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Ethnic identities in Malawi are further being strengthened by Mutharika’s efforts to have a paramount chief for each ethnic group. Under his watch chiefs Nkhumba, Chikowe, Chikulamayembe were elevated to paramountcy for the Lhomwe, Yao and Tumbuka respectively. Although historically the elevation of these chiefs can be critiqued and Mutharika’s motives for these elevations may primarily have been political to ensure his grip on rural Malawi–just like revamping the traditional courts and courting chiefs on national (political) issues; still, this will aid the preservation of significant cultural elements. This is in keeping with the UNESCO 2003 convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage and the 2005 convention on Cultural Diversity, which Malawi became a party to in 2010 during Mutharika’s government. President Joyce Banda has since perpetuated this policy by elevating Chief Kyungu as Paramount of the Ngonde people.
In light of the above, it is clear Mutharika took an interest, and was instrumental in cultural heritage preservation. It seems his growing antagonism towards western donors may have been influential in this. Equally important may however have been Malawi’s first president Hastings Kamuzu Banda, whom Mutharika took as a role model in terms of political style and economic policy.
Kamuzu had always taken a pride in Malawian history and his Chewa traditions which he aimed to impose onto the nation. Immediately after coming to power Mutharika started to rehabilitate Kamuzu who had suffered a damnatio memoriae under Muluzi’s regime in-between. The Blantyre stadium and the Lilongwe airport were to carry the Kamuzu name again. And the new monuments erected by the Department of Culture include Kamuzu’s Mausoleum and a Kamuzu statue at the new Martyrs’ Tower. More importantly though, the Department of Culture was forced to close down the exhibition it had in Mikuyu Prison, Zomba, which commemorated Kamuzu’s political prisoners and the dark side of his regime.
Muntharika’s cultural achievements are thus closely tied to national politics. In this tendency, Malawi is not an exception. The political dimension of culture is deployed throughout the globe. What is exceptional is the absence of an official national cultural policy, which has been drafted and redrafted since 2005. In the absence thereof cultural projects easily become ad hoc and stand alone. Culture was also omitted from the original Malawi Growth and Development Strategy paper. This has luckily been corrected in the draft of MGDS II.
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