Part 7 (2/2)
DIXON, ALAN. Leading European politician and sisal producer, Alan Dixon was also the general manager of the British Central Africa Company (BCAC) and chairman of the European Land Owners a.s.sociation. Dixon's BCAC had shares in the Nyasaland Railways, and Dixon was a notable member of the Chamber of Commerce. In 1953, he replaced Malcolm Barrow as an unofficial member of the Legislative Council (LEGCO) and, four years later, became an unofficial member of the Executive Council of the Nyasaland government, effectively making him the princ.i.p.al spokesman of the European settler community in Nyasaland. Dixon strongly opposed decolonization and supported Sir Robert Armitage's declaration of the State of Emergency in 1959. As a director of the Blantyre Printing and Publis.h.i.+ng Company, he used the Nyasaland Times to publicize his views and to reflect the opinion of the European settlers in Nyasaland. He and Michael Blackwood represented European settler interests at the const.i.tutional talks in London; as the transfer of power to Africans approached, Dixon left the country for South Africa.
DOIG, REV. ANDREW BEVERIDGE (1914?). Educated at Glasgow University and the Union Theological Seminary, New York, Doig, a missionary in the Church of Scotland, served in the Blantyre synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) from 1938 to 1962. During World War II, he was chaplain to the Nyasaland King's African Rifles (KAR) in East Africa and Burma. A sympathizer of African nationalist aspirations, in 1951, he was nominated to the Nyasaland Legislative Council (LEGCO) to represent African interests and, although opposed to the establishment of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Nyasaland's governor appointed him to represent the same interests in the Federal Parliament. There he became a member of the African Affairs Board but, in 1958, resigned from it and from the Federal Parliament. He returned to Blantyre Mission where he became secretary general of the synod until 1962, when he switched positions with Rev. Jonathan Sangaya, who had been his deputy. Doig was one of the people who persuaded Dr. Hastings K. Banda to return to Malawi sooner than he had planned, arguing that his age and experience qualified him for the leaders.h.i.+p the people of Nyasaland required at that crucial stage of their political history. Back in Scotland in 1962, he became, first, a parish minister and then secretary of the National Bible Society. In 1981, he was moderator of the general a.s.sembly of the Church of Scotland.
DOKOWE, BAZA. Of the Nyirongo clan, Baza Dokowe was a minor chief in Tumbuka country around Mount Hora, an area that had come under the authority of the M'mbelwa Ngoni. Sometime between 1877 and 1878, Baza led an uprising against the Ngoni. Some historians argue that Baza's action was prompted by the success 15 months earlier of the Tonga rebellion against the Ngoni; others contend that the reason was economic in the sense that Baza refused to surrender the ivory the new rulers demanded. The Ngoni besieged Mount Hora, where many of the indigenous people had gathered, attacking and killing many of them. Baza and his wife were narrowly saved by escaping at dawn and took refuge in Mwase Kasungu's area farther south. Baza Dokowe died in Kasungu in 1924. Dokowe has become a hero in Tumbuka folklore and is immortalized in numerous songs.
DOMASI. Located 10 miles north of Zomba town, Domasi is the seat of Malemia, the Yao ruler who in the late 1860s conquered the indigenous Mang'anja and established authority over them. Within two years of its establishment in the s.h.i.+re Highlands, the Blantyre Mission set up a major substation in western Domasi where the initial missionaries included R. S. Hynde, who would become an influential European businessman in Nyasaland. Domasi became particularly famous after 1929 when the government opened the Jeanes Training Centre in the central section of the area. The center trained community workers, chiefs, government clerks, and teachers. Domasi continues to be a.s.sociated with education and is the home of the Malawi Inst.i.tute of Education and a modern secondary school teacher's college.
DOMINGO, CHARLES (c. 1875?). Domingo was born in Quilimane in Mozambique and was brought to Malawi by William Koyi in 1881. He worked as a servant for Dr. Robert Laws, who in 1891 sent him to Lovedale (see LOVEDALE MISSIONARY INSt.i.tUTE) for further education. He returned in 1894 and, when the theological college started at the new Livingstonia Mission at Khondowe, Domingo became one of its first students, completing the course in 1900. A very talented and effective teacher, Domingo became increasingly frustrated by the delay in his ordination. In 1903, he became a ”licentiate,” a status that allowed him ”to preach the Gospel” but not entirely fulfill the duties of a church minister. Although normally a licentiate would have expected ordination within six months, Domingo continued to wait for his. In the same year, he was sent to Chinyera in Ngoni country, and in 1907 he was transferred to Loudon Mission, also in a Ngoni-dominated area. Although the Kirk at Loudon were impressed by him and made it known to officials that they wanted him to be one of their full ministers, Domingo's position did not change. Frustrated by the length of his probation, he resigned in 1909. He had already been in touch with Eliot Kamwana Chirwa, John Chilembwe, and Joseph Booth, and he came to be identified with the latter, who at this time was in South Africa as a representative of the Seventh-Day Baptist Church.
From 1910 to 1916, Domingo was the princ.i.p.al organizer of the African Seventh-Day Baptists in Mzimba district, acquiring several thousand adherents by 1912. He also edited the Malawi version of the African Sabbath Recorder while Booth remained its chief editor in the Cape Town area. Funded by Booth and the home church in the United States, Domingo set up his base near Mzimba boma and, from there, preached and disseminated literature, some of which came from Eliot Kamwana Chirwa's Watch Tower Society. Furthermore, he established numerous village schools where, as in many of his unpretentious mud churches, political and other issues were discussed. He talked about fairness, equality of human beings, and the autocracy of the colonial government.
Although there was no evidence to directly implicate Domingo in the 1915 Chilembwe uprising, his views and message were similar to those of Chilembwe, Booth, and Chirwa. He was not arrested, but, in 1916, he was deported from Nyasaland after the authorities intercepted a letter to Booth in which he stated, among other things, that ”the world should have equality of representation in the respective Legislative a.s.semblies or councils and should be fully eligible to all sorts of loveliness in the commencement of the New Heaven [on] Earth” (quoted in R. Rotberg, 1965:72).
DUPONT, BISHOP JOSEPH, SM (18501930). Head of the White Fathers order of the Catholic Church in the Bemba country, Northern Rhodesia, in the 1890s and early 1900s, and first vicar apostolic of Nyasa, Bishop Dupont was born in France on 23 July 1850, and was ordained in December 1878. Dupont was responsible for establis.h.i.+ng the Catholic presence in the Lake Nyasa region. In 1889, he directed other White Fathers to set up a mission station at Mponda at the southern end of Lake Malawi and, later, he also recommended to the Montfort Fathers that they found their own stations in the region. He continued to be vicar apostolic of Nyasa until 1911 when he consecrated Louis Auneau as vicar apostolic of s.h.i.+re. That year, he returned to France, and after a time he was posted to Tunisa where he died on 9 March 1930. In 1997, his remains were reburied in Kasama, Zambia.
DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH OF SOUTH AFRICA MISSION (DRC). Following the formation in 1886 of the Minister's Missionary Society by some pastors of the Dutch Reformed Church of Cape Town, a decision was made to send a mission to the Lake Malawi region. In 1888, Rev. Andrew C. Murray became the first missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church, the initial plan being to establish stations among the Ngonde and the Nyakyusa. However, discouraged by the instability in the area because of the conflicts between the Swahili-Arabs and the British, Murray moved south to work with Rev. Walter Angus Elmslie among the M'mbelwa Ngoni for some months before finally deciding to set up stations among the Chewa farther south.
In 1889, Murray and Rev. T. C. B. Vlok, who had joined him earlier, established their first mission station at Mvera in Chief Chiwere Ndhlovu's area, midway between Lilongwe and Salima. Other missionaries, including Robert Blake, William Murray, Martha Murray, and Koos du Toit, joined the DRC mission, establis.h.i.+ng newer centers at, among other locations, Kongwe, Nkhoma, and Mlanda. Between 1895 and 1900, the Livingstonia Mission handed their stations at Livulezi and Cape Maclear over to the DRC; in 1924, a similar transfer took place in Kasungu. Further expansion took place in the Ngoni and Chewa areas of Portuguese territory in Mozambique and the southern Luangwa area in Mpezeni country. By the beginning of World War I, the DRC was the dominant Protestant sect operating in the central province of Nyasaland.
In 1926, the DRC Mission, under the umbrella of the Nkhoma synod, joined the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP). The mission was active in training a local laity and, in 1924, it ordained its first ministers, Namon Katengeza and Andreya Namk.u.mba. Compared to the Blantyre and Livingstonia missions, the other partners in the CCAP, the DRC's educational policy tended to be less active in promoting Western education among Africans, preferring to emphasize agriculture and artisan work. It was also more reluctant than the other two in handing over authority to the local clergy.
Dw.a.n.gWA. The Dw.a.n.gwa River drains from the Lilongwe plain and Rift Valley into Lake Malawi, and it was the northern limit of the Maravi confederation. The river delta is the site of an irrigated rice project begun in 1972 and, in 1979, the Dw.a.n.gwa Sugar Corporation began producing sugar and ethanol in the area. As part of the privatization process the corporation was sold to the Illovo in 1997. Dw.a.n.gwa is also the location of the Dw.a.n.gwa Cane Growers Ltd., which supplies a small percentage of sugarcane to Dw.a.n.gwa mill, and it is also the site of the Ethanol Company Ltd.
E.
ECONOMY. From independence in 1964 to the late 1970s, Malawi pursued prudent economic policies that facilitated the maintenance of stable economic conditions and the realization of strong economic growth. In the decade that ended in 1978, economic growth averaged over 5 percent per annum. However, beginning in 1979, the economy weakened markedly, weighed down by a number of economic shocks, including a sharp deterioration in the terms of trade, major disruptions in key transportation routes to the Indian Ocean, and poor climatic conditions. Structural weaknesses in the economy, such as a narrow predominantly agricultural export base, poor domestic infrastructure, technological and marketing handicaps to increasing smallholder agricultural production, and dependence on imported energy inputs exacerbated the situation. Moreover, increasing weaknesses in economic management, including those of agricultural pricing, price controls, budget control, and inefficiencies in the parastatal sector contributed to the slowdown in activity.
To address the unfavorable economic conditions, Malawi embarked on a stabilization and structural adjustment program, with the support of the multilateral financial inst.i.tutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other donors, designed to put the economy on a sustainable growth path. From the early 1980s the authorities began to implement several activities. First, the incentives provided to smallholder export farmers were enhanced. Second, a major transformation in the machinery for providing key agricultural services-extension, technical, and research-was inst.i.tuted that involved the decentralization of these services to a project based system. Third, initial steps were taken to begin to reduce the role of the state in the provision of goods and services that involved the concessioning of some public services to the private sector and a streamlining of government ministries and departments. Fourth, programs were drawn up aimed at improving the corporate governance, operational efficiency, and profitability of key state bodies, including the Malawi Development Corporation and Press Corporation Ltd. Fifth, to improve incentives and reduce distortions, the government announced the move to more frequent adjustments of key factors such as the prices of petroleum products and the exchange rate. Finally, public expenditure would be reallocated to agriculture and other economic services.
The overall macroeconomic response to these reforms was mixed. Although gross domestic product (GDP) growth picked up from an average annual decline of 0.8 in its less than profitable years 197980 to an annual average growth of about 3 percent in 198285, gross investment fell and public revenue registered no growth. This mixed performance together with renewed macroeconomic tensions in the mid-1980s, which were partly due to the deteriorating finances of the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), convinced the authorities of the need for a reorientation of the adjustment program to focus on underlying structural issues. Accordingly, from the end of the 1980s, the government broadened and deepened its adjustment efforts. The adjustment rested on policies to restructure the growth of domestic demand and on structural measures to augment supply through an improved allocation of reserves and steps to tackle the deep-seated impediments to increased agricultural output. The reforms aimed at opening up the economy and promoting its reliance on market signals and consisted of, among other actions, trade liberalization, opening the exchange and payments system, financial sector reforms, and tax reform.
The achievement of the program was undermined by a series of adverse shocks in the early 1990s, including the influx of Mozambican refugees, drought, and the suspension of donor aid that was effected to impose a move to democratic governance. The government that took power following the May 1994 elections sought to broaden and accelerate the reforms. Early in its life, it introduced free primary education, liberalized exchange rate and interest determination, and freed burley tobacco production. After these initial positive steps, the Bakili Muluzi administration was largely characterized by financial instability, economic stagnation, rising inflation, and frequent food shortages. These developments were mainly the result of gross mismanagement of public resources, fiscal indiscipline, weak inst.i.tutional support, and widespread corruption.
The Bingu wa m.u.t.h.arika administration that a.s.sumed power following the May 2004 elections took notable steps to strengthen expenditure management. In addition, increased attention was given to rehabilitating key infrastructure and to promoting smallholder agriculture, involving the provision of fertilizer subsidies to farmers. These actions together with the return of substantial donor a.s.sistance helped to promote a strong resurgence on economic growth. However, the expansion of monetary aggregates in the second half of the decade against the background of a fixed exchange rate has contributed to a marked drawdown in foreign reserves. The GDP growth averaged 8 percent per year in the 20049 period, and Malawi managed to restore global food sufficiency. This boded well for the economy's ability to address the food security problems arising from the expanding population. Official sources projected GDP growth at 6 percent in 2010 and into 2011.
The structure of the economy changed moderately in the 30 years that ended in 2009, with the contribution of agriculture to GDP falling from 40 percent in 1979 to 30 percent in 2008. The contribution of the manufacturing sector also fell to 9 percent in 2009 from 12 percent in 2008. The 30-year period saw diversification in exports take place, with the share of agricultural exports to total exports declining to about 75 percent from 90 percent in 1979. A recurring problem in 2010 was a shortage of foreign exchange, adversely affecting Malawi's ability to import goods, including petroleum products.
The deterioration in political relations between the Malawi and British governments following the expulsion in April 2011 of the British high commissioner to Malawi is expected to adversely affect aid flows to Malawi. In response to the expulsion, the British government, the largest bilateral donor, has announced a review of its bilateral relations with Malawi, including budget support. It is expected that the European Union and other bilateral donors would follow the British lead. See also CURRENCY; FIs.h.i.+NG; FOREIGN AID; FORESTRY; MINING.
EDINGENI. Located between Mzimba boma and Loudon Mission, Edingeni is the headquarters of the northern Ngoni and the residence of their ruler, Inkosi ya makosi M'mbelwa. This was the home of the M'mbelwa African Administrative Council and is the main base of the M'mbelwa District Council.
EDUCATION. In precolonial times, formal and informal education took different forms, depending on individual societies. Western education was introduced in Malawi by Christian missionaries in the last quarter of the 19th century, as an essential part of proselytizing. Christian organizations that were responsible for Western education included the Livingstonia Mission, Blantyre Mission, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa (DRC), the White Fathers, and Montfort Missionaries, Baptists, Church of Christ, the Zambezi Industrial Mission, and the Seventh-Day Missions. Through its Quranic schools, Islam also played a role in education in Malawi and, although in areas of Islamic influence Western education went hand in hand with that of Muslims, generally, the former took some time to take root.
After World War I, government involvement in education increased. In 1923, the British government established the Advisory Committee on African Education in Tropical Africa, which, in conjunction with the Phelps Stokes Committee of the United States, visited Malawi in 1924 to look into the colony's education. The latter committee, supported by other commissions, urged, among other things, setting up a local advisory board on African education. In 1926, the colonial government appointed the first director of education; the Advisory Committee on African Education was also formed, and two Africans, Levi Mumba and Charles Matinga, became members in 1933 and 1937, respectively.
In 1929, a government college to train teacher supervisors was opened at Domasi. Christened the Jeanes Training Centre, in honor of U.S. philanthropist and educationist Anna T. Jeanes, and funded by the government and the Carnegie Corporation, the college's purpose was to train teachers whose main duty was to supervise teachers in rural or village schools and thus to ensure good standards of education. From 1934 onward, selected chiefs would complete a four-month course at the Jeanes Center, concentrating on community and rural development. After World War II, the center expanded its mission to include training teachers at higher levels, that is, students who had received some secondary school education. In 1937, Protestant missions started a secondary school in Blantyre, which duly opened its doors to students in 194041. Blantyre Secondary School was followed a year later by Zomba Catholic Secondary School. Although after World War II a few more secondary schools were to open at places such as Dedza, Livingstonia, Mtendere, Mzedi, Nkhata Bay, Kongwe, and Mzuzu, further development in this field was generally slow. In 1961, there were only four secondary schools that enrolled students up to the school certificate (O level) grade. Access to secondary schools had remained restrictive because of slow expansion attributable partly to inadequate financial a.s.sistance to Christian missions, which had continued to dominate education at this level. The same applied to teacher training colleges.
In the early 1960s, two commissions were appointed to review the matter. The Phillips Commission, which reported in 1962, recommended a major expansion of primary and secondary education; it also recommended that there be a limited involvement of voluntary agencies in primary education and a greater control of such education by local government. In addition, it recommended that, as primary schools became the responsibility of local communities, government's spending on secondary education needed to increase. In 1963, the second commission, under the auspices of the American Council on Education, concentrated on professional and tertiary education. In 1964, it submitted its findings, the Johnston Report, which, while agreeing with the Phillips Commission on the importance of primary and secondary education, recommended, among other things, the establishment of the University of Malawi, which was duly founded in that same year. Four inst.i.tutions not directly part of the University of Malawi were established in the 1980s. They are the Kamuzu Academy in Kasungu district, the Malawi College of Accountancy in Blantyre, the Inst.i.tute of Education at Domasi, and the Malawi Inst.i.tute of Management (MIMS) in Lilongwe.
Complementing the formal school system are vocational training and nonformal education programs. For instance, six technical schools offer vocational training for carpenters, welders, mechanics, and bricklayers. The Malawi Correspondence College (MCC) was established in 1965 essentially to absorb those primary school graduates who could not find openings in the secondary schools. In conjunction with the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, MCC has provided radio programs to primary and secondary schools. Many such centers were later turned into distance education centers, each accommodated in modern facilities and headed by properly trained high school teachers.
In 1994, the United Democratic Front (UDF) government introduced free primary education as pledged in the party manifesto. Although the shortage of trained teachers forced the government to hire untrained teachers and to introduce a crash course in teaching, the studentteacher ratio remained very high. Whereas in 1983, only 53 percent of primary school age pupils actually attended school, over 85 percent did so in 1995. The actual number of children attending primary schools jumped from 1.9 million to 3.2 million in response to the offer of free education, and the number of primary schools jumped from 3,216 in 1994 to 5,159 in 2005. This led to, among other developments, the problems of cla.s.sroom s.p.a.ce, lack of textbooks, and the low teachers' salaries. The enlargement of primary education has meant a greater demand for s.p.a.ce in secondary schools, which have increasingly faced the same problems as those of the lower tier. One result of this has been the proliferation of private schools at all levels; many such schools have been established as business enterprises.
For its part, the Malawi government transformed 315 of the distance education centers into community day secondary schools. It is also building more regular secondary schools, besides those the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the j.a.panese International Cooperation Agency are sponsoring. Boarding schools are being phased out and replaced with day inst.i.tutions. Furthermore, teacher training colleges, including the Domasi Secondary Teacher Training College, will increase their intake so that the pupilteacher ratio can be reduced from 1:200 to 1:60 by 2015.
According to a World Bank report of 2009, access to primary education continued to be inequitable in Malawi. Although statistics showed that nearly all students were able to enter Standard 1, many in rural Malawi would not reach Standard 8, and this represented a 34 percent ruralurban difference. Similarly, although admission to secondary schools grew by 0.7 percent annually between 2001 and 2004, and 5.3 percent annually since 2004, the gross enrollment rate remained at 17 percent during the same period. Related to this was the disparity in the ratio of entry into secondary education between girls and boys, respectively, 47 percent and 53 percent. Other problems that were highlighted were the very poor pupilbook ratio, the pupilcla.s.sroom ratio, and the pupildesk ratio.
The report also showed that although many secondary schools had major problems such as underfunding, lack of teaching resources, and teacher qualifications, they varied, depending on the type of school. In post-Banda Malawi, secondary schools can be cla.s.sified as follows: community day secondary schools (CDSS), which, according to 2007 statistics, enrolled 47 percent of students; conventional secondary schools (CSS), 20 percent of students; open schools, 3 percent; grant-aided schools, 6 percent; and private schools, 23 percent. According to the report, despite their central role in Malawi's secondary educational system, 81 percent of teachers in CDSS were underqualified, and the 107:1 student to qualified teacher ratio was very high. The ratios for other types of schools were not given, although the report states that 27 percent of teachers in conventional secondary schools were unqualified.
Through, among other approaches, the Education Sector Implementation Plan, the government aims to solve these problems by concentrating on a program of achieving more fair (equal) access to education and of bettering the quality and administration of education. The initial stage of this program, designed by many interested parties, including civil society and the development partners, was to last from 2009 to 2013. This program is part of the broader Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) goal, and it hopes to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
The Malawi educational system is based on an 8:4:4, that is, eight years of primary school and four years of secondary school, after which students may qualify for tertiary education. The duration of a college or university degree program at bachelor level is four years. There are two public universities, the University of Malawi and Mzuzu University, Bunda University, and in 2010, the government began to construct a university of science and technology in Thyolo district. Since the mid-1990s, private externally funded postsecondary inst.i.tutions, mainly a.s.sociated with religious organizations, have mushroomed in the country, and they include the Bible College in Lilongwe, the Catholic University near Limbe, Livingstonia University, which has campuses at Khondowe and Ekwendeni, and the Seventh-Day Adventist University in Ntcheu district.
The Ministry of Education is the government department that administers the educational system in Malawi. Students write national exams at the end of Standard 8 in order to qualify for secondary school; they write another examination two years into the secondary school (Form 2); and to compete for tertiary education they take the last national examination in the fourth year of secondary school. The administration of national examinations is the responsibility of the Malawi National Examination Board, an independent statutory body, with the a.s.sistance of the Ministry of Education.
Education contended with some unusual problems at the end of 2010 and into 2011, the most widespread of which was the irregular payment of teachers' salaries. Many secondary schoolteachers received pay two to three months late, causing financial hards.h.i.+p, lowering their morale, and adversely affecting their work. Although the Ministry of Education's explanation was that the new methods of paying their salaries into bank accounts rather than by checks sent to individual teachers was the cause for this, some suggested that cash flow problems accounted for the situation.
Another problem was the closure in April 2011 of Chancellor College and the Polytechnic, both const.i.tuent colleges of the University of Malawi, following the boycott of cla.s.ses for two months, first by the faculty and then by students. In May, Mzuzu University also closed because of financial problems and was to reopen as soon they were resolved. See also QUOTA SYSTEM.
EKWENDENI. Located 14 miles from Mzuzu on the MzuzuRumpi road, Ekwendeni is one of the princ.i.p.al bases of the Livingstonia synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP). Opened in 1889 after Inkosi Mtwalo I approached Rev. Walter Elmslie with the request for missionary activity in his domain, it became the second important Livingstonia Mission station in Ngoni country after Njuyu. Elmslie supervised its development from his Njuyu post, but it was Peter McCallum and his wife who oversaw its initial growth into a major educational and health training center, producing some of the leading people in Nyasaland, including Mtwalo II (Amon Jere), Yesaya M. Chibambo, Hezekiah M. Tweya, Levi Z. Mumba, Isaiah Mopho Jere, Edward K. Gondwe, and former Chief Justice Richard Banda. Today, Ekwendeni has the biggest CCAP hospital in northern Malawi, a major girls boarding high school, and a facility to train lay church workers. It also has the colleges of commerce, theology, and nursing at the University of Livingstonia.
The London & Blantyre Supply Company had its northern headquarters at Ekwendeni until the late 1950s when it was moved to Mzuzu and, before the Africanization of Asian businesses in many parts of Malawi, Ekwendeni was a major Asian trading center.
ELECTIONS. The first elections in which Africans partic.i.p.ated took place in 1956 under the 1955 Const.i.tution according to which the provincial councils, consisting mainly of chiefs, were to elect members of the Legislative Council (LEGCO). The southern and central provinces were each to elect two members, and the northern province one member. However, the first general elections based on free adult suffrage took place in August 1961 following the const.i.tutional talks at Lancaster House the year before. The majority of the voters (107,076) registered on the lower roll (African) seats, and 4,401 voters, of which 471 were Africans, registered for the more selective higher roll. The total poll was 95.1 percent, and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) won all 20 seats on the lower roll; there were eight seats on the upper roll: the MCP won two, an independent with African and Asian support won the third, and the rest went to the United Federal Party (UFP).
The next general elections were set for May 1964, but they did not take place because all 53 nominated candidates were returned unopposed. Of these, 50 belonged to the MCP, which were to contest the 50 general roll seats; the Nyasaland Const.i.tutional Party (formerly the UFP) took the three special roll seats reserved for Europeans. In 1966, the MCP ran an unopposed slate of candidates; they were up for reelection in 1971, but Dr. Hastings Banda called off the elections and chose 60 members of Parliament (MPs) nominated at MCP conferences. The next election was held in June 1978, when registered Malawi voters did go to the polls to cast ballots for MPs. Thirty-three candidates were returned unopposed based on earlier nominations. Write-in ballots were disallowed with only designated candidates accepted for balloting. Registered voters were required to show age and residence certificates. Seven const.i.tuencies were left vacant in this 1978 election as 80 MPs were sworn in. A new feature of this election was that candidates without high school certificates had to pa.s.s an English competency test before they could qualify. The test had to be set and administered by the vice chancellor of the University of Malawi.
In the June 1983 general elections, the members.h.i.+p of the National a.s.sembly was increased to 101 elective seats; 11 were presidential appointments; of the 101 seats, 75 were contested within the one party system, the rest being returned unopposed. Five had failed the English competency test.
The elections of May 1987 were for 112 seats in the National a.s.sembly. However, more than 200 stood for election, 38 were returned unopposed and 53 lost their seats. With 11 appointed by the president, there were a total of 123 parliamentarians. There was a high turnout at the 1987 elections, which occurred without incidents. In June 1992, 675 candidates contested for 141 seats, of which 45 were returned unopposed and 5 were not filled because of the disqualification of candidates. The turnout was low.
The May 1994 elections were the first in which political parties other than the MCP fielded candidates. Also, for the first time, there were presidential candidates as well as those for Parliament. Bakili Muluzi of the United Democratic Front (UDF) won the presidential contest as follows: Muluzi of the UDF, 47.3 percent; H. K. Banda of the MCP, 33 percent; Chakufwa Chihana of the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), 18.6 percent; Kamlepo Kalua of the Malawi Democratic Party (MDP) 0.5 percent. The results of the parliamentary elections were: UDF, 85 seats; MCP, 56; AFORD, 36. The following parties did not win seats: the Malawi Democratic Party (MDP), the Congress for the Second Republic (CSR); the United Party for Mu
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