36). He makes a clear
distinction between the Letter of Intent and the arrangement: The two stand-by
documents, the Letter of Intent and the stand-by arrangement, do not constitute
an international agreement under which the member undertakes obligations to
observe its objectives and policies (Gold 1980: 43).
His argument refers to stand-by arrangements, the regular form of IMF
balance-of-payment support in the 1970s, but it also pertains to all subsequent
loan facilities the Structural Adjustment Facility (SAF) and the Enhanced
Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) of the 1980s and 1990s as well as the
Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility and the HIPC initiative, which replaced
ESAFs in 1999. In spite of these changes in the Funds policy, Golds argu-
Sir Joseph Gold, who served as General Counsel between 1960 and 1979, played a
crucial role in the legal development of the IMF.
ments were never substantially altered and continue to define the legal character
of all arrangements of the IMF with borrowing countries.
Gold is surprisingly frank about the IMFs motives in avoiding any contrac-
tual implications. He argues that the non-binding character of the Funds ar-
rangements has advantages for both parties the Fund and the government. He
observes that [t]o bind governments by agreement to observe their objectives
and policies, so that departures from them would be breaches of obligation,
could exacerbate political tensions and increase the difficulties of negotiation
[with the Fund] (Gold 1980: 37). By using arrangements, the parties in-
volved leave the fiction of sovereignty intact and avoid legal and democratic
accountability for policy reforms that may impose hardship for a time on the
populace as a whole or on sections of it and can provoke domestic political
controversy and become a cause of friction even within a government, as Gold
puts it (1980: 37).
Since the 1980s, when the concept of conditionality was introduced, the
World Bank and the IMF have developed a whole range of different conditions,
tailored to the perceived needs of the borrowing governments. Both organisa-
tions have harmonized their policies to avoid overlaps and conflicts between
their respective conditions. To avoid these conflicts, both organisations basi-
cally use the same types of conditions, in order to complement each other in
their arrangements with borrowing countries (IMF & World Bank 2001).
They have developed four types of conditionality: prior actions, performance
criteria, structural benchmarks, and programme reviews:
Prior actions are measures that a country agrees to take before the Funds Executive
Board approves a loan and before the initial disbursement takes place. [...]
Performance criteria (PCs) are specific conditions that have to be met for the agreed
amount of credit to be disbursed. There are two types of PCs: quantitative and
structural.
- Quantitative PCs typically refer to macroeconomic policy variables [...]
- In arrangements where structural reforms are an essential part of the economic
program, structural PCs are also used. These vary widely across programs but
could, for example, include specific measures to restructure key sectors [...]
Structural benchmarks are similar to structural PCs, except that individual bench-
marks are less critical for meeting the programs objectives. Thus, benchmarks may
help the Board assess a countrys progress on structural reforms, but failure to
achieve them would not necessarily interrupt Fund funding.
Another important monitoring tool is the program review, which serves as an op-
portunity for a broad-based assessment [...]. Reviews are used to discuss policies
Fund arrangements are not international agreements and therefore language having
a contractual connotation will be avoided in arrangements and program documents
(IMF 2002b).
and introduce changes to the program that may be necessary in light of new devel-
opments (IMF 2002a).
Prior actions and performance criteria are viewed as hard conditions, be-
cause they are a condition for the disbursement of the credit. Structural bench-
marks, on the other hand, are considered to be soft, because they would only
affect disbursement under exceptional circumstances (for example, massive
failure to implement a whole range of structural benchmarks without giving the
lending institution a satisfactory explanation). According to the IFIs, structural
benchmarks merely serve as points of reference for assessing a countrys pro-
gress and monitoring the governments progress in implementing the reform
programme (IMF 2001a: 3-20).
Recent reports and policy papers of the World Bank and the IMF character-
ise hard conditionality in the form of performance criteria as being too inflexi-
ble and inconsistent with the principle of country ownership (Collier 2000; IMF
2001b; IMF & World Bank 2001). Of course, the Bank and the Fund did not
give up performance criteria and other hard conditions completely. However, by
emphasising the flexibility of soft structural benchmarks, both organisations
have tried to avoid the impression that they punish governments for failing to
implement certain policies. Soft conditionality has been presented as being
responsive to the needs of the borrowing governments, because it gives them
more leeway in adapting to changed circumstances.
The 1990s expansion beyond the financial-economic issues traditionally
addressed by the IFI programmes has resulted in the growth of conditionality.
The current PRSPs continue this trend and cover all aspects of the national
economy, from measures designed to increase agricultural production to
policies aimed at improving education and governance (cf. GoM 2002). PRSPs
are characterised by a complex mixture of hard and soft conditionality, ranging
from quantitative performance criteria to structural requirements, such as the
establishment of a system to prioritize expenditure management.
In Malawis case, the Poverty Reduction Strategy process, with its more
complex conditions, has not resulted in more leeway for the government. On the
contrary, in 2002 the IMF blocked the disbursement of US$ 45 million for
balance-of-payment support, because of government overspending and corrup-
tion allegations against several Cabinet ministers despite the fact that these
were structural benchmarks. Since 2000, it has become common for bilateral
donor agencies to stop financial support, due to the misuse of funds or corrup-
tion allegations. So far, it seems that only the IFIs and other donor agencies
benefit from the greater flexibility afforded to them by the new conditionality in
the PRSPs, whereas the government of Malawi faces tougher sanctions than
under the Structural Adjustment regime in the event of misbehaviour.
The way the loan documents are drafted reveals the extent to which
supposedly government-owned documents are determined by the policies of the
Bretton Woods institutions. The following documents have to be distinguished:
the Draft Staff Appraisal Report, the Memorandum and Recommendation of the
President of IDA
to the Executive Directors.
The Memorandum and Recom-
mendation of the President of IDA is normally heeded by the Executive
Directors. The Presidents recommendations are based on the Draft Staff
Appraisal Report. The Draft Staff Appraisal Report, in turn, is based on data
collected by visiting missions and data provided by the government and is
meant to assess the policy objectives listed in the Letter of Policy. The Minister
of Finance sent a Letter of Policy to the World Bank on 3
May 1994, stating
the governments intention to implement a range of policy measures to reform
the civil service. The Staff Appraisal Report, dated 17
May 1994, referred to
this Letter of Policy of 3
May 1994 and endorsed the planned measures.
Formally, the sequencing of the documents is correct, the Letter of Policy is
dated 3
May 1994 and the Draft Staff Appraisal Report is dated 17
1994. It is odd though that the Draft Staff Appraisal Report and the Memoran-
dum and Recommendation of the President of IDA are both dated 17
1994. A comparison of the Letter of Policy and the Draft Staff Appraisal Report
undermines the impression created by the sequencing of distinct documents.
First, it strikes one that the wording of large parts of both documents is
identical. Second, the data referred to in the documents was already collected
during the appraisal mission of World Bank staff in October and November
1993 and updated by World Bank staff and consultants in subsequent years. The
same observation applies to the policy prescriptions. Both documents, the Staff
Appraisal Report and the Letter of Policy, refer to recommendations discussed
during the World Bank mission, which visited Malawi in October and Novem-
ber 1993.
Foreign consultants and experts were not only involved in the collection of
data, they also participated in drafting government policy. According to a report
by a consultant of the accounting firm KPMG, one of the conditions for dis-
bursement of the second tranche of US$ 30 million of the 1996 Fiscal Re-
structuring and Deregulation Programme was the submission of a Civil Service
The president of IDA is identical with the President of the World Bank Group.
The Executive Directors are responsible for the day-to-day decision-making of the
World Bank and exercise all powers delegated to them by the Board of Governors
under the Articles of Agreement. Every member government is represented by an
Executive Director. Representation depends on the size of the shareholders econo-
my: The five largest shareholders (Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the
United States) appoint an Executive Director. All other members are represented by
19 Executive Directors.
Reform Action Plan to the World Bank. However, the first draft of this action
plan was rejected by the World Bank officials because it did not meet the World
Bank standards for civil service reform. At this point, several experts of the
British Overseas Development Agency (ODA), the precursor of the Department
for International Development (DFID), were hired to develop an acceptable
action plan and more generally to meet the conditions for the release of the
second tranche of funds from the Bank. They wrote a new draft, which was
submitted in March 1996. This plan better reflected the concerns of the World
Bank and was duly accepted. Shortly afterwards the World Bank released the
second tranche (KPMG 1996: 3).
The rejection of loan applications that do not meet World Bank and IMF
standards is not uncommon. For instance, the Interim Poverty Reduction
Strategy Paper that was submitted to the Bank and the Fund in 2000 was
discussed with the various missions visiting Malawi, followed by four draft
versions that were written in the course of the following two years, a process in
which various donor agencies and external consultants actively participated. In
spite of their active involvement representatives of donor agencies were keen to
delete any reference to their involvement and the donor-driven development
agenda in the policy papers and official documents. During the Consultative
Group Meeting in 2000, for instance, a representative of one of the major donor
countries commented on one of the drafts of the Poverty Reduction Strategy
Paper: It gives some reason for concern that the document [interim PRSP]
states at the outset that PRSP process is simply a response to requirements of
the IMF and the World Bank (The Nation 18 March 2000). Of course, the
criticised passage was duly removed from the following draft. Drafting the
PRSP was a protracted process. After four drafts had been rejected several
World Bank and IMF consultants participated in the writing of the government
document and eventually the Final Draft was submitted and endorsed by the
donors represented in the Paris Club, the yearly conference of the major donor
organisations where the general trend of a countrys performance and future
policies are discussed, in April 2002.
The various technologies described so far, ranging from the splitting of the
loan documents to the non-contractual nature of the unilaterally binding con-
ditions and the sequencing of the different documents, are all aimed at rein-
forcing the image that reforms are government-owned. This image, however, is
undermined by the extent to which foreign consultants, hired at the behest of the
Bretton Woods institutions, ensure that the letters and documents of the gov-
ernment of Malawi are acceptable and meet the standards set by the World
Bank and the IMF.
The normativity of numbers
Getting the numbers right is at the core of what staff and consultants at the
World Bank and the IMF do and the sheer amount of data collected by the
IFIs is staggering. A policy document of the Bank and the Fund would be
incomplete without extensive statistics and tables on every aspect of a countrys
economy, from data on the Gross Domestic Product to social indicators, such as
school enrolment. These numbers enable policy planners to determine the state
of the national economy and predict future development.
In his ethnography of the IMF, Harper (1998) traces the transformation of
numbers from their initial collection by visiting missions to their eventual
arrival on the desks of managers and directors in Washington D.C. He observes
how important numbers are for the functioning of the IMF. Echoing Levi-
Strauss, he describes their transformation as a conversion of numbers from a
raw state into a cooked, meaningful state in country reports and loan docu-
ments. According to Harper, the transformation of numbers into a cooked
state enables the Funds staff to assess a countrys present situation.
Harper, however, fails to address one important issue: the normativity of
numbers. Numbers develop a particular normative character when they become
part of the conditionality of the loan documents. Numbers may acquire norma-
tivity in two ways. First, the number itself can transform into a norm when it is
part of the conditions attached to the loan and second, the collection of specific
numbers, using standardised methods, can constitute a condition. Typical ex-
amples of the former are targets for economic growth, inflation, and public
expenditure. The second type of normativity of numbers exemplifies the neo-
liberal trend toward systems of self-control. The operation of the new systems
of management and control depends on the collection of reliable and standard-
ised data. For example, the installation of computerised personnel and payroll
management, expenditure planning, and accounting systems is a prerequisite of
the civil service reform programme. These systems are supposed to function as
instruments of self-control that are operated by the government or private con-
sultants, without any direct intervention from the IFIs.
The governments Letter of Policy or Letter of Intent includes stated objec-
tives of policy reforms. Many of these targets are represented as numbers,
touching on all aspects of economic and social development, including Gross
Domestic Product, inflation rate, government expenditure, revenues, and aver-
age life expectancy. The stated targets or objectives are based on estimates of
Malawis economic situation at the time estimates obtained using scientific
methods of data collection and processing. They are, however, not fixed; they
can change under specific circumstances. For example, by stating that the
reduction of deficit is an objective, the Letter creates some discretionary room
for the World Bank and the government. Better data collected in the future
might indicate that the original goal is no longer realistic and a new goal, based
on better estimates of the present and the future, might be formulated. As a form
of scientific knowledge, estimates are by nature subject to change if data col-
lection and processing methods are improved.
The collection of quantitative data is crucial for policy planning and imple-
mentation. Contemporary management and auditing systems depend on reliable
sets of quantitative data (cf. Porter 1995; Rose 1999; Strathern 2000). Numbers
are only useful if they are collected according to standardised methods; other-
wise they cannot be used to assess the countrys progress in relation to a
specific norm. In order to receive standardised sets of statistical data, the World
Bank and the IMF provide the government of the borrowing country with the
necessary technology to collect the required numbers.
When the first World Bank mission for governance reform visited Malawi in
1993, it was surprised that the precise number of people employed by the civil
service was unknown. The Bank therefore financed, through the Second Insti-
tutional Development programme, a civil service census a critical first step
in the development of a Personnel Management Information System (PMIS)
(World Bank 1994: 19). The civil service census was conducted in October
1995 (GoM 1996a). The data collected through the census could be fed into the
PMIS, including a computerised payroll system, which was eventually intro-
duced in 1998, and a personnel management system. The data thus acquired
could be used for other measures, such as functional reviews of ministries and
the retrenchment of staff identified as redundant.
Another crucial element of the civil service reform was the establishment of
the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). MTEF is a technology,
which was developed by the World Bank in the 1990s to enable the government
to plan and prioritise expenditure in line with the available financial resources
over a period of three to five years. MTEF was introduced in Malawi as a
condition of the First Fiscal Restructuring and Deregulation programme in
1996. The important contribution of MTEF is that it enables the government to
prioritise expenditure in a time frame that transcends the traditional yearly
budget planning. To prioritise does in fact mean that the ministries have to
identify their priority activities. High-priority activities will receive available
funding, while low priority activities receive less funding or no funding at all if
they cannot be sustained. Low-priority activities are usually earmarked for
privatisation. MTEF was at the heart of the measures to control government
expenditure and constituted a structural performance criterion. It is a technology
that was supposed to balance the tasks of a ministry, its expenditures and the
available funding. The Letter of Development Policy of the Second Fiscal
Restructuring and Deregulation programme stated the aim of MTEF:
The aim will be to correct deviations from the budget and adjust expenditures to
changes in resource availability. To enable control over salary payments, expendi-
ture monitoring will also include a monthly comparison and the reconciliation of
payroll and personnel, based on the ongoing audit of civil servants.
Of course, MTEF was not supposed to operate in isolation: it was part of an
encompassing system of interlocking tools serving specific purposes. Specifi-
cally, it was connected to the computerized payroll and personnel management
system, which, in turn, relied on data collected during the civil service census.
MTEF was introduced, together with a number of instruments, to assist line
agencies in defining their mission, goals and programme objectives, and Activ-
ity-Based Budgets (ABB) to enhance programme costing and classification in
budget representation. A system of monthly cash allocations, the so-called
cash budget, and a Credit Ceiling Authority (CCA) were also introduced to
check overspending, which was endemic in Malawis ministries during the
1990s.
The government established several specialised government agencies to
implement these systems. For example, it set up the Public Sector Change
Management Unit (PSCMU) to conduct functional reviews of all ministries,
aimed at evaluating how the ministries performed, as well as at earmarking
functions for outsourcing to the private sector. Furthermore, the government
established the Finance and Audit Committee of Principal Secretaries and the
Special Cabinet Committee on Budgetary Measures to monitor expenditure and
check overspending. The Ministry of Finance was responsible for the prioriti-
zation of expenditure and in each ministry so-called MTEF Committees were
formed to ensure the application of MTEF in their respective ministries.
The discovery of the C word
Since the introduction of the PSRPs a gradual shift has taken place from the
emphasis on economic analysis to a more open involvement in matters con-
ventionally considered to be more politically sensitive. The most visible marker
of this shift was the discovery of the C word. In 1996, the World Bank and
the IMF put the fight against corruption high on their agenda. This new element
in their policies does not imply a move away from or a softening up of the
rigorous instrumentalism that characterised their more conventional economic
interventions. In the rhetoric of the World Bank and the IMF the fight against
corruption is just another necessary technical instrument employed in a
bundle of other technical measures, such as accounting and budgeting systems,
to transform the state into the efficient machine that creates the enabling envi-
ronment for private enterprise.
The discovery of the C word has to be considered in the context of grow-
ing critique on the World Bank and its policies in the early 1990s. A heteroge-
neous assemblage of scientists, NGOS and lobbying groups had criticised the
Bretton Woods institutions for a long time drawing the attention of the public
and politicians to the failures of the Bank and the Fund. Both organisations
were held responsible for the deteriorating living conditions of people who were
supposed to benefit from their programmes and the deterioration of the envi-
ronment due to large-scale infrastructure projects. Pressure on the World Bank
really became threatening for its continued existence when major donor coun-
tries, led by the United States, became increasingly critical of World Bank pro-
jects and began to reduce their contributions to the IDA.
By discovering the C word Wolfensohn succeeded in reinventing the
World Bank as an organisation fighting corruption. In doing so he was able to
divert at least some of the attention of the Banks critics to corrupt and parasitic
African civil servants. As Finnemore (1997) shows, this was not the first time
that the World Bank was reinvented. When the Bank was threatened by donor
fatigue in the 1960s McNamara succeeded in reinventing the Bank by iden-
tifying poverty alleviation as the primary policy objective of the World Bank in
Considering that the mandate of the Bretton Woods institutions explicitly
prohibits any non-economic intervention into the domestic policies of a state it
is surprising that the fight against corruption was quite bluntly advanced in
policy statements and official documents. The shift in policy of the international
financial institutions is marked by Wolfensohns address to the Annual Meeting
of the World Bank in 1996:
And lets not mince words: we need to deal with the cancer of corruption. In country
after country, it is the people who are demanding action on this issue. They know
that corruption diverts resources from the poor to the rich, increases the cost of run-
ning businesses, distorts public expenditures, and deters foreign investors. They also
know that it erodes the constituency for aid programs and humanitarian relief. And
we all know that it is a major barrier to sound and equitable development. Corrup-
tion is a problem that all countries have to confront. [] The Bank Group cannot
intervene in the political affairs of our member countries. But we can give advice,
encouragement and support to governments that wish to fight corruption and it is
these governments that will, over time, attract the larger volume of investment. Let
me emphasize that the Bank Group will not tolerate corruption in the programs that
we support; and we are taking steps to ensure that our own activities continue to
meet the highest standards of probity (Annual Meetings Address by James D.
Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, Washington, D.C., October 1, 1996).
This speech reflects the instrumentalist vision of the World Bank. Corrup-
tion is a cancer growing and diverting resources from the poor to the rich,
increasing costs for private business and deterring foreign investors. The image
of cancer evokes a surgeon who cuts away the literally corrupted parts of the
body and applies medicines to stop the growth of cancerous cells. Surgery can
only be undertaken if there is a correct medical diagnosis. It is neither political
nor moral. This imagery draws heavily on the language of disinterested scien-
tific rationality, which produces facts not judgements. Wolfensohn was careful
in pointing out that the World Bank cannot intervene in political affairs. He
emphasised ownership of governments that wish to fight corruption. In his
representation the World Bank would only play the role of an advisor providing
technical knowledge when needed.
The C word figured prominently again in a speech delivered on the
Global Forum on Fighting Corruption in Washington, D.C. on 24 February
1999. In this speech less than three years later Wolfensohn reflected on the dis-
covery of the C word:
It is true that when I came to the World Bank, I was given an admonition by our
General Counsel that I should read the Articles of the Bretton Woods agreements. In
there it says I am to deal with economic matters and that as an international civil
servant, I should not, if I want to keep my job, talk about political matters. I was
then told that there was one word I could not use, which was the C word, the C
word being corruption. Corruption, you see, was identified with politics, and if I
got into that, I would have a terrible time with my Board. Well, I then visited quite a
number of countries, and I decided in 1996 that I would redefine the C word not
as a political issue but as something social and economic. That got me in under the
wire of the Articles of the Bretton Woods institutions and, simultaneously, my
friend Michel Camdessus did the same on the side of the International Monetary
Fund. The fact is that all the evidence indicates that the major inhibiting factor to
investment and to consistent development; the major factor which affects the lives
of poor people in terms of equity and in terms of their opportunity, is corruption
(www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/extme/jdwsp022499).
In this speech Wolfensohn displays more confidence: He muses uninhibit-
edly about his trick that got him under the wire of the Articles prohibiting
political interference by the World Bank. No more concern about political
interference and ownership of reforms is expressed in this speech.
Both quotes from Wolfensohn reveal the way the Bank presents measures
that are perceived as political, even within the Bank, as purely economical and
technical affairs covered by the Banks legal mandate prohibiting its interfer-
ence in the domestic affairs of borrowing countries. His frankness about rede-
fining the C word as something social and economic is indicative of a
dangerous pragmatism that simply subsumes anything it might see fit under its
mandate. The realm of the economic does not limit the operations of the Bretton
Woods institutions but rather expands the realm of the economic to include the
social and political domains. Both, the good governance reforms of the mid-
and late-1990s and the fight against corruption are presented as instruments and
technical measures, something from the toolbox of a surgeon who diagnoses
cancer or some other dysfunctionality that can be cured applying the proper
While the austerity and efficiency measures of the 1990s, the Institutional
Development programmes and the Fiscal Restructuring and Deregulation pro-
grammes, were mainly concerned with prescribing technologies to get the
numbers right the PRSP spelled out very detailed conditions with regard to
measures against corruption the World Bank and the IMF expected the govern-
ment to implement. These conditions did not replace the normativity of num-
bers but supplemented it. For example, the Letter of Intent sent by Malawis
Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Minister of Finance on 8 December 2000
to the Managing Director of the IMF, in which Malawi requested support from
the Fund under a three year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF)
arrangement in the amount of SDR 45.11 million (65 per cent of quota) and are
seeking debt relief under the enhanced HIPC Initiative contained very detailed
measures the government intended to take in order to curb corruption that
would not have been part of the agreements signed in the mid to late 1990s.
Under the title Governance the Letter stated:
Prima facie evidence indicates that corruption and fraud remain major problems in
Malawi. The government is fully committed to the prevention of fraud and corrup-
tion and prosecution of all identified offenders. Furthermore, the government is
committed to supporting the work of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Auditor-
General and is determined to achieve good governance. In pursuit of this commit-
ment, the government will
- give all possible support to the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and the Director of
Public Prosecutions (DPP) in their investigations and potential prosecution of
former officials of the PCC [Petrol Control Commission] implicated in the irregu-
larities highlighted in the 1998 audit report on the PCC, and take steps to recover
misappropriated funds;
- facilitate further action by the ACB and DPP in the cases of the disputed contract
award to SECUCOM to provide identity cards and the attempted procurement of
Land Rovers through Apex Motors;
- by end-February 2001, pursue the recovery of at least MK 150 million in cases of
large-scale evasion of customs duties, together with appropriate penalties, and pro-
vide adequate resources for investigation and prosecution of such cases, including
associated corruption issues.
The government went quite far with this list of cases of fraud and corruption
it wanted to deal with. It even specified a date by which the recovery of the sum
of at least MK 150 million in the cases of large-scale corruption was to be
pursued. This remarkable list has to be placed in historical context: In 2000 the
donor community grew more confident in expressing concern about wide-
spread corruption in the government and criticised the way it had been dealing
with cases of corruption. The IFIs therefore expected a firm commitment to the
fight against corruption.
The governments commitment to deal with particular cases of corruption
was a condition for the Funds acceptance of the loan request. The list quoted
above is a Structural Benchmark, a soft condition which, in principle, did not
affect the effectiveness of the loan although that is exactly what happened in
2002 when the IMF blocked the disbursement of US$ 45 million balance-of-
payment support because of government overspending and serious corruption
allegations against several Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and politi-
cians. This move reflected the more flexible approach of the Bretton Woods
institutions. The shift away from too many hard performance criteria was
presented as an acknowledgement that more flexibility and ownership were
required to make conditionality work. It was finally time for the government to
get into the driving seat, the representatives of the IFIs argued. Benchmarks
were supposed to be more open to dialogue and the participation of the bor-
rowing government. This, it was claimed, would strengthen ownership. In
actual fact, however, benchmarks widened the margin of appreciation for the
World Bank and the IMF rather than strengthening ownership.
In line with Wolfensohns redefinition of corruption as a social and eco-
nomic problem the PRSP summed up the negative effects of corruption:
The Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS) district consultation process
showed that corruption is one of the major concerns of the people. High levels of
corruption and fraud reduce economic growth by discouraging legitimate business
investment, and reduce the public resources available for the delivery of services to
the poor. In addition, corruption gives disadvantages to the poor in selling their agri-
cultural produce, and reinforces the unequal distribution of wealth and power in
society only those who can afford to pay a bribe benefit while the poor, the weak
and vulnerable suffer (GoM 2002: 81).
The shift from the relatively straightforward emphasis on simple Perform-
ance Criteria to the highly complex mixture of hard conditionality and struc-
tural conditionality of the PRSP occurred gradually between the late 1980s to
the late 1990s. Until the mid-1990s the Bretton Woods institutions relied almost
entirely on hard conditions aimed at improving economic performance. This
changed soon. For example, already in 1997 the delegates of the Consultative
Group applauded the continued progress made by Malawi in good governance,
respect for human rights, and in consolidating democratic institutions (parti-
cularly Parliament and the Anti-Corruption Bureau) over the past 17 months.
Yet there was a discernible shift from the emphasis on the reform of institutions
and management systems that pervaded the documents signed in the mid-1990s
to forms of interference that were both, much bolder and more intrusive, at the
century.
This chapter traced the reorganisation of Malawis civil service to its source: the
good governance reform agenda, as it had been promoted by the World Bank
and the IMF since the 1990s. It shows how the IFIs actually set the develop-
ment agenda for civil service reform in Malawi, where national policy is rarely
the product of the sovereign government or the national legislature. The paper
trails described in this chapter provide the background for the subsequent
chapters that show in detail how the World Banks and IMFs policy pre-
scriptions were operationalised and what they meant for Malawis civil ser-
vants.
The close reading of the loan documents revealed how the World Bank and
the IMF ensure that supposedly government-owned policy documents, such as
the Letter of Policy, the Letter of Intent and the Poverty Reduction and Strategy
Paper, reflect World Bank and IMF standards. One way to ensure that the
government documents meet the standards of the lending agencies is to rely on
consultants and staff hired at the behest of the Bretton Woods institutions to
supply the government with the required data. The involvement of these exter-
nal consultants already during the planning phase is not perceived as political
interference by the management of the World Bank and the IMF. According to
the dominant view within the Bretton Woods institutions, they merely respond
to a request for technical assistance or tools to deal with technical prob-
lems, such as administrative bottlenecks and management problems.
The use and the collection of numbers were important means of legitimising
the Banks and the Funds advice. The introduction of standardised account-
ing and management systems relieved the World Bank and the IMF of the
necessity to exercise more direct control. Tools, such as the Personnel Man-
agement Information System (PMIS) or MTEF by government agencies,
supplied the Bank and the Fund with the required numbers to monitor Malawis
public sector. They also enabled the Bank and the Fund to insert instruments
such as the enclave approach into the civil service when required.
The following chapter turns from policy documents and reports to the
implementation process of the civil service reform in Malawi between 1994 and
2002 in order to observe the actual operation of the instruments of control and
surveillance provided by the Bretton Woods institutions. It shows how the
already existing fragmentation of the civil service deepened during the imple-
mentation of the civil service reform and how underlying conflicts erupted,
because of changes to the status quo. Civil servants responded in unforeseen
ways to what most of them perceived as a threat to their cherished privileges.
Their responses ranged from silent resistance to more or less overt attempts at
manipulating the reform to pursue particularistic interests and certain elements
within the civil service were able to use a potential threat to their privileged
positions to their advantage.
The implementation process
Deconstructing policy implementation
In 1996, the government of Malawi adopted a Civil Service Action Plan (GoM
1996b), following the World Banks advice. This plan, primarily drafted by
consultants of the British ODA at the World Banks behest,
listed eight strate-
gic objectives:
(i) To confirm the role and core functions of government, taking account of the
governments policy priorities, plans for decentralisation and the scope for out-
sourcing and privatisation.
(ii) To secure performance improvements through the reduction of overlap and du-
plication in the machinery of government
(iii) To design and implement organisation and staffing structures and management
systems which enable ministries and departments to achieve their objectives
efficiently.
(iv) To design and implement a retrenchment programme which will assist in the
move to an affordable and sustainable civil service.
(v) To improve the recruitment, retention, motivation and work ethos of civil serv-
ants through the implementation of revised remuneration and grading systems.
(vi) To develop the capacity of civil servants to undertake the core functions of gov-
ernment and deliver higher quality services to the public.
See previous chapter.
(vii) To improve planning, resourcing, monitoring, management and accounting sys-
tems so that resources are more sharply focused on priorities and public expend-
iture is more effectively controlled.
(viii) To develop understanding and commitment to civil service reform both within
and outside the civil service through effective leadership and management of the
reform process (GoM 1996b: 2).
These objectives can easily be subsumed under the primary topoi of civil
service reform, promoted by the World Bank and the IMF: privatisation (i, ii),
expenditure control and retrenchment (iii, iv, vii), performance improvement
(vi, vi) and ownership of the reform (viii) (Dia 1993; IMF 1997; World Bank
1992, 1994). But what was actually done to achieve these objectives? Which
actions were taken, which orders were issued and were these orders obeyed?
This chapter addresses these questions and turns from the realm of policy
discourse to the actual implementation process of the civil service reform and
investigates their relationship to each other. Many studies have shown that it is
not as simple to determine the outcomes of policy intervention as the propo-
nents of social engineering claim. The implementation of policy cannot be
adequately captured with a linear model that distinguishes the planning phase,
implementation and outcomes. This simplistic approach isolates the project
from the social context. However, the inside and the outside of policy inter-
vention might not be as easily separated as this model suggests (Long 1992;
Shore & Wright 1997). Instead the analysis of policy intervention must trans-
cend the parameters defining the space and time of a particular policy measure
and approach them as a subject of study rather than an a priori given. Accord-
ing to Long (1992), policy interventions consist of complicated, contested and
multi-stranded processes, which involve the reinterpretation or transformation
of policy during the implementation process, such that there is no straight line
from policy to outcomes (Long 1992: 34).
Transcending the instrumentalist vision of social engineering requires a
much wider scope of inquiry, including factors that seem to have no direct
causal relationship with the policy intervention and unforeseen side-effects. A
number of studies investigate how unintended consequences may undermine the
efficacy of policy measures (e.g. Long & Long 1992; Moore 1973; von Benda-
Beckmann 1993). As early as 1967 the famous development economist Hirsch-
man drew attention to the importance of influences outside the scope of the
project design and the occurrence of unexpected side effects:
[E]ach project turns out to represent a unique constellation of experiences and con-
sequences of direct and indirect effects. This uniqueness in turn results from the
varied interplay between structural characteristics of projects, on the one hand, and
the social and political environment, on the other (Hirschman 1967: 186).
This chapter presents another layer of the vertical slice (Nader 1980) of
the implementation process. It shows how the civil service reform was shaped
by a number of influences outside the scope of the policy measures. Whereas
the previous chapter was mainly concerned with documents the focus now
shifts to the actual practice of policy implementation by studying up (Nader
1972). It argues that the implementation of the civil service reform revealed and
widened already existing fault lines within the bureaucracy. The policy
intervention constituted a threat to the status quo and triggered various attempts
at manipulation, co-optation and appropriation from within the civil service. My
account of the implementation process focuses on two central elements of the
civil service reform, the retrenchment of redundant civil servants and the intro-
duction of housing allowances. These measures had the stated objective to make
the civil service smaller, more efficient and transparent.
Retrenchment of employees made redundant
Two World Bank missions visited Malawi in 1991 and 1993 to assess problems
in the civil service and present possible solutions (World Bank 1993, 1994b).
These studies recommended reducing the number of support staff like watch-
men, cleaners, workmen and messengers, occupying the lowest grades in the
civil service, the Industrial Class (IC) and the Subordinate Class (SC). Employ-
ees made redundant were supposed to be laid off after payment of appropriate
disengagement compensation (World Bank 1994b: 84).
In March 2000, I had an interview with the representative of the World Bank
at the local offices of the World Bank in Lilongwes business centre, aptly
named Development House. When we discussed the progress of the civil
service reform he complained that in Malawi reform had been bogged down,
since there was no champion of reform. On the issue of retrenchment he told
me that the Banks objective was not so much the downsizing but the right-
sizing of the civil service, since the lower ranks were overstaffed and senior
positions often remained vacant for years. He quoted a few figures to support
the case for right-sizing. According to the civil service census, financed by the
World Bank, 18.9 per cent or 21,179 of the 112,975 civil servants counted in
1995 had no formal education at all; 16.2 per cent or 18,267 civil servants only
had primary school education and 37.4 per cent or 42,289 only had attended
secondary school for two years. Many professional posts were vacant and only
4.6 per cent or 2,576 civil servants had a diploma or university degree (GoM
1996a: 24). He argued that the fact that management and professional positions
remained vacant, whereas the junior grades were overstaffed, seriously skewed
the staff composition. When asked about severance payments or a social plan
for employees made redundant, he replied that according to his knowledge these
issues had not been addressed in negotiations between the World Bank and the
government. He pointed out that the implementation of retrenchment and
payment of severance settlements was the governments responsibility, not the
The unbalanced staff composition was partly attributed to the uncontrolled
growth of IC and SC workers whose employment was the responsibility of in-
dividual departments.
Heads of departments and senior civil servants at the
departmental level used their authority to employ staff in non-established posts
without interference or pressure from the Public Service Commission (PSC) or
the Department of Human Resource Management to employ large numbers of
clients or to create so-called ghost-workers, non-existing employees whose
salaries were pocketed by rackets led by senior civil servants. From the Banks
perspective the remedy seemed clear: establish the exact number of employees
in the IC and SC, reduce staff numbers in these grades through a retrenchment
programme, outsource these tasks to the private sector, improve personnel and
payroll management and create more favourable salary structures for highly
qualified professionals in senior posts (World Bank 1993, 1994b).
In terms of staff numbers, the Secretary of Human Resource Management
set the target of 16,000 people, formerly employed in the IC and SC, to be
incorporated in the civil service establishment. The others were to be made
redundant. This measure affected tens of thousands of government employees
who were dismissed between 1995 and 2002. It is impossible to establish exact-
ly how many were actually dismissed, since prior to the civil service census in
1995 the exact number of IC and SC staff was unknown. Yet, according to
estimates, the civil service employed about 50,000 IC staff in 1994 (World
Bank 1994b: 18). The governments Letter of Development Policy, requesting a
loan of US$ 106.4 million to finance the first phase of the civil service reform
programme, informed the World Bank that 20,000 civil servants in the IC and
SC had already been dismissed between February and September 1995. This
number, however, should be treated with caution since the reduction of support
staff constituted one of the conditions for being granted the World Banks loan,
a so-called Prior Action (see Chapter 3: 39). The government, therefore, had an
interest in reporting a high number of dismissals before the civil service census
was conducted. Since the number of 20,000 was not doubted by the World
Bank officials, this meant that a further 14,000 people had to be made redun-
dant. Most of them were dismissed between 1997 and 1998 but dismissals con-
tinued until 2002, albeit on a smaller scale.
These are non-established positions as compared to established posts, which had to
be approved centrally by the PSC and were managed by the Department of Human
Resource Management and Development, see also Chapter 1: 12.
The actual implementation of this plan was of course much messier than the
documents signed between the World Bank and the government suggested.
Targets were not met, deadlines were not kept, and implementation was often
subject to ad-hoc decision-making, particularistic interests and unanticipated
events. Nevertheless, the World Bank and the IMF maintained just enough
pressure to keep the government on track. This was not met with enthusiasm by
government officials, as can be seen in a circular by the Secretary to the Presi-
dent and Cabinet, the head of the civil service, distributed to the heads of
departments in November 1998. The circular explicitly made reference to the
World Bank/IMF agreement with the Malawi Government in connection with
the retrenchment exercise.
While conducting fieldwork in Lilongwe and Zomba, in late 1999 and early
2000, I met many who had been the victim of the last wave of dismissals in
1997 and 1998. Whereas some had returned to their villages to farm, as my
interlocutors told me, many lingered on, doing piece-work and hoping to find a
new job. One of them was Mr. Kangame, a former security guard. During one
of our meetings he carefully unfolded a crumbled piece of paper, a letter he had
often shown officials at the Labour Office as well as his friends and colleagues,
in the hope they might be able to assist him. The letter was a letter of notifica-
tion:
Herewith you are being notified that your service will be terminated on grounds of
redundancy. The last day of service is 31 January 1998. May I thank you for the
services you have rendered to the government during the period you have been with
us and to wish you all the best in your future undertakings. Monthly wages will be
paid in lieu of notice. All outstanding debts will therefore be recovered from any
payments due to you.
The letter was delivered on 19 January 1998. Between March 1993 and
January 1998, he had worked as a security guard for the Veterinary Department
in Zomba. As security guard he belonged to the Industrial Class (IC) and was
paid on a daily basis. The Malawi Public Service Regulations (MPSR) provided
only little job security for IC workers. Since Mr. Kangame had been employed
for less than five years, the notice period was only two weeks.
For two weeks
notice he had received a payment of about US$ 10, not more than a handout in
the late 1990s, with prices soaring. The fact that he had been dismissed just one
month short of completing five years of service constituted a personal insult in
his eyes.
Mr. Kangame was desperate after losing his job and asked his former boss
for help. Yet, no assistance had been forthcoming. He had pleaded with him
several times and had been a lot on the premises of the office in the hope to get
Government of Malawi (1991) Malawi Public Service Regulations: 3: 104 (1), (2b).
his job back. Mr. Kangame was very bitter about this refusal and complained
about the selfish bosses who wouldnt help juniors like him. He was one of
those who were laid off in the second retrenchment exercise between 1997 and
1998. During that time security services for government departments were ear-
marked for outsourcing to the private sector and, as a security guard, there was
no need for him any longer. The contracts to guard government buildings were
awarded to Securicor, a British security company. Many of the former govern-
ment security guards were able to find employment with private security com-
panies such as Securicor but a considerable number was less lucky and faced
social decline, such as Mr. Kangame, who had only enjoyed a few years of
primary school and was not qualified enough to compete for the scarce jobs that
were available.
Others had more luck than Mr. Kangame. I often met people who had been
dismissed months ago but who still hung around offices in hope of getting their
jobs back. By staying close to their former offices, they hoped to apply some
pressure on their former superiors by reminding them of their social obligation
as bwana or master. Many a superior officer proved to be receptive to this
subtle pressure and re-employed their clients as soon as the budgetary pressure
eased. They were creative in finding ways to re-employ their clients and de-
pendants. Although they could no longer employ support staff without the ap-
proval of the PSC, they retained the authority to employ project staff, which
they used to find employment for their clients.
The implementation of the Civil Service Action plan was to be coordinated
by a specialised agency with a cross-cutting mandate, the Public Sector Change
Management Agency (PSCMA). Its establishment was a condition attached to
the second institutional Development programme in 1994. PSCMA had the
mandate to conduct functional reviews in all ministries and make recommenda-
tions on how to improve performance and the internal command structure.
Amongst the measures recommended were the privatisation of non-core tasks
and the reduction of staff levels to cut the wage bill. Most of the senior staff
of the PSCMA were quite young, not older than 40, held college degrees in
economics or human resource management and represented the professional
elite of the civil service. They had been seconded from various ministries for
the duration of the project. The work at the PSCMA was seen as challenging
and interesting, offering possibilities to be promoted. Furthermore, the PSCMA
offered far more attractive work conditions, because of the generous funding
provided by the World Bank, the sponsor of the PSCMA. Due to World Bank
funding, the PSCMA was able to rent spacious and comfortable offices, send
staff on workshops abroad, pay allowances on time and maintain a fleet of
project vehicles at the PSCMA staffs disposal.
The prospect of a new agency with the task of reducing staff levels and
assessing the functioning of the ministries and departments was not greeted
with much enthusiasm by the ministerial top brass who feared outside interfer-
ence and took every opportunity to delay the establishment of the PSCMA. It
thus took the PSCMA until 1998 to become fully operational and conduct the
first functional reviews. Most top officials in the so-called line ministries, the
classic ministries such as Health and Agriculture, continued to resort to delay
tactics and silent resistance. Because of this resistance, the last functional re-
views were only conducted in 2002, well behind schedule.
The introduction of new housing allowances
The governments plans to introduce a new system of housing allowances also
triggered unanticipated responses. On 28 September 2000, I was on my way to
the Ministry of Lands and Housing in Lilongwes business district. While I was
walking towards the ministry, shots rang and clouds of teargas drifted down the
street. People came running from the direction of the ministry. As it turned out,
the riot police had chased a group of protesters away with tear-gas and warning
shots. The protesters were landlords who let their houses to the government,
which in turn allocated these houses to civil servants. A few months earlier, the
government had announced that it would terminate the lease agreements with
the landlords but had failed to pay all arrears to the landlords.
This measure was part of the restructuring of the civil service. In line with
the donor agencies recommendations, the government intended to change its
long-standing policy of providing housing for civil servants. To this end, the
Ministry of Lands and Housing had rented thousands of houses owned by
private landlords. Under the new scheme, this would no longer be the govern-
ments task. Instead, it would pay housing allowances to civil servants, who
were, in turn, supposed to pay for their accommodation themselves. The minis-
try, however, had not paid rent to a number of landlords since April 2000.
These landlords decided to voice their concern before the agreements were
terminated, and had gathered at the ministry to demand payment of the arrears.
After they had waited the whole night, the riot police arrived in the morning and
dispersed them with tear gas and warning shots.
This vignette exemplifies many aspects of everyday life in urban Malawi in
the second half of the 1990s. Demonstrations and strikes had become common.
Every group with grievances, ranging from street vendors to civil servants, was
quick to take to the streets to voice their demands and concerns. This was
unprecedented and would have been unthinkable under Kamuzu Bandas autho-
ritarian regime. On the other hand, demonstrations such as the one described
above also reflected the widespread disillusionment with democracy and the
dire economic situation in Malawi. Since market liberalisation in 1994, the
economy had plummeted, and many people were facing social decline or even
abject poverty.
The incident on 28 September 2000 also illustrates the debates and conflicts
that characterised implementation of the civil service reform programme. It
should not come as a surprise that the issue of government-provided housing
and housing allowances proved to be so contentious. Housing provided by the
government for civil servants has always been a central and sensitive issue in
Malawi. Malawian civil servants considered the provision of housing as one of
the most important benefits of government employment. The provision of
housing was perceived to be one of the primary duties of the government as
employer.
Government housing was a legacy of the colonial period when the admini-
stration offered generous housing to the expatriate officers, a considerable strain
on the budget of the cash-stripped territory. The cost of institutional housing
continued to be a burden after Malawi became independent. As early as 1963,
the report of a commission of inquiry argued that rents for civil servants should
be brought into line with prevailing economic conditions. The report also
recommended bringing to an end the artificially created demand among civil
servants for larger houses in order to stop the drain upon development funds
(Skinner 1963: 240, 273). These recommendations were never implemented
due to resistance among civil servants of the new state who regarded cheap
institutional housing as a privilege of the colonial masters, to which they felt
entitled after independence. To keep the bureaucratic elite of the country in line,
Kamuzu Banda retained the colonial system of institutional housing after
Malawis independence in spite of his criticism of civil servants greed.
The housing issue resurfaced again in the early 1990s when the World Bank
evaluated the state of Malawis civil service. These reports noted that govern-
ment housing was highly subsidised and that rents were only at 10 per cent of
the market value (World Bank 1994b: 49). In line with the neo-liberal percep-
tion that non-essential government functions, such as the provision of housing
for civil servants, had to be privatised, the report recommended monetising
benefits like housing to make the salary structure more transparent and equita-
ble (World Bank 1994b: 85).
On 30 June 2000, the newly appointed Minister of Finance, Mathews Chi-
kaonda, a former World Bank economist, announced in a statement on the
annual budget that the government intended to withdraw from the lease of
houses for civil servants and to pay a housing allowance instead. In July 2000,
the Ministry of Lands and Housing announced that all lease agreements be-
tween the government and landlords would be terminated by November 2000.
This announcement signified the change of the long-standing government poli-
cy to provide housing for many civil servants. Theoretically, all civil servants
were eligible for government housing, but the government and the state-owned
Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) had never been able to build and maintain
housing for all civil servants. There were no statistics available on the exact
number of civil servants living in the houses leased by the government, but the
number was estimated at about 20 per cent, most of whom held senior positions.
There were two categories of civil servants: On the one hand, those living in
houses owned or leased by the government and, on the other, those who were
not housed by the government and received a housing allowance instead. The
first category included civil servants living in houses owned by the government
and those living in houses leased by the government from the MHC and private
landlords. Most of the former were teachers in rural areas who lived in houses
on the premises of the school, extension workers in rural areas, and soldiers and
police officers living in staff quarters. The latter lived in houses leased by the
government from the MHC and private landlords. Most of these houses were of
a relatively high standard and were situated in the urban centres. Generally,
most of the senior ministerial staff lived in houses leased from the MHC and
private landlords in one of the more up-market townships of Lilongwe and
Zomba. Civil servants living in institutional and leased houses paid only a
nominal rent of less than 10 per cent of their salary, equalling only a few US
The second category comprised civil servants who were not housed by the
government. They received a housing allowance of 15 per cent of their basic
salary. This meant that most civil servants in this category received less than
US$ 10 housing allowance in 2000. Most of the junior grades in Zomba and
Lilongwe, such as support staff and clerks, fell into that category and were
forced to find housing on the free market. Rents were relatively high, especially
in Lilongwe, and many civil servants had to pay rents much higher than their
monthly housing allowance. For example, a so-called servants quarter, one
room with communal washing and cooking facilities, cost almost US$ 15 per
month in Biwi, one of the central townships in Lilongwe. Houses with more
than one room and electricity in Biwi started at US$ 40 per month. Therefore,
many civil servants were forced to live in the outlying townships, such as Area
25, where rents were still affordable and housing available. However, what was
saved on the rent was spent on public transport to and from the city centre, at
distances between 5 km and 15 km from Capital Hill and City Centre.
Two issues caused considerable unrest among civil servants. First, the meas-
ure announced by Chikaonda only applied to civil servants who lived in houses
leased by the government and, second, the new policy entailed a complete
restructuring of the whole system of government housing. Civil servants would
no longer rent their houses from the government, which, in turn, leased them
from the MHC or private landlords. Instead, they would rent their houses
directly from the landlords without interference from the government. To this
end they would receive housing allowances. The new policy would result in the
reduction of capacities used to administer thousands of houses, one of the main
objectives of the civil service reform.
A few months after the initial announcement in July, the Secretary of Human
Resource Management issued a circular on 18 September 2000, which intro-
duced housing allowances for those civil servants previously living in houses
leased by the government. It announced that the last rental payments to land-
lords would be made in October 2000.
The new rates were based on the stan-
dard rents of the MHC, the largest provider of housing for civil servants and the
only landlord with standard rents in the country. The allowances would be paid
as a monthly lump sum. Payments would be based on the respective salary
grade. Generally, the new rates exceeded basic salaries by 30 per cent, resulting
de facto in an enormous increase in total monthly remuneration.
The circular
provided that those civil servants who were not living in houses leased by the
government and who had received the 15 per cent monthly housing allowance
would receive 25 per cent of their basic salaries as housing allowance, an
increase of 10 per cent.
This measure resulted in a huge gap between housing allowances paid to
those living in previously leased houses, who would receive an average of 130
per cent of their basic monthly salary, and those receiving only 25 per cent of
their basic monthly salary as housing allowance. This discrimination was ac-
knowledged in the circular that stated that this rate will be revised subject to
the availability of resources in the next financial years with a view to bringing it
in line with the allowance payable to employees who are currently housed.
The Secretary of Human Resource Managements circular stirred up a nest
of hornets because of its bias in favour of the mostly senior civil servants living
in houses leased by the government. In September 2000, senior officials of the
Office of the President and Cabinet admitted that the scheme was not equitable,
since it gave preferential treatment to a small group of civil servants. Another
serious problem was the funding: the new scheme was estimated to cost about
100 per cent more than the old scheme. However, no extra funds had been made
available, neither from donor agencies nor from domestic sources, and it was
still unclear how the whole scheme would be financed.
Circular of the Secretary of HRMD 18 September 2001
Ref/HRMD/102/4/OC/IV/22.
Senior officers in the Superscale grades would receive MK 12000-15000 (about
US$ 125-163 in July 2000), the middle administrative, technical and professional
grades MK 6000-9000 (about US$ 75-113 in July 2000) and junior grades MK 2000
(about US$ 25 in July 2000).
As the October deadline for the introduction of the new housing allowances
approached, the opposition gathered momentum. The junior civil servants, who
did not enjoy the benefit of institutional housing, were especially critical of the
new scheme and started to exert influence on the trade unions. They attacked
the CSTU, which initially had supported the new rates, for failing to represent
the interests of those who did not live in leased houses. Several former members
of the CSTU accused the union leaders of pure treachery in the press.
argued that the new scheme was unfair, since it would create two categories of
civil servants: those receiving 25 per cent of their basic salary and those who
would receive a lump sum, which would be many times higher than what the
rest would receive. Opposition against the new scheme spread among the
juniors who threatened to take action without the approval of the trade
unions. In August 2000, the unions dissidents even planned to hold a demon-
stration against the scheme on Capital Hill. Hence, to regain their influence, the
union leaders abandoned their conciliatory position and adopted a much harder
line, demanding that the new rates apply to all civil servants.
Government negotiators eventually gave in to these demands, since Muluzis
government depended on the civil servants support. After the 1999 elections, in
which Muluzis UDF only won by a narrow margin, the presidents position
had been considerably weakened and he tried to drum up support in the run-up
to the local elections in September 2000.
The confusion around the new allowances grew when the press reported that
the scheme had been put on hold until January 2001.
Finally the new housing
allowances were paid in January 2001 to those civil servants living in houses
formerly leased by the government. During 2001, government representatives
negotiated with the representatives of the trade unions. The government repre-
sentatives tried to exclude certain categories, such as teachers living in govern-
ment-owned houses in rural areas, from the new scheme but the trade union
representatives adopted an uncompromising stance and pushed for the payment
of the new rates to all civil servants. Eventually, the negotiators of the govern-
ment gave in and introduced a new housing allowance scheme for all civil serv-
ants on 1 January 2002.
Meanwhile, funding had also been secured. Parallel to the negotiations with
the representatives of the trade unions, the functionaries of the Ministry of
Finance and OPC had negotiated with the IMF, which agreed to compensate the
extra burden on the budget, resulting from the introduction of the new scheme
The Nation, 25 September 2000, Civil Servants hit own union.
The Nation, 3 October 2000, House allowance on hold.
Circular of the Secretary of Human Resource Management, 2 January 2002, Ref.
No. HRMD/4/1/7E/IX/21.
with balance-of-payment support to promote the implementation of good
governance in Malawi. Due to the changes, the costs of the new schemes were
about 100 per cent higher than the old system and only the support of the IMF
enabled the government to implement the new scheme 15 months later than
originally planned.
Increasing fragmentation of the civil service
The account of the retrenchment exercise and the introduction of the new
housing allowances warrant a closer look at the fissures within the civil service
that were revealed and widened by its implementation. Two major fault lines
can be distinguished. The first one is the competition between new agencies,
which had the task of promoting the civil service reform, and the classic line
ministries. The second one is the growing gap between bosses and juniors
that can be traced back to the colonial period under British rule. Both of these
fault lines, in turn, were influenced by ethnic-regional rivalries, a distinct
characteristic of Malawian society since colonial times.
In line with the enclave approach described in the previous chapter, the
World Bank singled out government departments and agencies. These enclaves
were expected to operate as centres from where the reform would spread
throughout the whole civil service. Enclaves were either already existing
ministries, usually with cross-ministerial mandates, such as the Ministry of
Finance,
the Department of Human Resource Management and the National
Economic Council (NEC), specialised departments such as the National Sta-
tistics Office (NSO) or newly established agencies such as PSCMA, with the
mandate to implement the various measures of the civil service reform. These
agencies received considerable logistical and financial support to implement the
reforms. The National Statistics Office, for example, received World Bank
funding and assistance to improve data collection and the Department of Hu-
man Resource Management received assistance to implement the new compu-
terised payroll system.
Due to the financial and logistical support of the World Bank, these en-
claves tended to have more resources and better qualified staff at their dis-
posal. The working conditions in a project were considered much more attrac-
tive than regular work in the civil service. There were more workshops, more
financial resources, better training possibilities, more vehicles and more allow-
ances than in departments that depended on government funding. Training
The Ministry of Finance usually had the overall responsibility for managing the
programme, and for monitoring and reporting responsibilities (interview at Minis-
try of Finance, March 2000) and functioned as principal contact for World Bank
staff and visiting missions.
courses abroad were especially attractive for civil servants, considering the
limited possibilities within Malawi to receive training.
Generally, cooperation of individual government departments or agencies
with donor agencies was often better than between government departments
with different donors. Considerable differences existed between bureaucratic
routines and requirements of the various multilateral and bilateral donor agen-
cies, which resulted in different bureaucratic practices between and even inside
ministries depending on the donor agency funding the projects.
With regard to the implementation of the civil service reform, conflicts
emerged between the enclave agencies and parts of the senior staff of the
classic line ministries, who tended to resist what they perceived as interference
in their affairs. The partnership between the World Bank and the Ministry of
Finance soon resulted in isolation of the latter from other ministries that were
targeted by the reform programme (Botchewey et al. 1998: 81). The heads of
departments preferred to maintain as much discretion in running their depart-
ments as possible. For example, the possibility to hire IC employees without
outside interference or the freedom to allocate resources as they saw fit consti-
tuted valued privileges they were not willing to give up. Consequently, the
senior management in the line ministries viewed measures such the introduction
of job descriptions, computerised payroll management and functional reviews,
with suspicion sometimes even with alarm.
Resistance was rarely open, and the senior civil servants who rejected the
reform opted for delay tactics, such as ignoring the PSCMA and feigning indif-
ference. No one challenged the retrenchment exercise openly; they had been too
long in the civil service to jeopardise their positions by resisting openly and
actively. They rather chose the chameleon tactics of camouflage and survival
developed under Kamuzu Bandas despotic rule (cf. Dzimbiri 1998; Englund
2002b; Mapanje 1981) and tried to delay what seemed to be inevitable without
attracting undue attention, rather than voicing any concerns they might have
had.
The conflicts between the enclaves and the line ministries had a genera-
tional dimension. The senior functionaries, who had been socialised under
Kamuzu Bandas autocratic rule and, in fact, often owed their positions to him,
were confronted with younger civil servants who were mainly employed in the
new enclave agencies. The enclave agencies employed a high percentage of
younger university-trained professionals, many of them economists. By con-
trast, the senior civil servants in the line ministries belonged to an older genera-
tion who began their careers in the 1970s. I denote the former as technocrats
and the latter as old-school officials. Most of the technocrats were in their thir-
ties and had joined the service in the late 1980s. They had enjoyed a better
education than the older generation, either abroad or at the University of
Malawi, established in the 1970s. Their outlook was more international, and the
most ambitious aspired to a career in an international organisation or in the con-
sultancy business.
The old-school bureaucrats had entered the service in the 1970s. They had
usually enjoyed less education due to the scarcity of educational facilities
during the colonial era and had progressed slowly up the ranks by accumulating
years of service. Their outlook was more national and they primarily perceived
of themselves as being rooted in Malawian society. Owing their position to
Kamuzu Banda, considered the father of the nation who secured independence
from the British, they were brought up in a highly hierarchical culture where
superiors decisions were never questioned. Under Kamuzu Banda, decisions
were usually referred to the top, often to Banda himself, and people were often
simply afraid to take decisions for fear of being accused of being a dissident or
confusionist. Moreover, many of them had served as junior officers in the
colonial administration, where Africans were required to follow the orders from
their European superiors without questioning, a characteristic of the Malawian
civil service addressed in more detail below. Many of those civil servants
suspected of harbouring confusionist ideas or feeling unable to subject them-
selves to Bandas strict regime had left the country and pursued an international
career, such as Bingu Wa Mutharika, elected president in May 2004, and
Mathews Chikaonda, one time governor of the Reserve Bank and Finance
Minister.
The culture of fear under Banda and the colonial experience had shaped
those men who had remained in Malawi, and, after democratisation, they con-
tinued to display the habitus of obedient and loyal functionaries. This attitude
goes a long way in explaining the absence of open protest by the old-school
officials who resisted civil service reform. Furthermore, they were afraid of
losing their positions after the transition to multi-party democracy and preferred
to keep a low profile in order not to attract too much attention from their new
political leaders who sought to replace those suspected of being too closely
associated with the previous regime.
The younger technocrats were usually more in favour of reform than the
older generation, although not necessarily always along the lines of the World
Banks ideas. Having been brought up in the 1970s, they were familiar with the
oppressive atmosphere under Kamuzu Banda, but many of them had longed for
change, although they were very circumspect in expressing these views openly
for fear of persecution from the security forces. Having been exposed to eco-
nomics, and being aware of the deepening economic crisis during the later days
of Bandas rule many of them were more open to new ideas and many tacitly
supported the reforms of the 1990s. Due to their age, they had been less in-
volved in the practice of hiring large numbers of support staff and, therefore,
did not have the same sense of loyalty towards those threatened by retrench-
ment as the old-school bureaucrats in ministries such as Health, Agriculture or
Labour. Being mainly employed in the enclave agencies supported by the
IFIs, these younger professionals often found themselves pitted against old-
school officials in the line ministries (Adamolekun et al. 1997: 215-217).
Dezalay and Garth (2002) describe a similar development for Latin America,
where economists trained in the elite universities of the United States, formed
bureaucratic and political elites in their countries of origin, creating a transna-
tional class of bureaucrats who approach problems of economics and the state
from precisely the same perspective (Dezalay & Garth 2002: 28). In Malawi,
the influence of economists, most of whom have worked either for the World
Bank or the IMF, is striking. President Bingu wa Mutharika, for instance, used
to work for the World Bank and his Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe used
to work for the IMF.
This generation gap, however, does not imply a complete rift between the
older and younger generations. Like their cousins elsewhere, the young tech-
nocrats were connected to the older elites by kinship ties and shared many
similarities with the generation of their uncles and parents, although their out-
look and style was different from the older generation. The competition be-
tween technocrats and old-school officials, therefore, constituted one dimension
of the multi-faceted competition between the newly created enclaves and the
classic line ministries a direct consequence of the implementation of measures
to improve governance in Malawi.
The dismissal of employees made redundant revealed a widening gap be-
tween top officials or managers, on the one hand, and the rank and file of the
civil service, on the other. In the Malawi civil service, the former were casually
referred to as bosses and the latter as juniors. When my informants referred
to the bosses, they usually meant functionaries high up in the hierarchy occu-
pying administrative and professional positions, with the authority to issue
orders and make decisions, as well as other senior officers who supervised sub-
ordinate staff in a department. Bosses constituted not more than five per cent
of all civil servants, i.e. about 5000 persons (GoM 1996a: 29). The rank and file
were casually referred to as juniors by my informants. This category consti-
tuted all civil servants who were considered to be subordinate, including lower-
ranking civil servants, such as support staff, unskilled labour and extension
workers with no or little formal education. It also included middle-ranking offi-
cers, such as teachers and office clerks with no authority over other civil ser-
This rigid division between bosses and juniors is one of the characteris-
tic elements of the postcolonial state in Africa that can be traced back to the
notorious colour bar between European expatriate officers and African employ-
ees found in all African colonies.
Under British colonial rule, all senior posi-
tions in the civil service of what was then Nyasaland were held by Europeans,
whereas Africans were only found in junior positions such as teachers, clerks
and labourers. According to Africans who served in the colonial civil service,
they were looked down upon by European officers, who considered the African
civil servants to be inferior, only emulating the manners of their colonial mas-
ters. Under colonial rule, it was unthinkable for an African to challenge the
decisions taken by Europeans and Africans were required to refer all decisions
of importance to their white superiors.
The colonial division between superiors and subordinates was retained after
independence in 1964, since Kamuzu Banda strongly discouraged any ques-
tioning of his authority, which he interpreted as criticism of his regime. Juniors
were not to challenge the orders of their superiors, while they, in turn, were not
to challenge Kamuzu Bandas orders, who exercised absolute power between
1964 and 1993. In addition, Kamuzu Banda continued to rely on Europeans to
run the civil service because he considered them to pose no threat to his claim
to absolute power. He only reluctantly embarked on a programme of Africani-
sation and, until the early 1980s, a number of Britons who had already served in
the colonial administration continued to hold key positions in the civil service,
the police force and the army. This continuity with the colonial civil service did
much to maintain colonial attitudes between bosses and juniors, even after
the retirement of the European officials.
It should also be noted that, in spite of the ritualistic invocation of a shared
African culture, there was actually a considerable social distance between
bosses, many of whom were trained abroad and enjoyed a formal western-
style education, and the juniors who often hailed from more humble origins.
The bosses, either old-school officials or technocrats, belonged to Malawis
tiny elite and considered themselves to be more modern or civilised than
their cousins with less social status, whereas many juniors looked with a
certain envy at the affluent lifestyle of those at the top, referred to as
apamwamba in Chichewa, the countrys main language. Although society as a
whole, in Malawi, avoids the more ostentatious consumption, observed in other
African countries, and people generally emphasise harmony and egalitarian
values, it is obvious that a considerable degree of alienation between bosses
and juniors existed even prior to retrenchment. Because of that social dis-
tance, the heirs of the colonial masters, the high-ranking functionaries, did not
really go out of their way to protect people with whom they often had very little
in common, and whom they tended to look down upon in spite of the pervading
rhetoric of clientelism and solidarity. Instead, the bosses preferred to keep a
cf. Ba (1994) for French West-Africa and Eckert (2007) for Tanganyika.
low profile in order not to jeopardize their own precarious positions following
the change in government after 1994.
Since the implementation of the civil service reform constituted a condition
for financial assistance of the IFIs, the government did not really have a choice
regarding the retrenchment of redundant support staff. Of course, the president,
the ministers and the top functionaries in the enclave agencies knew that this
decision would be extremely unpopular among the tens of thousands of
juniors who would be threatened with the loss of their jobs. Therefore, those
responsible for the retrenchment exercise tried to put at least part of the blame
for the unpopular measure on the World Bank and IMF, the institutions that had
demanded staff reductions. Malawis new democratic rulers feared the wrath of
the civil servants who had become accustomed to going on strike to lend more
weight to their demands.
Because of civil servants propensity to go on strike, the absence of large-
scale or organised protests against retrenchment is surprising. Several factors
have to be taken into account in this regard. First, the level of organisation
among civil servants was very low during the second half of the 1990s, the time
when most of the support staff were dismissed. Trade unions had been
prohibited during one-party rule and the new trade unions, which were founded
after 1994, remained weak, with insecure funding and few members. Owing to
their weakness, trade unions played a relatively minor role in the often
spontaneous strikes prior to 2000. This changed after 2000, when the CSTU
was recognised by the government as the representative of the civil servants
interests. Although this was too late to affect the retrenchment exercise, which
had largely been concluded at the time it proved to have an influence on the
extension of the new housing allowances to all civil servants in spite of the
initial reluctance of the leadership of the CSTU to endorse the junior civil
servants demands for equity. Second, many of those made redundant found
employment elsewhere, while their less fortunate peers still hoped to find
employment in the civil service. Many dismissed juniors thought it unwise to
alienate their patrons by openly resisting retrenchment. They preferred to hover
close to their patrons, constantly reminding them of their obligations towards
their clients. Some of them even succeeded in finding other employment in the
civil service or in the private sector due to the brokerage of patrons who
succumbed to this subtle but strong social pressure. This attitude derives from
the well-documented clientelistic logic permeating African bureaucracies (cf.
Bayart 1993; Chabal & Daloz 1999).
The belief in the efficacy of clientelistic relationships, however, was
thoroughly demystified when thousands realized that their patrons would not
help them and many junior civil servants I worked with during my fieldwork
expressed their alienation from the bosses, whom they accused of being
selfish, an accusation not taken lightly in a society where the duty to share ones
wealth is a fundamental moral principle. The alienation between bosses and
juniors was exacerbated by the implementation of the civil service reform
programme and the juniors readiness to resort to strikes and other forms of
open protest can be read as a reflection of their growing disenchantment with
clientelism.
My interlocutors had a tendency to frame the conflicts triggered by the
dismissal of staff made redundant and the introduction of the new housing
allowance scheme in terms of ethnic and regional rivalries. Within the civil
service there was a great mutual distrust between people from the countrys
three regions. Northerners and Southerners accused people from the central
region and in particular those with a Chewa ethnic background for conspiring
against them. People from the central region, in turn, would often point towards
conspiracies of Northerners against people from the centre.
To express conflicts in the idiom of ethnicity and regionalism has been a
general characteristic of Malawian politics since the countrys independence.
President Banda, a Chewa from Kasungu in the central region, aggressively
promoted Chewa tribal identity as the national identity at the expense of other
ethnic groups in the north and south (Chirwa 1998; Kaspin 1995; Vail & White
1989). As Kaspin (1995) notes, ethnicity and regionalism provide distinct, al-
though partly overlapping, registers in Malawis cultural politics. The northern
region is mainly associated with the Tumbuka and to a lesser extent Tonga and
Ngonde. The central region is considered to be Chewa, although there are size-
able Ngoni populations. The south is primarily associated with Yao and
Nyanja/Manganja, although there are also large numbers of Lomwe in the
southeast who arrived in the early 20
century from Mozambique to work on
estates in the British protectorate. The Chewa and the Nyanja/Manganja speak
the same language, which is referred to as Chinyanja in neighbouring Mozam-
bique and Zambia, where there are sizable Chinyanja-speaking populations. In
Malawi, Banda decreed this language to be Chichewa in order to strengthen his
claim that Chewa tribal identity represented the nation.
Banda pursued a policy of discrimination and exclusion, in particular against
the Northerners. Already in 1964, he dismissed several cabinet ministers, who
had challenged his claim to absolute authority, during the Cabinet Crisis. All of
them hailed from the North or the South and were forced into exile (Baker
2001). Many civil servants who were suspected of supporting the dissident
ministers also left the country, among them Bingu Wa Mutharika, who returned
in the early 1990s to Malawi and was elected president in 2004. The fear of
dismissal or even imprisonment was ever-present during the 30 years of one-
party rule. During the 1970s, when Banda consolidated his grip on power,
thousands of civil servants, most of them from the North, were purged from the
civil service. For example, my informants remembered that in 1977 several
hundred employees of the National Statistic Office (NSO) in Zomba were
suspended, some even dismissed and detained on sedition charges. Kaspin
reports the forced transfer of Northerners teaching in the central and southern
regions to the North for allegedly miseducating their students in 1989 (1995:
Bandas hostility towards Northerners has to be considered in the context of
colonial history. Northerners, in particular people with a Tumbuka and Tonga
ethnic background, had dominated the colonial civil service because they had
better and earlier access to missionary education. In the late 19
century, Scot-
tish missionaries had established several mission stations in the North and
Blantyre in the South, where they provided formal education to the surrounding
areas, which afforded the graduates of these schools access to employment in
government service, the missions and the settler economy throughout Central
and Southern Africa (McCracken 2000; Ross 1996). As a consequence, the
majority of African civil servants at the time of independence came from the
northern region. Banda wanted to correct what he perceived as a distorted staff
composition, inherited from the colonial administration, by replacing Northern-
ers with loyal Chewa and people from the central region. The civil service strike
in 1963 in Zomba, which had mainly been carried by Northerners, had already
raised his doubts regarding their loyalty towards him. The thinking in ethnic
and regional categories soon permeated society and the civil service, and influ-
enced many a conflict in government departments.
Ethnicity and regionalism did not vanish after the end of Bandas rule. The
power of ethnic and regional thinking was manifested during the referendum on
the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1993 when the North and the
South overwhelmingly voted in favour of multi-party democracy whereas the
central region voted to retain one-party rule. The presidential and parliamentary
elections the following year also showed the extent to which the country was
split. The UDF and the other opposition parties received most votes in the North
and the South whereas the MCP won the majority of votes in the central region
(Kaspin 1995). Ethnic and regional stereotypes about Chewa, Northerners and
Southerners permeated all social strata. In the civil service, ethnic and regional
background often played a role, for example, with regard to recruitment or
promotion. Especially at the senior level, the origin of a civil servant could
become an issue if he or she was from the wrong region. Because of this it
was still common practice to strive for a regional balance in senior government
positions during my fieldwork.
The retrenchment of government employees made redundant and the introduc-
tion of the new housing allowance scheme were widely resisted by civil ser-
vants because these measures were perceived as a threat to the status quo. Their
resistance, however, was not the result of a shared political agenda or class
interest, and was largely uncoordinated, spontaneous and situational. In spite of
the frequent strikes and the involvement of the trade union with regard to the
introduction of the new housing allowances, civil servants resistance to the
new policies never resulted in a co-ordinated political struggle. The widespread
discontent and anxiety in the civil service was more diffuse and self-oriented,
and rarely transcended the mundane stratagem individual civil servants em-
ployed to protect their privileged positions. The countless individual acts,
nevertheless, succeeded in transforming the implementation of the civil service
reform programme and delaying it considerably.
Implementation of the reform measures intensified tensions within the civil
service, often expressed in terms of ethnic and regional rivalries. The World
Banks enclave approach widened the gap between the classic line ministries
and the enclaves, agencies with cross-cutting mandates, such as the Ministry of
Finance and PSCMU, often staffed by younger technocrats and supplied with
ample funding by the donor community. These centrifugal tendencies were
exacerbated by other donor agencies that supported individual projects im-
plemented by specific ministries and departments. As a result, government
agencies and departments were often better equipped to link up with their
respective donor agencies than with other units in the civil service. An im-
portant aspect of this fissure was the difference between an older generation of
old-school officials, who made their careers in the 1970s, and the younger
generation of technocrats who entered the civil service during the 1980s and
1990s. The reorganisation of the civil service constituted a threat to the position
of the older generation and the modus operandi to which they had become
accustomed, whereas the younger generation generally displayed fewer inhibi-
tions about civil service reform.
A far deeper fault line existed between the bosses, the bureaucratic elite,
and the mass of middle-ranking and junior civil servants. In fact, there was a
continuation of the colonial divide between expatriate senior officers and in-
digenous junior officers. The top officials in the ministerial headquarters were
in a better position to benefit from the implementation of civil service reforms
due to their seniority. The retrenchment exercise did not affect them and the
monetarisation of benefits actually constituted a barely hidden salary increase
for the highest grades. This was well understood by junior civil servants who
were threatened by dismissal and initially excluded from the new housing al-
lowances. In the latter case, they were able to exert sufficient pressure, partly by
mobilising the trade unions to ensure they also benefited from the new housing
allowance scheme.
In the context of the attempts to exploit or co-opt the reform, the term
ownership, the governments responsibility for reforms, acquires a com-
pletely different meaning. There was no ownership, as was evoked by the
documents of the World Bank and the IMF. Instead, I understand the civil
servants efforts to manipulate and appropriate the civil service reform as
mundane and subversive attempts to own the reform or at least parts of it to
protect their immediate material interests. In a sense they drew errant tra-
jectories in de Certeaus terminology (1984: 35) infiltrating, as it were, the
civil service reform process.
Eroding salaries and
The African entrepreneurial spirit
This chapter shifts from the vertical slice (Nader 1980) of the implementation
process to the perspective of civil servants everyday experiences. It takes a
horizontal perspective and explores the interconnections between the spheres of
work, private business enterprises and farming in order to understand the
motives, desires and dilemmas of Malawian civil servants in the times of good
governance and the free market.
The same World Bank report that identified bad governance as one of the
causes of lagging African economic growth praised the potential of African
entrepreneurship as one of the main forces stimulating economic growth. The
report sketched a particularly favourable picture of the dynamism of the in-
formal sector. The authors considered the informal sector as a seedbed for a
capitalist free market economy that thrives because of its responsiveness to
market forces (World Bank 1989: 135-147).
While I was spending time in government offices in Lilongwe and Zomba I
could observe this African entrepreneurial spirit in practice. The offices were
hubs of all kinds of commercial transactions, places where deals were being
made, goods were being sold and merchandise was being traded over the desks.
Virtually all civil servants I met in the course of my fieldwork were engaged in
some kind of commercial activity often informal and usually during working
hours. Business was one of the buzzwords on everybodys lips and, together
with advances and allowances, formed the Holy Trinity of the good civil
servant, as one of my friends pointed out sarcastically.
ERODING SALARIES AND DOING BUSINESS
This was certainly not the kind of entrepreneurial spirit the authors of the
World Bank report had in mind when they mentioned public service employ-
ees seeking to supplement their official incomes as an important group of
entrepreneurs (World Bank 1989: 139). A World Bank study of the Malawian
civil service in 1994 lamented Malawian civil servants poor performance. It
Until about 1992, such indicators of low productivity as idleness, late arrival and
early departure to and from the office, absenteeism and moonlighting were much
less in evidence in Malawi compared to many other sub-Saharan African countries.
However, there is increasing evidence that these negative attitudes to work are
gaining ground. This new trend is confirmed in the recent management audit [].
The study revealed that slack time among the staff [] exceeds 30 per cent. There-
fore, there may still be significant opportunities for improving the manning levels
and productivity in the Malawian civil service (World Bank 1994b: 27).
And indeed, instead of discharging their official duties many a Malawian
civil servant moonlighted and spent time in the garden to grow food. However,
this display of African entrepreneurial spirit did not stimulate economic growth
as predicted by the authors of the 1989 World Bank report. On the contrary, for
most of my informants business had become a necessary means to fend off the
effects of a severe economic crisis that had deepened since democratisation in
1994. Several devaluations of the Kwacha and a high inflation rate of about 30
per cent had eroded salaries. Jobs and privileges, once taken for granted, were
threatened, as the previous chapter illustrates. For most civil servants business
was a desperate attempt to keep alive a dream of modest wealth and material
security. The scope of this dream was quite bourgeois: building a house, ac-
quiring furniture, providing the children with a good education so that they can
lead a better life and enjoy the amenities of modern or civilized urban life.
By the late 1990s, this dream had become increasingly difficult to realise
and a government job did not command the same respect as it had in the past.
Many of my informants complained about the loss of respect since democrati-
sation; one complained that even the vendors at the market look down on us
civil servants and the little money we earn. Instead of acting out Bandas ideal
of the diligent, obedient and loyal servant, many civil servants adopted the
cunning and successful entrepreneur as a role model.
The high inflation rate, the general economic malaise and the civil service
reform all contributed to a profound sense of insecurity among civil servants, a
section of the population that had previously enjoyed the privilege of state
employment and the security that came with it. The experience of crisis was a
dominant feature of everyday life not only in Malawi but throughout Sub-
Saharan Africa in the 1990s. Most parts of the continent had been in the grip of
economic decline since the 1980s. Mbembe & Roitman, for example, sketch
everyday life in Africa in terms of a deep anxiety caused by economic de-
pression, chain of upheavals and hibulations, instabilities, fluctuations and
rupture of all sorts (wars, genocide, large-scale movements of populations, sud-
den devaluations of currencies, natural catastrophes, brutal collapses of prices
) (1995: 323). The decay of the entire material and symbolic architecture
resulted in surprise, perplexity and stupor of people who struggled to make
sense of the crisis (Mbembe & Roitman 1995). Ferguson (1999) describes a
similar experience of crisis and loss in his ethnography of retrenched mine-
workers in Zambia, who experienced economic and social decline during the
1980s. He also emphasises the experience of crisis and the dream of progress
that never came true: when the Copperbelt mineworkers expressed their sense
of abjection from an imagined modern world out there, then, they were not
simply lamenting a lack of connection but articulating a specific experience of
disconnection, just as they inevitably described their material poverty not sim-
ply as a lack but as a loss (Ferguson 1999: 238).
From these descriptions emerges a narrative of social decline and abjec-
tion experienced by the African avantgarde of modernization during the 1980s
and 1990s comprising mineworkers, urbanites and civil servants. Those who
expected to benefit first from modernization were especially disappointed when
a dream that had appeared to be within their grasp dissolved like a mirage. Both
present and future had become less predictable and any kind of contingency
could trigger an acute crisis. The precarious situation of all strata of the popu-
lation was sharply revealed during the food crisis in 2002. In February and
March 2002, the mood in the country was grim and desperate, food shortages
had turned into a full-blown famine, with many people dying by the beginning
of 2002. Outright despair reigned among those who did not have enough money
to supplement their depleted granaries and those in rural areas where no maize
was available for months.
Although the World Bank report was wrong in seeing Africans entrepreneu-
rial spirit as the motor of economic development, the growth of private
usually informal business activities also had a positive side: they were a sign
of the new political and economic liberties since 1994. The introduction of the
free market was visible everywhere. In Lilongwe, Zomba or Blantyre privately
owned minibuses filled the streets, private schools of often dubious quality were
mushrooming and the pavements were lined with stalls where hawkers sold
anything from drinks to stamps. The free market had also reached rural areas
where the licensing system had been deregulated and everybody was free to
cultivate tobacco and sell it on the market. Previously, smallhold farmers had
been excluded from the cultivation of cash crops and ADMARC, the agri-
cultural marketing board, had held the monopoly over all agricultural produce.
The deregulation of the market and the crumbling discipline in the civil
service created opportunities for a small emerging class of influential business-
people cum public officials who used their high position in the civil service to
establish promising business contacts. Even junior civil servants who were
relatives of the people up there or at the top, or who were otherwise related
to them, could use these newly won freedoms to their advantage as the case
studies presented in this chapter will show.
The meaning of having a job in the civil service
In a setting in which not only peoples incomes but the whole economy fluc-
tuates heavily due to the seasons of the agricultural cycle, drawing a regular
monthly salary is an asset, the importance of which cannot be exaggerated.
Only 2.5 per cent of the economically active population in 1994 were employed
in the civil service (World Bank 1994b: 2, 3) but, according to World Bank
figures, one in every three persons employed in the formal non-agricultural
sector was employed in the civil service.
In Malawi, the salary was more than just an amount paid for services
rendered. According to Mbembe, the salary in Africa should rather be con-
ceptualised as an allocation. It is not perceived as remuneration obtained for
work done or service or duty performed (Mbembe 2001: 45). Instead, the
salary acted as a resource the state could use to buy obedience and gratitude
and to break the population to habits of discipline (ibid.). In Malawi, as
elsewhere in Africa, employment in the civil service constituted one of the
scarce opportunities to benefit from the admittedly very limited social security
provided by the state. Thus, relatively few civil servants were willing to quit the
service, despite their frequent complaints about low salaries and unfavourable
working conditions. Many informants in all salary grades pointed out that
government employment itself constitutes a form of social security for them.
The experience of being employed and drawing a regular salary was a central
element in the construction of civil servants subjectivity, i.e. the way they
perceived themselves as a subject in relation to the world they lived in.
Besides the salary, government employment gave access to other benefits.
Civil servants were also eligible for salary advances or government loans.
During my fieldwork, civil servants made extensive use of these facilities,
sometimes becoming indebted to the government to the extent that 80 per cent
of the salary was deducted to pay off various loans. Other important benefits
were pension payments after retirement, paid maternity leave and paid sick
leave, as well as payment of funeral costs, terminal benefits to the deceaseds
spouse and a housing allowance. These benefits were invaluable considering
that Malawi only had rudimentary legislation on labour rights and social secu-
rity.
A job in the civil service granted access to workshops and field trips, a
considerable source of income for many civil servants. Allowances from work-
shops and trips to the field were part of the Holy Trinity of the good civil
servant and every civil servant I met considered the per diems paid for the
attendance of workshops or during trips outside the service station as a neces-
sary supplement to their salary. Salaries had been eroding continuously due to
the high inflation rates. Real income had fallen drastically. According to
government estimates, the urban inflation rate between November 1998 and
March 1999, for example, was more than 60 per cent, in April 1999 and May
1999 it dropped a little to 59 per cent, and in June and July inflation was at 56
per cent (GoM 1999: 46). The inflation rate had rarely dropped below 30 per
cent since 1994. Even before that, during the 1980s, real income had been
steadily shrinking. According to the World Bank, real basic salary in 1992
remained about 50 per cent below the 1982 levels (World Bank 1994b: 38).
The importance of government employment could be observed in Zomba,
one of my field sites. Zomba did not offer much else than employment in one of
the government departments, the university or the army. Usually a sleepy town,
it livened up at months end when the government paid the monthly salary, a
moment awaited with great impatience. The banks were crowded with civil
servants, university employees and soldiers, waiting in long queues while they
clutched pay slips and money orders, while others searched for a desk and a pen
to fill in a withdrawal form. On the weekend after the salary was paid, soldiers
from the army base flocked to town to spend their salaries on drinks and female
company in one of the bottle stores (bars) and resthouses, as brothels were
euphemistically referred to. The aisles of the supermarkets of Kandodo and
PTC were crowded with civil servants wives buying necessary household
items, such as soap and cooking oil. The market was busier than usual and
people bought and bargained for meat, vegetables and other food. The whole-
salers and Asian
shopkeepers made brisk business with government employees
replenishing their stocks. The streets were crowded with private cars and
government vehicles transporting civil servants and their purchases to and from
the town. The bus station was teeming with people who wanted to travel to
Limbe and Blantyre to buy goods from the wholesalers there, who offered
better prices than the traders in Zomba. Others went to visit their relatives and it
was difficult to find a seat in the packed buses.
In Malawi, as generally in East Africa, people of south Asian origin whose ancestors
came as contracted labourers during the 19
century are referred to as Asians.
Malawi was still far removed from a situation described by Mbembe &
Roitman for Cameroon of the late 1980s and early 1990s where one of the
most flagrant signs of the decline of public power is what surely appears to be
the end of the salary and its substitution by occasional payments, the amounts
of which are steadily declining (Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 347). Generally,
salaries were paid more or less on time, although occasional delays occurred,
especially in the payment of primary school teachers salaries. These delays can
be explained by the difficulties of managing the tens of thousands of teachers
spread out across the country. Nevertheless, the prompt protests provoked by
these delays highlighted the paramount importance of receiving the salaries on
time. Even though salaries in Malawi were generally paid more or less on time
civil servants experienced a kind of existential insecurity. Due to the rapidly
rising prices it became more and more difficult to make ends meet. Most civil
servants, especially those in junior and middle positions, had spent their
months salary within two weeks. During the hungry season between January
and March, when food prices were high and granaries largely depleted, the
situation was even worse and it was no exception that people spent their
monthly salary in the first week of the month. During the last two weeks of the
month, the bars and rest houses in town were empty. It was also the time that
many of my acquaintances went hunting for loans, as they said.
Many of them relied on salary advances paid by the government. The minis-
tries and departments operated loan facilities for salary advances for specific
purposes such as emergencies, the purchase of furniture or a car.
Interest on the
loans was very low (at the time about 15 per cent) and the rates of repayment
were very generous compared to private moneylenders or commercial banks,
who often charged 50 per cent interest. Yet it became more and more difficult
to obtain a salary advance. Under the impact of endemic illnesses and wide-
spread poverty, demand for salary advances had outstripped the available re-
sources. For civil servants outside the ministerial headquarters, like primary
school teachers, these loan facilities had never been really accessible but, since
the late 1990s, it had become extremely difficult even for officers at the head-
quarters to get a salary advance. Since the government had introduced the so-
called cash budget system
to improve budgetary discipline, it had become vir-
tually impossible for the rank and file to obtain salary advances. The negative
effects of the austerity measures and the overwhelming demand were com-
Malawi Public Service Regulations (1991) 1: 701-708 (Part A: Advances of Salary
Generally), 1: 710-715 (Part B: Education Advances), 1: 718-722 (Part C: Emergen-
cy Advances), 1: 725-731 (Part D: Bicycle Advances), 1: 733-745 (Part E: Motor
Vehicle Advances).
Cash budget is a measure to check overspending and means that a department can-
not spend more money than allocated by the annual budget.
pounded by the high inflation rate that not only eroded salaries but also the
ministerial funds for loans.
The costs of living had exploded since 1994. Prices for electricity and water
had gone up after the privatisation of the electricity and water sectors. People
had no financial reserves to be used in case of illness or accident. It was
virtually impossible to plan ahead. Any day a new misfortune might drain
savings that were already under heavy pressure from the high inflation rate. A
friend of mine, for example, who occupied a relatively senior position in the
civil service, had planned to build a house for years and finally he had been able
to save enough money to buy a plot and begin construction work. But just after
the foundations had been laid his mother-in-law was attacked by burglars and
needed support and medical care. Shortly afterwards, his own mother was diag-
nosed with cancer and had to be treated at an expensive private clinic in Blan-
tyre. Again, it was he who had to step in to foot the medical bills and drugs.
Luckily he was able to secure a salary advance of more than MK 100,000,
which enabled him to cover all the costs for the medical treatment of his
mother-in-law and mother. This meant, however, that the completion of the
house would be delayed for years and he would be indebted for years to come.
Indebtedness was a common phenomenon among civil servants during the
1990s. It was no exception that two thirds of the basic salary was deducted to
pay back salary advances and interests. For example, one of my informants
presented his payslip of 30 September 1998, in which more than two thirds of
the basic pay had already been deducted. Basic pay was MK 2,937 (at that time
about US$ 80) plus MK 15 duty allowance. The following items had been
deducted: MK 67.30 rent for a house leased by the government from the
Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC), MK 547.99 income tax, MK 85.72 inter-
est on a General Purpose Advance, MK 84.72 interest on an Emergency
Advance, MK 78.39 interest on a Motor Vehicle Advance, MK 385.97 payback
for the salary advance for the car, MK 500 back for the Emergency Advance
and MK 422.75 repayment of the General Purpose Advance, leaving the civil
servant in question with MK 806.16. e.g. about US$ 10, for the whole month.
Considering the urban inflation rate of 42.9 per cent in September and 51.9 per
cent in October 1998 (GoM 1999: 46), it must have been very difficult indeed
for him to make ends meet.
Only a few options were available to the average civil servant. Under
pressure to repay loans and interests and due to the increasing difficulties to
secure a salary advance, people resorted to so-called welfare committees in
offices or schools, revolving funds for funerals and emergency loans that had
been established to compensate the loss of the government loans. However,
many of these funds had also collapsed. Firstly, they shrank under the influence
of the high inflation rate and, secondly, demand for advances was growing due
to the general crisis. Especially junior civil servants, who could not activate a
resourceful network to raise money, were often forced to resort to moneylenders
known as katapila, who charged at least 50 per cent interest on a loan. Com-
mercial banks were not an option either, since they demanded collateral and
also charged 50 per cent interest. Many of my informants were so indebted that
they serviced loans with other loans, never breaking even.
In spite of these difficulties employment in the civil service still gave access
to a number of benefits including paid sick leave, maternity leave, pension
benefits, death benefits and payment of a housing allowance. According to the
Malawi Public Service Regulations (MPSR) a civil servant was entitled to six
months sick leave with full pay, a pension after 20 years of service or upon
reaching the age of 55, payment of the funeral costs in case of death and
payment of a death benefit to the heirs. Female civil servants were eligible for
up to three months paid maternity leave. The Workers Compensation Act
provided for compensation payments in case of injuries sustained or illnesses
contracted while working.
One of the vital benefits was the payment of funeral costs. The payment of
funeral costs was considered to constitute an essential part of civil service
employment, as important as the salary. The MPSR paid for the coffin and
provided a maximum of four vehicles for the purpose of transporting, by the
most direct route, the body of the deceased and the accompanying persons and
personal effects from the mortuary or other place where the body lies to the
place of burial (MPSR 1: 192.1). The same provision applied for a civil ser-
vants family members living at the service station, although, in case of a
family member, only two vehicles were allowed (MPSR 1: 192.2). The govern-
ment differed in this respect from employers in the private sector, who often
tried to avoid paying the funeral costs of their employees or their dependants. It
occurred regularly that angry relatives and co-workers dropped the corpse of
a deceased in front of the entrance of the company building in order to force the
employer to pay the costs of the funeral. In the end, it was usually the employer
who gave in to get rid of the corpse and restore peace among the employees
(Otanez 2000).
Funerals were a dominant feature in peoples lives during my fieldwork
between 1999 and 2002. The mortality rate among all segments of the popula-
tion was very high and life expectancy was estimated to be less than 40 years.
About 20 per cent of the population was HIV/AIDS positive, according to offi-
cial estimates. The army, police and the civil service were believed to belong to
the professions most affected by HIV/AIDS (only truck drivers and prostitutes
had higher infection rates). Death was ubiquitous and hardly a week passed
without the funeral of a friend, colleague, relative or neighbour. Obituaries
where the cause of death was a long sickness, a euphemism for HIV/AIDS,
filled several pages in the newspapers. Road accidents, caused by drunken or
reckless driving, also took a heavy toll; accidents with dozens killed or injured
were common.
Funerals were part of my daily fieldwork routine. Whole departments closed
down for one or two days because the staff was attending the funeral of a
colleague or a colleagues family member. It happened more than once that I
arrived at an office or a school only to find the premises deserted because most
of the staff were attending a funeral. Usually the corpse would be on display in
the familys house in town before being transported to the home village to be
buried. Most funerals in Malawi took place in the home village and it was of
great concern to people whether they could be buried in their home village.
Since the cost of a coffin and its transportation to the home village was so high,
the MPSRs funeral allowance was highly valued by civil servants. Burial
ceremonies in the home village strengthened and reproduced kinship and an-
cestral ties. For the villagers it was an important sign of respect if the successful
son or daughter, who had worked for the government, was buried in the village
graveyard, manda.
Funerals had become so much part of everyday life that people used them as
a resource. They gave them the opportunity, not only to pay respect to the
deceased, but also to visit their own relatives and friends, or to attend to other
matters. Funerals had even become sites where deals were made and goods
were purchased, as one of my friends wrote me:
A new phenomenon of late is that people collect maize from the villages when
escorting the body of the dead office mate, friend or relative from town to the vil-
lage. It is more common than not that those residing in town when they die or when
they get seriously sick, should be taken to their home village for burial or treat-
ment or to wait for their last day. As such, it is common practice that a lorry (3
toner and above) is provided for colleagues, townmates, relatives and ferrying goods
from town to the village. Those coming from far away places (the existing stereo-
type is that this practice is more common among Northerners than any other group
in Malawi, though it is also practised by others) collect maize, fish, relatives, etc. on
their return journey. This is a cost saving mechanism, as they cannot go on their own
funding to most of their remote villages to collect maize (e-mail of July 2001).
According to my friend there was a direct link between people attending
funerals and the economic crisis. Due to the high inflation rate, people were no
longer able to visit their home villages. Prices for bus tickets had been continu-
ously rising: In 2000, the trip from Zomba to Lilongwe cost about MK 250 and
the one from Lilongwe to Mzuzu on the northern cost about MK 500. These
were substantial amounts, considering that the average monthly salary was MK
3000 to 4000, of which half or more was deducted beforehand to service debts.
Consequently, a funeral in the home area was a welcome opportunity to visit
relatives and friends for free.
Funerals were a heavy burden on the government budget: The cost of cof-
fins, the use of government vehicles and the loss of work time were substantial.
A senior officer in the OPC complained that half of the government vehicles
drive through the country carrying corpses and I was told that the ambulances
in Zomba were mainly used for the transportation of deceased employees of the
Ministry of Health or their deceased relatives, instead of being available for the
transportation of patients and victims of accidents.
Even the IMF expressed
concern about the high cost of funerals of government employees and their
families. At the end of March 2000, the IMF sent a confidential memo to the
government of Malawi that urgently recommended more controls on ex-
penditures for funerals, and restrictions on civil servants attending funerals and
the provision of vehicles. In Zambia, for example, the government had intro-
duced the rule that funerals were to be held on Saturdays only. In Malawi, how-
ever, a similar measure was not being considered, since it was expected that any
infringement on the payment of funeral costs would be met by fierce resistance
from civil servants and trade unions, as a Deputy Secretary at OPC told me. He
said the government was not prepared to deal with angry employees dropping
dead bodies at the ministries doorsteps.
My informants were obsessed with allowances for the attendance of work-
shops, field trips and travels abroad. In principle, the allowance or per diem is
meant to compensate the civil servant for extra expenses incurred while being
away from the service station. In practice, however, allowances were consid-
ered to be a necessary supplement to the salary in difficult times. Often civil
servants stayed with relatives or friends and saved the allowances they received
for the trip. The per diem amounts were significant: for the attendance of a
workshop or a trip to the field an officer could earn as much as his or her
monthly salary in one day.
The top officials in the ministerial headquarters in Lilongwe benefited most
from workshops and travel allowances. Foreign travel allowances for trips
abroad were as high as US$ 260 per day paid in foreign currency. Of course
civil servants had to use the money for their expenses made on the trip, but
usually people were able to save money if they wanted to. The opportunity to
save foreign currency when the national currency was depreciating rapidly due
to inflation was very attractive indeed. Considering that the annual salary of an
There were no official statistics or estimates available at the time of writing. My in-
formation on the issue of funerals was provided by senior civil servants in the OPC
who were in a position to assess the impact of civil servants funerals on the govern-
ment resources.
officer with a Superscale-post
was less than US$ 2000 and that the salary of
civil servants in the professional, executive and technical classes rarely ex-
ceeded US$ 1000
, it should not come as a surprise that travels abroad, work-
shops and field trips were very popular among civil servants. Allowances
were paid as a lump sum, thus offering the civil servant a considerable amount,
which could be invested in a business venture or used to buy a plot, for
example. In the houses of my informants, each luxury item, such as a fan,
refrigerator, television set, video recorder or cupboard, signified a field trip or
I could observe the almost redemptive force of allowances during my visits
to the usual workshop venues, such as the Capital Hotel in Lilongwe, the Mount
Soche Hotel in Blantyre or one of the lakeside resorts near Mangochi. The
arrival of the accountant with the government-issued brown envelopes, con-
taining the per diems was anticipated with tension and excitement, dissolving
into laughter and banter after the envelopes have been handed out. To be de-
prived of ones allowance and to be forced to rely exclusively on ones salary
was almost as threatening as losing ones job. Allowances, however, were un-
predictable and sometimes it could take months before a civil servant was sent
to a workshop or a field trip. Especially in the lower ranks of the civil service,
the chance to attend a workshop was considered a rare stroke of luck, only
comparable to winning a lottery prize. Unlike the salary, allowances depended
to a large extent on the grace of the superior officer who had the authority to
grant or deny the permission to attend a workshop or go on a field trip. Conse-
quently many of my informants in the lower salary grades were in a constant
state of anxiety, trying to please their superiors on whose goodwill they de-
pended.
By the late 1990s, workshops had become a familiar feature of my infor-
mants lives. After the democratic elections in 1994, many donor agencies and
NGOs flocked to the country to promote development, civic virtues and human
rights (Englund 2006). The main means to transmit the necessary knowledge to
civil servants and stakeholders were workshops: workshops on HIV/AIDS,
management, human rights, accounting, sensitising workshops, workshops
for traditional leaders, for extension workers, for controlling officers, etc. Most
of these workshops were organised and paid by one of the donor agencies.
Hotels and resorts were often fully booked on the weekends with workshops for
civil servants, and many hotels depended on the income generated by hosting
S5/P5 and below; in 2000 Superscale officers in the grades P4/S4 and above who
participate in the contract scheme earned more than US $ 36,000 per annum.
Revision of salaries and wages in the civil service, Circular of the Secretary for Hu-
man Resource Management and Development 12.7.1999.
workshops for civil servants and NGOs. Often civil servants could choose from
several parallel workshops and they would attend the workshop in the best hotel
or where the highest rates were paid.
Per diem rates were not standardised and there were considerable discre-
pancies between the rates paid by different donor agencies. Most workshops
were fully paid by the donor agency organising the event, including the per
diem for attending civil servants. From time to time, the government issued a
circular, setting the allowances paid for the attendance of workshops and
training programmes. The donor agencies, in turn, set their own rates. Some
would pay the minimum rates set by the government, whilst others paid more.
These discrepancies led to disagreements. In 1999, the government and the
donor agencies agreed that the donor agencies would pay a minimum daily sub-
sistence allowance of MK 600. On 12 January 2000, however, the government
revised subsistence allowances and set the per diem rate at a minimum of MK
880, without consulting the donor agencies. Consequently the civil servants
demanded payment of the new rates. Several donor agencies initially refused,
arguing that the government could not revise allowances for the workshops
without prior consultation. In the end, however, the donor agencies had to give
in because the civil servants simply refused to attend workshops that paid rates
lower than those set by the government.
It proved to be difficult to meet civil servants, especially in the higher posi-
tions, because they were constantly temporarily out of office, as the phrase
went. Of course, it can be expected that top functionaries are extremely busy,
but it was striking how many workshops they visited. The report of an external
consultant hired to assess the civil service reform nicely illustrates this phe-
nomenon:
The main drawback to his [the consultants] work programme was the general non-
availability of Principal Secretaries during the visit. The Principal Secretary at the
Department for Human Resource Management and Development (DHRMD) []
was absent for the entire week in South Africa together with one of his Deputy
Secretaries. The Deputy Secretary to the President and Cabinet [], together with
most other Principal Secretaries, was committed to attending a workshop in
Mangochi. All of senior management of the Ministry of Education were on a visit to
Mozambique until early June, Ministry of Agriculture top management was com-
mitted to a World Bank mission for the week, and the Secretary to the Treasury was
in South Africa for the week (KPMG 1996: 4).
In 2000, the situation had got so out of control that the donor agencies and
the government took action. In May 2000, the Cabinet issued a directive that in
the future all workshops and seminars should be held in Lilongwe and Blantyre.
At a workshop in Blantyre, the Community Services Minister announced that
the measure was intended to check the movements of civil servants as they
carry out their duties and thus to improve efficiency and productivity in the
public sector. The newspaper ironically reported that the meeting was poorly
attended because half of the NGO community was having a policy meeting in
Mangochi at the lakeshore (Nation, 18 May 2000). A few days later, the news-
papers reported that representatives of the tourism industry had warned of the
negative effects for the national tourism industry because the hotels and holiday
resorts of the country depended to a large extent on the income from the work-
shops. It might not be coincidental that this measure was announced in the same
week that the meetings of the consultative group were held in Lilongwe, where
all representatives of the donor agencies had urged the government to stop
wasteful spending. According to my information, the circular was never imple-
mented and the lake resorts continued to host workshops for civil servants.
Workshops were not only a source of income for many civil servants, they
also constituted a refuge, and it is apt to speak of a veritable workshop cul-
ture. Workshops were the place to drink alcohol and have extramarital sex
with one of the numerous bar girls that crowded the hotel bars. Workshops
provided one of the few ways to have a good time and escape from the de-
pressing reality of inflation, illness and death. I was present on more than one
occasion, where the laughter of civil servants, who had drunk themselves into a
stupor, seemed to create some distance to the experience of the crisis, but often
their derision tasted of despair and hopelessness, instead of joy and sociability.
Drinking and sexual encounters often already started on the way to a work-
shop and it was no exception for civil servants to arrive drunk at the workshop
venue. A short story published in March 2002, in the literary section of the
newspaper The Nation, provides an illustration of workshop culture. The title
of the story was A night in Zomba and described the journey of a civil servant
and his boss from Blantyre to a workshop in Mangochi, at the lake. The au-
thors boss, Mr. Deseki was at home at almost all entertainment places along
the road to Mangochi. A letter addressed to one of those places was bound to
arrive safely. The boss announced that they would make several stops on the
way to Mangochi: we need to enjoy ourselves sometimes, after all we only live
once. And indeed the boss decided to make a stopover in Zomba, about 60 km
north of Blantyre on the M 3 road to Mangochi.
The atmosphere in the restaurant was inviting: We found everybody as
busy as a bee, taking drinks of their choice. They played beautiful kwasakwasa-
music [dance music from Zaire] that made most of us forget that we still had a
long way to get to our destination and by 10.30 p.m. the bar was full. Young
ladies had outnumbered men. Mr. Desiki was already engaged in a serious talk
with one of the ladies. The mood was tempting. Suddenly, a feeling landed in
me to get myself closer to a lady sitting at the entrance. However, the author
resisted, he thought his boss might decide to proceed to Mangochi. This fear,
however, was unfounded: the boss advised us that it was not safe to travel in
the night. He directed that we spend the night in Zomba, and proceed the next
morning. All officers received money from the boss to pay for accommodation
and everybody went to bed in a nearby guesthouse where the author of the story
is lulled into sleep by the happy noisy voices of young men and women.
The reforms and the crisis had fuelled a sense of insecurity and unpredict-
ability among civil servants. In the government offices, the atmosphere was
tense and frenzied. Everybody was hoping to attend workshops and be sent to
the field or to training courses outside the country. Often civil servants did not
save the allowance to invest in their businesses or redistribute among their
dependants, but rather to indulge in the consumption of alcohol and sex. In this
sense, the workshop constituted a place of inversion where everything that was
usually forbidden was allowed. So workshops served both as a refuge and as a
major source of income for civil servants.
How to make ends meet
Virtually all civil servants were engaged in business and trade. Their business
enterprises ranged from selling second-hand clothes (kaunjika) and raising
poultry to running restaurants, bars and resthouses, as well as taxis or mini-
buses, maize mills, saw mills or tailor shops. Others traded tobacco or travelled
to neighbouring countries and to South Africa to buy wholesale goods. Most of
them did so to make ends meet, as they said. It was also common practice to
cultivate a plot or garden, either in the home village or near town, where they
grew maize and vegetables mainly for subsistence.
Some had more land and
cultivated maize and cash crops. Especially in the central region and the North,
many senior civil servants owned estates where they cultivated tobacco and
maize.
This was not a new phenomenon. Already during the 1940s, African em-
ployees of the colonial administration doubled as businessmen. Vaughan, for
example, mentions a small group of clerks and retired clerks [in Domasi Area]
who were also involved in timber trading and maize traders in the Blantyre
district who were retired government employees (Vaughan 1987: 104, 105).
This pattern did not change after independence. A civil servant would set up a
business, such as a maize mill or a grocery store, after retirement. The re-
tirement age was 55, but after 20 years of service he or she could opt for
retirement and the payment of the retirement benefits. The payment of a
A garden denoted a plot of land where people cultivated cash crops and foodstuff,
in Chichewa munda (sg.), minda (pl.). Gardens were of widely varying size, in the
southern region only rarely bigger than 2 acres. Gardens were distinguished from
estates where maize and cash crops such as tobacco or tea were produced.
gratuity as a lump sum after retirement enabled the pensioner to invest in a
business and start a second career at a relatively young age. In the 1990s, the
emphasis appeared to have shifted from business after retirement to business
parallel to the official function. Representing a sort of insurance that enabled
civil servants to maintain a reasonable standard of living after retirement, the
business served to compensate for eroding salaries.
Business was the buzzword of civil servants in Lilongwe and Zombie. In
Zomba, Asians, people of south Asian origin, dominated the commercial
sector, while the few businesses owned by Africans were mainly in the hands of
government employees. For example, one of Zombas popular clubs at Three
Miles, a township and trading centre three miles southwest of Zomba, was
owned by an army officer, a major posted at the army base in Zomba. The club
was a large building with a parking lot and a spacious porch. Inside there were
two rooms, a bar and a large dance floor. The major told me that he did not
intend to stay in Zomba after he retired but wanted to open a nightclub in
Lilongwe because Zomba was too poor: There are only civil servants, they
have no money you know!
The term business denoted any private or informal commercial activity and
covered a wide range of activities. After 1994, many civil servants invested in
commerce and trade. This had previously not been possible under Banda when
the economy was strictly regulated and government employees had very little
leeway. During Bandas time civil servants were considerably restricted in their
out-of-office activities; they lived in constant fear of being arrested or dismissed
from service as a suspected dissident. Subjected to strict control, they had to
live up to Bandas credo of diligence, obedience, loyalty and unity, the four
cornerstones of Malawi nationalism.
When the strict discipline that used to be enforced under Banda weakened,
civil servants invested heavily in the private economy. They were able to do so
because of a favourable starting position. By virtue of their employment they
enjoyed a regular salary and access to monetary benefits, such as salary ad-
vances and allowances. Furthermore, their employment gave them privileged
access to all types of infrastructure, such as vehicles and telecommunications,
that were used for private ends, not to mention the valuable contacts that come
with a privileged position in the civil service. All these assets functioned as
capital, which they could invest in their private businesses.
It is impossible to provide an exhaustive list of businesses of civil servants.
Relative large-scale businesses included minibus or taxi businesses, private
schools and fishing boats. Medium-scale businesses might involve the breeding
of poultry, second-hand clothes shops, a restaurant, a bar, a shop or a maize
mill, while small-scale businesses ranged from selling mandazi (local donuts),
samosas (local stuffed pastries) to soft drinks, potato chips or freezies (water
ice). The scale of a business operation depended on the amount of money
invested. A bar could be a hut with a thatched roof or it could be bottle store in
town owned by a senior civil servant with electricity, bottled beer and food
served, or anything in between. The scale of the business reflected the social
status and wealth of the civil servant: high-ranking civil servants ran large-scale
businesses that required substantial investment and know-how, while junior
civil servants were engaged in small-scale businesses requiring only a small
investment. Rarely civil servants worked in their businesses themselves; usually
they supervised the work of employees and relatives. Yet many of my infor-
mants devoted a considerable amount of time to managing their businesses.
Many of them owned more than one business, often together with their spouse.
The income from these activities could be the equivalent of a months salary or
Agriculture was the other pillar on which many civil servants relied. Virtu-
ally all people had plots where they cultivated maize, groundnuts, pumpkins or
cash crops, such as tobacco and cotton. During my fieldwork, between 1999
and 2002, agricultural production had become more important than ever before.
For many civil servants, it had become necessary to grow food to feed their
families. Hence, people tried to spread the risk by combining their jobs with
various business endeavours and the cultivation of foodstuffs and cash crops.
Common cash crops cultivated by civil servants were maize, cassava, vege-
tables and tobacco. This was done at all levels of seniority, from the junior civil
servant who sold cassava to earn some extra money to the senior civil servant
who owned a large tobacco estate in the central region. Between these extremes,
government employees operated farms of all sizes, where they cultivated maize,
vegetables or groundnuts. Others raised cattle or poultry. It was well known that
many high-ranking officers from the ministerial headquarters in Lilongwe
owned large tobacco estates in Kasungu district. The reason for this was
Kamuzu Bandas decision to promote tobacco as Malawis main cash crop. He
had promoted the expansion of the large-scale tobacco sector as a national
development strategy and had acquired large estates in Kasungu district where
he established tobacco estates to produce high-quality flue-cured tobacco. He
urged the elite of party officials and bureaucrats to follow his example and
hundreds of party officials and senior civil servants received soft loans from the
Agricultural Division of the Commercial Bank to develop their estates. They
established large estates on former Crown land that had been confiscated by
Banda himself where they grew tobacco, which was to become by far the
greatest earner of foreign currency (by the end of the 1980s, tobacco accounted
for about 70 per cent of Malawis export earnings) (GoM 2001: 70; Williams
Apart from cash crops, it was common to grow maize to feed the household.
This was both a matter of necessity and pride. Nsima, the porridge made from
maize flour (ufa), is at the centre of every Malawian meal and, according to
Malawians, one has not eaten without a helping of nsima.
We Malawians are
proud to grow our own food was an often heard statement. To be able to grow
ones own food was a source of pride in Malawi, symbolising respect for tradi-
tion. Even people in wage employment, living in urban areas, cultivated maize
along with cassava and vegetables.
To grow ones own maize was a means to
increase the food security of a household and to reduce dependency on dwin-
dling salaries. The location of civil servants gardens varied. Some rented a
garden close to their service station, whereas others had a garden on family-
owned land in their home village, often not far from where they lived. Types of
landholding also varied widely. Some rented a plot from private landowners or
village authorities, while others cultivated a plot that had been acquired by rela-
tives or allocated to the family by the village headman.
Two types of garden need to be distinguished: the garden in the home village
and the one close to the place of residence. The former was usually situated on
what people referred to as family land, while the latter was bought or let as an
individual title against payment. Family land was a broad term covering land
under customary law tenure allocated by the village authorities to the family
and land that had been bought. In a village, the headman had the authority to
allocate gardens to the families that made up the village. This was their right as
members of the village and they did not have to make any payments for the
rights to use the land. Family members with traditional authority such as the
asyene mbumba (ChiYao) or the mwini mbumba (ChiChewa), the guardians of a
sorority group consisting of their sisters and their sisters children, allocated
plots of family land to individual family members. It is important to note that it
was legally impossible to acquire ownership of customary land, according to the
Customary Title Act. The village headmen and the representatives of the fami-
lies could only confer usufruct rights. An individuals claim to a certain plot of
land was only effective if the person cultivated the plot; uncultivated and thus
unclaimed land could be assigned to other individuals or families by the village
authorities.
Having a garden on family-owned land in the home village had many ad-
vantages and was of highly symbolical significance. It was tangible proof of the
sense of belonging to the village and to the rural kin. Economically, a garden on
Nsima is served with a side-dish or relish, ndiwo. Typical ingredients are pumpkin
leaves, peas, cassava leaves, sweet potatoes, cabbage, eggs, fish, meat, fungi and in-
sects such as ngumbi.
On urban agriculture in East Africa, see Foeken (2006).
family land was very attractive because it came without charges. For many, the
distance to their place of residence was a problem. If the garden was too far
away, the disadvantages outweighed the advantages because transport costs
were too high and tending to the garden became too difficult. Therefore, junior
civil servants, such as teachers and extension workers, were usually posted
close to their home area to enable them to make use of the customary land in
their home village.
Cordial relations with the relatives in the village were vital for civil servants
with gardens in the home village. Those who lived at a distance were not able to
supervise the work in their gardens themselves but had to rely on relatives to
keep an eye on things in their absence. The role of the relatives in the village
was ambivalent. Usually they looked after the civil servants garden during his
or her absence and helped to maintain the garden. And yet there was a good
deal of distrust between the civil servants from town and their rural kin in the
home village. Stories of thefts of crops or whole harvests by relatives in the
village were widespread among my informants.
As a result of these problems, many civil servants decided to rent or buy a
garden closer to town. From their perspective, a garden close to town had many
advantages: it was easy to supervise, transport costs were low and one did not
have to deal with jealous and stealing relatives. Many civil servants in Lilongwe
and Zomba rented one or more plots in one of the surrounding villages. This
land was either let by the village headman himself or by villagers, with the
permission of the village headman. Without the permission of the village head-
man, it was not possible rent a plot on the territory under his jurisdiction. In
theory, these transactions were illegal, since it was not possible to acquire a
legal title on land regulated by customary law. Nevertheless, the lease and sale
of land was common among the traditional authorities in the vicinity of Lilong-
we and Zomba.
The size and location of the plots depended to a large extent on social status
and income. Junior civil servants with only little capital depended exclusively
on the produce of the garden in the home village, while others, who were
wealthier, were able to have one or more gardens close to town, in addition to
the one in the home village, which they kept to display their attachment to the
village rather than to produce food for themselves. Many civil servants had
abandoned their claim to land in their home village and relied exclusively on
their gardens close to town for their food supply.
The motives for the decision to focus on the garden close to town were
diverse, but the distance to the home area was of prime importance, as one of
my informants observed:
Because of migration to towns in search for work or greener pastures, many people
have developed the attitude of home is where you are comfortable and you have
your own land. As such, many have bought land elsewhere and built their homes
there, too. Because of this they cant go home to collect maize which they didnt
cultivate.
Others had to rent a garden because of the scarcity of land in the home
village. In many districts, especially in the southern region, land had become an
extremely scarce commodity. Population growth was so high in many areas that
individual plots had become too small to produce sufficient yield for peoples
livelihoods. This forced many of the civil servants I met during the course of
my fieldwork in the South to rent plots elsewhere, where land was still avail-
able. Another important factor in the decision to withdraw from the home
village and focus instead on gardens closer to the service station in town was
the ambivalent relationship with rural kin, a complex issue that will be ad-
dressed in more detail in the following chapter.
Malawians dream of food security proved to be precarious during the
famine that affected large parts of Malawi in 2002.
The famine revealed the
importance of a regular income and the limitations of subsistence farming.
Generally, people employed by the government and the formal sector did not
suffer too much from food shortages, although many people encountered se-
rious difficulties in paying the high maize prices. In February and March 2002,
I was staying with a friend in Biwi, a township in Lilongwe. The hungry
villagers, who flocked to the towns in a desperate search for help, had nothing
to fall back on: their granaries had been depleted a long time ago and they had
no money to buy food. Almost every day a hungry relative from the village
would find his or her way to the house of my friend where they would receive a
warm meal and some money to buy one of the little five kg bags of ufa that
were sold at exorbitant prices in town. Everybody complained about the high
prices that had quadrupled since the beginning of the food crisis, in September
2001, but those with a regular salary could get by, whereas those with no
regular income had nothing but the pity of their relatives to fall back on.
The famine revealed the risks of subsistence farming. The harvest might be
excellent one year while a seasons labour might be destroyed by floods or a
draught the following year. During the famine, even salaried people were in dire
straits and had many dependants to look after. One of them, a junior civil ser-
vant in Domasi, a peri-urban settlement 20 km north of Zomba, supported two
young sons, four daughters and three grandchildren who depended on his
support. Furthermore, he occasionally supported his mother, his five sisters and
their children, the mbumba. In 2000 and 2001, he had a good harvest that lasted
until November 2001. In November 2001, he had bought two bags (50 kg each)
For more details on the famine see Chapter 1. Devereux (2002) published the most
comprehensive study on the causes of the famine yet.
for MK 850 (compared to MK 450 in July 2001 and MK 250 in 2000) from
ADMARC. Since his mother and his sisters did not have any food left at the
time and no money to buy food, he shared the maize he had purchased from
ADMARC with them and by the end of December there was nothing left. In
December 2001, he went back to ADMARC to buy more maize but by this time
ADMARCs reserves were almost depleted and it was only with the help of a
friend of his late father, who worked for ADMARC, that he was able to buy 75
kg of maize. During our conversations in February 2002, he told me the maize
will be finished next week. His situation was especially difficult because he
had to buy fertilizer for the crop of the harvest seasons of 2001 and 2002. He
had bought two bags of fertilizer for MK 1200 and half a bag for his mother.
Unlike the previous years, he was not able to buy fertilizer for his sisters: They
were disappointed because they depend on me. I promised to share my harvest
with them. He expected a bad harvest for April 2002: People in the village
have no fertilizer, this year there is a lot of adult malnutrition, people are dying
of hunger! Unlike them, my informant was lucky. By means of his salary he
was able to buy food and also seeds and fertiliser for his gardens, and even
provide support for his relatives although he was stretched to the limit.
Many who had dreamed of achieving affluence and financial stability one
day saw their dreams crumble during the food crisis. In February 2002, furni-
ture like a sofa, a cupboard, a dining table and chairs cost between MK 10,000
and MK 50,000. A mattress cost between MK 2,000 and MK 5,000, a television
set MK 20,000, a stereo set MK 10,000, and a refrigerator MK 15,000. Private
school tuition cost between MK 4,000 and MK 10,000 per term, depending on
the school, and a plot of undeveloped land in one of the outskirts of Lilongwe
cost about MK 80,000. For a middle-ranking civil servant who earned MK
10,000, including all allowances per month, these things had always been diffi-
cult to attain, but through iron discipline and salary advances, many civil ser-
vants had succeeded in making this dream come true. However, in February
2002, not one of my acquaintances could even think of buying a refrigerator or
a television set. Confronted with a bad harvest and the demands of starving
relatives in the rural areas, they were forced to buy ufa for MK 800 to MK 1000
per 50 kg bag. All other plans had to be shelved and all resources had to be used
to fend off the effects of the food shortage.
Winners and losers of economic liberalisation
It should be noted that the economic crisis and the 2002 food shortages did not
affect all my informants to the same degree. Obviously those in higher positions
had more resources at their disposal, but even within the lower salary grades
some were doing better than others, as two detailed case studies will exemplify.
In February 2000, I was conducting fieldwork in Zomba where I accompanied
two extension workers from the Ministry of Health, so-called Health Sur-
veillance Assistants (HSA), who were posted at a health post in Domasi town-
ship near Zomba.
They formed a team whose task was to educate people on
health and hygiene issues and to administer drugs and vaccines as well as
chlorine for clean drinking water. They also assisted the Clinical Officer and the
staff at the health post, a dilapidated compound of three buildings dating back to
colonial times. Two to three days a week they were supposed to tour the sur-
rounding villages assigned to them with bicycles provided by the government.
Both were from the area and belonged to the same ethnic group, the Yao.
The Yao are descendants of various groups originating from present-day
northern Mozambique that entered the territories south of Lake Malawi at the
century as slave and ivory traders, acting as intermediaries
with Arab and Swahili traders on the East-African coast. When they settled in
present-day Malawi, they mixed with the local Nyanja population and adopted
local customs. The Yao are organised matrilineally with the mbumba, the local
sorority group of sisters and their children, as the central family unit. The
brother, usually the oldest one, acts as their guardian or warden, asyene
mbumba, and is responsible for his sisters and their childrens well-being. He
settles quarrels within the mbumba, is responsible for his sisters children,
distributes the family land among his sisters and their daughters and represents
the mbumba (Mitchell 1956). Marriage is said to be generally uxorilocal
although virilocal residence patterns increasingly seem to replace uxorilocal
residence patterns, especially among people who live in towns and are em-
ployed in the formal sector.
Mr. Kabula
was the typical example of a junior civil servant of the older
generation with only little formal education and no connection to people with
wealth and influence. He was engaged in various small-scale business endeav-
ours and subsistence farming to secure his and his familys livelihood. His
business enterprises had met with mixed success and he was barely able to
make ends meet, even in years with a good harvest, such as in 2000. He was
47 and had been working as an extension worker for the Ministry of Health
since 1975. From 1975 to 1993, he had served as a Grade 3 Industrial Class
employee with daily wages and no retirement benefits. In 1993, he was inte-
grated into the establishment of the civil service and became a civil servant,
Subordinate Class Grade 2, with a monthly salary and pension benefits. In 2000
Both informants spoke Chiyao, Chichewa and English. Interviews were conducted
in Chichewa and English.
All names of informants are fictive to protect their identities.
he earned about MK 2000 (about US$ 25 at that time) per month, including a
housing allowance of 15 per cent of his basic salary (MK 300).
He was a widower and had four daughters and three sons, all of whom lived
with him and depended on his support. He commanded considerable respect in
the village and he acted as an advisor, nduna, to his village headman. Once he
had had higher aspirations. He expressed regret that he had not been able to
finish secondary school because of health problems in his adolescence. He had
dropped out after two years at Likuni Secondary School, a Catholic boarding
school considered to be one of the best schools in the country. Since he had left
school without a certificate, his career opportunities were limited and he was
never promoted in the years he had been working as an extension worker.
Nevertheless, he was dedicated to his work. For example he planned his trips
to the villages carefully: I always make a plan: I am the only person at the
hospital who does that. He complained about his colleagues and superiors at
the health post who were jealous and preferred to stay at home, attending to
their private businesses. According to Mr. Kabula a good HSA should be
interested in his work, should be dedicated to his or her duties, should be
knowledgeable and have skills; he or she should be co-operative, show respect
to villagers and superior officers and should know what she or he wants to do.
Otherwise he could not manage to work with the community. A good HSA
should know the community.
Mr. Kabula knew his village well, since this was his home area. He lived on
a compound, consisting of several houses on family land, at a distance of about
two km from the health post. The houses were ordinary village houses, built of
mud bricks with a grass-thatched roof and a stamped mud floor with no glass
windows. All houses only had one room. He owned almost no furniture, only a
few chairs and a bed frame. Cooking was done with firewood in a small shed
and there was a pit latrine close by. His compound was not connected to
electricity and water. Close were two gardens of about one acre each where Mr.
Kabula cultivated maize for subsistence. Under ideal circumstances, the two
gardens produced enough food for himself, his children and grandchildren, and
even provided additional reserves for relatives in need until December. In a
good year, he was able to harvest ten bags of maize (50 kg each). To shore up
reserves for the hungry months of January and February, when food prices
would soar, he would occasionally buy a 50 kg bag of maize from ADMARC
for MK 250. However, subsistence farming required considerable investments.
For his gardens he needed at least two bags of fertiliser at about MK 800 each
and he had to employ casual labour, waganyu, for weeding and harvesting. In
addition, he had to buy fertilizer for the plot of his frail mother and pay for
waganyu working there.
Mr. Kabula had not remarried after the death of his wife in the previous year.
He lived in one house, together with his youngest son of six years. A fifteen-
year-old daughter and her child lived in the second house. The father of the
child, who was 16 years old, had deserted them and stayed at his brothers in
Blantyre. Two younger daughters and one son, who attended primary school,
lived in the third house. His fourth daughter, who attended secondary school in
a nearby trading centre, had left. She recently moved to her husbands village
nearby where he operated a maize mill but he had gone bankrupt after a short
time. The young couple was in dire straits financially, and her two children
lived in Mr. Kabulas household. The fourth daughter visited him frequently
and often stayed several days on his compound. In other words, all his children
and grandchildren depended on Mr. Kabula.
His children and grandchildren were not the only relatives depending on his
support. Mr. Kabula had eight sisters who lived in the same village, some of
whom were married and all of whom had children living with them. His only
brother, who was older, lived in Mangochi and had severed the ties with the
family. Therefore Mr. Kabula bore the family responsibilities as the guardian of
his sisters and their children, the mbumba. In this capacity, he mediated if there
was quarrel among his sisters and represented them externally. Being the asyene
mbumba was not easy: Sometimes the sisters are rude; if you do not assist
them they hate you. Mr. Kabula lamented the ingratitude of his sisters who
hated him even if he helped them. His mother also lived close by, in her own
house, just a few hundred metres away. She was very old and frail and de-
pended on his care and support. He expressed the relationship with his parents
in somewhat ambiguous terms. On the one hand, he felt a strong attachment to
his mother who could not live on her own but, on the other hand, he built his
own compound because it is better to isolate yourself and stay away from your
parents. If someone stays with his parents it is difficult to prosper. It appeared
that the few hundred meters distance to his mothers house were not sufficient
to isolate him. His attachment to his mother also had a material dimension.
He wanted to protect his familys usufruct rights on the family land and was
afraid that he would not be able to protect the land rights of his mbumba if he
moved away. The access to land was crucial for his survival, since he and his
matrikin depended on the food crops grown in their gardens. Land had become
a very scarce commodity around Zomba and he did not have the means to rent a
plot of land to cultivate enough food to secure his own and his dependants
livelihoods.
Mr. Kabulas compound bore testimony to his various often ill-fated busi-
ness endeavours. One old house, the first one built in 1984, used to function as a
grocery store where he sold matches, soap, batteries and razor blades that he
would buy wholesale in Zomba town. The grocery store came to an abrupt end
in 1990 when burglars stole all his money and goods. He was not able to raise
enough money to start the business again. Another simple building was the
bar where he sold Chibuku beer (popular industrial-made beer made of maize
and millet), Chibuku has its ups and downs, at the moment [February] the bar
is not operating. In the hungry season, all the money goes into the garden. In
the hungry season, between December and March, it was pointless to sell beer
because most people in the surrounding villages had nothing left to spend and
even those with jobs were in a similar situation as Mr. Kabula and could not
afford to spend a single Kwacha. In good times, Mr. Kabula bought 10 crates of
Chibuku. Usually he was able to sell all and make a profit of MK 400. If he was
able to buy more crates his profit was even higher. Chibuku, however, cannot
be kept longer than two to three days without a refrigerator. A refrigerator cost
at least MK 10,000 and was well beyond his financial capabilities.
Two other buildings had only been partly completed: one was supposed to
serve as a restaurant and the other one contained five very simple and small
rooms, which he intended to let to primary school teachers. He had not been
able to complete these buildings since he lacked the necessary capital. It was
impossible for him to get credit. His requests for a loan from the office had been
rejected and he had no collateral for a credit from the bank. There were also in-
formal moneylenders, known as katapila, who offered loans but Mr. Kabula did
not want to borrow money from them because they charged 50 per cent interest.
None of his friends would lend him money and his older brother, who used to
work as a fish-trader in Mangochi, had stopped working due to old age and was
unable to provide any support. In spite of these setbacks, Mr. Kabula planned to
build yet another building to function as a shop but it was unlikely that he could
muster the necessary financial resources.
Two central issues emerge from Mr. Kabulas case. The first one is his job,
where he works diligently but has no access to any benefits other than his
monthly salary. Since he lacks formal education he had never been promoted.
Furthermore, he did not enjoy the protection of senior officers who would give
him access to lucrative workshops or fieldwork where he could earn allowances
for accommodation and subsistence. Most civil servants were able to save part
of their allowances and thus supplement their salaries. In a bid to supplement
his income, Mr. Kabula engaged in various small business enterprises and relied
to a considerable extent on the food grown in his gardens. However, these busi-
nesses did not flourish because he lacked access to financial capital. The lack of
connections and resources is linked to the second issue that emerges from Mr.
Kabulas case. He was the most successful member of his family and a large
number of relatives depended on his support. In the event of a mishap, there
was no relative he could rely on, for example, to lend him money. His relatives,
however, did provide one vital resource, the access to family land in the village,
which he was free to cultivate without paying rent. Yet access to land seemed to
be a double-edged sword, since he had to stay in his familys spatial proximity
to effectively claim the land. Since his salary was not sufficient for him and all
his dependants he had to fall back on the only resource he had access to, his
familys land in the village.
His colleague Ms. Malula, on the other hand, could be considered a winner
of liberalisation. Aged 27 when I met her, she had joined the civil service in
1996 and had always been posted at the health post at Domasi. Like Mr.
Kabula, with whom she formed a team, she was a Health Surveillance Assistant
(HSA), Subordinate Class Grade 2. She earned about MK 2000 net per month,
including a housing allowance of MK 300. Unlike Mr. Kabula, she had enjoyed
a good education. As a child she had lived with an aunt in Blatyre and had
attended primary school there. When she was older she went to a highly
regarded missionary secondary school in Malosa, about 30 kilometres north of
Zomba, where she obtained the Malawi School Certificate for Education
(MSCE). She finished school in 1994 and lived with her grandmother in
Blantyre for two years. Her grandmother was a successful businesswoman.
When I met Ms. Malula her grandmother was already very old and had moved
to her home, the place where Ms. Malula was posted. She looked after the
grandmother who lived in an adjacent house. The grandmother used to be a
primary school teacher before she went into business in the 1980s and earned a
fortune. The grandmother had bought land and built several houses in Blantyre
and her home village near Zomba.
Ms. Malula lived in a comfortable house with a concrete floor, glass win-
dows and a corrugated iron roof made of burnt bricks quite luxurious com-
pared to Mr. Kabulas more modest dwelling. Her house had a kitchen, a bath-
room, a living room and two bedrooms. The house was connected to electricity
and water. She owned a lot of furniture, including two armchairs, a couch, a
cupboard, two beds with mattresses and a dining room table with several chairs.
In the cupboard she had plates, cutlery, cups, and a thermos flask on display.
The living room was decorated with some posters and the windows had
curtains. She also had a stereo-set and a stove. She lived together with two
younger brothers, two daughters, one of whom had a young toddler, and a
classificatory sister, cemwali. Her second youngest brother worked as a teacher
at a private secondary school and her youngest brother attended the Training
Centre in Zomba town where he was being trained as an electrician. Her
classificatory sister attended primary school. Her older daughter lived at her
maternal aunts in Blantyre, Malawis commercial capital. This aunt had a good
job as a branch executive for Malawi Telecom and was married to the executive
director of a private company. Ms. Malulas mother was divorced and worked
as a secretary for the District Health Officer in Zomba. She paid the school fees
for the younger brother attending the Training Centre. The mother had six
sisters and one brother, most of whom lived in Blantyre and had well-paid jobs
at banks or the government. Ms. Malula entertained a cordial relationship with
her relatives in Blantyre and Zomba paying them regular visits.
Ms. Malula was not married; the father of her daughters was a student at the
Malawi College of Accountancy in Lilongwe. They wanted to marry as soon as
her grandmother passed away so that they could move together to Lilongwe or
Blantyre where her boyfriend hoped to find employment as an accountant.
When I met her she had taken the responsibility of looking after her grand-
mother and, together with her mother, she managed the family land in the
village. Ms. Malula supervised other relatives to look after her grandmother
when she was on duty, but in the evenings she would prepare dinner for the
grandmother and stay with her until bedtime. The grandmother was highly
respected by her daughters and grandchildren. She had financed both houses in
which she and Ms. Malula lived. Ms. Malula referred to her grandmother with
the Yao-word likolo, the word for the founding ancestress of a village, and thus
underlined the central role of the grandmother in the family.
The grandmother had acquired several gardens, minda (pl.), nearby where
Ms. Malula and her mother cultivated maize, mainly for subsistence, and em-
ployed wage labourers, waganyu. In a good year the harvest was about 15 to 20
bags (50 kg each), which provided her household with maize porridge, nsima,
until December. Her aunts had their own gardens. The younger aunt from
Blantyre had a large garden on family land close by and the aunt from Lilongwe
rented a large garden near Lilongwe. Whenever Ms. Malula would fall short of
food she could rely on the support of her aunts.
Ms. Malula participated in a small-scale credit scheme with FINCA, a
micro-finance scheme run by an international NGO and financed by Western
donor agencies. Together with 28 other women, she formed a group called
Tupochere (meaning we are happy). She was one of the leading members of
this group. She invested the money borrowed from FINCA, rarely exceeding
US$ 10, in her second-hand clothes trade, kaunjika. Usually, once a month, she
bought one or two bales of second-hand clothes (donated in European coun-
tries) and sold clothes in the villages and markets nearby, often on one of her
tours of duty. With this trade she earned about US$ 20 per month, thus doubling
her total cash income. Furthermore, she had started another womens group
with eight other women, mainly primary school teachers. This group had re-
ceived a loan from the Malawi Rural Finance Company (MRFC), another
micro-credit organisation. Ms. Malula planned to use this credit to buy station-
ery in South Africa and sell it in Malawi.
Sometimes she did business together with one of her aunts. She might, for
instance, travel with her aunt from Lilongwe, a rich businesswoman, to Tanza-
nia by bus to buy textiles, kitchenware, plastic slippers and other items to sell
them to acquaintances and relatives. These goods were more expensive in the
south of Malawi and a handsome profit could be made by selling them there.
The aunt, who had provided the money for this trip and the goods, allowed Ms.
Malula to sell a share of the goods and keep the earnings without paying her a
commission. Trips like the one to Tanzania were lucrative but required a lot of
time and money. The bus trip to Mbeya in the southwest of Tanzania took
twenty hours and accommodation there was expensive. Ms. Malula could not
leave her work too often and, besides, she would had had difficulties, in any
case, in raising enough cash for the trip herself.
Ms. Malula pointed out that she was business-minded. However, her work
did not figure prominently in her stories. She mainly perceived her job as a
source of social security, providing her with a regular salary and leaving her
enough time to do business. From our conversations, I deduced that her mother
had helped her get the job in the health sector in order to have a family member
located close to the grandmother and to ensure her access to the property in the
home village. With her education and social background, Ms. Malula could
have found a better job but the obligation towards her family weighed heavier
and she had accepted the subordinate position in the civil service to be in a
position to look after her grandmother. She was not unhappy with the arrange-
ment, since she enjoyed a regular salary, lived rent-free in a comfortable house,
had enough time to run her various businesses and entertained cordial relation-
ships with her mother and her maternal aunts on whom she counted on for sup-
port for her business enterprises.
Since her mother worked as a secretary for the Clinical Officer in the
District Health Administration, she was in a position to help Ms. Malula. Once,
for example, she had pulled a few strings and secured her daughters participa-
tion at a donor-funded workshop on HIV/AIDS education in Lilongwe. It was
quite unusual for an officer holding such a junior rank to be selected to attend a
workshop, since there were always more applicants than places in workshops
for the junior grades. The workshop lasted three days and she earned MK 880
per diem subsistence allowance. She saved the total amount of MK 2,640, since
she could stay at her aunts house in Lilongwe. With the extra money earned
from the allowances she bought more bales kaunjika than usual.
A different picture emerges from Ms. Malulas story than from Mr.
Kabulas. She depended to a lesser extent on her salary than Mr. Kabula. For
her business endeavours, she relied on her aunts support, who also helped with
supplies or food when she needed it. She knew how to access credits through
the micro-finance schemes, how to write a proposal and submit it. Due to her
mothers intervention, she even participated in a workshop. Her close relatives
did not seek her assistance as Mr. Kabulas sisters did. Instead, she could al-
ways count on the support of her wealthy relatives in Blantyre and Lilongwe,
who had paid for her education, provided support when she needed it, and
helped her in her business endeavours. Ms. Malula had the necessary financial
and cultural capital to make use of the free market opportunities in New
Malawi, whereas Mr. Kabulas capital as asyene mbumba was not suitable to
be exploited for his business plans and instead constituted a burden on his
limited resources but, on the other hand, granted access to customary land. His
high social status in the village was a mixed blessing since his relatives ex-
pected his assistance whenever they needed it.
The aim of this chapter was to present a number of horizontal slices of civil
servants everyday lives. The general theme of these slices was the civil
servants attempts to regain their lost security. Civil servants relied on salary
advances and used benefits, such as workshop allowances, to supplement their
salaries. Employment in the civil service ceased to be the main source of
income for many civil servants who were business-minded. The deregulation
of the market and the end of Kamuzu Bandas autocratic regime had created
room for them to start businesses to become less dependent on their jobs in
times when they could no longer count on lifelong employment. Subsistence
farming was also a popular means of reducing the dependency on cash, al-
though the famine of 2002 revealed that subsistence farming was not without
risks.
The neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s redrew the borders between those
included and those excluded from benefiting from the free market economy,
and it seems that only a happy few were included in the New Malawi of the
1990s. Employment in the civil service was no longer sufficient for a secure
existence. People like Ms. Malula, who had kinship ties with the elite were able
to benefit from the freedom in New Malawi. She was the proof that it was no
longer sufficient to have a job in the government to prosper. Without the social
capital provided by wealthy and influential relatives, it became very difficult to
strive for the dream of material wealth. For them, democratisation, economic
liberalisation and the civil service reform meant freedom: they could buy
furniture, television sets and other luxury goods, while the rank and file lived on
advances and katapila. They had the financial means to send their children to
expensive private schools while the government schools were overrun by
pupils; they could invest money in a large-scale business that promised profits
and they did not depend on maize grown in the home village.
My discussion on the location of the garden raised another important issue:
the relationship between the civil servant who had a garden in the home village
and the kinsfolk living there was characterised by distrust and ambivalence. Mr.
Kabula had access to the land in the village by virtue of his status as warden of
his mbumba but his sisters were also a constant source of irritation and a con-
siderable burden on his limited resources. Many of my informants complained
that their rural kin provided only little assistance, stole the harvest and had
exaggerated expectations. Hence, many civil servants preferred to rent a garden
close to town, out of the reach of their relatives in the home village. The
relationship with kin was of vital importance and the source of great anxiety for
civil servants. The tensions my informants experienced in their relationships
with relatives and dependants are not represented in the stereotypical image of
African civil servants whose primordial affiliations are said to have negative
effects on their functioning as servants of the public good. This simplistic
representation of African civil servants ignores the anxieties and ambivalences
that shape the relationship between civil servants and their rural kin, as the
following chapter will show.
Distance saves me
I want to avoid unnecessary family problems. That must be avoided. You know I
have stayed in town for quite a long time, I dont want to get entangled in the way
people live, I have been away from the village for so long I doubt I can manage.
They know their policies and I doubt I can cope. [] Distance saves me.
Mr. Mkandawire, civil servant in Zomba
Mr. Mkandawire was preparing for his retirement when he shared his anxieties
about his relatives policies with me. For 30 years he had been posted far
away from his home region and he did not intend to return after his retirement.
Mr. Mkandawire opted against a return to the home village or kubwerera
kumudzi because he had been away from the village for so long and rather
preferred a neutral place at a safe distance from his relatives and in-laws.
This chapter investigates the importance of social and spatial distance in
relation to civil servants relatives in their home areas. Their relationships with
a wider circle of kinsfolk were characterised by their desire to maintain a com-
fortable social distance. All of my informants were confronted with demands
for support from their rural kin and all of them were concerned with the per-
tinent question of how to deal with these demands. Civil servants in Lilongwe
and Zomba provided accommodation for the children of relatives, many of them
orphans, and paid their school fees. It was common practice to send remittances
to their parents and other relatives in the home village. Many provided agri-
cultural inputs, such as fertilizer and seeds, and brought them gifts in cash and
kind when they visited the home village.
My informants experienced a tension between their dream of material wealth
for their own nuclear family and the numerous demands on their resources by
kinsfolk often only vaguely related to them. This tension, it should be noted, is
not to be equated with a dualism between individualism and communitarianism,
as recent Africanist studies point out. With regard to Malawi, Englund draws
attention to the fact that personal growth or kukula and the support of depend-
ants are two sides of the same coin (Englund 1996, 2001). He describes kukula
as a continuous process by which a person ideally consolidates his or her
moral standing in the course of his or her life cycle. Crucially, the process is
less a matter of individual virtues than of being able to care for (kusamala)
many dependants (Englund 2001: 99). Thus, ones growth as an individual and
the care of kin are not mutually exclusive. Seen from this perspective, the
personal ambition to grow as a moral person entails responsibilities towards
others. Dependent relatives, in turn, do not perceive someones success as a
personal but rather as a collective achievement. Consequently, successful
nephews and nieces, sons and daughters, are expected to redistribute their
alleged wealth with their kinsfolk by sharing, known as kugawa.
My informants in the townships of Lilongwe and Zomba expressed their
predicament in terms of a dualism between their modern or civilised way of
life in town and the traditional way of life led by their kinsfolk in the home
village. A modern way of life was associated with formal education, a white-
collar job, the nuclear family, the neighbourhood and the church, whereas the
latter was associated with a wide circle of relatives (abale) in the home village
who had no education and tended to expect support from their wealthier rela-
tives in town. Although the village was usually described in terms of backward-
ness and underdevelopment, the feelings of the comparatively privileged urban-
ites were ambivalent. On the one hand, they complained about the uncivilised
and backward life in the village, with jealous and ungrateful relatives who
should be avoided and, on the other, they imagined an idyllic life in the village
where one could still find traditional solidarity, a place not yet corrupted by the
modern world.
This dualism between modern and traditional, which still influences
Western views of Africa, has attracted considerable criticism by anthropologists
(Comaroff & Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1997; Piot 1999) who argue that this
dichotomy does not reflect African experiences of modernity. In this respect, it
is crucial to differentiate categories of practice and categories of analysis,
as Cooper (2005: 62-64) argues. So, while anthropologists have tried to trans-
cend the modern versus traditional dichotomy, civil servants in Lilongwe and
Zomba insisted on framing the relationships with their rural-based relatives in
these terms. This discrepancy between the anthropologists analytical categories
and the categories of practice cannot be glossed over, as Ferguson noted during
his fieldwork in the Zambian Copperbelt: Listening to informants discuss the
contrast between the village and the town, or African tradition versus
European modernity, I often had the unsettling sense that I was listening to an
out-of-date sociology textbook (Ferguson 1999: 84).
This chapter addresses civil servants experience of a tension between their
modern way of life and traditional village mores in four parts. The first part
illustrates the ambivalent nature of their relationship with relatives in the home
village by means of two case studies of two civil servants who had to make a
decision about where to settle after retirement. The second part deals with the
influence of formal education on the process of social stratification between the
educated elite and the poor. The third part places the reliance on voluntary
social networks in the context of the ambivalent relationship with the rural kin
and the fourth part discusses the moral dilemma that arose from the desire to
maintain social and spatial distance to the relatives in the home district.
Kubwerera kumudzi
As I have said in the previous chapter my informants attitude towards the home
village and rural kin was ambivalent. Often people hinted at anxieties and con-
flicts below the surface of kinship harmony. Social pressure by relatives could
not be avoided, a feeling aptly illustrated by the Chichewa proverb chibale
chringati chipsera (relatives are like a scar). One informant explained the prov-
erb in the following words: Relatives are like a scar, you never get rid of them,
they are a pain in the ass. Others mentioned the fear of witchcraft, ufiti, used
by jealous villagers against them. However, these negative feelings were often
juxtaposed with images of idyllic village life without the anonymity, stress and
crime of urban life. On the one hand, the village was perceived as the source of
exaggerated expectations by less affluent relatives and a place where there was
the constant threat of jealousy (nsanje)
or witchcraft attacks. On the other, the
village was viewed as a security one could fall back on in times of need, a place
where life was still predictable and safe.
The choice of the place of residence after retirement nicely illustrates my in-
formants attitudes towards their ancestral home. In a sense, residence patterns
can be understood as the spatial expression of the social distance my informants
sought to maintain after retirement. Their desire to move to neutral ground at
a safe distance is in marked contrast to the findings made by Englund in
Chinsapo, a poor township on the outskirts of Lilongwe, where the overwhelm-
Please note that the Chichewa word nsanje, which is usually equated with the Eng-
lish word jealousy by Malawians, has a much broader meaning and may denote any
kind of open strife or conflict. Nsanje is usually associated with witchcraft attacks
and accusations. See Marwick (1965) and van Velsen (1964: 67 fn. 2).
ing majority (89 per cent) of his respondents expressed the desire to eventually
return to the village (kubwerera kumudzi) (Englund 2002a: Table 4). Unlike my
informants, many of whom had grown up in town, Englunds respondents were
mainly people who had recently migrated to Lilongwe from rural areas else-
where in Malawi.
As government employees my informants had only limited influence on
where they were posted or transferred to. Only after retirement they were in a
position to choose a place where to settle. A civil servant could either retire at
the age of 55 or after twenty years of service. According to the Malawi Public
Service Regulations (MPSR), the retiring civil servant could choose between
two options: the first was a lump sum payment and a small monthly pension,
the second, no lump sum payment but a higher monthly pension. Most retiring
officers chose the lump sum payment to set up a business or another income-
generating enterprise.
Unlike Englunds respondents, my informants stated that they did not intend
to return to their home village after retirement. Instead, they wanted to settle
on neutral ground. They had a clear idea of the nature of this neutral
ground. It should offer opportunities for business such as a trading centre or
market, have access to urban infrastructure such as public transport, electricity,
schools and hospitals and be situated at a distance that would prevent relatives
from visiting too often while at the same time allowing the retired civil servant
to visit them if necessary. In practice, neutral ground was usually a trading
centre or township where land was still available and cheaper than in the urban
centres. These trading centres were situated on main roads and were connected
to electricity and telecommunication networks.
Two case studies illustrate the economic and spatial dimensions of the
decisions taken by civil servants after retirement. Both case studies present men
who decided to settle on neutral ground, at a safe distance from relatives
and in-laws in the home district. The first one describes a civil servant who had
been retired for more than twenty years when I met him, a man who was deeply
involved in community affairs, both in his chosen home and his home village.
The second case study presents a man at a different stage in his lifecycle, who
had yet not moved to neutral ground and was more anxious about his ability
to maintain a safe distance than his peer, who already had succeeded in estab-
lishing a certain distance to his home village.
Mr. Kachopoka had retired from the civil service in 1981. He was in his late
60s and had held a senior position in the Office of the President and Cabinet. He
was also the village headman of his native village, a position he had inherited
from his father. He was a respected member of the community in Lunzu, a
quickly growing trading centre about 20 km north of Blantyre, on the main road
to Lilongwe, where he had settled after retirement. He was also the founder of a
district association and very active in various church groups in Lunzu. Mr.
Kachopoka came from a village in the lower Shire valley near Chickwawa,
about 50 km south of Blantyre. He received his primary education from the
White Fathers missionaries who had come to the area in the early 20th century.
Later he attended the Catholic seminary in Zomba.
Mr. Kachopoka was a typical representative of the first generation of African
civil servants after independence who had benefited from the new career pos-
sibilities that opened up for Africans after the departure of most expatriate civil
servants. He had served in the colonial government since 1956 and, after having
received six months of training as part of the localisation programme, he was
posted to Blantyre in 1968. In 1976, he was transferred to Lilongwe where he
worked until his retirement. After retirement, he settled in Lunzu where he had
already built a house in 1971. This turned out to be a far-sighted decision. In the
1970s, a new road was built to connect Blantyre in the south directly with
Lilongwe, the new capital in the central region, and Lunzu soon developed into
a bustling and quickly growing trading centre. The small house that he had built
to occupy the place in 1971 was later replaced with a larger house.
He explained his motivation to move to Lunzu after his retirement in the
following words: If you would go to your home village, people would demand
a lot from you, to safeguard your childrens future you have to be at a neutral
place. If you retire and go to the village your children would not have a place
when you die, it is a security for them. But the care for his children was not the
only motivation to move to neutral ground. He had been away for so long and
got used to life in town with all its amenities: You might feel as a stranger after
having been away for such a long time and you would not feel comfortable in
the village without electricity and running water.
Mr. Kachopoka ensured that his children received a good education. All of
his children, three daughters and three sons, had attended college or university,
except for the youngest daughter who had just finished secondary school. The
eldest son had even received a Ph.D. in the United Kingdom and worked as a
lecturer at the University of Malawi. One daughter and one son were employed
as secondary school teachers. The youngest son attended the College of Ac-
counting in Blantyre. Mr. Kachopokas second daughter worked as a senior
nurse at a health post in Lunzu and the youngest daughter had a temporary job
in a family planning clinic in Lunzu, while she was waiting for a response to her
application to the College of Nursing. His children earned enough and did not
have to rely on their fathers support, as he proudly told me.
He lived in a comfortable house with a corrugated iron roof and four rooms,
a few hundred metres from the main road. The house was connected to the
mains electricity supply and had running water. The house had also been con-
nected to the telephone network, a gift from his children who had paid for the
connection. Mr. Kachopoka owned several houses and gardens in Lunzu as well
as three shops. With the gratuity (the lump sum payment after retirement) he
had built the first building in 1981 where started a tailor shop. He had bought
four sewing machines and employed four tailors. However, in the early 1990s,
business deteriorated due to cheap imports of second-hand clothes from Europe
and he was forced to close the tailor shop. Instead, he let the shop premises and
two other commercial premises which he had built later. The income from the
rents was relatively high by Malawian standards. In 2000, he earned about US$
30 per month for the three shops he let. The reason for this was Lunzus
development since the 1970s. The town had grown dramatically since the con-
struction of the new road and had changed from a sleepy village into a bustling
little township and marketplace where property prices soared. He also owned
two gardens with a total of six hectares where he cultivated maize for sub-
sistence and sale. This was large considering that the average size of gardens in
the south was less than one hectare.
He told me that he did not have any other sources of income than his salary
while he was employed in the civil service: Everything was paid from the
salary, civil servants lacked capital and they were not encouraged by govern-
ment to engage in other businesses. The average civil servant was not interested
in business in those days. Usually a civil servant would invest the money from
the gratuity in a business, such as a maize mill or a grocery-shop, supplemented
by subsistence farming after his or her retirement.
In Lunzu, Mr. Kachopoka was deeply involved in the affairs of the local
community and was a member of several committees: the School Committee,
the Development Committee, the Committee for Justice and Peace of the
Catholic diocese and an HIV/AIDS project sponsored by the Catholic Church.
Lately, he had been working a lot on the HIV/AIDS project to raise awareness
and influence peoples behaviour. He visited surrounding villages to raise
awareness and distribute drugs. He attended to the sick, gave medication and
advised the relatives on proper care. He promoted abstinence to check the
spread of the epidemic, since he was very sceptical about the use of condoms,
an attitude quite in line with the official position of the Catholic Church. For
this work, the Church paid him a modest monthly allowance of US$ 17.
His involvement in local politics and community affairs was not limited to
Lunzu. He was the chairman of the Friends of the Lower Shire, a district
association of people from the Lower Shire in Malawis far south, between
Chikwawa and Nsanje. He and a few other civil servants from that region had
founded the Friends of the Lower Shire in Lilongwe in 1977. The association
started as a burial association and slowly developed into a revolving fund for
funerals, sick pay and weddings. Furthermore, it assisted migrants from the
Lower Shire to find housing and employment in Blantyre and Lilongwe. There
were branches in Lilongwe and Blantyre and the association numbered about
500 contributing members when I met Mr. Kachopoka.
Like his father before him, he was the village headman of the village bearing
his name. Headmanship in Mr. Kachopokas village was passed on patrilineally,
although kinship in the village was generally organised along matrilineal lines.
It is not uncommon to find hybrid forms of descent, merging elements of
patrilineal and matrilineal kinship logics in many matrilineal areas in Malawi
today. This is a result of extensive migration in the 19
century when patri-
lineally organised groups, most notably the Ngoni, migrated to the territory of
present-day Malawi and mixed with indigenous matrilineally organised groups.
The village was a large and thriving settlement and many people come to live
there, Mr. Kachopoka told me. Since he lived in Lunzu, his sister handled the
daily affairs of the village together with the advisers, induna, and his nephews.
He visited the village only in the case of more serious disputes, usually about
land demarcations. As village headman and mwini mbumba, he was an easy
target for backbiting and witchcraft attacks of disgruntled and jealous relatives
and he pointed out that it was vital for him to maintain a safe distance from
the kinsfolk in the village. Therefore, it is apt to conclude that Mr. Kachopoka
was able to maintain the ties with the home village, not in spite of his spatial
distance but because of it.
In a sense, Mr. Kachopoka epitomised the ideal retired civil servant. Finan-
cially independent, in good health, living in his own house, loved by his wife
and children, highly respected in the community and an authority figure in the
clan, acting as mediator and arbitrator in family affairs. For many retired civil
servants such a life remained a dream. Plagued by financial difficulties, some
embarked on ill-fated business ventures that left them destitute and dependent
on the support of their children. Not everybody was in a position to move to
neutral ground, with all the amenities of urban life. But complete failures
were the exception. Generally, those who had held white-collar jobs were able
to build a house and start a business or a farm, which would provide them with
an income after retirement. Of course, like everybody else, they suffered from
the economic crisis and the high inflation rate.
The next case study presents a senior civil servant in Zomba, Mr. Mkan-
dawire, who was preparing for his imminent retirement when I met him in June
2000. He had reached the retirement age of 55 after having served in the civil
service since 1969, slowly advancing through the ranks to his present position
in the Superscale (highest salary grades in the civil service). Originally, he came
from the Mzimba district in the northern region of Malawi. Since his early
See Marwick (1965: 95-97) and Mitchell (1956b: 137, 138) on conflicts and witch-
craft within the matrilineage among the Chewa and Yao.
youth, he had been away from the village. He grew up with his father who had
worked for the Kandodo supermarket chain in Mzuzu. When he entered the
civil service he was posted to Zomba. During the 1970s, he was sent to Li-
longwe and, in the 1980s, he was transferred back to Zomba.
He pondered where to settle after retirement when he would have to leave
the house provided by the government. Eventually, he decided to move to
Mzimba, a small town and the administrative centre for Mzimba district. In
1998, he had acquired a plot there and since 1999 he had been assembling
building materials such as iron sheets, nails, door-frames, window-frames and a
toilet at a storage place in Zomba. All of these goods would be transported to
the site in Mzimba by the government because, according to the MPSR, the
government takes care of the transportation of the belongings of a retired civil
servant to the new place of residence. In total, he had already spent about US$
900 for the plot and the construction material over the years. The preparations
to settle in Mzimba town had been progressing slowly or pangono pangono
(little by little), as Mr. Mkandawire said. Whenever he had some extra money
he would buy more construction material but often he had to wait several
months before he could acquire the next items. He planned to spend part of his
gratuity to purchase the rest of the material he still needed to construct a house
with four bedrooms on his plot in Mzimba town where he and his wife could
live comfortably.
Mr. Mkandawire chose the place where he wished to retire very carefully.
Eventually, he and his wife decided to move to neutral ground. At first he had
wanted to move to Enkwendeni, a trading centre and CCAP (Church of Central
African Presbyterian) mission station situated on the main road between the
central region and Karonga in the North, about 40 km northwest of Mzuzu.
However, his wife objected. She was worried that Enkwendeni would be too
close to his family. His father lived in a trading centre a few kilometres south of
Enkwendeni, about 20 km away from his familys village. To complicate mat-
ters his mothers clan lived in a village just a few kilometres from Enkwendeni
and his wifes home village was also close. Mr. and Mrs. Mkandawire agreed
that such a proximity to their relatives would constitute a burden they wanted to
avoid. To avoid crowding is much better, we do not want to open a wing of the
Enkwendeni mission hospital, as he put it.
Due to his long absence from the village and the spatial distance to his home
district, Mr. Mkandawire was afraid of returning as a stranger who had become
too used to urban life to adjust to a village life he had barely experienced: I
want to avoid unnecessary family problems. That must be avoided. You know I
have stayed in town for quite a long time, I dont want to get entangled in the
way people live. I have been away from the village for so long I doubt I can
manage. They know their policies [sic.] and I doubt I can cope.
It is important to note that the high status associated with a cosmopolitan
urban life-style observed by Ferguson (1999: 82-122) in his research on the
Zambian Copperbelt was much less distinct and pronounced among urbanites in
Malawi (cf. Englund 2002a). My informants repeatedly emphasised their
respect for village customs, miyambo yakumudzi, and tended to express their
anxiety about adjusting to village life in terms of their own inadequacy rather
than their superiority. Apart from Mr. Mkandawires anxiety about the lifestyle
kumudzi, he also had well-founded fears regarding the exaggerated expectations
of jealous relatives who could accuse him of selfishness and greed, umbombo.
Mr. Mkandawire used the phrase distance saves me to express his desire to
stay outside of family affairs in the home village and to keep his distance after
retirement. He therefore chose to move to Mzimba town, about 150 km distance
from his and his wifes home villages. The town had all the amenities of urban
life and several of Mr. Mkandawires acquaintances from Enkwendeni and
Mzuzu worked there for the district administration and planned to settle there
too. Obviously, he preferred the social contact with his peers than with the
villagers whose policies were alien and potentially threatening to him.
It is important to note that the house on neutral ground was usually not the
only house a civil servant built in his lifetime. It was quite common to build a
house in the home village as a place to stay while visiting, and thus to demon-
strate ones commitment to the home village. However, people did not intend to
live there permanently. For informants with a matrilineal background, such as
Mr. Kachopoka, the home village was the village of the mothers clan, whereas
for people with a patrilineal background, like Mr. Mkandawire, the home
village was the village of the fathers clan. Several of my male informants with
matrilineal backgrounds, who were also married to women with a matrilineal
background, had built houses in the wifes village. The motivation to do so was
the uxorilocal marriage custom among matrilineal groups in the central and
southern regions, according to which the husband moves to the village of his
wifes matrikin, known as chikamwini (guest) in Chichewa.
However, none of my informants intended to live for any length of time in
this house; it was merely meant to reflect their adherence to custom. In fact, the
men strongly opposed the idea of moving to their wifes village after retirement,
as they feared the influence of their wifes matrikin and their precarious posi-
tion in the village, especially in the event of their wifes death. Hence, it was
not unusual for a retired civil servant with sufficient means to build a simple
house in the wifes village after their marriage, another house for visits to his
own home village, and a third house on neutral ground, where he intended to
settle after his retirement.
The desire to move to neutral ground contrasted with the custom to be
buried in the home village. According to the literature on the subject the burial
in the home village is an expression of the strong sense of attachment of African
townsfolk to their home area (Geschiere & Gugler 1998; Gugler 2002). And,
indeed, in Malawi most townspeople were brought to the home village and
buried there, often with considerable effort and at a high cost. The payment of
the costs of transporting the corpse to the home village was therefore considered
by many civil servants to constitute one of the main perks of government em-
ployment (see Chapter 5). According to my informants, it was very important
for the relatives in the village to claim the deceased as one of theirs and bury
him or her in the home village. Most of my informants also wished to be buried
in the home village but in practice the issue of the place of burial proved to be
very controversial. It was common for the village of the deceased and the wifes
village to compete to host the burial, especially if it concerned an influential and
wealthy senior civil servant. Others preferred to be buried in town but expected
that their corpse would be hijacked by relatives after death, as one of my in-
formants remarked wryly.
It was exactly this kind of village politics my informants wanted to avoid
after retirement. They had a strong preference to settle on neutral ground at
safe distance from the relatives in the home village, their squabbles, policies,
jealousy and expectations. In order to establish a place at a safe distance, civil
servants acquired property and built a house. Sometimes this occurred during
their careers, as with Mr. Kachopoka, who had already bought land in Lunzu in
the early 1970s and built a house there before he retired; sometimes it was done
in phases, as with Mr. Mkandawire who depended on the available financial re-
An important motive for moving to neutral ground was the protection of
status and wealth. Civil servants with a matrilineal background, for example,
expressed concern about moving to the wifes village after retirement because
they feared being thrown out of the village if the wife died. Part of the
explanation for this anxiety is the uxorilocal marriage pattern among parts of
the matrilineal ethnic groups. All the rights a husband can claim in his wifes
village are derived from the union with his wife. If the marriage is dissolved or
the wife dies, the husband is forced to leave the village in which he was only a
guest, mkamwini. A senior female civil servant commented on her male col-
leagues desire to settle on neutral ground:
Now they are becoming more sophisticated, they dont want to go back to the
village. The reason is that once they go back to the village and their wife dies, some
of the people would chase them out. They cannot build a house elsewhere, thats
why they want to go to a place that is neutral. Should the wife die the man could
stay, so they do that now.
Women who followed the husband to his home village had the same fear of
isolation or exclusion in case of their husbands death. Generally, people were
very afraid of the greed of relatives in the home village. Stories of property-
grabbing by the relatives of the deceased were ubiquitous and dominated
newspaper reports on gender issues. Property-grabbing denotes a widespread
practice when relatives of the deceased spouse literally grab everything from
the widow/widower. Generally, both men and women can become the victim of
property-grabbing, although all informants agreed that widows whose husbands
were wealthy were the prime targets of the mans customary heirs, i.e. in a
matrilineal setting uncles and cousins from his mothers side. They were all
afraid of being in a vulnerable position in the village of the deceased where his
or her relatives had relatively easy access to the estate.
The position of the children was the other central concern for people who
moved to neutral ground. Mr. Kachopoka stated that to safeguard your chil-
drens future you have to be in a neutral place. One of the main motives for
moving to neutral ground was to protect the acquired social status for them-
selves and for future generations. The fear was that the accumulated wealth
could not be protected from the claims of kinsfolk if one settled in the home
village. As we have seen in Chapter 5, it was essential to start up a business to
maintain the social distance the civil servant had built up during his or her
career. Another important means to ensure self-reliance and to counter the
effects of the economic crisis was subsistence farming. These activities enabled
the retired civil servant to keep a safe distance. Business and agricultural
production on neutral ground were situated outside the sphere of the home
village and were at least partly removed from the reach of the kinsfolk there. In
order to protect their wealth from what they perceived as jealous rural kin and
to pass it on to their children, they had to move to neutral ground, out of reach
of their rural kin.
And last but not least, the desire to maintain an urban lifestyle should not be
underestimated. Due to their socialisation and the life in town, both men had
developed a distinct lifestyle they could not maintain in the village. In the
trading centre they had shops, health facilities, electricity, running water, tele-
communications and easy access to the road network. Furthermore, they could
expect to find more people with the same socialisation and modern lifestyle in
towns and trading centres, people with whom they felt they had more in com-
mon than with their rural kin.
Property-grabbing is illegal and violates the Wills and Inheritance Act (Amendment
1998). Enforcement, however, is often lacking. Unfortunately there is no empirical
quantitative data available on this phenomenon. In 1999, an unpublished survey
sponsored by DANIDA merely recorded people's perception of property-grabbing
but failed to collect empirical data on the phenomenon itself.
Education and social stratification
People like Mr. Kachopoka and Mr. Mkandawire not only had doubts about
their ability to cope with village life, they also experienced a sense of alienation
as civilised or modern people. The main marker that set them apart from
their rural cousins, aunts and uncles was their formal education. Access to
formal education had always been extremely limited in Malawi. Until the
1930s, there were almost no government schools. The education of Africans
was mainly provided by Christian missionaries, most notably at the Presby-
terian mission stations in Livingstonia in the North and Blantyre in the South
(McCracken 2000; Ross 1996). The missions operated an impressive network
of schools and trained Africans who were employed by missions, the admini-
stration and European businesses, not only in Nyasaland but in the whole of
British central and southern Africa. Clerks from Nysaland dominated the top
positions for Africans in the copper mines of northern Rhodesia and the mines
of the Witwatersrand. Nevertheless, coverage was limited to a few places and
the total output of educational facilities was so low that the report of the Local-
isation Committee, an advisory body on the Africanisation of the civil service,
concluded: The estimated output of the secondary schools [] is totally
inadequate to meet the requirements of the Civil Service [] (Nyasaland Pro-
tectorate 1960: 27).
The lack of qualified Africans should not have come as a surprise, since the
first secondary school opened as late as 1942. Institutions of tertiary education
were non-existent during colonial times and only a fortunate few were able to
follow courses at Makere College in Uganda, Fort Hare in Rhodesia and other
colleges in South Africa or abroad. The Localisation Committee estimated that
in 1960 only 33 Nyasalanders held a degree, while about 40 followed various
degrees and professional courses (Nyasaland Protectorate 1960: 22). This was
an alarmingly low output rate considering that there were 480 posts requiring a
degree (ibid.).
After independence, the output of secondary schools remained low. There
were only a few secondary schools and school fees were mandatory. Kamuzu
Banda did not show much interest in expanding secondary and tertiary edu-
cation to the masses, and even primary education was restricted by the obli-
gation to pay school fees, a considerable hurdle for poor households. Instead, he
focused on providing high-quality secondary and tertiary education for a very
limited number of students. Under Kamuzu Banda, the few hundred graduates
of the University of Malawi found secure employment in the senior grades of
the civil service and state-owned companies. This changed in the 1990s when
the number of graduates began to outstrip demand. After that, a diploma was no
longer a guarantee for life-long employment in the civil service. Only those
with training in accountancy or information technology had no difficulty find-
ing a job, since these skills were central to the quickly transforming economy.
In a sense, this development was the continuation of a trend that had existed
since the 1970s and 1980s. As a result of the introduction of the dual economy
and the colonial administration a small indigenous elite had formed during the
colonial period. Due to the expansion of the state and the Africanisation of the
civil service after independence, this elite expanded considerably until the
1970s. This process slowed down and access to the political and bureaucratic
elite effectively became blocked when the impact of the debt crisis hit the
African countries. This was a general trend in Africa at the time, according to
Bayart, who notes that in the 1980s hierarchies close up, and tend to the repro-
duction of the governing classes, particularly in schooling (1993: 69).
Social stratification by means of formal education and employment in the
civil service was evident from the family histories of my informants. Employ-
ment in the civil service was rarely limited to one family member. It was very
common for the parents, uncles, aunts and siblings of my informants to also be
employed in the civil service or state-owned enterprises. Especially among the
middle- and high-ranking civil servants, it was common for one or both parents
to be employed in the civil service. Often uncles and aunts were also employed
in the civil service or the formal economy. It was the moral and financial
support of this older generation that had enabled many of my informants to
pursue secondary and tertiary education and the gratitude for this support char-
acterised the attitude of my informants to their benefactors. Other informants
had received support from older brothers or sisters who had paid school fees
and provided accommodation for their younger siblings. One important conse-
quence of this process was the social distance between the modern family
members employed in the formal sector and their rural kinsfolk in the villages.
The following paragraphs aim to further elucidate this complicated relationship
and the social distance between civil servants and their rural kin.
The importance of associations
One of the effects of an urban civilized lifestyle at a safe distance was the
growing reliance on other social networks than those based on kinship. Tradi-
tionally the village had been perceived as the last refuge one could fall back on
in times of crisis. During my fieldwork this perception seemed to have changed.
The civil servants in the townships of Lilongwe and Zomba had a clear
preference for relatives with a similar social status and voluntary associations,
such as district associations, church groups and welfare committees, to serve as
social security in case of unanticipated contingencies. However, this preference
for people with similar social status and lifestyle, whether they were relatives or
not, did not result in an open fissure with the kinsfolk in the home village. As
Mr. Kachopoka and Mr. Mkandawire strove to carefully negotiate a course at a
safe distance from their rural kin, they sought to check access to their resources,
on the one hand, whilst maintaining cordial ties with their home village, on the
The church congregation, the colleagues at the workplace and various other
organisations, such as district and burial associations, played a central role in
civil servants life in Lilongwe and Zomba. These forms of voluntary associa-
tion are not the manifestation of traditional or primordial ties with the home
region, but should rather be understood as urban phenomena (Englund 2001;
Gluckman 1960; Mitchell 1956a).
Faith and the participation in church affairs were matters of extreme impor-
tance for the civil servants in Lilongwe and Zomba and pervaded all aspects of
daily life. In Zomba many government employees assembled in their lunch
break in groups of ten to twenty people in the adjacent Botanical Gardens to
pray and sing together. The same could be observed on Capital Hill, Lilongwes
modernist government quarter, where groups of civil servants gathered in their
lunch break in the shade of the trees between the office buildings to sing and
pray together. Sunday morning was the time that most of my informants would
crowd the benches of one of the various churches.
Many participated in
neighbourhood prayer groups, referred to as mphakati in the Catholic Church
and Jesus Way by the Seventh Day Adventists, for instance.
These neighbour-
hood groups constituted important hubs of support and solidarity and a mani-
festation of both peoples engagement in the church and solidarity among
neighbours. Their most active members tended to be women who generally
played a more active role in church affairs than men. The members of a prayer
group usually had a similar social status and habitus due to the high degree of
social stratification in Lilongwes and Zombas neighbourhoods and townships
with clear borders between more affluent low-density areas and poorer high-
density areas.
The largest churches in Malawi were the Catholic Church, C.C.A.P. (Church of
Central African Presbyterian), Seventh Day Adventists, although the new charisma-
tic or born-again churches quickly gained ground. See e.g. van Dijk (1998).
I was not able to check whether all churches had these neighbourhood prayer and
support groups although I suppose that the established churches (Catholic, Seventh
Day Adventists, CCAP) and some of the smaller more institutionalised churches
(Lutheran, Assemblies of God and other born-again churches) had this form of orga-
nisation at least in the urban and peri-urban areas. My empirical material is limited
to the Seventh Day Adventists and the Catholic Church in Blantyre, Lilongwe and
Zomba.
The workplace also formed an important hub for networks of support and
sociability. In most government offices, schools, hospitals, offices and barracks
employees were organised in so-called welfare committees or social welfare
funds. Typically, all employees of a department or school would be organised in
the committee, a revolving fund to which they paid monthly contributions, with
a secretary, a chairperson and a treasurer. Two different types of support for
members existed: emergency loans and condolence money in the event of a
member or one of their relatives dying. For example, the preamble of the statute
of one of the welfare funds at the National Statistics Office in Zomba stated that
the fund had the objective to provide financial assistance to members of the
fund in case of need, like funeral, sickness and other genuine personal prob-
lems, and to reduce the heavy burden experienced through borrowing from
other sources.
All welfare committees had these and similar objectives. The welfare com-
mittee at a primary school in Biwi, for example, offered condolence money and
emergency grants to its members. It consisted of a chairperson, vice-chairper-
son, secretary, vice-secretary, treasurer, executive committee and all 75 teachers
of the school. The headmaster selected the chairperson of the committee, the
other executive members were elected by the staff members. According to the
committees constitution, the members had to pay a monthly contribution of
MK 20 and received money in the event of illness, death and other emergencies.
In case of illness a member received MK 10, a member who was admitted to the
hospital received MK 20, and other members who paid him or her a visit were
paid the bus fare. The fund paid MK 100 condolence money if one of the
parents, the spouse or a child died, MK 50 if one of the grandparents, an
amalume (MB), a maternal aunt or one of the parents-in-law died, and MK 20 if
the paternal uncle, aunts, cousins or other in-laws died, thus reflecting the
predominantly matrilineal setting in the central region. The executive commit-
tee decided on applications for an emergency grant. In 1999, the committee ran
out of funds several times because there are too many funerals these days, as
the chairwoman put it. In these situations, the committee borrowed money from
the wealthier staff members who did business and had more cash at their dis-
posal than the others. These amounts were minimal ranging from US$ 0.20 for
a member in hospital to US$ 1 in case of the death of a spouse but their impor-
tance as signs of respect should not be underestimated. In addition, the members
of welfare funds provided invaluable support in serious situations such as fune-
rals.
Funerals were events where several support networks converged and com-
plemented each other. For example, one of my female informants, a primary
school teacher at Biwi Primary School, was the secretary of a mphakati, which
counted about a dozen families. One day in February 2002, one of the members
died unexpectedly. While we were having dinner we heard whistles blown by
boys to announce the funeral. They walked the streets to inform the neighbour-
hood. This was the sign for people to put firewood in front of their houses to be
collected later and delivered to the house of the deceased. These boys had
received orders by the traditional chief
of the neighbourhood who had been
immediately informed of the death by the widow of the deceased. After dinner,
my informant went to the house of the deceased to see what had to be done and
to discuss matters with the other members of the mphakati. Then they organised
the night vigil, prepared food for the guests and co-ordinated the collection of
condolence money and food. The next morning, the day of the burial, the mem-
bers of the welfare committee, some of which had already attended the night
vigil, organised a government vehicle from the city council, the authority
responsible for primary schools, to transport the corpse to the home village in
Kasungu district, about 30 km north of Lilongwe, where preparations for the
funeral were already underway.
District associations were another important form of organisation in the
urban areas. They were organisations with a written statute and which were
managed by a secretary, a treasurer and an executive committee. Most district
associations managed revolving funds that provided assistance for funerals and
weddings. Some of the wealthier associations in Lilongwe and Blantyre also
supported charitable projects in their respective home district.
District associations are not a recent phenomenon. Their antecedents can be
traced back to colonial times. In fact, Malawi has one of the strongest and
longest traditions of this form of organisation in Central Africa (Rotberg 1972).
Originally, district associations or native associations, as they were called
during colonial times, were an attempt by the small African elite, consisting of
people who had enjoyed missionary education and were employed by the
missions or the government, or who were traders and commercial farmers, to
influence colonial politics. The colonial government was very sceptical of these
modern demands made by supposedly tribal natives and ignored the demands
and complaints voiced by these associations. Instead, the colonial administra-
tion promoted and strengthened the traditional chiefs as representatives of the
African population following the British doctrine of indirect rule (Chanock
1975; McCracken 1983; Rotberg 1972).
The urban areas, especially Traditional Housing Areas (THCs), the squatter town-
ships and older townships within the municipal boundaries have also chiefs although
only chiefs outside the municipal borders are officially recognised.
The nature of kinship duties
Whilst my informants in Lilongwe and Zomba mainly turned to church groups,
neighbours, social welfare funds and district associations when they needed
support, they felt a strong sense of moral duty towards a wide circle of kith and
kin. These obligations were felt to be a burden and many an informant com-
plained about the exaggerated expectations of their relatives who expected to
benefit from my informants alleged wealth. Consequently, they were torn be-
tween striving for the material security of their nuclear families, on the one
hand, and meeting the expectations of their rural kin who sought to benefit from
their wealth, on the other. To finance the education of their cousins children in
the home village and to send remittances often meant postponing the purchase
of the refrigerator or the television set. With little or no savings to fall back on,
the medical treatment or funeral of a relative could result in indebtedness for
many years to come.
But what was the exact nature of these extensive kinship obligations? Did
they constitute binding obligations circumscribing precisely the scope of soli-
darity or were they very general principles open to interpretation and negotia-
tion? The study of morality in Africa often draws on proverbs and popular
culture. With the help of my research assistant, I conducted a survey of pop
songs, cartoons in newspapers, theatre plays and the performances of come-
dians, searching for clues. Most manifestations of popular culture centred on
adultery, marital fidelity and the institution of marriage. Many pop songs
addressed HIV/AIDS, politics, corruption and the economic crisis in the New
Malawi. One of the best songs dealing with the problematic side of kinship
obligations was amalume, meaning uncle in Chichewa, by Albert Khoza, a
Kwaito-artist based in Blantyre. The song is sung by a boy, an orphan, ad-
dressing his uncle, his mothers brother. In a matrilineal context, the amalume
(MB) is a person with great authority and responsibility, acting as guardian for
his sisters and their children. The boy addresses the uncle in the first person,
amalume, on the bwalo you promised to look after me but here in town you
spend all your money on women and drinking. Amalume what should become
of me if you do not help me? To address a song in the first person to the
listener or a fictitious character is a very common form for songs in Malawi and
is a way of expressing grievances that cannot not be raised in reality. The bwalo
is the centre of the village; it is the place where the chief and his advisors
(induna) listen to complaints. The bwalo is located within the realm of the
village, governed by the traditional customs, miyambo yakumudzi, of kinship
ideology. A promise or an oath made on the bwalo is public and witnessed by
the village headman, the induna and the other villagers.
The boy complains that the amalume broke this promise and neglects him in
town. Instead of taking an interest in him and supporting him, the uncle spends
his money on women and alcohol. The song juxtaposes the village as a place of
traditional kinship solidarity with the town as a place of moral corruption,
selfish indulgence in worldly pleasures and individualism. With regard to the
opposition between the individualized corrupt town and the collective tradi-
tional village, it is important to note that the artist himself is a member of the
urban elite and that the audience is primarily the younger generation growing up
in town. By invoking the image of the promise on the bwalo, the artist tries to
remind both his generation and the older generation of the traditional obliga-
tions of the uncle. In this sense the song has a very explicit moral message. The
song criticises the hypocritical use of traditional moral values to maintain
social status among kin. The uncle made a promise on the bwalo but as soon as
he and his nephew leave the village he drops the faade of the responsible uncle
and shows his true face.
It is striking that the boy complains directly to the uncle, the mwini mbumba,
instead of directing his complaints to a third party such as the village headman
or some other person of authority. The reason for this is the taboo that rests on
making public conflict within the lineage (Marwick 1965; Mitchell 1956b;
Velsen 1964). The Chichewa-proverb Apawo ndi mizu ya kachere, the clan is
like the roots of the Kachere-tree (fig-tree) encapsulates this strong rejection of
revealing infra-kin conflicts to outsiders. A multitude of roots is invisible to the
eye of the observer who only sees a strong and unified tree. Hence, the boy
cannot complain to anyone other than the amalume, who acts as mediator in
internal conflicts and on whom he depends for support. The only thing he feels
he is able to do is to remind the uncle of his duties, in the hope that he will
eventually fulfil his promise.
We do not hear the voice of the amalume in the song. How would he re-
spond to his nephew if confronted with the charge of neglect and selfish be-
haviour? Most of my informants belonged to the category of the uncle, i.e. they
were supporting a relatives child staying in their household paying school
fees, providing food and clothes, etc. Many complained about wildly exagge-
rated expectations of these children who often failed in school and used the
money they received to buy schoolbooks and stationery for consumer goods
instead. Some even accused the children of acting as spies for relatives who
wanted get information about their material wealth.
During my fieldwork, I witnessed several cases of adolescents taking ad-
vantage of the relative they were staying with in town. For example, I spent
several months in the household of a senior civil servant in Zomba. The son of
his sister who had passed away stayed with him. The young man was nineteen
and had just finished secondary school. He was staying at his uncles house to
find a job in Zomba. Unfortunately, he had failed the Malawi Secondary Cer-
tificate of Education (MSCE) exam, and without a degree, his chances of find-
ing a good job were slim. However, he told me he was confident that his uncle
would find him a job. During the three months I was staying in the household,
the nephew mainly loafed around, watching television, hanging out in town to
pick up girls and spending the evenings in bottle-stores with his friends. As far
as I could see, he did not do anything to find employment, instead relying com-
pletely on his uncle to find him a job. Of course, these are the problems to be
expected with adolescents but, as this vignette highlights, there are two sides to
the story of the neglected child and the selfish uncle.
Exaggerated expectations of kin and the strong emphasis on intra-kin har-
mony soured many relationships and resulted in backbiting and witchcraft. The
discrepancy between expectations and the actual support provided by civil
servants was a source of insecurity and anxiety among my informants. The fol-
lowing account of a senior civil servant illustrates this ambiguity:
In all the situations I have failed to assist I have discerned the feeling that the people
couldnt understand how I was unable to assist them. As for my wifes relative, who
first came to the husband of my sister-in-law and he couldnt help because his truck
has been down for a month, they were complaining that my wife and her relatives
are not like their father who was assisting them. They were being accused of being
stingy and selfish and inconsiderate to their plight. This, I think, is a source of
conflict and disputes. The only reason it doesnt become a dispute is that the villag-
ers are unable to speak their minds to the concerned persons e.g. they tell me about
the husband of my sister-in-law, yet they cant tell him in his face. I also suspect that
they talk about me to the others behind my back. I also perceive that lack of appre-
ciation and understanding as to how much one can help. This is true with my family,
no one appreciates the burden I shoulder and the extent to which I can assist. I have
to control myself nearly always for fear of making myself stupid while trying to be
reasonable with the concerned peoples. I believe strongly that many others who
dont have that patience can end up flaring up and heightening the existing tensions.
In all this, I wouldnt be surprised that issues of witchcraft, ufiti, can easily crop in.
Within kinship groups jealousy, witchcraft and gossiping were constant
undercurrents and those who were perceived to be wealthy were constantly
confronted with demands for support. Often they were either accused of being a
witch or fell victim to witchcraft attacks by other relatives. He continued his
reflection on moral principles and their interpretation:
The problem here is who sets the value range of importance for the obligation to
help? How does one understand the categories and differentiate at which level one is
operating on? The obligation to help relatives in need is our custom cast in iron,
miyambo. I am expected as part of miyambo to do anything possible, even put my-
self in critical debts, to pay for my mothers hospital expenses or the death of my
brother and I cant abscond from such responsibility without being considered
morally bankrupt. Yet, I can be exempted or people will understand my failure to
contribute towards my brothers wedding or education or my mothers house, but
not her food. Since there is no rule governing the importance of one custom in rela-
tion to the other, there are ultimately differences in understanding or application in
certain circumstances. It is as if the ideal vision has now become blurred and, even
though the same principles still apply, people act differently and this tends to loosen
the binding character of certain miyambo on rural and urban people. This difference
in applicability depends also on ability: how much does one have to provide so as to
be able to fulfil certain expectations depends on ones resources: where a small-
scale vendor is expected to help with a lot of cash, even with issues of life and death,
the miyambo loses its binding character since the person cant fulfil his obligations.
My informant complained that there was no authority or meta-rule to inter-
pret the moral obligation to help and determine the scope of the obligation.
Instead, different people interpreted the moral principle of kinship solidarity
differently. The moral principles of kinship ideology proved to be very flexible
and their interpretation was subject to constant negotiation. Interpretations
varied since there was no third party available that might have provided an
authoritative interpretation of the moral obligations.
Yet the interpretation of the moral principle to help was not arbitrary.
Kinship obligations were differentiated by grade of relatedness, availability of
resources and the perceived need. The request of a distant kin who needed
money to start a business could be refused, usually by reference to ones own
limited resources, without offending anyone, including the requester. However,
if a first-grade relative was in need of urgent medical treatment or had died, one
cant abscond from such responsibility without being considered morally
bankrupt, as one of my interlocutors put it. Thus, in case of illness and death of
first-grade relatives such as the spouse, parents, children, siblings and other
close relatives, there was little room for interpretation.
Indeterminacy crept mainly in through the assessment of the need and the
extent of support in less vital situations. In this respect, the crucial issue was
who ought to decide what kind of support was appropriate and which situations
warranted a request for support. All civil servants emphasised their freedom to
decide whom to help, in what form and under which circumstances. It was vital
to them that it was their decision in what situations they would provide assis-
tance and in what form, unaffected by social pressure. They denied that their
relatives had a claim to their resources. If they could assist it was them who
decided what to do, not the relatives who should show more gratitude and have
less exaggerated expectations. It was important for my informants to assert their
autonomy and to stress that they were by no means obliged or forced to help.
They represented themselves as acting out of pity and a moral sense of duty to
help. In reality, however, they often responded to considerable social pressure
to provide support but it was important for them to present themselves as being
in charge; they controlled access to their resources and no one else.
This interpretation of kinship duties differed from that of less affluent people
as Rohreggers (2006) study shows. She conducted research in a poor squatter
area in Lilongwe (Area 25, Sector 7) and her informants stressed their claim on
the resources of their wealthier relatives. According to her informants, the
moral principle of sharing ones wealth and displaying the spirit of kinship soli-
darity and neighbourliness constituted an entitlement (Rohregger 2006).
My informants were not willing to honour every request. They made a clear
distinction between sensible demands, such as school fees, and foolish ones.
Relatives who would just ask for money without a specific and useful purpose
could not count on their support. After all, it would be inconsistent for civi-
lised urbanites to be under the control of the uncivilised, uneducated kin
from the home village. Reality was often different: stories about jealous rela-
tives in the home village were ubiquitous. Many of my informants admitted that
they feared witchcraft attacks and lived in fear of being accused of being a
witch because of their alleged selfishness and greed.
Witchcraft thus came into these matters in two ways: on the one hand,
people who were perceived to be rich were accused of being witches and, on the
other hand, many of my informants were afraid to become the target of
witchcraft attacks by jealous relatives.
With regard to the former, a selfish and
greedy person, munthu wa umbombo, was accused of being a witch or sorcerer
based on the idea that material wealth is acquired through the use of medicine,
mankhwala, made from human organs. Rumours about the sorcery practised by
rich people to accumulate more wealth were ubiquitous, although no one would
ever have dared to utter these accusations in the face of the respective person
for fear of being bewitched. With regard to the latter, witchcraft was be used
against the relative in town, who adopted an air of aloofness. To be proud,
onyada, or to boast, kusitu kumula, was strongly disapproved of and could be
punished through backbiting, social isolation and witchcraft. Therefore it was
very important for most of my informants, especially those with a higher social
status like Mr. Kachopoka and Mr. Mkandawire, to create and maintain a safe
distance, both spatially and socially. The importance of witchcraft in modern
Malawi should not be misunderstood. As Geschiere (1997) shows, both forms
of witchcraft are not remnants of traditional African culture but rather constitute
ways of making sense of a modernity characterised by discontinuities and social
For a more in-depth investigation of these views and the nexus between new forms
of wealth accumulation and witchcraft, see Cameroon, Fisiy & Geschiere (1991,
1996) and Geschiere (1997).
Although the interpretation of what was appropriate varied according to the
social status, neither the response nor the request was posed directly, allowing
both parties to save face. Some of my informants devised the most elaborate
strategies of evasion to control access to their resources. One senior civil
servant in Zomba, for example, lived in a very spacious house leased by the
government. However, this blessing was a curse in disguise, since an increasing
number of relatives came to settle in his quarters to enjoy his hospitality. Since
there was sufficient space there was no apparent reason to refuse them and soon
he started to feel claustrophobic in his own house, he told me. After a couple of
months he decided to do something about this, since the rising water and
electricity bills were becoming a serious threat to his budget. He started to
spread the rumour that his transfer to Lilongwe was imminent. His relatives, in
turn, started to get worried and wondered what would happen to them if their
patron moved to Lilongwe. Soon, I heard that one family had moved out to
honour another relative in town with their visit. Of course, he was never trans-
ferred but that could be blamed on the unreliability of the bureaucracy. In the
meantime he had found another house that, not coincidentally, was much
smaller and did not have enough space for all the relatives who wanted to visit
The adherence to kinship solidarity proved to be highly situational. Those civil
servants who had the necessary means preferred to move to neutral ground at
a safe distance from their relatives after their retirement. It was revealing to
observe how social distance was translated into spatial distance. The civil ser-
vants were keen to maintain the distance they had established during their
careers after retirement. However, the decision to create spatial distance in
order to protect the accumulated wealth and to avoid squabbles with the rural
kin did not imply that civil servants wanted to sever ties with the village. On the
contrary, both men, Mr. Kachopoka to a greater extent than Mr. Mkandawire,
had maintained ties with the home village and felt a sense of attachment to it.
Mr. Kachopokas case is particularly revealing in this respect, since he main-
tained ties at different levels with his home village.
This attachment was expressed in terms of a tension between the modern
and the traditional way of life. Yet, despite this sense of attachment they
preferred to keep the distance they had established during their career in the
civil service. It was telling that the neutral place was at a distance prohibitive
to the poorer relatives in the village but not insurmountable for the retired
officer. The fear of jealousy, witchcraft, backbiting, theft and property-grabbing
were a source of great anxiety among civil servants when contemplating retire-
ment. A neutral place promised more security than the village, where their
status of being civilised and modern would set them apart and their material
wealth would be threatened by the claims of their relatives.
Kinship groups had become increasingly socially stratified as a result of the
process of class formation, with formal education and a modern lifestyle as
the primary distinctive features. It was common practice for the employed and
educated family members in town to form a sub-group to discuss support for
relatives from the wider kinship group. People in town relied more on other
relatives in town and forms of association, such as district associations and
welfare committees, for their own social security than on their relatives in the
village. To avoid some of the tensions arising from personalized support, the
ties with the home district were transformed into a more abstract form of
attachment through membership in district associations, which were an urban
form of solidarity rather than the manifestation of kinship and ethnic identity.
One of the main motives for the desire to move to neutral ground seemed
to be the ambiguous and all-encompassing character of kinship obligations. My
informants were willing to share part of their wealth with their relatives but they
also wanted to maintain control over their resources. Otherwise, they feared,
they would not be able to maintain their civilised way of life and the standard
of living they had become accustomed to. The civil servants in Lilongwe and
Zomba felt the need to assert their autonomy with regard to the support they
offered their relatives, the foundation on which their sense of being modern
rested, although in fact they often felt compelled to provide support because of
the fear of social isolation, backbiting and witchcraft. Hence, they manoeuvred
carefully to avoid alienating themselves from their relatives in the village.
The democratisation of appropriation
Bwana zimakukomerani ife tikatuwa, pa lunch hour tikuwerenga manyuzi,
kuyenda bawo inu muli ndi mahule, muku njoya mukukadya ku Ryalls.
Boss it pleases you to see us reading newspapers and playing bawo [East-African
board game] during lunch hour while you spend your time with hookers, enjoying
and eating at Ryalls [expensive hotel in Blantyre].
Lucius Banda and Zembani Band, Njoka mu udzu (1999)
During Kamuzu Bandas rule, Malawis civil servants had a reputation for
integrity and discipline. This changed in the 1990s and in the 21
century. The
country now seems to have caught up with the rest of Africa, although the
situation is a far cry from countries such as Angola or Nigeria where corruption
is supposedly much more deeply entrenched. Since the countrys transition to
multi-party democracy in 1994, corruption appears to be on the rise and has
become a hotly debated topic. It was striking how my interlocutors drew a clear
line between the time before 1994, when corruption was virtually unheard of,
and the time after 1994. Even people who had suffered under his autocratic
regime would admit that, under Kamuzu Banda, corruption was negligible and
government officials discharged their duties more diligently than under his
successor Bakili Muluzi. The expansion of graft and embezzlement was so
clearly associated with the introduction of democracy that it is justified to see a
connection between the two phenomena.
Since 2004, corruption accusations have become a dominant feature of Ma-
lawis political culture. Bakili Muluzi, who served two terms as president, was
widely perceived to tolerate or even condone corruption among his cabinet
ministers and the UDF, his party. This changed in 2004 when the newly elected
president Bingu Wa Mutharika embarked on a high-profile campaign against
corruption. Several politicians and high-ranking functionaries have faced inves-
tigations and even Bakili Muluzi himself was briefly arrested on corruption
charges. There have however been critics, especially within the government and
the UDF, who accuse Mutharika of employing corruption charges to get rid of
political rivals rather than being genuinely interested in curbing corruption.
The international donor agencies have also levelled accusations of corrup-
tion against Malawian politicians and bureaucrats. Concerns over bad govern-
ance and corruption figure prominently in their policy prescriptions and the loan
documents (see GoM 2002 and Chapter 3: 45-49). World Bank and IMF reports
blame Africas underdevelopment on the dysfunctional state, which is alien to
and disconnected from African society. For example, Dia, who conducted a
large survey for the World Bank,
observes a
[D]isconnect between formal and informal institutions that largely explains prob-
lems in capacity building and institutional performance in both the public and the
private sectors in Africa. On the one hand, formal institutions in Africa, being
mostly inherited from the colonial period, do not generally reflect actual societal
behavior and incentives and thus suffer a crisis of legitimacy and enforcement.
Unrooted in local culture, they lack the local ownership needed for voluntary self-
enforcement (Dia 1996: 29-30).
This chapter suggests a different interpretation and places corruption in the
context of the countrys recent transition to multi-party democracy and the
influence of the global anti-corruption movement. Far from blaming an imag-
ined disconnect between local culture and imported state for the current
state of affairs it presents a more nuanced picture that, on the one hand, suggests
more similarities between the bureaucratic order inherited from the colonial era
and post-colonial patrimonial rule than often assumed and, on the other, ques-
tions the existence of a homogeneous African society. First, the chapter ex-
amines corruption and the talk about corruption in the light of Malawis recent
past and current political developments. Second, it discusses the significance of
a parallel informal order in the bureaucracy and, third, it highlights differences
within a society that is often reduced to patrimonialism, kinship and ethnicity.
Unlike the previous chapters, which cover events up to 2002, the present chap-
ters deals with events until late 2007.
The African Management in the 1990s Research Programme (AM90s).
Bad politics
While doing fieldwork in Lilongwe and Zomba it was hard to avoid talk about
corruption. The newspapers regularly ran stories about corruption scandals,
songs denouncing corrupt politicians and bureaucrats were popular in bars and
clubs, politicians hurled corruption accusations against one another and my in-
formants indulged in stories of bribery and nepotism. There was a general con-
sensus among Malawians that corruption had been on the rise since the 1990s.
This popular assessment cannot be taken at face value, since there is no reliable
data. Current indices are methodologically weak and there is no data at all on
corrupt practices during Kamuzu Bandas regime. Hence, the common percep-
tion in Malawi that corruption had been on the increase has to be put in per-
spective.
Under Kamuzu Bandas rule, the boundaries between his own private prop-
erty, the state apparatus and the MCP had become increasingly blurred. Prac-
tices, which would qualify as corruption after democratisation, were considered
to be part of the political system, in which the autocrat exercised absolute con-
trol. Banda used his control over the state-owned companies that dominated
Malawis economy until the 1990s to strengthen his rule. For example, he
ensured that party functionaries and senior civil servants could obtain soft loans
from the Commercial Bank, a bank owned partly by the state and partly by
Press Corporation, Malawis largest company. Press Corporation, a conglome-
rate with substantial interests in all sectors of the economy, was Bandas
personal property and he used its resources for his patronage network and
personal prestige projects in order to ensure the absolute loyalty of his clients in
the economy, the bureaucracy and the party.
In the early 1990s, discipline and the enforcement of official rules crumbled
as a result of dramatic political and economic changes. Freed from the constant
fear of being disciplined, senior officials and politicians of all parties seized
their chance to establish themselves as patrons in their own right and appropri-
ated the resources they controlled. According to both senior and junior civil
servants, the misuse of the public office started among the top cadres of the
civil service and quickly spread down to the junior grades who imitated their
superiors in an attempt to benefit from the political turmoil of the mid-90s. In
contrast to Kamuzu Bandas system, in which only a small circle around the
autocrat appropriated the resources of the state, the time after the introduction
of multi-party democracy was characterised by what I call the democratisation
of appropriation. The term refers to two interrelated developments. On the one
hand, the alleged rise of corruption has to be seen in the context of Malawis
transition to representative democracy and the liberalisation of its political
system and, on the other, the appropriation of the states resources by a wider
circle of people than before. Some informants even went so far as to frame
human rights in terms of a regime that allowed one to exploit the new freedom
for personal enrichment or as the right to grab as much as you can.
The end of one-party rule ushered in an unprecedented era of civil rights and
openness. For the first time since the colonial period it was possible to openly
discuss political affairs without having to fear censorship or reprisals. Ordinary
citizens felt free to criticize the government without the fear of being reported
to the authorities by their neighbours. Topics, which had been taboo under
Kamuzu Banda, such as the widespread poverty or corruption, could now be
discussed by journalists and politicians. Newspapers mushroomed and, although
most of them were only short-lived, a number of professional national newspa-
pers survived. During my fieldwork there were three national newspapers which
were available in towns and the larger trading centres along the main roads. The
Nation had been established in 1994 and was more sympathetic to the newly
elected government headed by Bakili Muluzi, although it regularly reported on
corruption scandals involving members of the UDF and cabinet ministers. The
Daily Times used to be the only newspaper until the transition to democracy
and adopted a more critical stance towards the government after the end of the
one-party rule. The Chronicle, a weekly, was only available in the larger towns
and quickly acquired a reputation for investigative journalism, uncovering a
number of corruption scandals.
A more important influence on public opinion proved to be popular music
because it reached a much wider audience than the newspapers with their
limited circulation. The musicians perceived themselves as the mouthpiece of a
disappointed population and criticized the government harshly in their songs.
Their songs were widely played by radio stations and proved to be extremely
popular, especially among the younger generation. The most famous of them
was Lucius Banda who came to fame in the early 1990s when he criticized
Kamuzu Bandas regime. Later he became a vocal supporter of Bakili Muluzi
and the UDF. After the elections in 2000, however, he fell out with Bakili
Muluzis government and wrote songs like Njoka mu udzu to express his disen-
chantment with Malawis political class who misused their public offices for
personal gains (Chirambo 2002).
During a follow-up visit in 2007, I found that corruption allegations had
become a feature of bitterly fought battles within the government and parlia-
ment. The 2004 elections had been won by the UDF candidate Bingu Wa
Mutharika. Mutharika was a relatively unknown economist who had left Ma-
lawi in 1964 because he feared persecution by Kamuzu Banda. He had pursued
an international career and worked for several international organisations, in-
cluding the United Nations Development Programme. In 1992 he returned to
Malawi and joined the UDF. In 1997, he left the UDF and formed his own
political party, the United Party (UP), for which he ran as presidential candidate
in the 1999 elections. He gained less than 1 per cent of the vote, and after dis-
solving the UP, he rejoined the UDF. Muluzi offered him a post as deputy
governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi and in 2002 Mutharika was appointed
Minister of Economic Planning and Development.
Mutharikas candidacy for the 2004 elections came as a surprise both to the
population and the UDF. For a long time Muluzi himself had harboured hopes
that he would gain the necessary quorum in parliament for a constitutional
amendment that would have allowed him to serve a third consecutive term as
president. After this plan faltered, because it became clear that there would not
be sufficient support in parliament to amend the constitution, Muluzi picked
Mutharika as presidential candidate. Muluzis move met considerable resistance
by the UDF stalwarts, some of whom had presidential ambitions themselves.
They considered Mutharika, who had virtually no support within the party, a
weak candidate who would act as Muluzis proxy. This view was widely shared
by the public who assumed that Muluzi had chosen a relative outsider because
he planned to continue to exercise influence on the government and the party.
Muluzi was able to overcome this resistance because of his authority within the
UDF, as chairman and its biggest financer. Mutharika, who was put forward by
Muluzi as an economic engineer, promised to restore economic growth and
fight corruption.
Soon after the elections in May 2004, Mutharika fell out with the UDF top
brass and Muluzi, his former patron, accusing them of sabotaging his campaign
against corruption. He moved swiftly and only one month after being elected,
President Mutharika ordered the arrest of a high-ranking UDF functionary on
corruption charges. Shortly thereafter, Friday Jumbe, then Finance Minister and
former director of the agricultural state marketing board ADMARC, and several
high-ranking officials were charged for their alleged role in the illegal sale of
the strategic grain reserve in 2001 that had triggered a devastating famine (see
Chapter 2: 22-24). The conflict between Mutharika and Muluzi escalated and in
February 2005 Mutharika left the UDF and formed the Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP), together with a number of UDF parliamentarians. This resulted in
a rift between Mutharika and several of his cabinet ministers who refused to
leave the UDF. Soon Mutharika took action against them. Yusuf Mwawa, the
Minister of Education, was arrested and charged with corruption in March 2005
after he was reportedly seen at a UDF meeting. One year later, he was found
guilty on four charges of corruption and became the first minister to actually be
convicted of corruption. In August, the government reopened a corruption case,
dating back to 1994, against UDF speaker and former Education Minister Sam
Mpasu. In November 2005, Chilumpha, the Vice President and UDF strong-
man, was also briefly arrested on corruption charges. The conflict reached its
peak when Muluzi himself was arrested on corruption charges at the end of July
2006, although he was released soon afterwards.
Except for the case against Mwawa, who was found guilty on four charges
of corruption in February 2006, only a few of these investigations led to a trial
and none to a verdict at the time this chapter was written in late 2007. Usually
cases once opened would neither be closed nor transferred to court but rather
kept in suspension, an indication that it was in the interest of the authorities to
delay the trials. For example, the former Secretary to the Treasury Milton
Kutengule, against whom the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had opened an
investigation in July 2005, was still waiting for the opening of the trial in late
2007. He did not expect that the trial would be opened at all because of bad
politics, as he told me. Sam Mpasu commented the re-opening of the case
against him in the following words: What I know is that they want to use the
Department of the Public Prosecutor and the courts in the name of criminal
prosecution. That is very dangerous politics.
Obviously claims such as this
cannot be taken at face value and ACB officials insisted that they follow the
clues where they lead us and did not succumb to political pressure. However, it
is undeniable that since Bingu Wa Mutharikas split from the UDF, the number
of corruption investigations against political opponents have increased drama-
tically and that these investigations produced only very few results.
The recent debate about corruption in Malawi cannot be considered in iso-
lation from the global anti-corruption movement and the shift in development
policies towards the promotion of good governance, as discussed in Chapter 2.
Since 1994, the government of Malawi has been under considerable donor
pressure to tackle corruption and several times donor agencies have withheld
financial aid because of the alleged misuse or misappropriation of funds. Donor
support was key in creating instruments to fight corruption. One of the first
pieces of legislation passed by the newly elected parliament in 1995 was the
Corrupt Practices Act. This statute was one of the main instruments to curb
corruption demanded by the donor community and was drafted with the
support of World Bank consultants (World Bank 1998).
The ACB, mandated with the task to fight against corruption, was estab-
lished in 1998. It was mainly funded by the British development agency DFID
and has the mandate to examine the practices and procedures of public bodies
and private bodies in order to facilitate the discovery of corrupt practices and
secure the revision of methods of work or procedures which in the opinion of
the Bureau may be prone or conducive to corrupt practices (Section 10(1)
Corrupt Practices Act). It also has the task of disseminating information on the
evil and dangerous effects of corrupt practices on society and enlisting and
Daily Times Fieldyork scandal revived, 4 August 2005.
fostering public support against corrupt practices (Section 10(1) Corrupt Prac-
tices Act). After a slow start, the ACB became more active after 2000, focusing
on a few high-profile investigations and a media campaign, ranging from bill-
boards to radio broadcasts, to raise awareness among the general public. Since
2005, the ACB has drastically increased the number of investigations, although
at least part of these are politically motivated according to critics.
Apart from supporting and financing measures, such as the establishment of
the ACB, Western donor agencies also intervened directly in the domestic
debate on corruption. On several occasions, payments were suspended because
of governance concerns. The suspension of aid because of corruption and
mismanagement was unprecedented and would have been unthinkable during
the Cold War when Kamuzu Banda was a reliable ally of the West. When the
Cold War ended, however, such restrictions were by and large abandoned and
Western governments and donor agencies became more vocal in demanding
democracy and better governance in Africa, as Abrahamsen (2000) argues. For
example, in 2000, the British government suspended aid to Malawi because of
governance concerns. In November 2001, the European Union and USAID
suspended their financial assistance because of the mismanagement of funds
and, in January 2002, the new Danish right-wing government decided to pull
out and terminate all development projects in Malawi due to concerns over bad
governance and corruption. In 2002, the IMF postponed the disbursement of
balance-of-payment support during the famine because of the alleged corruption
of senior government officials. In total, payments of US$ 75 million by various
Western donor agencies remained blocked from 2002 until 2004.
Manifestations of the global anti-corruption movement were also directly
appropriated in public debates in Malawi. For example, the publication of
Transparency Internationals corruption index in September 2007 coincided
with the conflict between Mutharika and Muluzi. The parliamentarians of UDF
and MCP picked up the news that Malawi had slipped from position 105 in
2006 to 118 in 2007 with relish and criticised Mutharikas performance as a
self-professed champion against corruption. Mutharika responded by drawing
on the Ibrahim Index on African Governance, which was published at the same
time and ranked Malawi 12
of 48 African countries. Critical statements of
foreign diplomats and representatives of international organisations invariably
elicited furious reactions by the government. When the Danish ambassador
allegedly insulted then president Muluzi at a private meeting in 2001, the
government protested vehemently against what was seen as Danish interference
in matters of national sovereignty. The ambassador who had led an investiga-
tion into the alleged misuse of Danish aid was finally called back to Denmark in
October 2001. The Danish accusations became the subject of a heated public
debate about governance. The government launched a media campaign against
the Danish allegations in the national newspapers whereas the opposition and
civil society groups took the opportunity to cite the Danish allegations in sup-
port of their criticisms of the government.
In everyday conversations in Zomba and Lilongwe, people used the English
word corruption quite frequently but in a very broad sense, covering corrup-
tion in the legal sense of the term, i.e. bribery, and all kinds of illicit practices
like fraud, theft, embezzlement, etc. In everyday conversations, newspaper
reports, official documents and statements by politicians, practices labelled as
corrupt were invariably condemned as something poisonous that had to be
eradicated or stamped out. However, the general rejection of anything associ-
ated with corruption did not imply a clear and unequivocal rejection of prac-
tices considered to be corrupt among average Malawians in the vernacular
languages.
In many conversations people used the Chichewa word katangale. Katan-
gale denoted any kind of illegal, dubious or shady deal or practice connected to
the place of work or the office in the formal sector that served the enrichment of
the employee. Katangale also covered nepotism and patronage since the two
practices were often connected. When people referred to corruption by the
English word they generally expressed their strong disapproval. Katangale, on
the other hand, was more ambiguous. Although people did not approve of it
they often talked about it in a rather ironic fashion, acknowledging the fact that
it was an intrinsic aspect of formal employment. Not surprisingly, civil servants
and their relatives often justified katangale as a way of making do. To them
katangale was not so much an individualist action but rather an aspect of the
system or the way of doing things. Usually katangale was not considered as
an act of free will but rather something one is drawn into. It was presented as
something you do because that is the way things are done around here, a
system that does not really leave an alternative way of doing things. The denial
of the individuals freedom of choice and the emphasis on the systemic char-
acter of corruption are common registers used to justify corruption, as Blundo
and Olivier de Sardan (2001) point out.
Two other words were also used to refer to corrupt practices: ziphupu and
madeal. Ziphupu is a minor act within the meaning of katangale and denotes
activities associated with theft or embezzlement. Madeal is also a practice that
falls under the term katangale and is derived from the English word deal. The
word describes illegal and semi-illegal deals and transactions between two or
more people. Katangale has strong redistributive connotations and is often
linked to the notions of allocating and sharing, kugawira and kugawa. If
On the systemic character of corruption see e.g. Maas (1973) report on corruption
in the New York police force.
others benefited from katangale and no one was harmed except for the state of
course people tended to consider corrupt behaviour as acceptable and morally
Of course, these are very general observations and often katangale was also
criticised as being harmful and anti-social. Lwanda (2005), for instance, draws a
linguistic distinction between katangale and ziphupu. According to Lwanda, the
original meaning of katangale refers to the custom of selling food from a
basket. He argues that this distinction became blurred between 1999 and 2004
when neo-katangale and a culture of we are all corrupt became entrenched
(Lwanda 2005:53). But, even though he perceives of neo-katangale as some-
thing bad, Lwanda also acknowledges the positive connotations the term ka-
tangale is associated with.
Katangale was clearly differentiated from ordinary theft, kuba. Theft was an
individual act for ones own benefit. Kuba did not evoke the redistributive asso-
ciations of katangale. Theft was legally and morally wrong and could not be
justified as katangale. For example, in the markets it was common practice that
a thief who was caught red-handed was subjected to spontaneous mob-justice
that often resulted in severe physical punishment or the killing of the thief.
These observations regarding the concept of katangale indicate that the attitude
towards the use of the public office for private ends was more complicated
and multi-layered than simplistic notions of African primordialism suggest.
The following sections explore these ambiguities in more detail.
The office mores a parallel social and moral order
African bureaucrats are famous for their often mind-boggling formalism. Coma-
roff & Comaroff (2006), for example, comment on the excessive legal for-
malism and the meticulous care for procedures, stamps and documents in the
postcolony, which they describe in terms of a fetishism of the law. Malawi is
no exception in this regard. Official rules were often applied with meticulous
care and there was an array of legal instruments regulating the conduct of gov-
ernment officials. The primary code was the MPSR regulating salary scales,
conditions of employment, and the rights and duties of all government em-
ployees. Therefore, it was commonly referred to as the bible of the civil
service by civil servants.
The MPSR contained a chapter on conduct and discipline sanctioning for
example the use of information for personal gain, the use of public monies or
property for private purposes, activities which conflict with the interests of the
government or are inconsistent with a civil servants official duties, etc. Only
two editions of the MPSR had been published, in 1978 and 1991. They had
been altered, updated and supplemented by a vast number of circulars, which
were usually issued by the Secretary of the President and the Cabinet and the
Secretary of the Human Resource Department. These regulations were supple-
mented by the penal code prohibiting theft and fraud by civil servants, the 1995
Corrupt Practices Act and the Public Finance Management Act. Both the
Corrupt Practices Act and the Public Finance Management Act were conditions
set by the World Bank and the IMF for their financial support. In addition,
numerous circulars of the Secretary of Human Resource Management addressed
specific problems such as the rampant misuse of government vehicles.
Several agencies were mandated to deal with the wrongdoings of public offi-
cials. Since colonial times the Auditor Generals Office had been the primary
department controlling the ministries accounts. The ACB, the Department of
the Public Prosecutor and the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament were
all established in the late 1990s, following Malawis transition to democracy.
Thus, state legislation and institutions were not a homogeneous system but a
rather heterogeneous mix with different genealogies determined by changing
geopolitical constellations. From independence in 1964 until 1994, Kamuzu
Banda retained and even strengthened the highly hierarchical and centralised
structure of the colonial civil service since it suited his interests. This started to
change when the new government under Bakili Muluzi was elected in the first
multi-party elections in 1994. The new government had a reformist agenda and
implemented a number of reforms to transform the service into a performance-
driven, transparent and accountable provider of public services, controlled
by democratic institutions and the general public under the guidance of the
World Bank, the IMF and bilateral donors. But instead of creating a new struc-
ture these reforms merely grafted a new bureaucratic layer on top of the struc-
tures inherited from the period of British colonial rule (cf. Skinner 1963; World
Bank 1994b).
In spite of the new legislation and Mutharikas anti-corruption campaign the
actual risk of discovery and punishment for corrupt civil servants remained very
low. Of course, the President and the ministers were eager to point out that cor-
ruption is an evil and that no one stands above the law. However, control by the
ACB, the prosecutors office and the notoriously understaffed Auditor Gene-
rals Office was incidental at best, and enforcement of the various statutes and
official regulations was mostly restricted to a few isolated cases that were
supposed to have a deterrent effect or serve the purposes of political rivals.
Furthermore, the competition between these institutions had counter-productive
effects, hindering rather than enhancing anti-corruption measures. Finally, it
should also be noted that in any country respecting the principles of fair trial
and the rule of law convictions on corruption charges are extremely rare due to
the well-known difficulties in collecting evidence.
During one-party rule, a bifurcated system of control was operating in the
civil service. Official regulations and a patronage network personally controlled
by Kamuzu Banda reinforced one another and were used to ensure discipline
and loyalty. Banda himself appointed all senior functionaries and he could also
remove them from their posts any time. It is reported that the title Permanent
Secretary, the most senior position in the civil service, was changed to Principal
Secretary because he stated that no position was permanent. The personal
loyalty of bureaucrats and party cadres was ensured by a highly efficient pa-
tronage system. After independence Banda had appropriated great tracts of land
in the central region, formerly designated as crown land or owned by European
farmers. This land was converted into tobacco estates and distributed to high-
ranking civil servants, managers of state-owned companies and MCP func-
tionaries. The beneficiaries of this scheme received soft loans from the Com-
mercial Bank, which was also under Bandas personal control (GoM 2001: 70;
Williams 1978: 280). By contrast, the rank and file of the civil service was
subject to strict enforcement of official regulations. Arbitrary arrests of sus-
pected dissidents created a culture of fear that ensured obedience. During the
1970s and 1980s any misstep could lead to ones dismissal or even arrest.
Banda relied on an impressive network gathering intelligence and monitoring
the population. The Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP), the paramilitary youth
wing of the MCP, had spies and informants everywhere and sudden unex-
plained wealth would inevitably lead to inquiries. Thus, it seems that the
reportedly low levels of corruption Malawi used to be famous for prior to the
1990s depended on Kamuzu Bandas system of brutal oppression rather than
the rule of law.
All bureaucracies know informal arrangements or codes of conduct at the
shop floor level. In Africa, this parallel order appears to be particularly strong
and well-developed. Beneath the layer of statutes, regulations and organisa-
tional charts a complex web of interpersonal relationships seems to amount to a
parallel structure within the state apparatus, running mainly along the lines of
patron-client relationships. This phenomenon is variously described as neo-
patrimonial state (Mdard 1982), rhizome state (Bayart 1993), shadow
state (Reno 1995, 2000) or even criminalization of the state (Bayart et al.
1999). In Malawi this parallel order did not amount to a shadow state in
Renos sense who describes a much more institutionalised parallel system in
Sierra Leone, where formal structures had been hollowed out completely during
the civil war, but parallel office mores were easily discernible in the Malawian
state apparatus.
This parallel social order is best described in terms of an unofficial code of
conduct based on the principle of respect for the master, ulemu kwa bwana,
that guide the interpretation of official regulations and prevails over them in
case of conflict. This system soon emerged after independence and constituted
one of the main instruments used by Kamuzu Banda and the MCP to ensure
absolute control over the civil servants who were considered a potential threat
to the MCP regime. The emergence of this parallel order can be traced back to
the colonial administration, an aspect often overlooked by neo-patrimonial
readings of African states. The basic principles of the office mores are a
colonial legacy which were retained and adapted after independence to ensure
Kamuzu Bandas absolute control of state functionaries. Respect for the boss
was a feature of the British colonial administration with its notorious colour
bar between European expatriate officers and African employees. Under
British colonial rule, Europeans held all senior positions in the civil service of
what was then Nyasaland, whereas Africans were only found in junior positions
such as teachers, clerks and labourers. According to Africans who had served in
the colonial civil service, the European officers looked down upon them and
considered them to be only mimicking the manners of their colonial masters.
Under colonial rule, it was unthinkable for an African to challenge the decisions
taken by Europeans, and Africans were required to refer all decisions of im-
portance to their white superiors.
According to the junior civil servants I talked to during my fieldwork,
respect for the boss was the most important virtue in Malawian government
institutions. Respect for the boss overruled the official regulations, the
MPSR. One informant pointed out that we have laws but we also have by-
laws. The superior officer knows that there is some government regulation
but he may divert whereas the junior civil servant had to obey. In the office
you cannot challenge a senior officer, if you do that he can transfer you as a
junior civil servant put it. My interlocutors often alluded to the office mores as
know how to manoeuvre or the rules of the game. Obviously there existed
differences between the various departments and sub-units like offices and
schools. According to the old adage that the fish stinks from the head, the
conduct of superior officers and managers heading a sub-unit usually set the
tone for the rest of the staff. Opportunities for corruption also depended on the
functions of a department. The Fisheries Department, for example, differs from
a primary school and police officers or accountants tend to have more opportu-
nities than clerks or messengers. Nevertheless there is a set of basic informal
rules and codes, which can be found to some extent in all ministries and de-
partments down to the smaller units of police posts, health posts and schools.
I was struck by the disillusionment and discontent of the junior civil servants
I talked to. One of the techniques I used was to ask civil servants to draw their
department as an animal.
All of them would draw wild animals such as lions
Thanks to Kevin Quinlan who suggested the use of this technique.
and leopards with sharp claws and teeth, ready to strike. One of my informants,
a Technical Officer at the Ministry of Natural Resources, described his depart-
ment as a leopard:
It looks beautiful, sometimes it is quiet but it can become aggressive. It becomes
aggressive when you trespass. I am saying that because from the outside people
think of our department as a place where they can get scholarships but when you
come and join the system you start realizing. It looks beautiful from the outside but
inside it is dangerous.
I asked him what he meant by trespassing trespassing official regulations
or the rules of the office mores? He answered:
Not the ones in the book. There are some other ones, we take them like the ones in
the village, kumudzi. Sometimes people say alibe miyambo, meaning that you have
no manners. Bosses who have just been promoted, not because of their qualifica-
tions but because of favouritism, thats when you start to meet obstacles. You have
to show respect, ulemu, if you do not show respect they say alibe miyambo. The new
bosses are afraid of being underrated [to underrate someone = kunderera], they start
thinking this young guy is underrating me. This is not because of the MPSR but be-
cause of the rules of the bwana.
The problem for the civil servant was that the master, bwana, was in a posi-
tion to induce compliance to the informal rules of the office mores because of
the authority conferred on her or him by the official regulations. The subordi-
nates depended on the goodwill of their bwana. They needed authorization from
the superior officer and the head of department to be sent to a workshop or to
the field, to be selected for training abroad or to be granted a salary advance.
Promotion and transfer to an attractive post required endorsement by the supe-
rior officer. Any display of disloyalty could result in being left out in the course
of promotions, never being sent to a workshop, not being sent to the field, etc.
Allowances often functioned as rewards in the patron-client relationships
which pervaded the civil service. Whether a civil servant went on a trip and
received the allowance depended on the grace of the boss who granted permis-
sion. Since allowances exceeded the salary by one or two times, civil servants
depended to a large extent on the grace of their patron for their income. Conse-
quently they found it hard to resist a request to sign a cheque or turn a blind eye.
The subordinate position of junior officers does not imply that they have no
leverage at all on their bosses. The patron who ignored his subordinates needs
and expectations faced silent resistance or even revenge in the form of corrup-
tion allegations, for instance. Junior officers tended to tolerate or even condone
corruption by the superior officers as long as it was katangale, a system of
redistribution in which everybody involved benefited. This attitude of junior
civil servants is nicely illustrated in the song Ndiphike Nyemba by Charles
Nsaku that was very popular in early 2002: A driver accuses his boss of being
selfish, I am your driver, we left Lilongwe together the previous day coming
here to the field to work, there you are with money boss, food you are just
eating alone, while your driver ate two days ago. These accusations of being
selfish are not something to be taken lightly in a society where the obligation to
share is a central principle of conduct. In the song Njoka mu udzu by Lucius
Banda, the junior officer compares his boss to a snake lacking basic human
qualities: You are like a snake in the grass, when passing us by you smile,
deep down in your heart you harbour bad feelings towards us, what is that you
are missing boss? He also warns his boss that one day he might have to depend
on his subordinates since life is like a card game, today we are working for you
but your children might be employed by us.
A primordial public sphere or a patchwork of moralities?
Scholars writing about corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa usually emphasise the
role of informal or traditional networks (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan 2006;
Chabal & Daloz 1999; Mdard 1982, 2002; Olivier de Sardan 1999). Due to the
absence of universal and substantial social welfare services, people tend to rely
on their networks with kin, colleagues, neighbours, etc. for their social security.
Civil servants are no exception and act as brokers and patrons within a web of
interdependent social networks that transcends the sphere of the public office.
This position makes them receptive for the temptation of corruption, as Olivier
de Sardan points out: One cannot refuse a service, a favour, a bit of string-
pulling or compliance to a relative, neighbour, party comrade or friend (Olivier
de Sardan 1999: 256).
To yield to the social pressure exercised by relatives and friends is not with-
out reward. The generous patron enjoys considerable status among his clients.
In turn, the connection with a powerful patron enhances the social status of a
client. The achievement of an individual is seen as a collective achievement by
a potentially wide circle of relatives, which grows to the same extent as a civil
servant moves up the social ladder and the senior civil servant or the successful
businessman are not surprised to find relatives at their doorstep of whose
existence they previously have not been aware. It is considered to be an es-
sential social obligation for kin to support each other and there is always the
implicit threat of ostracism and witchcraft accusations if someone appears to be
selfish or too individualist.
The prevalence of kinship solidarity should not be confused with an ideal-
ised picture where all corrupt behaviour by public officials is a logical conse-
quence of demands for support. For the analysis of corruption it is crucial to
distinguish motives from mere justifications of corrupt behaviour. Social pres-
sure and the principle of sharing and caring often serve only as an excuse for
misconduct (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan 2001). My informants pointed out that
it was no wonder that other officers (of course it was always the others) were
corrupt when they were confronted with the expectations of extended families
and the limitations of low salaries eroded by inflation. Such a statement must
not be accepted at face value and has to be seen in the context of actual practice.
Probing and participant observation in hotel bars and nightclubs revealed that
often kinship solidarity was merely used as excuse for corrupt behaviour.
Of course, one has to be extremely careful to generalize. Not everybody was
the same: some were not corrupt, others only manipulated and circumvented
official rules under exceptional circumstances, and some were downright cor-
rupt, indulging in hedonism and escapism. The numerous civil servants whom I
encountered in the bars and nightclubs of Lilongwe and Zomba or at the
workshops held in tourist resorts at the lakeshore where they spent a months
salary in one night give ample testimony of this type of corrupt behaviour. The
latter type of corruption attracted most criticism in the public, exemplified by
Lucius Bandas song Njoka mu udzu quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
As I showed in the previous chapter, civil servants maintained an array of
relationships with neighbours, colleagues, old schoolmates and fellow members
of the church congregation. In an urban and modern environment, networks
based on residence, social status and church membership were very important.
Often these relationships were described in terms of fictive kinship, especially
with regard to solidarity. Yet one should be careful to lump all social relation-
ships and personal exchanges under one heading as many authors seem to sug-
gest (Chabal & Daloz 1999; Ekeh 1975; Mdard 1982, 2002; Olivier de Sardan
1999; Scott 1979). Civil servants themselves often made a distinction between
kin and friends, stating that social pressure and expectations of kin weighed
more heavily but my observations did not reveal a correlation between kinship
solidarity and corrupt practices. Of course, relatives expected and received sup-
port, often drawn from government resources, and police officers, for example,
tended to let relatives off the hook more easily. Yet personal ambition appeared
to be more important as a driving force for corruption than kinship solidarity.
Ethnicity and regionalism clearly played an important role in the talk about
corruption. Corruption accusations, in particular, were framed in the idiom of
ethnicity and regionalism. Usually the accusers would hint at a network of
Northerners, a southern racket or Chewa conspiracy, depending on their own
affiliation. This reflected the general tendency in the civil service to frame
conflicts in terms of ethnic and regional rivalry, described in Chapter 4.
Describing the principles governing morality in terms of a coherent norma-
tive system of defined rights and obligations is difficult and fails to account for
their fluidity and flexibility. It was rather a cluster of basic principles, which
determined the sphere of personal relationships. Instead of speaking of rights
and duties it seems more appropriate to speak of expectations and feelings of
obligation embedded in social relationships. The feeling of obligation towards
relatives was generally very strong. It was virtually impossible to reject a de-
mand for support from kin, and people devised the most complicated schemes
to avoid or at least to control the demands of their relatives. Exchanges were
often never fully consummated to maintain a sense of indebtedness, which left
open the possibility of asking for more favours or services at a later point in
time. Terms and conditions of exchanges tended to be implicit and vague, thus
leaving space for changes in interpretation and a continuous process of nego-
tiation.
For example, the responsibility of the employer was not limited to the
employees. Generally, employers were expected to support employees and their
families in times of distress. The employer was expected to arrange for or to
pay the funeral and costs of transferring the corpse to the funeral site, usually
the home village. The circle of possible beneficiaries of this principle was ill-
defined and negotiable. The moral norms did not set a clear rule for whom the
employer has to pay funeral costs. This flexibility was not an undesirable side-
effect but considered advantageous by both parties. The employer wanted to
avoid giving the impression that he or she was keen to limit their obligations
and it is obviously in the employees interest to have as few restrictions as
possible regarding the support given by the bwana.
This is well exemplified by the experience of one of my informants, a senior
civil servant, who used government resources for the funeral of his house-
keepers mother. The housekeeper had been in my informants service for more
than ten years and when his mother died he naturally turned to his master for
support. My informant felt obliged to assist and organised two vehicles from his
department to be used for the transportation of the corpse and the funeral guests
to the village where the housekeepers mother was supposed to be buried. In
doing so, my informant violated the official regulations that only provided for
the transport of a dead family member. The housekeepers mother did not
qualify as such, although she was considered to be part of my informants
household. He, in turn, approached his superior and was granted the permission
to use two government vehicles for the funeral. He justified his request with his
moral obligation towards his housekeeper and financial difficulties that pre-
vented him from paying the transport himself. The following day, two drivers
drove the corpse and the guests to the village and returned a day later. For this
trip they received a field allowance. Hence, the illegal use of the government
vehicles was declared an official trip and authorized as such by the superior
officer. My informant and his superior were of course aware of the breach of
official regulations but they argued that these rules only exist on paper. His
superior recognised my informants moral obligation towards his housekeeper
to which he himself felt bound. Further, my informant hinted at a favour his
superior still owed him from another occasion when the latter depended on my
informant turning a blind eye.
This brief sketch of principles defining social relationships in Malawi seems
to correspond with Ekehs concept of the primordial public realm instead of
the civic public associated with colonial rule, which is devoid of moral im-
peratives. He seems to suggest that a homogeneous set of moral imperatives
operates in the primordial public and influences the private sphere. The idea
of a primordial moral realm is outdated at best and has been subject to a
thorough critique. However, my point is not superfluous. While the notion of
primordialism already slipped into obscurity in anthropology during the 1960s,
the concept has influenced many studies of the underdeveloped state in Africa
(Clapham 1982; Epko 1979; Hyden & Bratton 1992; Hyden et al. 1999; Mdard
1982, 2002) and has had considerable influence on the policies of the World
Bank, the IMF and other donor agencies that have the aim to make trans-
planted institutions work or try to take Africans primordial affiliations into
Ekeh distinguishes two public realms in the postcolonial state. On the one
hand, the primordial public realm associated with traditional kinship relation-
ships, which is moral and operates on the same moral imperatives as the pri-
vate realm and, on the other, the civic public of the states institutions based
on the ideology of the colonial administration, which is amoral and lacks the
generalised moral imperatives operative in the private realm and in the pri-
mordial public (Ekeh 1975: 92).
He seems to suggest that a homogeneous set of moral imperatives operates
in the primordial public and influences the private sphere. In my view, this
conceptualisation is misleading. In general, the idea of a primordial realm is
anachronistic at best and seems to be inspired by a search for authenticity rather
than reflecting the social realities in modern Africa. In present-day Malawi,
there exists not one universal morality but rather a patchwork of different
moralities. Mbembe makes a similar argument in his analysis of power in the
post-colony when he states that the postcolony is made up not of one public
space but of several, each having its own logic yet liable to be entangled with
other logics when operating in certain contexts (2001: 104). Often the differ-
ences are negligible, as for example between different ethnic groups who have
similar moral imperatives, but sometimes they are significant. This is certainly
the case with Christian morality and kinship morality, which are often at odds
and gave rise to tension and conflict. Ekehs concept of the primordial public
in Africa, which he primarily associates with kinship and ethnicity, ignores the
profound influence Christian missionary activities have had on Malawian
society (cf. McCracken 2000; Ross 1996; White 1987).
Often civil servants who were devout Christians, especially the rising num-
ber of born again or charismatic Christians, had high moral standards with
regard to an individuals personal conduct. Christian ethics differ in important
aspects from kinship-influenced moral imperatives. Charity, for example, is a
moral duty for Christians but, unlike solidarity between kin with strong social
pressure applied by members of the group, the obligation is based on the belief
in God and the hereafter, where good deeds will be rewarded or bad deeds will
be punished. For the major Christian denominations, corruption and katangale
constitute sinful behaviour and for some charismatic churches the devil himself
tries to seduce the believers from the path of God by tempting them to act
wrongly. This strong rejection of illegal acts, which can be traced back to the
acknowledgement of secular power in all Christian churches,
differs from kin-
ship solidarity, which does not recognise the distinction between public office
and private sphere. Differences between charismatic Christian ethos and kinship
morality, however, do not imply that charismatic Christians were less prone to
corruption than other denominations or non-believers. I merely suggest replac-
ing the notion of a primordial public by conceptualising a mix of alternative
moralities that may have conflicting elements.
Good governance policies in Africa are informed by a reductionist culturalism
that blames African primordialism or patrimonialism for corruption and
underdevelopment. There is a tendency to represent state institutions as alien
transplants unrooted in local culture (Dia 1996: 30) harking back to notions
like the primordial public realm (Ekeh 1975). The imagined disconnect be-
tween institutions imported by the colonial powers and African society or cul-
ture is seen as the cause of weak and failed states. The ethnographic evi-
dence presented in this chapter shows that these simplistic dualisms do not
account for the complex political and social realities in Malawi. Instead of re-
ifying the ethnocentric and politically biased categories that dominate develop-
ment discourse, I have presented detailed descriptions from the perspective of
civil servants in Lilongwe and Zomba. What does it mean to receive a monthly
salary and how important are allowances? How does someone make ends meet
with an inflation rate of more than 30 per cent and why do people prefer to
maintain a safe distance to their rural kin? What does it mean to be a corrupt
civil servant? Are the corrupt civil servants I met in the course of my fieldwork
Of course there are differences between the various Christian churches. Protestant
churches have a more pronounced tradition of being apolitical and recognising secu-
lar power than the Catholic Church. Yet most churches recognise secular laws and
adhere to the private/public distinction.
good or bad civil servants? I must admit that I find it difficult to pass
judgement on these people. I agree that one ought to refrain from romanticising
corruption, praising the creativity of the African civil servants and losing one-
self in the poetics of clientelism (Zinn 2001). On the other hand, it is very
difficult to condemn the actions of people who go along with the system of
katangale because of the dire economic situation, the social pressure from rela-
tives and the highly clientelistic relationships with superiors who expect their
subordinates to display unconditional loyalty.
Good governance policies and the civil service reform do not provide an-
swers to these questions. In a sense, the focus on parasitic and corrupt civil
servants abdicated the donor community from the responsibility to address
issues of income distribution and the failure of the economic programmes to
alleviate poverty. Instead of asking what went wrong they simply pointed an
accusing finger at the African civil servants who prevented development aid
from reaching those who really needed it. Good governance, therefore, has to be
subjected to scrutiny. It is not simply an instrument or tool to repair dysfunc-
tional bureaucracies. Instead, the historicity of the concept should be fully
recognised and analysed as one of the manifold manifestations of the neo-
liberal political agenda that exacerbated the crisis it claimed to address. The
reforms and the new agencies did not result in a stronger state apparatus but
actually contributed to the transformation of the parallel order that had been
used by Banda to strengthen his grip on the state apparatus. By 2007 the
policies and institutions that were supposed to fight corruption had by and large
been appropriated by political rivals who tried to extend their influence,
following the conflict between Mutharika and his opponents in parliament.
Conclusions: The state in society
The reorganisation of bureaucracies according to neo-liberal principles during
the 1990s and the beginning of the 21
century was a global phenomenon. The
activities and policies of state agencies, universities, development agencies and
NGOs influenced both employees and clients in a myriad of unforeseen ways
but the countless mundane individual acts also shaped the ways in which these
organisations operated and affected peoples daily lives. It is the aim of this
book to contribute to an understanding of the links between quotidian practices
and global processes, between the micro-level of day-to-day tactics and the
macro-level of development discourse. It does so by focusing on this dynamic
in a particular place, the urban areas of Lilongwe and Zomba, during the last
years of the 20
and the first years of the 21
During my fieldwork, it soon became clear that these connections were far
more complicated and elusive than originally anticipated. In the encounter with
the field, assumptions on the causal relationships between policy measures
and peoples actions evaporated and gave way to a sense of a far more complex
and subtle interconnectedness. Hence, the main challenge in writing this book
was how to conceptualise the impact of tools such as MTEF, Poverty Re-
duction Strategy or Fiscal Restructuring and Deregulation on my informants
and the ways they transformed these tools during implementation.
By tracing their movements between workplace, neighbourhood, church,
home village, garden and business, by talking to experts of various couleur, by
delving into archives and libraries and by studying Malawis colonial and post-
colonial history a more layered picture emerged, which was not represented in
organisational charts, implementation plans and strategy papers. In contrast to
the one-dimensional and a-historic view of the Malawian bureaucracy pervad-
ing policy documents, this book presents a detailed account of the design and
implementation of policy measures, on the one hand, and civil servants every-
day experiences, on the other.
The paradoxical policies of the World Bank and the IMF
The detailed ethnographic account of the various aspects of civil service reform
presented in this book reveals two contradictions underlying the governance
reforms promoted by the World Bank and the IMF. The first one is the contra-
diction between the principles of ownership and conditionality. The second is
the one between two conflicting conceptions of the state informing good gov-
ernance policies. It is seen as both a modernizing influence and as an obstacle to
the development of society. The book then shows how the indeterminacy re-
sulting from these contradictions created considerable room for manoeuvre for
my informants who struggled to come to terms with the almost complete over-
haul of Malawis political and economic order during the 1990s.
Chapter 3 shows how conditionality was used as a means to create openings
for the insertion of good governance reforms into Malawis national polity. It
dissects the construction of conditionality as the logical consequence of country
ownership. The chapter does so by showing the inherent tension between the
idea of a government in the driving seat and the policy prescriptions recom-
mended by the Bretton Woods institutions was resolved by splitting the loan
documents and the normativity of numbers. The loan documents were split into
the loan agreement, signed by the IFIs and the government, on the one hand,
and the governments letter, setting the conditions of the loan, on the other.
Since the letter was a government document, the representatives of the World
Bank and the IMF took the position that conditionality did not contradict
country ownership and was, in fact, a result of ownership. As a consequence,
measures, such as the retrenchment of thousands of government employees, the
establishment of new agencies, the privatisation of government services and the
introduction of new personnel management systems, could be presented as
government-owned, which perfectly matched the World Banks governance
approach and the principles of New Public Management.
The second technique used to resolve the contradiction between county
ownership and the requirements of the IFIs is what I dub the normativity of
numbers. The term refers to the use of economic data and the introduction of
systems of number collection and management, as conditions attached to the
loans. The policies that were introduced in the late 1990s, most notably the
Poverty Reduction Strategy, were linked to a highly complex mix of different
conditions, ranging from traditional quantitative performance criteria to the
more sophisticated quantitative and structural benchmarks. The reliance on
numbers and economic data, of course, is a crucial element of development
discourse, which depends on the scientific and technical character of policy
prescriptions (cf. Apthorpe & Gasper 1996; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994).
The reforms falling under the label of good governance differ from classic
development interventions influenced by the modernization paradigm. Good
governance is not about building roads or transmitting knowledge, it is about
establishing systems of management and self-control to increase efficiency
and transparency by means of auditing and new public management (cf.
Abrahamsen 2000; Mosse & Lewis 2005; Murray Li 2007; Shore & Wright
1997; Strathern 2000). The World Bank missions that visited Malawi to collect
data, to conduct workshops and to negotiate programmes differed from the
activities of the extension workers described by Arce & Long (1992) or
Lipskys street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 1980), which were concerned with
improving agricultural techniques (Arce & Long) and policing (Lipsky). In a
sense, all civil servants in Malawi, from the Principal Secretaries (PS) down to
the junior staff, constituted the target population of the first major civil ser-
vice reform since the colonial period. Even the highest government function-
aries, who participated as members of government negotiating teams, had
virtually no influence on the formulation of civil service reform. Apart from the
World Bank representatives in Lilongwe and the odd consultant in the minis-
terial headquarters, the extension workers of good governance, so to speak,
were not present. The principal encounters with government officials occurred
during the visits of World Bank or IMF missions. These visits were usually
brief and representatives of the Bank and the IMF were not involved in the
actual planning and implementation of the reform measures. Hence, there was
no continuous interaction at a knowledge interface, in Longs terminology
(1992). The control and monitoring of reform measures was actually outsourced
to the government, the sovereign owner of the reforms from the perspective
of the donor agencies.
In order to operate these systems of self-control, the national government
required the transfer of expert knowledge. To this end, the IFIs took an active
interest in the training of national cadres (cf. Dezalay & Garth 2002). This
strategy was also employed in Malawi, albeit on a much smaller scale than in
Brazil or Argentina. The World Bank financed the establishment of the Malawi
Institute of Management (MIM) where civil servants were to be trained in the
new management and accounting techniques. Furthermore, the World Bank and
the IMF regularly organised workshops to train civil servants and stake-
holders in the basic principles of the new thinking. However, these efforts only
reached a small minority of civil servants and the few Malawian civil servants
who were trained in the new techniques rarely identified with the discourse on
New Public Management and good governance as Chapter 4 shows.
The focus on technologies of control and management goes a long way in
elucidating the workings of good governance reforms but two caveats must be
made. Most of the literature, which is heavily influenced by Foucaults ideas
about governmentality (Abrahamsen 2000; Barry et al. 1996; Burchell et al.
1991; Miller & Rose 1990; Rose 1999), is limited to the analysis of documents
and policy statements. The majority of these studies are only marginally con-
cerned with empirical evidence. Such a narrow focus ignores the multitude of
mundane practices that exist beyond the ambit of the technologies of surveil-
lance and management investigated. Both, the vertical and horizontal slices of
the civil service reform presented in this book show how a whole range of
issues mattered to my informants that were not addressed by the reform
measures, such as the fault lines that riddled the civil service, the necessity to
develop alternative sources of income or the ambivalence of kinship relations.
The second caveat concerns the apparent effectiveness of development inter-
ventions. Ethnographic observation teaches us that development institutions and
interventions do not constitute the all-powerful homogeneous machines we find
both in the self-representations of the World Bank and IMF and in their critics
accounts. Proponents and critics of the IFIs alike make the mistake of taking the
claims to efficacy made in reports and documents at face value, as if these
claims reflect actual practice. Mosse (2005a) draws attention to this when he
observes that in anthropology, overstatement of the capacity of international
development to objectify and control third world people, and the mistaken idea
that donors rule through representations, arises in part from the fact that, at first,
critics of development gave so much importance to donor policy texts as repre-
sentations of discourse (Mosse 2005a: 14-15). This tendency resulted in the
reproduction of the development agencies hyperbolic self-representations and
unrealistic claims regarding the efficiency of their instruments.
Chapter 4 traces the unravelling of what on paper appeared to be an all-
encompassing management system during the implementation phase. The
majority of the civil servants, whether they were high- or low-ranking officials,
resisted civil service reform because it constituted a threat to the relatively
privileged positions they had become accustomed to under Kamuzu Bandas
rule. To conclude that most civil servants perceived the reforms to be a threat to
their privileged positions, however, does not imply a common interest or the
existence of a strategic group (Evers 1988). In spite of the frequent strikes,
civil servants resistance to the new policies never resulted in a co-ordinated
political struggle against the neo-liberal reforms in general. The widespread
discontent and anxiety in the civil service was more diffuse, and resistance to
the civil service reform rarely transcended the mundane tactics and ruses of
individual civil servants who pursued their personal agendas in de Certeaus
sense. The countless individual acts, nevertheless, succeeded in transforming
the implementation of the civil service reform programme.
The disorganised character of the civil servants response to the reform
measures was partly due to the relatively weak position of trade unions in
Malawi. Except for the TUM, all trade unions had been banned under Banda
and, even after democratisation, membership levels remained very low and the
trade unions impact was negligible until 1998. This changed somewhat during
the 1997 civil servants strike (van Donge 1998), which was initiated by the
trade unions. Yet the conflict surrounding the introduction of the new housing
allowance in 2000 demonstrated that, in fact, the CSTU only had limited influ-
ence on the rank and file civil servants.
The civil service proved to be fragmented and deeply divided. The World
Banks enclave approach had widened the gap between the classic line minis-
tries and the enclaves, agencies with cross-cutting mandates, including more
established ones such as the Ministry of Finance and the Department of Human
Resource Management and Development (DHRMD) as well as a host of tempo-
rary task forces like the PSCMA, often staffed by younger technocrats and
supplied with ample funding by Western donor agencies. An important aspect
of this gap was the difference between the older generation of old-school offi-
cials who had made their careers in the 1960s and 1970s and the younger gen-
eration of technocrats who had entered the civil service in the 1980s and 1990s.
and the mass of middle-ranking and junior civil servants, a legacy of the colo-
nial divide between expatriate senior officers and indigenous junior officers.
The top officials in the ministerial headquarters were able to benefit from the
implementation of civil service reform. The retrenchment exercise did not affect
them and the monetarisation of benefits actually constituted a barely hidden
salary increase for the highest grades. This was well understood by junior civil
servants who were able to exert sufficient pressure on the government to ensure
they were included in the new housing allowance scheme. The juniors ob-
served the behaviour of their superiors with growing discontent and openly
complained about their selfish bosses. They had lost respect for their masters
and regularly resorted to protests and strikes to add more weight to their de-
mands.
The conflicts fuelled by the implementation of the civil service reform were
expressed in the idiom of ethnic and regional rivalries, a ubiquitous characteris-
tic of Malawis colonial and postcolonial history. People hailing from the
North, mainly Tumbuka and Tonga, constituted the majority of African em-
ployees in the colonial administration because of their privileged access to
missionary education. After the countrys independence from Britain, Banda
gave preferential treatment to Chewa, his own ethnic group, and discriminated
against Northerners whom he suspected of disloyalty towards his regime. After
the transition to multi-party democracy, the rivalries between Northerners,
people from the central region, and Southerners Tumbuka, Chewa and Yao
became a dominant feature of Malawis political landscape and the internal
conflicts riddling the civil service. It was these three fissures between old
school officials and technocrats, bosses and juniors, and between people
from the North, Centre and South that shaped the implementation process of
the civil service reform. By presenting a detailed account of their implement-
ation, Chapter 4 shows how measures, such as the dismissal of staff and the
introduction of the new housing allowances, immediately turned into battle-
grounds between the various groups and factions within the civil service, all
trying to turn the reform to their advantage.
The horizontal slices of civil servants everyday lives, presented in the sub-
sequent chapters, expose the second major paradox underlying the good gov-
ernance policies promoted by the World Bank and the IMF. Good governance is
based on the idea of a dichotomy between state and society, a division that has
informed most conceptualisations of the modern state. The World Bank and
IMF-sponsored policies actually rest on two conceptualisations of this dichot-
omy that contradict each other, as Ferguson (1998) notes. In this sense, good
governance is a truly post-modern hybrid concept, drawing on a disparate mix
of ideas from modernization theory, on the one hand, and the neo-liberal para-
digm of the free market, on the other. According to good governance thinking,
the state is both an instrument to effect social change and an impediment to the
development of the free market. The former idea is based on a concept of the
state as an instrument of social engineering that ought to push back or check
primordial affiliations and patrimonial structures in Africa. Seen from this
perspective, the state is the principal agent of modernization and African society
a potential threat to progress because of its backwardness and traditional
This conceptualisation is at odds with the neo-liberal faith in the potential of
the free market and the belief that civil society is stifled by the state found in the
World Bank Report Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Economic Growth
(1989), quoted in Chapter 5. Good governance aims at transforming the state
institutions into more efficient, transparent and accountable providers of public
services. According to the authors of that report, the African entrepreneurial
spirit has been forced into informality by predatory and inefficient state in-
stitutions. The rule of law and respect for private property are expected to
unleash the entrepreneurial spirit that will bring about Africas economic
recovery. This report optimistically represents African society as seedbed of
the development of a free market. Good governance mysteriously resolves the
contradiction between these two conceptualisations of the state in a call for
leaner and more efficient state institutions that are supposed to create the
enabling environment for the market by establishing the rule of law and an
efficient administration.
Chapter 5 shows that the reality lived by civil servants in Lilongwe and
Zomba did not match the optimistic predictions of the authors of the World
Bank report. The deregulation of the economy during the mid-1990s did indeed
create more economic freedom for those with money to invest. Civil servants, in
particular, were in a position to invest in business enterprises, since they could
draw on a regular salary an invaluable privilege in an economy still primarily
structured by the agricultural cycle. Freed from the restrictions that had been
imposed on economic activity under Banda, civil servants invested in all sectors
of the economy. For most of them, however, this did not lead to social ad-
vancement or prosperity. My informants became entrepreneurs, not out of
choice but out of necessity. Faced with the erosion of their salaries due to
monthly inflation rates running as high as 50 per cent and a general economic
crisis, they turned to a large variety of income-generating activities to fend off
threatening social decline. Petty trading and subsistence farming, always prone
to bankruptcy and lack of money, were desperate attempts to regain the sense of
security they had lost and to make ends meet. Only those with ties to the
wealthy elite, the apamwaba, actually benefited from economic liberalisation,
whereas the rest were forced to diversify their sources of income in order to
maintain their middle-class dreams of wealth and a civilised lifestyle.
The account of the diverse nature of my informants social life presented in
Chapter 6 lends little support to the idea of a homogeneous African society, as it
is presented in the 1989 World Bank report and Dias studies (1993, 1996). The
concept of civil society informing the neo-liberal vision of society as a hotbed
for the development of a free market is as devoid of substance and history as its
opposite, the neo-liberal idea of the state as the provider of public services and
guarantor of individual rights. The horizontal slices of the everyday practices of
civil servants in Lilongwe and Zomba reveal how far removed this image of a
homogeneous primordial morality is from the dilemmas of people who wanted
to maintain a safe distance from their rural kin. My informants maintained
closer relationships with relatives, neighbours, fellow churchgoers and friends
who were also employed in the formal sector and lived in town than with rela-
tives in the village who were considered to be less modern or less civi-
lised.
Relationships between civil servants and their rural kin were highly am-
bivalent and charged with tension. None of my informants in Lilongwe and
Zomba wanted to sever ties with their relatives in their home district. Good
relations with their relatives were deemed a necessary form of social security in
case of future mishap the village constituted a potential refuge where they
expected to find support and land if needed. However, in practice, virtually no
one wanted to leave town and return to the village. The village was considered
to be a last resort, to be avoided at all costs. My informants feared the exagger-
ated expectations of kin in the home village, they were afraid of witchcraft and
a hard life without the amenities of urban life. Furthermore, the village no
longer provided social security in the manner it once had. This became clear
during the food crisis in 2002 when hungry and cash-stripped villagers flocked
to the town in search of support from their relatives. Because of their salaries,
civil servants did not experience hunger to the same degree as the villagers but
the desperate appeals for help caused them considerable difficulties.
The 2002 famine also highlighted another issue that had gained salience
since the 1990s: corruption. In 2001, the maize harvest had been far below
expectations and, when food shortages affected large parts of the country, it
transpired that the complete Strategic Grain Reserve (SGR) had been sold. Very
soon, accusations of corruption were levelled against senior officials of the
National Food Reserve Agency, the body set up to manage the SGR, and
ADMARC, the agricultural state marketing board. Although a Presidential
Commission of Inquiry presented a damning report, the ACB and the public
prosecutor did not succeed in prosecuting the alleged culprits, including the
former general manger of ADMARC, so that even at the end of 2007 there were
still no convictions.
This was typical for corruption investigations in Malawi, as Chapter 7 illus-
trates. Most criminal proceedings eventually petered out without having ever
been formally concluded and, especially after 2004, there was a tendency to use
corruption allegations against political rivals. These observations shed doubt on
the apparent increase of corruption during the late 1990s, which has to be seen
in the context of the arrival of the global anti-corruption movement and the
introduction of a multi-party democracy in Malawi. The chapter mainly takes
issue with simplistic ideas, according to which corruption in Africa stems from
an imagined disconnect between the state and society. It presents a detailed
ethnographic account of the existence of the parallel informal office mores that
often superseded official regulations and the complexity of public morality,
which lends little support to the notion of a homogeneous African morality and
a modern state unrooted in local culture (Dia 1996: 30).
A note on theorising the postcolonial state
The main argument of this book is not merely aimed at debunking the interna-
tional donor agencies and their instrumentalist vision of good governance. It
also seeks to contribute to current academic debates about the nature of the
postcolonial state in Africa. The dichotomy between state and society at the
heart of the IFIs vision can be traced back to academic debates about the
importance of the state in developing countries. The basic premise of most
social-scientific approaches since Weber (1990) has been the notion of the state
enjoying a certain degree of autonomy from society.
This was the case with the modernist approaches of the 1960s. Authors such
as Huntington (1968), Leys (1965), Scott (1979) and Wertheim (1961) argued
that a gap between the transplanted state and society was responsible for the
dysfunctionality of state institutions in the newly independent countries in
Africa and Asia. Although these authors emphasised the postcolonial states
dysfunctionality, they reflected the general optimism of these years because
they assumed that this would merely be a transitory problem. Marxist critics of
the modernization paradigm, such as Rodney (1972), retained the modernist
dichotomy between state and society but emphasised exogenous factors for
lacking development. From the Marxist perspective the postcolonial state does
not act as an autonomous agent of social change but rather as a proxy serving
the interests of global capitalism and neo-colonialism.
During the 1980s both modernization and Marxist dependency theory came
under attack by a group of mainly French political scientists including Bayart
(1993), Mdard (1982) and Chabal & Daloz (1999) who drew on Webers
typology of domination (1990) and Eisenstadts (1973) concept of the neo-
patrimonial state. The latter studies in this vein by Bayart and Chabal & Daloz
differ somewhat from the studies of the 1970s and 1980s because they stress the
endogenous nature of the modern state in Africa. These authors substituted
modernization theorys nave belief in progress with a more pessimistic out-
look, whilst ascribing to African elites more independence from the forces of
global capitalism than dependency theory. They also assumed a fundamental
divide between state and society but saw the state as being co-opted by the
clientelistic logic pervading African societies famously dubbed politics of
the belly by Bayart (1993). The idea of the states lack of autonomy from
society also informed studies of failed or collapsed states in Africa (Zart-
man 1995).
Recently, a number of authors have criticised the dichotomy between state
and society (Blom Hansen & Stepputat 2001; Das & Poole 2004; Ferguson
1994, 1998; Gupta 1995; Mitchell 1991, 2002) informing conventional ap-
proaches to the postcolonial state. They argue that this dichotomy is a product
of the states self-representation and, therefore, should be treated as a category
of practice rather than an analytical category. Instead, they propose investigat-
ing imaginaries of the postcolonial state, popular ideas about the state, and the
practices of governing ascribed to the state. The distinction between the state as
an idea and as a practice was already advanced by Marxist sociologists in the
1970s (Abrams 1988; Miliband 1969; Poulantzas 1978). Abrams (1988), for
example, distinguishes what he refers to as state-system: a palpable nexus of
practice and institutional structure centred in government (1988: 58) and the
manner and means by which the idea of the existence of the state has been con-
stituted, communicated and imposed (ibid: 69). In support of this distinction he
quotes Radcliffe-Browns dictum that in writings on political institutions there
is a good deal of discussion about the nature and the origin of the State, which
is usually represented as being an entity over and above the human individuals
who make up a society [] The State, in this sense, does not exist in the phe-
nomenal world; it is a fiction of the philosophers (Radcliffe-Brown 1940:
xxiii).
Whilst authors such as Blom Hansen & Stepputat (2001) have done a lot to
transcend the pervasiveness of state thought (Bourdieu 1994: 1) in the social
sciences, less attention has been paid to the practices of individuals employed
by the state and representing it. Arguably this is due to the emphasis on repre-
sentations in the majority of anthropological studies on the state. The ethnogra-
phy of civil servants quotidian practices presented in this book aims at shifting
the focus from representations of the state to what African government employ-
ees actually do both inside and outside their offices. In a sense this study there-
fore harks back to Radcliffe-Browns radical empiricist stance although it does
not deny the importance of imaginaries of the state. By virtue of the attention
paid to civil servants ways of making do in de Certeaus sense this is a study
of the state in an African society rather than the modern state and African soci-
ety.
The ethnography of horizontal slices, including the private realm and the
public office, de-exoticises African bureaucrats and shows that they are sub-
jects in times of crisis, in Mbembe & Roitmans (1995) words. It does not reify
the dichotomy between Western state institutions and African society but, in-
stead, focuses on the lives of people in the midst of processes that restructured
state institutions all around the globe. From this perspective, it is possible to
address questions such as what does it mean to be an African employed by the
government in the times of neo-liberalism or what are the effects of the general
scarcity of resources on the day-to-day functioning of the state apparatus? Only
anthropological studies addressing these fundamental issues have the potential
to elucidate the workings of African states at the turn of the 21
century. This
study constitutes a modest contribution towards this end.
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Abrams, Philip, 150
Anti-Corruption Bureau, 25, 45, 46,
ADMARC, 20, 21, 22, 23, 72, 88,
89, 91, 126, 148, 156
African entrepreneurial spirit, 70-
Africanisation, see localisation
allowances, 13, 14, 51, 54, 55-60,
61, 65, 68, 69, 70, 74, 79-80, 81,
84, 93, 96, 97, 134, 141
of development, 5-6, 50-51, 143-
of the state, 3-5, 148-150
apamwamba, 64, 73
district, 102, 104, 111, 114, 115,
native, 114
Banda, Hastings Kamuzu, 2, 15-25,
28, 56, 61, 62, 64, 66-67, 84, 85,
122, 124, 125, 132-133, 144, 146,
Banda, Lucius, 122, 125, 135, 136
Bayart, Jean-Franois, 4, 17, 65,
Blantyre, 18, 26, 67, 72, 74, 76, 80,
81, 82, 83, 92, 94-95, 102, 103-104,
105, 110, 114, 115, 122
Biwi, 8, 57, 88, 113, 114
Bourdieu, Pierre, 4, 150
bosses & juniors, 60, 63-66, 133-
business, 70-73, 83-85, 90, 92-93,
94, 95, 96, 97, 104, 105, 109, 146-
cabinet crisis, 16, 17, 24, 66
Chabal, Patrick & Jean-Pascal Daloz,
4, 17, 65, 135, 136, 149,
Chatsika Commission, 26
chameleon politics, 17, 61
Chewa, 17, 24, 64, 66-67, 136
Chichewa, 64, 66, 86, 101, 107,
Chikaonda, Mathews, 56, 57, 62
Chikwawa, 104
Chilumpha, Cassim, 126
church, 5, 11, 17, 100, 103, 104,
Civil Servants Trade Union, see
action plan, 39, 49-50, 54
cash budget, 42, 75
census, 8, 12, 25, 41, 42, 51, 52
colonial, 4, 9, 24, 56, 60, 62, 64, 67,
68, 83, 103, 111, 114, 123, 131,
culture of fear, 25, 27, 62, 132
discipline, 73, 84, 122, 124, 130,
expenditure control, 7, 41-42, 50
functional review, 41, 42, 54, 55,
ghost-workers, 25, 52
Malawi Public Service Regulations,
53, 77, 78, 102, 106, 130, 131, 133,
Public Sector Change Management
Agency, 54-55, 60, 61, 145
Public Service Commission, 12, 52,
structure, 11-13
Cold War, 2, 17, 3, 128
colonial period, 8, 9, 16, 19-20, 24,
56, 60, 62, 64, 67, 90, 110, 111,
114, 123, 125, 131, 138, 141, 142,
consultants, 6, 38-39, 40, 47, 49,
corruption, 1, 5, 14, 18, 29, 42-46,
de Certeau, Michel, 8, 69, 145, 150
democracy, 2, 4, 5, 16, 18, 21, 25,
28-29, 46, 62, 65, 67, 71, 80, 97,
Domasi, 9, 83, 88, 89, 94
economic crisis, 2, 3, 5, 7, 15-16,
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 31, 62, 71-72,
education, 16-17, 18, 24, 37, 51,
62, 63, 64, 67, 71, 90, 93, 95, 97,
100, 103, 110-111, 115, 146
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., 4, 149
Englund, Harri, 100, 101, 102, 107
ethnicity & regionalism, 17, 24, 60,
66-67, 136, 145
famine, 16, 19, 22, 23, 88-89, 126,
farming, 10, 70, 85-88, 90, 91, 93,
Ferguson, James, 6, 72, 100-101,
Foucault, Michel, 5-6, 144
funerals, 78-79, 107-108, 113-114,
governmentality, 144
Hirschman, Albert O., 50
HIV/AIDS, 2, 23, 77, 80, 96, 104,
home village, 78, 86-87, 91, 99-
arrangements, 35-36
Camdessus, Michael, 33, 44
Gold, Joseph, 35-36
governance, 33-34
indirect rule, 114
Jumbe, Friday, 126
katangale, 129-130, 134, 139, 140
katapila, 77, 93, 97
amalume, 113, 115-116
duties, 115-120
matrilineal, 90, 1, 105, 107, 108-
mbumba, 86, 88, 90. 92, 97, 98,
patrilineal, 105, 107
solidarity, 113, 115-116, 118,
Lenten letter, 17
Lilongwe, 2, 7, 8-9, 11, 13, 18, 27,
99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 112,
localisation, 24, 64, 103, 110, 111,
Lomwe, see Southerners
loyalty, 17, 32, 63, 67, 84, 124,
Lunzu, 102-105, 108
Malawi Congress Party, 15, 16, 17,
18, 19, 21, 24, 67, 124, 128,
Malawi Housing Corporation, 57,
Malawi Institute of Management,
Malawi Revenue Authority, 25, 33
Malawi Social Action Fund, 25
Malawi Young Pioneers, 17, 19,
Mbembe, Achille, 4, 7-8, 72, 73,
micro-finance scheme, 95, 96
modernity, 100-101, 109, 110-111,
Mpasu, Sam, 126, 127
mudzi, see home village
Muluzi, Bakili, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22,
Mutharika, Bingu Wa, 62, 63, 66,
123, 125-126, 127, 128, 131, 140
Mwawa, Yusuf, 126, 127
Mzimba, 105, 106, 107
Mzuzu, 78, 106, 107
National Food Reserve Agency, 22,
Northerners, 17, 24, 66-67, 78, 136,
Nsanje, 104
Nyanja/Manganja, see Southerners
Nyasaland, 15, 16, 19, 23, 24, 64,
patrimonialism, 4, 32-33, 123, 132,
patron-client relationships, 65,
120, 124, 132, 134-135
primordialism, 4, 98, 112, 130, 138,
property-grabbing, 109, 120
Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R., 150
retirement, 64, 73, 83-84, 90, 99,
advances, 7, 70, 73, 75-76, 84,
grades, 10, 13, 26, 51, 52, 57, 58,
68, 73, 80, 89, 90, 94, 98, 105, 110,
inflation, 7, 21, 26, 27, 40, 71,
74, 76-77, 79, 105, 136
meaning, 73
Skinner Report (1963), 24, 56, 131
sorority group, see kinship,
mbumba
Southerners, 66, 67, 90, 107, 136,
strikes, 18, 24, 25-26, 27, 55, 65,
66, 67, 144, 145
Teacher Union of Malawi, see trade
tobacco estates, 19, 83, 85, 132
Tonga, see Northerners
trade unions, 26-27, 59-60, 65, 79,
Tumbuka, see Northerners
ufiti, see witchcraft
United Democratic Front, 16, 18,
27, 59, 67, 123, 125-126, 127, 128
Weber, Max, 4, 149
welfare committees, 76, 111, 113,
witchcraft, 101, 105, 117, 119
workshops, 13, 54, 60, 74, 79-83,
agreements, 35
conditionality, 6-7, 28, 29, 34-37,
country ownership, 6, 7, 28-30, 34-
enclave approach, 33, 47, 60-61,
63, 65, 68, 145
instrumentalism, 42, 43, 50, 148
Medium Term Expenditure
Framework, 41-42, 141
Structural Adjustment, 14, 15, 19,
20-21, 35, 37
Poverty Reduction Strategy, 21, 22,
35, 37, 39, 45-46, 47, 141, 142
Shihata, Ibrahim, 32
Wolfensohn, James, 43-44, 46
Yao, see Southerners
Zomba, 7, 8, 9, 13, 18, 24, 53, 57,
87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 99, 100,
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