Kwacha: The Violence of Money in Malawi's Politics, 1954-2004. pp.525 - 544.

Abstract

One of the strongest limiting factors in the transition to participatory democracy in Malawi is the failyre of independent and sustainable cadres of young politicians to emerge. This is caused by the role that money, genered via the informal economy, plays in Malawian politics.This money is channelled into politics via achikulire (neo-parerimonial patrons or 'big men'), usually without parti accountability.This factor may be more critical in retarding the development of participatory democracy than social structure, ethnicity, religion, donors or other aspects of political dynamics. The socio-economic impediments to achieving participatory democracy tend to be viewed through economic theories appropriate to contexts more westernised than Malawi. I will argue that some of the e"disorder' in Africa observed by Chabal and Daloz (1999) is actually a function of the unresolved historical dynamic between two economic sectors: the formal cash (colonial European and postcolonial black...