Mass Media Coverage of Election Campaigns and Its Influence on the Voter Study of The 2004 Malawi General Elections
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Date
2006
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tangaza University College
Abstract
his work investigates mass media coverage of election campaigns and the
influence it has on the voter. The research was carried out in Chilcwawa district, located
in the southern region of Malawi. It focused on the country's 2004 presidential and
parliamentary elections.
Malawi, formerly known as 'Nyasaland' in the colonial era, is a small landlocked
country located in South Eastern Africa. It has a surface area of about one hundred and
eighteen thousand square kilometers and a population of about ten million people.'
Malawi achieved independence from the British colonial rule on 4th July 1964.
The Nyasaland African Congress, a nationalist movement that was led by Orton Chirwa
and other young politicians, championed the fight for freedom.
In 1953 Britain federated Nyasaland with Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now
Zambia and Zimbabwe). The federation was vigorously opposed and, in 1958, Dr.
Hastings Kamuzu Banda returned to Nyasaland from Ghana, at the invitation of the
Nyasaland African Congress, to lead the fight against it.
The Nyasaland African Congress invited Banda because the movement discerned
the need to have an elderly and more experienced nationalist to lead it in the fight for
freedom. The key leaders of the movement (Henry Masaulco Chipembere and Orton
Chirwa) were in their twenties, and inexperienced. Banda, in his late sixties had much experience in nationalist politics through his
encounters with other African freedom fighters such as, Kwame NIchruma of Ghana and
Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya during his stay in the United Kingdom.
From independence in 1964 to 1992, Malawi remained a one-party state under the
rule of the Malawi Congress Party government led by Banda. During this period there
was no serious challenge from within Malawi to Banda's rule. He had total control of the
country. Freedom of the press was heavily curtailed. `Kamuzu knows best!' used to be
the slogan. The following were some of the institutions that served to enforce the
suppression of freedom of expression: networks of state informers planted everywhere
throughout the country, the censorship board, concentration camps, and detention without
trial laws. There was only one state controlled radio station, the Malawi Broadcasting
Corporation, and two national newspapers, the 'Daily Times' and 'Malawi News'. These
newspapers only gave news from the angle of the Malawi Congress Party as the ruling
party. This was the case with many newly independent African countries. People suffered
under cruel dictatorships of their own African leaders.
However, things changed dramatically in the 1990s when Africa in general
experienced in some parts more than others, the wind of change whose eye was in
Eastern Europe and which affected the world, peiestroilca.
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Keywords
Mass media, Election, Voter, Malawi General elections