Malawi: What the Doctor Orders

As a 21-gun salute boomed out, British Governor General Sir Glyn Jones waved from the doorway of the Malawi Airways Viscount. A moment later he disappeared inside, and the plane soared northward toward Britain. All alone in the middle of a red carpet stood Prime Minister H. Kamuzu Banda, waving his fly whisk after the plane. It was a last fond farewell between the two men who had worked together to prepare Malawi for independence in 1964 and for last week’s ceremonies, which established Malawi as a republic and Banda as its first President.

President Banda found himself in control of that rarest of African commodities—a politically stable nation. And Banda is the man who keeps it that way. A natty, gnomelike former physician, Banda led his tiny (46,000 sq. mi.) country’s fight for independence from the Central African Federation, became Prime Minister in 1964, and has since ruled the impoverished, landlocked nation with autocratic firmness. He jails critics at will, assumes sweeping powers to restrict the movements and statements of anyone in the country. Just to avoid confusion, Banda has even decreed that no Malawi businesses can have a “president” as such; they must find another title. “If I am a dictator,” Banda said last week, “it is because my people want me to be. I am a dictator of the people, by the people and for the people.”

A Shrug at Race. The people, in Malawi’s case, consist of 4,000,000 blacks, 12,000 Asians and 7,000 whites. Though the whites hold the best civil service jobs and run the army and police force, race relations are harmonious. To complaints that blacks should be running more of the show, Banda only shrugs that they will—when they are skilled enough. “I will not Africanize,” Banda said last week, “just for the sake of Africanization.”

Banda is just as emphatically his own man on Africa-wide matters. Last week Diallo Telli, Guinea’s leftist secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity, was in Malawi for Banda’s inauguration when he suddenly found some of his pet schemes under scathing attack during a Banda press conference. “I didn’t fight the British to exchange British imperialism for Eastern imperialism,” Banda snapped. Then looking Telli straight in the eye, Banda shouted: “I mean that! I’m saying that because you are here. You can expel Malawi from the O.A.U.” As Telli shrank lower and lower in his chair, Banda sneered at African countries that claim Socialist countries are their friends: “Tell that to the marines, not to Kamuzu.”

A Hand from Britain. Banda is speaking as the leader of a country that needs all the friends it can get. Plagued by too many people (106 per sq. mi.) and too few natural resources, the country is scarcely self-sufficient, and survives partly on the earnings of 230,000 Malawians who migrate to South Africa, Rhodesia and Zambia for temporary jobs in mines and factories. Though independent, Malawi also counts heavily on British help. Total British aid to Malawi in the next three years will run between $25 million and $28 million a year, making Banda’s tiny republic the second largest recipient of British aid in Africa (after Kenya) and the fourth largest in the world.