Short description:

This book explores Malawi?s recent history in light of longer-term historical developments, contributing important new insights to debates about migration, citizenship, chieftaincy, language, cultural practice, anti-colonialism and nationalism. 

Long description:

This book explores Malawi?s recent history in light of longer-term historical developments, contributing important new insights to debates about migration, citizenship, chieftaincy, language, cultural practice, anti-colonialism and nationalism. 

The book is organised around five key themes: Rethinking Kamuzu Banda?s Malawi; Rural Development and Agricultural Production; Power and Politics from pre- to post-colony; Malawi and the Southern African Region; and ?Culture? and Cultural Production. The focus on a single country facilitates consideration of local particularities, as well as revealing similarities in the trajectories and challenges shared with other countries in Africa. The book provides a nuanced understanding of Hastings Kamuzu Banda (Malawi?s first Prime Minister and President, 1964-94) and the legacy of his rule. Chapters analyse decolonisation in a political and a cultural sense, and show how the beginning and end of colonial rule were gradual processes rather than sharp ruptures. Individual chapters expand our knowledge of the history of public health, development, rural livelihoods, food production, and agricultural policy, as well as prompting new debate on migration, citizenship, chieftaincy, language, cultural practice, anti-colonialism and nationalism.

This book will be of particular interest to scholars of Malawi and the wider Southern African region.  Nine of the chapters were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS) (2020, Vol. 46, No. 2). This volume contains a revised Introduction, five additional chapters, all previously published in JSAS, and a new Afterword.

Table of Contents:

Introduction? Protectorate, Dictatorship, Democracy: Reflections on Malawi?s Past and Present 1. Birthing a Nation: Political Legitimacy and Health Policy in Hastings Kamuzu Banda?s Malawi, 1962-1980 2. The Radical and Reactionary Politics of Malawi?s Hastings Banda: Roots, Fruit and Legacy 3. Remembering Kamuzu: The Ambiguity of the Past in Malawi?s Central Region 4. Yielding Trouble: Development Dilemmas and the Political Uses of Bad Data in Malawi, 1964-1978 5. ?The Native is the Producer of the Future?: Improving Peasants? Food Production in Southern Malawi, 1859-1939 6. The Green Belt Initiative, Politics and Sugar Production in Malawi 7. Chieftaincy in Malawi: Reinvention, Re-emergence or Resilience? A Kasungu Case Study 8. Petitioning the State: Group Councils and the Development of Political Consciousness in Malawi, 1940s-1950s 9. ?The General from Fort Hill?: Katoba Flax Musopole?s Role as an Anti-Colonial Activist and Politician in Malawi 10. Central African Immigrants, Imperial Citizenship and the Politics of Free Movement in Interwar South Africa 11. ?Totemless Aliens?: The Historical Antecedents of the Anti-Malawian Discourse in Zimbabwe, 1920s?1979 12. Malawi in Verse: Authenticity, African Literature, and Indigenous Aesthetic Forms 13. The Madando Rhetoric: Musical Critiques of Electoral Management Leadership in Malawi 14. The Invention of ?Harmful Cultural Practices? in the Era of AIDS in Malawi Afterword