Malawi 2004 - 2007 |
||
The Battle for the Streets of Malawi
|
||
Scene 1 Area 36 - a small dusty neighbourhood at the southern end of Lilongwe. I went as usual to my local shop, one of about a dozen small brick-built serving counters with metal bars covered by chicken wire on the long earth street. I was ready for my usual banter with Jean and his wife and brothers. They were Congolese refugees who had built up their little shop into a thriving little business, stocking most of what you might need on a daily basis . Jean had nick-named me Jean-Paul and we often talked French. At least he spoke French I and I stuttered. Usually at least one of his two infants was sitting on someone's lap or suckling. Tonight there was hardly anything to buy. The shelves were nearly empty and the coke refrigerator stood very empty and forlorn in the corner. Jean was not there. I did not recognise these people. I went up the street to the next shop to buy from his relative, also a refugee from Congo. It was closed. When I got home I asked Letala what had happened. All foreigners without a permit have been taken back to the refugee camp in Dowa. Scene 2 The Central Market - close to work At 7.00 I drove from our offices on the edge of the main market to the bank in town to get money for the day's project. As I drove through the market I was aware of a great deal of two-fingers-in-the-mouth whistling. You get used to sudden crowds and flurries of playground action in the market and I took no notice. When I returned 30 minutes later I turned into the mini-bus station road. Leading to the main stall area. As I drove up towards the market I saw about 60 metres away a phalanx of about 200 young men jogging rhythmically towards me. Some held their arms aloft and their rows seemed squeezed together as if I were viewing them through a tele-photo lens. As I drove towards my turning they jogged towards me chanting in synchronised rhythm with their footfall. My first thought was how beautiful they looked in their testosteroned , gently bouncing dance. My second thought was that a mzungo (white) in a car was a tempting target for aroused young men with a sudden taste for power. I was the last car to turn into the side street before they reached my turning a few seconds later. I left for our rural area and returned in the afternoon to find that there had been running battles in the market all day between vendors and police. Tear gas, rubber bullets, live rounds etc. I found that our sports lassie had been turned back 3 times before arriving at the office and wishing she hadn't . She was so scared she hid under her desk. At the first opportunity she headed for the safe VSO office in the city centre for post-trauma counselling. The next day all seemed quiet. I was due to guide new volunteers round the town. Then at about 11.00 as I was nattering to a young worker I noticed he wasn't looking at me but behind me. The normally lightly trafficked road had turned into a rally track. Cars were racing out from every possible entry point horns blaring. "Something is happening in the main street." There were sounds of gun fire in the market. As I went up the road to be nosy, small groups of laughing youths ambled past, half running, glancing back over their shoulders. I headed back for the office with as much nonchalence as I could manage. We had the privilege of a front row seat as pick-ups full of armed police drove up and down firing live rounds into the air to drive everyone from the streets. It felt more like carnival than war. Now, at the same time Lorraine, our nervous colleague, became the lightening conductor, for her worst nightmare. She had started the day at VSO (safe zone ) , but hearing that all was quiet offered to drop friends at the bus station in the market. As they headed up the high street they were met by the jogging boys. This time there was no time to turn off the main street and by the time they were heading back on the wrong side of the road they were overtaken by boys with bricks in their hand. Luckily only one brick was thrown which glanced from the door. If they had been really serious the windows would have gone. However, this was the last straw for poor Lorraine who went to see the doctor on the following Monday and announced that she would not wait for her departure date and was gone by the end of the week. As peace returned I thought I would drive through the market to test safety for the new arrivals. I was confronted with a group of heavily armed police across the road. They held up their hands to stop the mini-bus in front of me. " Oh shit this is going to take hours". Not in the least; the bus had been stopped so that the police could get a ride back to the station. It was lunchtime and riots could not interfere with their break. The next day the police and the City Assembly Chief Exec. met the vendors' leaders. The whole incident was sparked by an attempt to drive vendors from the streets onto an unsuitable patch of ground where they would pay for stalls. The C.E. explained that he had not wanted the police to act so quickly. The Police chief said he could pay for the army to do the job next time as he would be otherwise engaged. The vendors were back on the streets This is, of course, was not the normal course of events and really, there was never any serious danger . ************ Scene 3. Driving Through Blantyre - the main commercial city- Five weeks later. We had been walking and wheezing our way up, across and down the amazingly beautiful Mount Mulanje in the South. We were tired and our legs were aching from three days trekking and lying on hut floors away from the news and outside contact. As we drove through Blantyre we saw a crowd of young men chanting in front of the sugar factory. " Must be an industrial dispute." The police had it all under control and we passed by with no trouble. Then we drove past a street market. Bricks and stones covered the roadway, but the usually gaily festooned stalls had become rows of prehistoric stick skeletons and there was no-one in sight other than a Police pick-up with its Star Wars riot-helmeted men. " They've cleared the vendors this time." Over the next few days it became clear what had happened. Just as with Maggie Thatcher's miners the authorities were not going to risk defeat again. This time the army and the Police had come in with enough force to drive the street boys and women from the streets for good. For several weeks armed patrols walked the towns and cities to make sure they did not return. The effect was devastating. The women vegetable sellers who filled a square of dusty earth and broken concrete 50 metres away from our office were gone. The stalls that crowded walkers into the road on either side were gone. The boys who shouted ' Azungo ' as you walked along were gone. The highly coloured and patterned chitenje draped across the railings in Old Town were gone. They taken the life from the streets and turned Lilongwe into suburban death. Stalls that were not dismantled were burnt, adding acrid smoke to the scene. To this day the streets have remained dead. Scene 4 . The Back of the Central Market The next day I went off to get some chips from a stall opposite. There were no chips to be had. They had gone - even our girl who's brother sold on a back street in front of her house had been told that the simple metal plate with an oil hollow would be smashed if they stayed on the street. There was no fruit or veg. to be bought. I turned left towards the wide crowded dirt roads that were littered with old car parts and ramshackle shops with impressive names like 'Suspension World' and 'Do-It-All Car Parts '. I was stopped in my tracks by the change in scene. Where there had been ramshackle shops there was now rubble. It was as if a tank had rolled through this area at the back of the market road. On the bits of wall that stood like a mouth full of broken teeth there were still signs of the red crosses that had marked illegally built buildings for demolition. Teams of near silent men were brick by brick, knocking down what remained, saving what could be salvaged and re-used or re-sold. Pick-ups arrived to be loaded. I was amazed at the serenity of the scene. No-one seemed angry. No-one complained. My garage man who had his shelter for a workshop and work benches destroyed simply shrugged his shoulders as I told him how awful it all was and got on with mending a car on his bomb-site . As I walked disconsolately through the car streets. I wondered what it must have like for those people blitzed in the war. It must have felt like this. Later that day I travelled through Lilongwe and out to a far area in the north of the city. I could not buy some simple vegetables anywhere on route when a week ago I could have stopped at any of more than twenty sites. Even in the remote city area some 14 kms from the central market the buildings had been bull-dozed as I was also to find when I got back to my home in area 36. I fought off the student-days desire to spray red crosses on the City Assembly building. These were the spirited creations of the poorest people who refused to give in and they had become the butt of the bullies who kicked over their sandcastles because they felt like it. It was a great poverty reduction strategy and one copied in Zambia, Senegal, Liberia, Tanzania and probably many more. Post Script My view of this battle for the streets is not one shared by all Africans. Most of the propertied class thought it was a great thing . " The streets are clean" " Most of those vendors are just thieves." " Now at least you can walk through the market . " My Human Rights Director said " Ah but the Government has been trying to reason with the vendors for three years. My relative's garage has been knocked down three times. He just rebuilds it." He laughed. The Government argues that it has set aside areas for markets and now all trading must be done from those areas. The vendors say people don't come to the special areas and they cannot make money - any way there are no toilets. Anyway where were the toilets on the streets? The Asian businessmen /traders now can no longer use boys to go out and sell their goods and the women who used to sell phone cards on the street have resorted to undercover espionage tactics- selling only when they can fly pitch, looking out for the Police. The buildings? Well the Government argues they are substandard and should never have been built in the places they stood, but the way it was dealt with carried the stench of totalitarianism and the red crosses spread across town like the marking of the plague. There is a sense of the return of the Banda era when he imposed standards and was respected for the cleanliness of the streets and the quality of the housing. The azungos hate it, the better off Africans love it and the poor people affected by it shrug their shoulders and wait for their time to come. They will find some way to survive.
***************************
|
||