[b]Stay away from the IMF and World Bank!



Malawi: Bingu's Malawi Spins Wildly Out of Control

29 September 2011

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Almost unnoticed outside its borders, Malawi is spinning politically out of control and teetering on the brink of financial collapse, as its access even to the IMF's agreed extended credit facility is cut.

The political temperature is at near-boiling point as pro-government attacks on extra-parliamentary opposition activists and leaders increase and UN officials struggle vainly to re-launch talks between President Bingu Mutharika's government and increasingly restive opposition movements.

Last weekend saw the first tit-for-tat attack on an apparent government target: arsonists destroyed a garage in the capital Lilongwe unfortunately named Home of DPP by the owners, sympathisers of Mutharika's ruling Democratic People's Party.

For the moment, popular attention is on the death of 25-year-old student Robert Chasowa, buried on Monday (26 September 2011) after what police insist was a suicide leap from the fifth floor of a building in the commercial capital, Blantyre. Chasowa had been in hiding since police brutally suppressed nationwide anti-government protests in July, killing 18. Police admitted they wanted to arrest Chasowa, but said he committed suicide before they found him - and produced a suicide note to back up their claim. But the handwriting is not confirmed as his and opposition activists say his injuries - massive head trauma, but no other broken bones - contradicts the official version.

Only days earlier a gang armed with pangas, claiming to be "thieves doing our job", attacked the homes of two members of the team set up to negotiate with Mutharika's government.

And at the weekend Catholic bishops meeting in Lilongwe complained of a heavy presence of government spies attempting to eavesdrop on their discussions.

Opposition representatives are boycotting a dialogue forum brokered by the UN for talks with Mutharika's government about opposition demands for government action over plummeting living standards, skyrocketing prices, and chronic fuel and medical drug shortages - and an end to Mutharika's increasing defiant breaches of the rule of law. The immediate trigger for the opposition walkout was the firebombing of a human rights NGO office and the home of an activist Anglican cleric.

The UN has flown in Nairobi office-head Sahle-Work Zewde to facilitate a resumption of talks, so far without success. Crucial to the problem is that opposition negotiators, with the religious community heavily represented, were out-manoeuvred by Mutharika.

Mutharika's government, meanwhile, with its foreign currency reserves down to the equivalent of less than two months' import cover and falling fast, is desperately casting about for additional funding to keep its civil service running. With its traditional Western source of aid cut following Mutharika's expulsion of British high commissioner Fergus Cochrane-Dyet in April, Lilongwe has been looking to the second tranche of a US$79,4-million (R539-million) IMF extended credit facility. But Malawi failed the IMF's economic performance review and resisted IMF pressure to devalue the kwacha - already at just a third of its 1994 dollar value, and devalued by 10% last month. Talks have resumed, but it is not clear when, or whether, the IMF will approve a second tranche.

Adding to Mutharika's problems, he hosts a summit of the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) in mid-October - the first at which neighbouring Zambia should be represented by newly-elected President Michael Sata.

But Sata has been a prohibited immigrant to Malawi since 2007, when he was leader of Zambia's opposition. He was arrested at Blantyre's Chileka Airport on Mutharika's direct orders, en route to a meeting with Mutharika's predecessor President Bakili Muluzi. No reason was given for his arrest, but he was detained for several hours and declared persona non grata. He was then driven 500km to the Chipata Malawi-Zambia border post and dropped off.

He sued the Malawi government for defamation and wrongful detention, but has not forgotten the humiliation. His personal lawyers announced within hours of his election that he would boycott the Comesa meeting.


Hundreds of protesters gather outside stores in Rumphi during the Malawi protests (file photo).[/b]

Just let it fail please. Do not suck the teet of the IMF, I dont know why this country is failing, or what is really going on but there is so much going on in Africa.

Continuing to devalue your currency will only make you vulnerable to huge land grabs by world hedge funds.