Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0229/02290.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 23KB | 364 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02290}
$Pretitle{372}
$Title{Malawi
Chapter 1.    General Character of the Society}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Harold D. Nelson, Maragita Dobert, Gordon C. McDonald, James McLaughlin, Barbara Marvin, Doanld P. Whitaker}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{malawi
african
ch
africa
banda
president
southern
country
rural
economic}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Country:     Malawi
Book:        Malawi, A Country Study
Author:      Harold D. Nelson, Maragita Dobert, Gordon C. McDonald, James McLaughlin, Barbara Marvin, Doanld P. Whitaker
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 1.    General Character of the Society

     Malawi joined the growing family of sovereign African states on July 6,
1964, after nearly three-fourths of a century of British colonial
administration. Designated the Nyasaland Protectorate in 1891, it was
governed by the Colonial Office of Great Britain. In 1953 it was joined in a
multiracial federation with the Northern Rhodesia Protectorate (later
independent Zambia) and the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia
in an effort to pool the region's resources and markets. The association was
opposed even before its formation by the African majority in Nyasaland and
Northern Rhodesia, who feared they would not be able to achieve
self-government within a federal structure dominated by white Southern
Rhodesians. At the end of 1963 the federation was dissolved after a great deal
of conflict and turmoil.

     The African nationalist generally credited as being responsible for
the breakup of the federation was Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda, who had lived outside
his Nyasaland homeland for forty years. Having left the protectorate as a
teenager, he worked for ten years as a clerk in the gold mines of South
Africa. There he saved enough money to pay for passage to the United States
where, with the help of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he pursued
an education and became a doctor of medicine. In 1937 he traveled to
Scotland, where he studied for medical accreditation in the United Kingdom.
Achieving this, he practiced medicine for sixteen years, mostly in white
working-class areas of suburban London. His quarters there became a
meetingplace for African students and exiles. During this time he kept in
touch with the young political activists in Nyasaland who were becoming
concerned with African nationalism and self-determination.

     Talk of federation among the three central African territories and
continuing efforts to bring it about were responsible for Dr. Banda's
entry into politics during his long period of self-imposed exile. His campaign
to prevent the association failed, and he emigrated to Ghana in 1953 and
established a medical practice. When he returned home in 1958 at the behest
of Nyasaland activists to lead the fight for destruction of the hated
federation, Dr. Banda was welcomed by the people as a messianic deliverer. To
his people he was Ngwazi, a Chinyanja word used to honor a man of exceptional
achievements. After dissolution of the federation, Dr. Banda headed the
movement for full independence from Great Britain and at its successful
conclusion became the prime minister of sovereign Malawi. Two years later,
on July 6, 1966, after adoption of a new constitution, Malawi became a
republic, and Dr. Banda continued in power as its first president.

     At independence in 1964 the new nation emerged as one of the least
developed on the African continent. Dr. Banda and his government immediately
set about to develop Malawi as a viable nation for the ultimate benefit of
its citizens. The white settlers of the region argued that Malawi could never
attain economic viability as an independent state. The African leader's
determination to prove them wrong and himself right provided a driving force
in his quest for success. His efforts won the adulation of the Malawi masses,
but his methods eventually brought scorn and displeasure from the
pan-Africanist leaders of other Black African states.

     According to United Nations (UN) standards in the early 1970s, Malawi
remained one of the twenty-five poorest and least developed countries of the
world. At the same time, however, of its initial disadvantages at
independence were gradually being overcome, and it was frequently cited as a
model of development progress.

     Geographically landlocked in southeastern Africa, Malawi is a narrow,
elongated country squeezed among disparate and antagonistic neighbors, a
buffer zone between the rest of Black Africa and white-ruled southern Africa.
In its less populated northern reaches, it shares borders with Zambia and
Tanzania. Most of its more densely populated and economically more viable
central and southern areas are surrounded on three sides by the territory
of Mozambique, still in mid-1974 under Portuguese control (see fig. 1). Part
of the Eastern African Rift Valley traverses Malawi from north to south, and
in this deep trough lies Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa and
the country's most distinctive geographic feature. The 350-mile-long lake
and several smaller ones constitute slightly more than 20 percent of the
country's area of 45,750 square miles. Great diversity in elevations and
relief provides marked contrasts throughout the country (see ch. 3).

     The republic derives its name from the Maravi, a Bantu-speaking people
who migrated in the fourteenth century to the area around Lake Malawi,
developing there a vast confederation that prevailed until the 1700s (see
ch. 2). According to oral tradition, the Maravi were the ancestors of the
Chewa and the Nyanja who constitute a majority of present-day Malawi's
population.

     Although Portuguese traders were the first Europeans to reach the
areas, the first significant contact with the West dates from the arrival
in the 1850s of David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary-explorer.
Throughout the nineteenth century the area was the scene of constant turmoil
as invading African tribes ravaged the land, subjugating the local peoples.
Livingstone's activities drew British attention to the region, particularly
to its growing slave trade. The region's tropical climate, lack of
exploitable minerals, and generally limited economic opportunities
discouraged the kind of extensive white settlement that had occurred
in Northern and Southern Rhodesia.

     In 1974 Malawi was the home of approximately 5 million people, a
population that was increasing at an annual rate of about 2.5 percent.
Approximately 99.5 percent of the inhabitants were Africans, most of
whom followed traditional rural life-styles associated with agricultural
pursuits. The remaining 0.5 percent of the population were classified
officially as Europeans (a term applied to all whites) and Asians (mainly
Indians). The European minority, estimated at slightly more than 7,000
people, occupied positions in governmental administration and within the
modern sector of the economy. Roughly 12,000 Asians played an important
role in small-scale retail trade in the urban centers. A small number of
Europeans and Asians had become citizens of the country, but most members
of both groups were residents only. Their continued presence was welcomed
by President Banda, whose program of africanization of the administrative
scene and the economy was proceeding carefully at a measured pace rather
than at the speed with which it was pursued in other Black African countries
(see ch. 9; ch. 11).

     The average population density of Malawi is estimated at 138 people per
square mile, one of the highest in Africa. Densities are greater in the
Southern Region where Blantyre, the country's largest city, and Zomba, the
national capital since independence, are located. Each is a focal point and
trade center for populous agricultural areas that produce both subsistence
and export crops (see ch. 12). Population shifts during the early 1970s were
most pronounced in the Central Region, assisted in part by the process of
transferring the national capita