Posted inEqualityNews/Politics

Joyce Banda, neither saint nor sinner

Written with Lindiwe Makhunga* The defeat of incumbent Joyce Banda in Malawi’s recent and controversial presidential elections, raises some uncomfortable but necessary questions about what constitutes collective expectations of women’s formal leadership in sub-Saharan Africa. On Saturday, Peter Mutharika of Malawi’s Democratic Progressive Party emerged as the winner with 36.4% of the vote, Lazarus Chakwera […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Joyce Banda: New president, old tricks?

Malawi’s president, Joyce Banda, needs no reminder that her honeymoon in office is over. When she assumed office in the aftermath of Bingu wa Mutharika’s sudden death, not many people, least among them Banda herself, would have thought that in just under two years, her presidency could be beset by so many problems and challenges. […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Is this finally Malawi’s Lazarus moment?

It was Eric Arthur Blair who once remarked; “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” Well, Malawi turned 48 on July 6 and for a country that has taken so much battering pre and post-independence perhaps it, too, has the face it deserves at that age. Yet, for just more than 100 days now […]

Posted inGeneral

Joyce Banda: Not your average president

By Anneke Meerkotter If you do a search of Joyce Banda’s speech on May 18 2012, you will find a range of international media articles with headlines such as “Malawi president vows to repeal gay ban” (BBC, Huffington Post); “Malawi to overturn homosexual ban” (Guardian); “Malawi president to repeal gay laws” (Al-Jazeera) or “Malawi’s Banda […]

Posted inGeneralNews/Politics

Dear Africa

I love you. Not the kind of love that Cardies sells on Valentine’s Day, but in that fraught and knotted way that grips my gut and won’t let go, that tangled mess of love and fear, guilt and longing that characterises all those relationships that mark us most deeply, the ones that truly shape who […]