Institute of Social Communication

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Browsing Institute of Social Communication by Author "Chiwanda, Matthias George"

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    Mass Media Coverage of Election Campaigns and Its Influence on the Voter Study of The 2004 Malawi General Elections
    (Tangaza University College, 2006) Chiwanda, Matthias George
    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.