On Sept. 16, Malawi’s voters will go to the polls to elect the Southern African country’s president, members of parliament and local officials. The presidential contest will be a repeat of the 2019-2020 elections, once again pitting incumbent President Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Part, or MCP, against his predecessor, former President Arthur Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.
The 2019 and 2020 elections in Malawi were unprecedented, as the Constitutional Court overturned the May 2019 results that had seemingly awarded Mutharika a second term in office and ordered a rerun. The subsequent June 2020 ballot resulted in Chakwera’s victory. The landmark ruling was just the second time that an African high court had ordered a presidential election to be rerun—Kenya’s did so in 2017—but the first in which the subsequent poll led to the defeat of an incumbent.
Amid the international acclaim that followed, The Economist named Malawi its 2020 Country of the Year, declaring that “its people are citizens, not subjects.” In 2022, the magazine opined that “Malawi has saved its democracy,” and the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden recognized it as a “democratic bright spot.” The political accolades came with financial benefits for Malawi, as well, as tens of millions of dollars’ worth of additional foreign assistance flowed into the aid-dependent country, in an effort to further boost the new government’s prospects.
The assumption among many observers was that the democratic triumph that brought Chakwera to office and the momentum it generated would create the political will to address corruption, governance, health care and other challenges that have plagued Malawi since before its independence. Five years later, however, most socioeconomic conditions and virtually all governance indicators in Malawi remain unchanged.
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Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, among the bottom 10 in most indices. The poverty rate, which was already over half the population when Chakwera took office in 2020, has continued to grow, as has food insecurity, inflation and emigration. Malawi has been forced to devalue its currency several times and recently was paralyzed by fuel shortages. And while Chakwera initially won some praise for dissolving his Cabinet due to corruption allegations in 2022, corruption has continued with impunity.
Some of economic indicators have been affected by factors outside of the government’s control. The population is over 80 percent rural, for instance, and depends on rain-irrigated subsistence agriculture and imported fertilizer, making it vulnerable to shifting weather and market conditions. So the droughts and cyclones that have affected the region played a role in Malawi’s worsening economic conditions, as well as global inflationary trends.
But they were compounded by the Chakwera government’s missteps, including mismanagement and a failure to enact needed economic agricultural subsidy reforms. Not surprisingly, the government’s favorability ratings have taken a hit: A 2024 Afrobarometer survey found that 76 percent of respondents believe that Malawi is going in the wrong direction, with less than 30 percent approving of the government’s performance in fighting corruption, managing the economy and improving living standards.
The arrests of opposition figures and violence by party-affiliated actors are by no means new in Malawi. But the number of both in recent months is notable, as is the fact that they are occurring so far out from the election.
These challenges have fueled discontent among voters in the runup to the elections. Many were further disillusioned by the death of former Vice President Saulos Chilima in a plane crash last June. Chilima was popular with youth who supported his message of structural reforms and well-positioned to contest the presidency under his United Transformation Movement, or UTM, party. The UTM subsequently nominated Dalitso Kabambe, a former Central Bank governor, as it new candidate, but he is unlikely to attract the necessary support to mount a realistic challenge to Chakwera and Mutharika.
Instead, Chilima’s death fundamentally transformed the political landscape, clearing the way for Mutharika’s re-emergence as the main opposition candidate. And given Malawi’s changed political dynamics and economic challenges, he is now the frontrunner. A recent poll saw 43 percent of respondents express their intention of voting for him, compared to 29 percent for Chakwera. However, his chances are complicated by several factors, including the need to win a 50-percent majority in a field that includes several smaller parties with ethno-regional support bases. This has led to a fierce competition between Chakwera and Mutharika to forge elite coalitions ahead of the election.
The current electoral cycle has already drawn criticisms from civil society and the opposition for what has been characterized as ineffective preparation and lack of fairness. The rollout of a phased voter registration process meant to create a fresh registrar of voters was messy: Registration required identity cards, but while many Malawians applied for the document months ahead of time, many did not receive it in time and were turned away at registration sites. This disproportionately affected opposition strongholds, which went first during the phased process, with some observers speculating this was by design. Eventually, a supplemental phase had to be added to accommodate those who were unable to complete the process despite having adequate documents. There were also instances of the abuse of state resources, including payments to chiefs to ensure high registration tallies in areas favorable to the MCP.
While the rocky registration process may not have been deliberate, it deepened the distrust many Malawians already had in the Malawi Electoral Commission’s ability to impartially administer the electoral process, given that the court ruling forcing a rerun of the 2019 ballot centered on irregularities in the tabulation process and concerns about the commission’s independence.
Beyond logistical challenges, many concerns have also been raised about Chakwera’s use of government institutions to weaken the opposition. This first gained attention in 2022, when Chilima—then the vice president—was arrested for graft allegations and removed from his duties, moves that he and his supporters argued were politically motivated. The charges were later dropped and he was reinstated, but the distrust of Chakwera has lingered, evident in the fact that, despite inquiries finding otherwise, many believe the plane crash that killed Chilima was an assassination.
This distrust has been compounded by the recent arrests of opposition figures ranging from parliamentarians to regional party leadership on charges of corruption, as well as one for allegedly planning to assassinate the president. One of the most notable incidents came in January, when four leading DPP figures were arrested on graft charges related to their previous government positions. The allegations may have some merit, but the timing of the arrests so close to the election, and the fact that Chakwera has ignored substantiated corruption allegations concerning his allies, exacerbates suspicions that they are politically motivated. Chakwera has also taken steps to try to prevent Mutharika from contesting the election, most notably with the introduction of an age-limit bill that would bar him from running.
There has also been a rise in violence against opposition figures and anti-government protesters. Such attacks have occurred throughout Malawi’s history, but this electoral cycle has seen an uptick. For instance, in November, machete-wielding youth disrupted an opposition protest over the voter registration process, and civil servants demanding pay increases were recently attacked. In both instances, police were present but did not intervene to stop the attacks, a hallmark of state and party-sanctioned violence in Malawi.
The arrests of opposition figures and violence by party-affiliated actors are by no means new in Malawi. But the number of both in recent months is notable, as is the fact that they are occurring so far out from the election. It suggests that the MCP is likely aware that neither retail campaigning nor the traditional systems of patronage that dominate Malawian politics may be enough to win the election. Instead, the party is likely to go to even further lengths to attempt to maintain its grip on power, which it had not exercised since Malawi’s return to democracy in 1994.
All of this bodes poorly for an election that will be hotly contested and most probably see further instances of state violence and heavy-handedness. Ironically, these are the same techniques that the MPC condemned when they were used against it during previous electoral cycles. The tensions risk leading to widespread violence, particularly against women, people with albinism and other vulnerable populations.
The events of 2019 and 2020 were without question an advance for democracy in Malawi. However, they did not remedy the economic and governance challenges the country faces. Indeed, the political climate ahead of the upcoming election, characterized by probable abuses of power and politically incited violence, underscores this. Despite benefiting from the “democratic credit” generated by the events of 2019 and 2020, Chakwera and his government continued to abuse Malawi’s powerful presidential system for their gain. Malawi’s judiciary may very well be called on again to uphold the will of the people, but if so, it will mean that yet another volatile election has put the country’s democracy in jeopardy.
R. Maxwell Bone is an analyst whose writing has been published in Foreign Policy, New Humanitarian, African Arguments and other publications. He has served as an accredited international election observer in Nigeria and Mozambique. He holds a master’s degree in African Studies from the University of Cambridge. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxbone55 and on Bluesky at @maxbone55.bsky.social.
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