Inventing Traditional Authority in Malawi

• In Event: The Political Origins of Inequality and Ethnic Difference

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between politics and ethnic identity construction, change, and mobilization is central to the study of African politics. Scholars often note that contemporary ethnic groups were politicized, and sometimes constructed, in response to the political incentives of elites. However, because existing research has focused primarily on the elite side of mass mobilization, we know less about when and how such elite-led attempts at ethnic mobilization actually translate into active political support or lasting cultural change. I address these questions within the context of an ongoing cultural revival among the Lhomwe ethnic group in Malawi. Historically marginalized, the Lhomwe have been aggressively mobilized along ethnic lines since 2008, primarily through a coordinated “revival” of the group’s chieftaincy, language, dances, and food preparations, and through the establishment of a new political party (DPP).

This chapter of the larger project focuses in particular on the political implications of the wholesale invention of a new Lhomwe chieftaincy. Traditional authorities are formally integrated into the Malawian state, with clearly demarcated territorial boundaries, government salaries, and explicit governance responsibilities. As elsewhere in Africa, traditional authorities in Malawi are trusted at a higher rate, and contacted more often, than elected officials or government bureaucrats, providing an important source of state-society linkage. This benefit of chieftaincy incorporation is based on their greater perceived legitimacy, due to both the mapping of chieftaincies onto ethnic kinship structures, and the perception that contemporary chieftaincies have deep historical origins.

But, do these legitimacy benefits confer when political actors invent a new chieftaincy from scratch? Because of the nature of their colonial-era migration into present-day Malawi, the Lhomwe ethnic community of southern Malawi lacked a chieftaincy of their own, with Lhomwe citizens living under non-Lhomwe chiefs. However, beginning in 2008, the ruling DPP party began appointing and promoting Lhomwe chiefs, including naming a Paramount Chief of the Lhomwe. Using a combination of in-depth interviews with Lhomwe and non-Lhomwe chiefs, oral histories with elderly Lhomwe residents, and an original survey of 1254 Malawian citizens (mostly Lhomwe), I explore the political drivers and implications of the legitimacy conferred on this newly created Lhomwe chieftaincy. This research contributes to historical work on the colonial creation of chieftaincies, and its political and social implications, but does so using a case of elite-driven cultural engineering in the contemporary era. The work also contributes to a larger literature on the value of traditional authorities in modern African states for both governance and development.

Author

• Amanda Lea Robinson, Ohio State University