The Thinking Malawian

Education is an investment, and securing funding for the same can be challenging for vulnerable students. In Malawi, student loans by the Higher Education Students’ Loans and Grants Board (HESLGB), are a popular means to finance higher education. If you are a first-time applicant, all you need to do is to state your parents’ financial standing, pay a sizable processing fee, and once the board determines, a loan is approved or not. That’s how many professionals we see today have financed their studies since the board came into existence in 1985. But while this disbursement approach is ideal given the economic stamina of many Malawians, its drawback is that it doesn’t place some responsibility on the receiving student. That is why when one needs a loan for the next semester, basing it on academic performance, particularly grades, it would make students use it prudently. This approach is ideal because it rewards academic excellence and provides deserving students with the fina...

The aura of the headline above may have stimulated you to read this article because of the way it has been presented or who has presented it to you.   That’s the ultimate goal of persuasion; stirring you up to like or dislike something. But as that isn’t enough, the credibility of the one persuading you to give a thumbs up or down to something matters most. As Malawi prepares for the September 16 General Elections, there’s something we must keep our eyes on. Our focus shouldn’t just be drawn at podium machinations by political actors, but the political messaging on social media. If you are a regular social media user, you must have come across videos of children saying something to do with politics or current state of affairs, especially the economy. There are some unknow social media users who now use children to stimulate others into liking or disliking certain politicians or individual parties in general. So far, I have watched at least five videos of children on s...

Many women dream of a wedding hatched in heaven, a fancy world where if they were men themselves, they would say their partner was ambitious for asking them to something beyond their buying power. But because they aren’t a man, they still pressure their partner to have a high-end wedding, one held in an exotic lush green garden, or the beachside of Lake Malawi, or a magnificent hotel while donning dresses and suits tailored for a roughly 3-hours but a lifetime event. As if that isn’t enough, they picture themselves being chauffeured in luxury cars, unfortunately to the envy of singles and the ex-es who wrote them off. That’s how women are so obsessed with high-end weddings. But times have changed, there’s a new reality that we must come to terms with, or we face the consequences. Nowadays, it’s extravagantly expensive to organize a glossy wedding because of an economic meltdown Malawi has found itself in. Everything has gone sky-high. Therefore, we must adjust to this new r...

In 2020, Malawians sent packing professor Peter Mutharika and his unruly blued-eyed boys. No sooner, they started wrangling over who would succeed Mutharika. They jostled as rival camps emerged in the party that once got intoxicated with excesses of power, a thing that sealed their exit. Concurrently, MCP and its eight alliance partners, won the hearts of Malawians because they had appealed to the voters’ senses, promising a fanciful future. But as the saying nuances, the more things change; the more they remain the same. The first red flag was the abuse of Covid-19 funds by government officials, including a former cabinet minister. Another cause for alarm was the shenanigans surrounding the arrest of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) director Martha Chizuma. Hence forth, they started behaving the same way their predecessors did, entangling themselves in corruption scandals involving top government officials. Fate has left them to their own devices.  Today, the life of...

Criticizing the church is a rarity in Malawi. And if one calls out faith leaders or the church in general, everyone gets awestruck at their courage to do such a thing. In short, it's off the limits. The reverence we put in our faith leaders is so esteem, sometimes more than in God Himself. You may find this hyperbolic but just look around. Of course, that's not wrong because both the Bible and the Quran teach the faithful to honor religious figures. Our nation's history, particularly the struggle for democracy, is incorrect without mentioning the church. In 1992, the Catholic bishops issued a Pastoral Letter that incited Malawians to hunger for democracy leading to the 1993 Referendum. Later in 1994, Malawi reverted to multiparty democracy, 31 years after Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda dissolved other political parties and made himself the Life President . Henceforth, the church has been the defender of the people, holding to account successive governments although ...

Evison Matafale, a revered reggae music icon in Malawi, played a key role in the social and political discourse of Democratic Malawi. This essay, therefore, examines Matafale’s politically charged songs and the seditious letter he wrote in 2001, which eventually put him in harm’s way. Like elsewhere in Africa and beyond, in Malawi reggae music is also regarded as protest music. Reggae music generally addresses themes such as corrupt systems, popularly referred to as Babylon, among members of the Rastafari Movement. In 1999, Evison Matafale stormed the Malawi music scene with his debut Kuimba 1, a ten-track album that did not relatively sell much due to reasons which will be expounded later in this essay.   Soon after releasing Kuimba I, he went off the music radar for almost a year battling with tuberculosis (TB). But after successfully cheating TB, Matafale released Kuimba II, which catapulted him back into the limelight. This album, laced with candid socio-political monol...

President Lazarus Chakwera is a troubled man watching the country sink into deeper depths of poverty and hardship. All macro-economic policies are either misfiring or backfiring. His government’s popularity is also on a downhill slide, according to the recent Afro-barometer report. Yet on 16 September, Malawians are going to decide whether to retain or replace him. The 84-year-old former president Peter Mutharika is eying for a second coming, having lost to Chakwera by 2.6 million votes against his 1.7 million votes in the 2020 presidential elections re-run. To prop up dwindling foreign reserves, since 2020 the Malawi kwacha has lost its value three times, making all imports expensive and triggering a spike in prices of basic goods. In the last four months of 2024, Malawians braved arduous fuel queues at pump stations across the country. The situation hasn’t improved yet. On November 27, 2024, president Chakwera addressed the nation, outlining a tranche of measures to deal with f...