Beyond Chameleons? On Malawian Politicians, Anti-Politicians and the Motivations and Meanings of Political Life

Few aspects of contemporary Malawi are seen to be more steeped in failure – above all moral failure – as politics and politicians. As a class of actors, politicians are cast in an exceptionally negative light in popular discourse and commentary, blamed for having thwarted the promise and hope of democratisation in ruthless pursuit of their own selfish ends. Much of the academic analysis of post-transition Malawi takes a similar view. This reflects long-standing peculiarities in the Africanist literature more broadly, which have led to a markedly materialist-instrumentalist understanding of African political praxis and African politicians. Opposing this approach, this article takes an interpretivist perspective, arguing that scholars ought to take Members of Parliament’s (MPs’) own narratives, including their narratives about their motivations in politics, seriously. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with MPs, it offers an analysis of MPs’ motivations and the meanings inscribed in their work that are rooted in these narratives. It finds that the attractions of money, power and personal status are real, but so too are MPs’ feelings of moral obligation to, and shared belonging with, their home areas and wider constituencies. Indeed, they are typically ‘called’ into politics by representatives of those communities and motivated to heed such calls at least partly because of a sense of obligation and commitment. Representing ‘home’ is central to MPs’ ideas and ideals of public or community service; and that ethic of service is reinforced by their sense that they have something valuable to contribute to their communities – informed in some cases by a family lineage in local politics. Ultimately, the article suggests that we cannot adequately understand Malawian MPs’ political praxis, or the workings of Malawi’s state and democracy overall, if we do not attempt to understand or to properly take into account the motivations and meanings undergirding their behaviour.