Gender Discourse and Malawian Rural Communities

Journalism (MIJ) to conduct a seminar on how human rights NGOs could deal with the 
media for purposed of advocacy and lobbying.  Since the advent of the internet, human 
rights NGOs have created an online discussion forum for human rights (visit 
http://sdnp.org.mw/bill-2000/discussion-forum.html). 
 
Some of the above organisations have done baseline studies before implementing their 
advocacy programmes. They have also evaluated their work in stages. The studies give us an 
insight into the target people’s reaction to the messages they get from the advocates. Below 
I summarise the main findings. 
 
In its baseline study report, Carer concludes that people in villages were indifferent to 
human rights issues because they associated “democracy, the constitution and human rights 
with economic problems prevailing in the country, corruption and insecurity” (1996:18). 
The same report also points out that traditional customs impact negatively on people’s 
understanding and acceptance of human rights and are a potential source of cultural conflict.  
 
In 1999 the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Human Rights and Democracy (IMCHRD) 
reached similar conclusions when it conducted a mid-term evaluative field study of its work.  
In its 2000 evaluative research report, Women’s Voice concluded that traditional beliefs 
impinged on children and women’s rights. WILSA attributed the failure of women to report 
domestic violence partly to Malawian culture which “calls on women to endure violence” 
(2001:4). The Malawi Government (1997; 2000) blames traditional beliefs (mainly patriarchy, 
which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 2) for gender inequality in the areas of education, 
agriculture and nutrition. Even studies that have little relevance to mainstream human rights 
advocacy blame traditional customs for rural people’s apparent resistance to family planning 
(Palamuleni, 1998) and to behavioural change towards HIV/AIDS (Malawi Government, 
1999).  
 
Some of the studies cited above recommend the use of the media of mass communication, 
such as radio alongside doses of interpersonal communication for advocacy purposes after 
realising that there was “lack of effective dissemination of gender information” (Women’s 
Voice, 2000:iv). The Malawi Government media strategy for HIV/AIDS prevention 
summarises this recommendation when it advocates regulating the media as a way of, inter 
alia,   
promoting the development and dissemination of media programmes which 
encourage positive values and lifestyles for the youth and promoting effective 
targeting of media programmes and materials to protect boys and girls from 
exposure to dangerous and counterproductive messages. (1999: 26) 
 
 7
 
The above discussion leads us to two conclusions. Firstly, the review of evaluative reports 
indicates there is apparent resistance among rural Malawians to new discourses, be they in 
the area of human rights, agriculture or gender. Secondly human rights advocates believe in 
strong media power and its role in development. 
 
In the sections that follow I will expand on these points in the light of cultural studies and 
development communication theory. I believe these will identify factors that might lead to 
rural people’s resistance to new messages. For the sake of chronological flow, I will briefly 
discuss development theory and development communication before previewing cultural 
studies. 
 
1.2 Development and communication 
For more than 100 years development experts have seen a role for the media of mass 
communication. Before I tackle the problematic and controversial concept of development 
communication, I will discuss development itself. 
 
1.2.1 Development 
Economists define development as economic growth (Berger, 1995) that is, the production 
of more goods than a nation can consume, which leads to the surplus being sold out for the 
construction of roads, hospitals, schools, etc.  According to Rodney (1973), this quantitative 
economic and infrastructure growth ought to lead to qualitative change in any society. 
Otherwise, there is no development. Development, Rogers (1975) writes, ought to be a 
participatory process of social and upward material adjustment for the majority of the 
people through their gaining greater control over their environment. In short development 
is, to quote the International Broadcasting Institute (IBI), “the improvement of the well-
being of the individual and the betterment of the quality of his or her life” (cited by 
Moemeka, 1996:3). The IBI definition goes beyond economic growth. It includes the 
qualitative improvement in human and social values, and the attainment of political self-
determination (Inayatullah, 1967 cited by Moemeka, 1996). 
 
The above perspectives of development indicate that development is not an easy concept to 
define. It depends on the priorities any group of people has. For instance, in the late 1950s 
and early 1960s, development for Africa meant political self-determination. The priorities 
have now changed, which explains the demise of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) 
and its replacement with the African Union (AU), the transformation of the Southern 
African Development Co-ordinating Conference (SADCC) to the Southern African 
Development Community (SADC) and the emergence of the New Partnership for Africa's 
Development (NEPAD). Having achieved political autonomy, African states are now 
interested in economic development and modernisation of their infrastructure. 
 8
 
 According to Rogers,  
 
Modernisation is the process by which individuals change from a traditional 
way of life to a more complex, technologically advanced and rapidly changing 
style of life. (1969 cited by Bin Adnan et al., 1991:8) 
 
Implicit in Rogers’ definition is the contention that traditional society is simple, stagnant, and 
lacks technological advancement. However, one would argue that there is no society that is 
not complex and stagnant. This explains why modernisation theorists have been criticised 
for bias and equating Westernisation (with America and Europe as models) with 
modernisation and development (Bin Adnan et al., 1991). Nevertheless, the terms 
development and modernisation, despite the latter term's denigrating connotation, ought to 
be used interchangeably to mean social improvement. 
 
Development communication theory was (and still is in some cases such as Malawi) strongly 
linked to the process of change for the betterment of society. Western communication 
experts and their Third World disciples saw a role of mass communication in the process. 
Below, I briefly discuss development communication. 
 
 
1.2.2 Development communication 
Hartman et al. (1989) contend that the role of the media in development emanated from 
Golding’s (1974) theory of exogenously induced change. Golding writes: 
 
Theorists of exogenously induced change relevant to media theory suggest 
that static societies are brought to life by outside influences, technical aid, 
knowledge, resources and financial assistance and by the diffusion of ideas. 
The strangle-hold of apathy, stoicism, fatalism and simple idleness is held to 
have gripped the peasantry of the third world until advanced countries 
produced both the tools and the know-how to coax them into action. (1974: 
43 cited by Hartmann et al., 1989: 24) 
 
Since poor people's resignation to fate and their idleness were deemed to be the major 
causes of underdevelopment in the Third World, Lerner (1958, cited by Hartmann et al., 
1989) thought the media’s role in development was to promote empathy amongst the 
people. This means that the media had the responsibility of whetting poor people's desire 
for better things. Hence, the poor become ambitious and work hard to develop themselves.  
 
 9
 
The second most prominent contribution to development communication came from 
Rogers (1962) who theorised that the media were crucial in diffusing critical modernisation 
information. Rogers had recognised, in the wake of studies that showed that the media 
were not singularly responsible for changing behaviour (Lazarsfeld, 1944 cited by Hartmann 
et al., 1989), the need for a two step communication flow. Studies pointed to the need for 
the combination of mass media and interpersonal communication.  
 
The third most important contribution to development communication came from 
Schramm (1964) who recognised the need for information to flow to and from the sender 
and receiver. Schramm’s formulation recognised the mass media as information multipliers. 
Development, according to him, needs a lot of information for people to be informed, 
educated, and persuaded to accept change. 
 
Although they have been criticised as being top-down linear communications strategies, for 
their top-heavy bias and for conceiving the audience as generally passive (Hartmann et al., 
1989), the above theorisations by the founding fathers of development communication have 
had a lot of influence on later development communication theorists and practitioners. 
Hornik (1988) has likened communication’s role in development to a low cost loudspeaker. 
The Malawi government sees the media thus: 
 
Media continues (sic) to influence the youth both positively and negatively. 
Some media messages are such that they can destroy the minds of the youth. 
(Malawi Government, 1999:25) 
 
Modern development communication experts propose that communication be seen as a 
participatory activity, a dialogue between the sender and the receiver, a process that 
empowers both the developer and the development beneficiaries (Berger, 1995; 
Anyaegbunam et al., 1998; Hartmann et al., 1989). This change in approach may have been 
influenced by cultural studies, to which I now turn to explain why Malawian rural people 
may resist human rights and gender discourses. 
 
1.3 Cultural studies 
One of the major tenets of cultural studies holds that receivers of media messages are not 
passive. According to Fiske (1982), who has been criticised for creating a hyperactive 
audience, the media audience is semiotically armed and decides what to do with the media. 
The audience questions what comes from the media and sometimes consciously decides to 
use the message differently from the author’s or creator’s intention. This is a big departure 
from the linear transmission model, which development communication experts relied on, 
which viewed the text as, closed and carrying a univocal meaning, the one meaning intended 
 10
 
by the encoder. However, as I explain in Chapter 3, the audience’s semiotic freedom is 
limited by the cultural context (Doucette, 2001). 
 
One of the most outstanding contributions to cultural studies come from Hall (1974b) who, 
following Parkin (see Morley, 1980) conceives three decoding positions that a person 
‘reading’ a text might take. Firstly, Hall (1974b) believes messages are structured in 
dominance, that is, they are intended to mean what the message producers and the 
majority 'naturally' expect. Secondly, the audience might negotiate the meaning of a text, 
that is, messages are scrutinised and made to fit a situation and finally, the audience might 
assume an oppositional stance towards the message. As Morley (1989) has noted in a 
critical postscript to his 'nationwide' study, opposition here means conscious and deliberate 
disagreement " with the propositional content of messages" (1989:18). Thus, opposition 
excludes any unintentional incomprehension or misunderstanding of a text out of ignorance 
(Morley, 1989).  
 
In sum, Hall’s model proposes that depending on the extent to which the audiences share 
communication codes with the producers of media messages, the audiences share, modify 
or simply reject and subvert the “ways in which topics have been encoded by the 
producers” (Morley, 1980: 23). So message initiators need not take it for granted that 
their target audiences always take in their messages raw. 
 
1.4 Goal of the study 
This study set out to explore how rural people in Malawi interpret media discourses on 
human rights and gender in particular using Hall's (1974b) encoding/decoding reading 
strategies. I also wanted to understand why there is apparent misunderstanding of or 
'opposition' to the gender equality messages amongst Malawians as manifested in the music 
cited in Chapter 2 below and the messages they make from the same discourses. I 
hypothised that the opposition could be the result of lack of cultural, linguistic, academic or 
political code-sharing between the gender rights campaigners and the targeted rural 
communities. As Chimombo and Chimombo (1996) put it, Malawian human rights 
campaigners have not 'translated' the human rights codes or concepts into a linguistic code 
that can be understood, accepted, and appropriated by rural communities. Hence, gender 
equality advocates and their audience in Malawi could be conceptually worlds apart. 
Therefore decoding, that is, meaning making, does not occur.  
 
My other assumption was that some Malawians are reluctant to accept the messages 
because they take a negotiated stance. They understand gender equality messages but they 
see in them attempts by some powerful, patriarchal, foreign culture, assisted by Malawian 
 11
 
civil society (who, in Gramsci's theory, are part of the state), to impose its hegemony on 
their communities.  
 
The third possibility, I advanced, was that the audience of human rights messages interprets 
the discourses with an oppositional code. The messages are rejected because they are not 
understood. It is also possible that the messages clash with the audience's long-held cultural 
beliefs because they are too alien to the target rural communities (Chirwa, 2001). 
 
The final consideration was that the audience resists, opposes or doubts messages because 
the message sources lack social credibility (Burgoon, 1989). Burgoon expounds the social 
credibility concept thus: 
 
The persuasive impact of organised…messages on attitude change…is 
mediated through attributions of credibility. (1989:136) 
 
Stewart and Moss (1991) explain that source credibility is the perception the audience has 
about the information person; that is, the person who delivers or claims to be the source of 
the information. Source credibility theory could explain why some Malawians, such as 
Ayipira (cited at the beginning of this chapter) say that human rights issues, and gender 
issues in particular, are not taken seriously by the audience because the majority of the 
campaigners have dubious social backgrounds.  
 
1.5 Justification of the study 
Fiske observes that the "(cultural studies) tradition developed in Britain in the 1970s was 
necessarily focused on culture in industrial societies…[because] the assumption was that 
capitalist societies are divided societies"(1987:254). While this may have been the case then, 
I contend that the cultural studies tradition applies to all societies. In Western industrial 
societies the relationships may be mostly along class divisions, but the male-female 
relationships in most societies is very important. As Doucette puts it, “gender 
transformation is a cultural struggle" (2001:1) for the definition of women and men. Fiske 
(1987) admits this importance. He writes that: 
 
The primary axis of division [in Western industrial societies] was originally 
thought to be class, though gender may now have replaced it as the most 
significant producer of social difference. (1987:255)  
 
So, insights gained from cultural studies elsewhere, particularly Hall’s (1974b) model of 
encoding and decoding media discourse and the conception of the audience as active can be 
used to understand why rural Malawians seem to resist mediated messages on gender and 
 12
 
human rights. The same insights may also prove helpful to understand the messages the 
rural people make, if they do so at all.  
 
To the best of my knowledge, mine is the first study that tests Hall's Encoding and 
Decoding model, in a rural African setting.  
 
1.6  Definition of key terms 
I now define what I consider as key and recurring terms of this study. Some are defined in 
the text. However, the following are defined here so that they are clear from the outset. 
These include rural area, (mass) media, media consumption, discourse, 
cultural/communication codes, and gender. 
 
1.6.1 Rural area 
The discussion group members were all recruited from the villages that fall within the 
jurisdiction of Traditional Authority Likoswe. The discussions were also held at the chief’s 
residence. The area lies outside the Blantyre city boundaries, and that is what makes it 
rural. Nark (1985) defines a rural area as that area outside the urban boundary whose 
inhabitants lead an agricultural life. In Malawi, rural communities owe their allegiance to 
traditional leaders more than they do to political leaders.  
 
1.6.2 Mass media 
By media or mass media I exclude all forms of private correspondence or communication. 
Thus, I remain with public and privately-owned wide circulation newspapers, magazines, 
radio stations and television. The term mass media is used here in spite of the controversies 
about the nature of the audience because media theorists argue that an active audience 
cannot be called a mass, which according to mass society theorists, entailed a passive and 
homogenous audience (Bennett, 1982; McQuail,1994). Mass media here refer to those 
media that are accessible to the public.  
 
1.6.3 Media consumption 
Following Hall (1974b), Storey (1999) defines consumption as the act or process of 
interpreting or making meaning from media texts. Reading, for example, means getting and 
appropriating the message and not just uttering the words from a text. To paraphrase Hall, 
there is media consumption only when meaning has been taken and appropriated by the 
“decoder”. 
 
1.6.4 Discourse 
Hatim and Mason define discourse as "Modes of speaking and writing which involve 
participants in adopting attitudes towards areas of socio-cultural activity" (1997:240). 
 13
 
Discourse is a world-view, a social practice, that people reference in the struggle to make 
sense of their world. Eco defines discourse as “the general framework of cultural 
references, ideological, ethical, religious standpoints,…tastes and value systems” (quoted by 
Moores, 1993: 18). Thus, we talk of political discourse, cultural discourse, linguistic 
discourse, and human rights discourse (see Fiske, 1987 in Underwood, 2001). Discourse is 
related to culture in that the latter informs and influences the former.  
 
 
1.6.5 Communication/cultural codes 
Fiske describes a code as: 
 
A rule governed system of signs whose rules and conventions are shared 
amongst members of a culture and which is used to generate and circulate 
meanings in and for that culture. (1987:4) 
 
Thus, the study of signs, semiotics or semiology is important in understanding how 
messages are interpreted. The codes are learnt through such socialising institutions as 
churches, mosques, schools and ‘passage’ rites (Watson, 1998). Codes can either denote, 
that is, give literal meaning or connote, that is, convey metaphorical meaning. For example, 
in Chichewa, the word mwamuna denotes man or husband. But when applied to a woman 
the word connotes strength. In short, codes are human constructs because they mean what 
a particular society wants them to mean. 
 
1.6.6 Gender 
Gender is the social manifestation of males and females. While sex, the anatomical 
difference between males and females, is biological, gender is a dynamic social or cultural 
construct (Heywood, 1992; Lopi, 1999). In this study gender is seen as a: 
 
Conceptualisation of the socially and culturally variable relations between 
women and men - the differentiated roles and order in a given socio-cultural 
context, which is distinguished from the biological concept of sex 
(female/male) determined by birth. (Doucette, 2001:2) 
  
1.7 Organisation  of the study  
This thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 summarises the thesis, explains the 
goal and justification of the study and defines the key terms used in the thesis. Chapter 2 
gives a socio-cultural and historical background to the study. Among others, the chapter 
explains the ethnic composition of Malawian society, gives the economic distribution of the 
country, and underlines its core beliefs about human relations. Chapter 3 discusses the 
 14
 
theoretical issues that inform the study. It discusses development communication theories, 
cultural studies, semiotics or semiology, and reviews in more detail related studies. Chapter 
4 concentrates on methodological issues employed in this study. After discussing the 
philosophical perspectives that underpin the differences among research paradigms, the 
chapter explains and justifies the choice of a triangulated research design. Though mostly 
qualitative, this study used quantitative techniques in trying to determine activists’ beliefs in 
mass media and their preferred messages to their audiences. Chapters 5 and 6 present and 
interpret results of the research from the message initiators/encoders (Chapter 5) and from 
the interpreters/decoders (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 forms a general conclusion. It identifies 
and discusses the similarities and differences between the preferred messages and those 
made by the audience. It analyses the results in view of Stuart Hall’s model of Encoding and 
Decoding media content.  
 15
 
Chapter 2: Overview of Malawian society 
 
The social aegis under which the message comes, the receiver's social 
relationship to the sender, the perceived social consequences of accepting it 
or acting upon it must be put together with an understanding of the symbolic 
and structural nature of the message, the conditions under which it is 
received, the abilities of the receiver and his innate and learned responses. 
(Schramm, 1974:7) 
 
2.0 Introduction  
This chapter provides a detailed socio-cultural background to the study. It sketches what 
Morley (1983) calls a social map, that is, the context in which gender and human rights 
discourses are practised. I discuss how poverty, illiteracy, religion and cultural beliefs 
(particularly patriarchy) may combine forces to constrain the evolution of gender. I further 
argue that despite constitutional provisions for media freedom, Malawian media have not 
been very helpful in opening up what Herbamas (1989) calls the public sphere, the 
necessary cultural space, to permit society to freely debate crucial issues such as gender 
equality. Since the concept of the public sphere is key to my discussion, I begin by 
describing it before examining the Malawian situation. 
 
2.1.0 Herbamas and the public sphere 
In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), Herbamas elaborates the concept 
of the public sphere. He conceives it as a place or environment where issues of public 
interest would be discussed without any hindrance. Summarising Herbamas, Baoill (2002) 
says the public sphere is characterised by universal access, that is, anybody can have access 
to the space; by rational debate, that is, any topic can be raised by any participant and it is 
debated fully until consensus is achieved; and disregard for the status of participants. 
 
The theory of the public sphere resembles the liberal democratic political concept of human 
rights, which, among other things, gives all citizens equal opportunities, freedom of 
association and expression, and gender equality. Doucette (2001) argues that the media 
(newspapers, radio, television and the internet) are a central arena for providing this public 
sphere or cultural space as he calls it, because they "provide a potentially shared public 
discourse" (2001:1).  
 
However, as Golding and Murdock (1996) note, Herbamas's theorisation is idealistic. In 
reality, several factors militate against the realisation of the public sphere. These include 
poverty, illiteracy, political intolerance, media bias, and cultural stereotyping.  
 
 16
 
In the sections that follow I discuss these constraining factors and relate them to the Malawi 
situation. 
  
2.1.1 Economic, literacy levels and the public sphere 
Compared to her neighbours, Malawi is a small country. It is landlocked and borders 
Mozambique and Tanzania to the east, Zambia to the west and Mozambique to the south. It 
has a surface area of 118,484 square kilometres, one third of which is taken up by Lake 
Malawi. Malawi is a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the 
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the African Union (AU), and 
the United Nations Organisation (UNO). Although blessed with rich agricultural soils and 
fresh water bodies, Malawi, with a population of nearly 10 million people, is one of the 
poorest countries in the world and beats only Mozambique in the SADC region. It has a 
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of US$182 (Sadcreview, 2000) and an adult 
literacy rate of 40%. Out of 1000 live births, 134 children die. The Malawi government 
(2000) estimates that 60% of Malawians are poor and a Malawian has an average life 
expectancy of 44 years (see also Benson et al., 2002). 
 
With such poverty and illiteracy, it is almost impossible for Malawians to rationally 
participate in public debates which are mostly conducted in the media (in English) and 
require a certain measure of literacy. Above all, to be accessed the media require money (I 
discuss this issue in more detail in section 2.1.5 below). 
 
2.1.2 Malawian politics and the public sphere 
Apart from illiteracy and poverty, Malawians in rural areas find it difficult to effectively 
participate in the public sphere due to political intolerance. In this sections, I briefly discuss 
the political history of Malawi. It must be noted that in Malawi politics, religion and cultural 
customs are so intertwined that it is impossible to discuss one without making reference to 
others. 
 
Nyasaland, as Malawi was known then, became a British Protectorate in 1891(Pachai,1973). 
It became independent on 6 July, 1964, and a republic two years later with Hastings Kamuzu 
Banda as its first democratically elected president. Just days after independence, Malawi 
witnessed its first political crisis. Six ministers were dismissed from Banda's cabinet and fled 
into exile in Zambia, Tanzania, Europe and America. According to Chiume (1982), Muluzi et 
al. (1999), and Lijenda (2000), the cabinet crisis was the result of some cabinet ministers' 
disagreements with Dr Banda over the pace of Africanisation of the Malawian public service, 
Banda's reluctance to support panafricanism, poor relations with other African states, and 
the levying of fees in government hospitals. Even worse, Chiume writes, Banda had 
grandiose expansionist ideas so that Malawi could cover "those areas [that] had belonged to 
 17
 
the great Malawi (sic) empire which extended from northern Swaziland to Nairobi in 
Kenya…" (1982:190). Until the early 1990s, Malawians lived in fear and were information 
starved as the media were heavily censored. 
 
The Maravi Kingdom comprised ethnic communities that migrated into pre-colonial Malawi 
in the seventeenth and eighteen-century AD. According to Pachai (1973), these groups 
came from the present day Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Maravi Kingdom 
occupied areas from around Lake Malawi to the Luangwa River in Zambia and down to the 
Mozambique border with Zimbabwe and to Sofala in Mozambique.  
 
Unlike the earlier inhabitants, the Akafula, who are believed to have migrated from areas 
around Lake Victoria (Chilambo et al., 1995a), the Maravi were tall, cultivated crops, reared 
cattle and had an elaborate political or administrative system. Today's Chewa, Mang'anja, 
Tumbuka, and Tonga are all believed to have descended from the Maravi (Pachai, 1973). 
 
The Maravi were and still are matrilineal. Inheritance of property and chieftainship was 
through the maternal line of the family. This practice still continues in some areas, except 
among the Tonga and Tumbuka peoples. The Tumbuka and the Tonga are likely to have 
been influenced by the Lambya and Ngonde ethnic groups that descended from areas 
around Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika (Pachai, 1973).  
 
Parsons (1993) contends that the most significant factor in the change of gender 
relationships in Southern Africa was the Ngoni migrants from Zululand. These came to 
occupy parts of Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania as they conquered 
the people they found on their way as they fled from Shaka Zulu's wrath.  
 
The Ngoni were patrilineal and believed in a centralised form of administration (Parsons, 
1993). They paid dowry to the family of the wife. This tradition is still being practised but in 
different forms. For instance, among the Ngonde, Lambya, Tonga, Ngoni, Sena and 
Tumbuka, the suitor pays dowry (malobolo) in the form of cattle (or the monetary 
equivalent) to the parents of the woman he wants to marry. The wife goes to live with the 
husband's family and she is considered part of the husband's family. Among the matrilineal 
Chewa, dowry is paid by the prospective husband to the woman's family and it is called 
chiongo (thanks). Among the matrilineal Lomwe, Yao, and Mang'anja the prospective 
husband does not pay anything. However, he leaves his home to live with his wife's family. 
There, he is given land to farm and is expected to build a home and give bride service 
(Parsons, 1993). All these belong to the wife and the husband is considered as part of the 
wife's extended family. In some cases, such men have become chiefs or advisors to chiefs. In 
rural Malawian family the chief is the highest authority. 
 18
 
 The Malawi Congress Party (MCP) ruled Malawi as a single monolithic party without any 
official parliamentary opposition for thirty-one years. Because initially it had the support and 
respect of the people, the MCP scrapped the bill of rights from its pre-independence 
manifesto and the resultant constitution and introduced the life presidency in 1971. There 
was only one radio station, the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) modelled on the 
BBC. Its aims were, and still are, to educate, entertain, and inform (Chikunkhuzeni, 1999). 
However, the station was, and still is, the voice of the president and his government. 
Additionally, Banda took advantage of the patriarchal nature of Malawian society, Christian 
and Islamic teachings and proclaimed to be the father or guardian (nkhoswe) of all women in 
Malawi. As a result, when, men who antagonised their wives in one way or another, were 
reported to the ngwazi, they were considered political dissidents and sometimes jailed. 
 
Banda's hold on political power started crumbling in 1992 when the Catholic Bishops 
published a critical pastoral letter, Living Our Faith, calling for political change and tolerance. 
In support for the change proposed by the Catholic Church, several politicians, started 
agitating for change to a multiparty system of government. Banda reluctantly gave in to calls 
for a referendum on the type of government Malawians wanted. 
 
In 1993, Malawians voted for a multi-party form of government. Several pressure groups 
registered as parties. Also, civil society, particularly human rights NGOs formed a front and 
campaigned for a new constitution that would include a bill of rights. Civil society  thus 
played a significant role in consolidating democracy and a culture of respect for human 
dignity. 
 
Malawi is a signatory to, and has ratified, almost all principal international human rights 
instruments. These include the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, the UN 
Human Rights Charter, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 
and Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Elimination of all 
Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). However, the Malawi government 
stands accused of not implementing and enforcing the cited instruments (Artcle19, 1999; 
MHRC, 2001). 
 
It is clear from the above discussion that, for a long time, political repression denied 
Malawians the chance to discuss issues freely. Additionally, 'traditional village' politics 
favours men to women. Therefore, it can be concluded that the entire country was a closed 
society, the antithesis of the Herbamasian concept of the public sphere. 
 
 
 19
 
2.1.3 Religion and the public sphere 
According to Chilambo et al. (1995a), the Akafula are believed to have had no organised 
religion. But, the Maravi peoples believed in one god, called chiuta, leza or mphambe. 
Elaborate Arabic and Western religions came much later following the Swahili and European 
traders. The Swahili were trading in both slaves and ivory at Karonga and Nkhota Kota. The 
Swahili Arabs introduced Islam and traded with the Yao and the Lomwe who had migrated 
from present day Mozambique (Pachai, 1973). The lakeshore areas from Nkhota Kota to 
Mangochi and communities surrounding Zomba mountain are predominantly Islamic and 
densely populated. The rest of the country is predominantly Christian.  
 
Both Moslems and Christians have been responsible for education in Malawi. It is through 
the schools and madrassas (or Koranic schools), which Althuser (see Hall, 1977; Fiske, 
1987; Underwood, 2001) describes as ideological state apparatuses (ISAs), that patriarchal 
ideas of God sanctioning gender differences, and women's subservience to men, are taught. 
Like Christianity, Islam is a patriarchal religion, that is, it favours men (Ahmad, 1983; 
Qureshi and Moores, 1999). Both Christianity and Islam have had a serious impact on the 
people of Malawi in terms of gender equality. This religious inculcation is so much part of 
Malawian life that it is considered part of the country's cultural tradition. It is no wonder 
that one often hears people saying, " it is written" to justify a cultural practice because they 
believe everything was handed down by God (see B1d, appendix 5). Thus, both Christianity 
and Islam have contributed to the constraining of the public sphere. 
 
2.1.4 Patriarchy and the public sphere 
Patriarchy, which Heywood (1992) defines as rule by men, is also reinforced by Malawian 
cultural beliefs and traditions. Some Malawians (precise statistics unavailable) still undergo 
customary education. The rites of passage ceremonies, such as gule wamkulu (the mask 
dance performed by graduating boys), chinamwali or jando (for girls who have attained 
puberty) and kulanga (advising the newly weds), have contributed to the entrenchment and 
the passing-on of cultural and traditional beliefs, including the subservience of women to 
men (Chilambo et al., 1995b; Women's Voice, 2000; Malawi Government, 2000). 
 
Traditionally, girls are taught that men are born leaders and that married women, even if 
they assume leadership roles such as those of village chief or member of parliament must 
respect and serve their husbands. 
 
Malawian society, patrilineal or matrilineal, has assigned different roles to women and men 
often based on social stereotypes. Therefore, it expects men and women to behave 
differently. The cultural stereotypes are well captured in the main song (Jenda) and the 
supporting texts (songs) I chose for this study. For example, in their song, Zasintha Udyo 
 20