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| Features |
| Our broken borders |
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by
Mzati Nkolokosa, 02 March 2006
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04:54:10
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The poor road from Nchalo to Nsanje gives the impression that the border district is a forgotten area.
It has been neglected for decades. Who cares?
It’s the same in Mozambique. People on both sides of the international boundary live in almost no man’s land, depend on both governments and survive on informal and illegal trade.
“Who could blame these people for finding illegal ways of fending for themselves?” Asks Paul Theroux, an American travel writer who spent three days on Shire River, in a dugout canoe, peddling to Zambezi River.
The region, like many border areas in Africa, is undefined with Sena people on both sides of Shire, a river whose changing course makes the area unreasonably ambiguous, not Malawi, not Mozambique, but, according to Theroux, “miles and miles of moving water, some fluid, a river in Africa.”
Malawi Kwacha follows Shire into Mozambique. The currency is used in parts of Mozambique, sometimes as far as Caia on Zambezi, where people catch road transport to Beira.
Mozambicans come to our churches, mosques, schools, shops and hospitals.
A 2004 Malawi Health Equity Network (MEHN) survey determined that Malawi loses drugs to citizens of neighbouring countries who come to our hospitals. One can walk for over 50 kilometres from the border into Mozambique without finding a health clinic.
“This means people in these areas come to Malawi for treatment,” said the survey report.
Ministry of Health officials said there wasn’t so much Malawi could do until national identity cards are introduced because “they don’t come as Mozambicans”.
Indeed they don’t. We speak the same language. We share physical features. They behave almost like Malawians. “I think that’s the major problem,” said former principal secretary of health, Dr Richard Pendame.
Malawians buy Irish potatoes, fish and maize from Mozambique. There are also reports that guns and chamba or hemp cross the border without much hassle.
People in Nsanje, for example, travel from one country to another at will. Marine Police patrols are almost nonexistent. It’s the same old story—and a sad one: lack of resources, boats grounded or not available at all.
That is the case at Nsanje, Liwonde and Chimwala marine police units.
It’s even more difficult to patrol roads. The 30-kilometre road from Nsanje to Marka, on the border with Mozambique, is in bad shape, worse than the part between Bangula and Nsanje.
I arrived at Marka at dawn. Over 20 canoes were getting ready for a journey down the Shire into Mozambique or up the river to Nsanje or some place.
Some canoes had bales of sugar. Others had what I couldn’t tell. “What is in your canoe?” I asked a young man, about 20. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not my canoe.”
A minute later he followed me, saying, “Sir, let’s discuss.”
He said they could transport anything for me. Or they had what I was looking for. That provoked a journalist’s senses. The cover of darkness, it seems, provides time for unusual business deals.
Of course, informal trade is the pillar of life here. But it is not all joy.
Cattle rustlers from Mozambique are a threat to Malawian farmers. Thieves cross Shire into Malawi, to areas like Bangula. ‘It’s bad here,” says James Juwawo. “They come and steal as if they own the animals.”
Despite the theft, people from the two countries live as one. Mozambicans have settled in Malawi up to places like Nchalo and Chikwawa.
Some who came as refugees did not return home and settled in Balaka and Ntcheu, for example. They didn’t need any papers. They simply settled, just like that.
People can move from Mozambique, cross the bushy borders and settle in Malawi.
The international boundary is on paper. Otherwise, it’s one people, one language: Sena and Yao in both Malawi and Mozambique. Some Zambians speak Nyanja and Tumbuka just like Malawians.
In Dedza and Ntcheu the M1 Road that forms the boundary between Malawi and Mozambique has markets—at Bembeke Turn-Off, Lizulu and Tsangano Turn-Off, among others—whose vendors come from both countries.
They speak Chichewa. They trade in Kwacha. We marry in Mozambique. They do in Malawi. Mozambicans come to Dedza district hospital. Perhaps some Mozambicans vote in Malawi.
Of what benefit is it, after all, to vote in Mozambique when they live on Malawi?
Mulanje
The minibus I caught from Limbe to Muloza in Mulanje had people speaking two languages, Chinyanja and Portuguese.
Suddenly, MBC Radio One signal was lost. Instead the frequency was receiving signals from a radio station in Mozambique, a sign that we were nearing the border post, Muloza, and indeed in 10 minutes we were on the boundary.
Milanje town popularly known as Villa, on Milanje mountain, is seen a couple of kilometres from Muloza. People at Villa and surrounding villages live more on Malawi than Mozambique. They come to our schools and hospitals at Namasalima, even Mulanje District Hospital.
“That is power from Malawi,” said a bicycle taxi operator, pointing at Villa when darkness had fallen. Escom’s Public Relations Assistant Chikondi Chimala confirmed saying Escom supplies power to Mozambican towns of Milanje (Villa), Mandimba and Villa Ulongwe; and the Zambian town of Lundazi.
Southern Bottlers (Sobo) products, too, are sold at Milanje. They trade in Malawi two currencies: Kwacha and metical.
Business people from Mozambique come to Malawi. Likewise, Malawians go to Mozambique.
One Mozambican had a story. His 600 bags of maize brought into Malawi were rejected because the grain was rotten. This maize—like most maize that came from Mozambique through Mulanje—crossed into Malawi illegally through village paths, across Muloza River, where young men run crossborder transport services. For them it’s not illegal. There is no boundary at all.
On my return journey one business man had 40 cartons of Washa soap he bought from Mozambique. He was with a young man, an expert in crossborder goods transport.
“Where have you been?” One passenger asked the young man. “People are looking for your services.”
The young man, I later learned, is a guru in informal crossborder trade, trusted for speed and honesty in dishonest deals.
Maize is sold at Muloza, a few hundred metres from the border post. Most people, including Malawi Police and Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) staff, buy from the same informal market. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the market is flourishing.
Tobacco from Malawi is already crossing the border to Mozambique at above K150 per kilogramme. The leaf is from Zomba, Phalombe, Machinga and Mangochi.
The East
Ivory from Liwonde National Park finds its way into Mozambique where travelling is sometimes dangerous. Guns are therefore necessary. Which is why people involved in illegal trade of legal and illegal goods also trade in guns. People also endure the risk of bombs planted during the civil war.
The West
The informal trade also takes place through Mwanza where tax evaders use bushy tracks to run away from the official border post at Mwanza.
The road to Thambani is through mountains that once had thick forests. Yet there are still bushes to hide young men who carry cargo across the border from either Malawi or Mozambique.
Young men take charge of the katundu and the owners travel safely through the border post at Thambani while the purchase is in the bushes, in safe hands of men who have mastered the trade of transporting cargo illegally.
The international boundary in Thambani and Chikwawa is as easy to cross as is the case in Ntcheu and Dedza.
Karonga
The case of Karonga and Tanzania is a funny one. Songwe River which forms the international boundary has in the past years kept changing its course. In one year a number of villages may be in Malawi, the next year in Tanzania.
In worst instances, the river has separated people from their land. So they can, for example, have houses in Malawi and what was their land in Tanzania, waiting for such a time when the river shall give them back the land.
It’s all crazy perhaps. The international boundaries, it appears, separated one people the Chewa for example who are in Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia under one chief, Karonga Gawa. There is a strong feeling that we are one.
And our governments may do well to explore ways of redeeming the informal sector that is growing by end of each day. |
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