Malawi

This book explores Malawi’s recent history in light of longer-term historical developments, contributing important new insights to debates about migration, citizenship, chieftaincy, language, cultural practice, anti-colonialism and nationalism.

The book is organised around five key themes: Rethinking Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi; Rural Development and Agricultural Production; Power and Politics from pre- to post-colony; Malawi and the Southern African Region; and ‘Culture’ and Cultural Production. The focus on a single country facilitates consideration of local particularities, as well as indentification of similarities in the trajectories and challenges shared with other countries in Africa. This book provides a nuanced understanding of Hastings Kamuzu Banda (Malawi’s first Prime Minister and President, 1964-94) and the legacy of his rule. Chapters analyse decolonisation in a political and a cultural sense, and show how the beginning and end of colonial rule were gradual processes rather than sharp ruptures. Individual chapters expand our knowledge of the history of public health, development, rural livelihoods, food production, and agricultural policy, as well as prompting new debate on migration, citizenship, chieftaincy, language, cultural practice, anti-colonialism and nationalism.

This book will be of particular interest to scholars of Malawi and the wider Southern African region. Nine of the chapters were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies, volume 46, issue 2 (2020). This volume contains a revised Introduction, five additional chapters, all previously published in JSAS, and a new Afterword.

Zoë Groves is Lecturer in Modern Global, Colonial and Postcolonial History at the University of Leicester, UK, and Research Associate at Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research focuses on migration, urban history and popular culture in Southern Africa. She is author of Malawian Migration to Zimbabwe, 1900-1965: Tracing Machona (2020).

Jessica Johnson is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of In Search of Gender Justice: Rights and Relationships in Matrilineal Malawi (2018) and co-editor of Pursuing Justice in Africa: Competing imaginaries and Contested Practices (2018).