The Drum Beat 265 - The Power of Community Consultation

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This Drum Beat is one of a series of commentary and analysis pieces. Linje Manyozo, a lecturer in development communication at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, is currently pursuing a PhD in development broadcasting at La Trobe University, Australia. He analyses the process of consultation and participation in development in Malawi. What follows is his perspective - NOT that of the Partners collectively or individually.

We are interested in featuring a range of critical analysis commentaries of the communication for change field. These will appear regularly on the first Monday of each month and are meant to inspire dialogue throughout the month. Though we cannot guarantee to feature your commentary, as we have a limited number of issues to be published each year, if you wish to contribute please contact Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com Many thanks!

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Blantyre Flea Market and Malawi's "Cemeteries" of Development: The Power of Community Consultation

That vendors in Blantyre are not interested in moving into the City's Flea Market is not open to debate, because it is a self-evident truth. That the Flea Market cost millions of a fortune and is a beautiful piece of architecture is also not open to debate because it is a self-evident truth. That the City Assembly is desperate to coerce the vendors to move into the Market is again not open to debate. Importantly, that the City will be cleaner and more tourism friendly if the vendors moved into the Market is just another self-evident truth. What is open to debate however is the motivation behind the vendors' refusal. Building on this case, I intend to clarify notions of consultation and participation, which have largely been misunderstood by most Malawian development planners.

Contemporary Malawi faces massive social, cultural and economic challenges, which places a huge responsibility on media to inform, empower and challenge the many rural, poor and illiterate citizens to actively engage in the formulation and implementation of policies affecting their lives. For people to actively engage in the reconstruction of their lives, there must be a dialogical and dialectical communication, not information. The distinction between communication and information seems slim to an extent they are oftentimes used interchangeably. Yet communication is participatory and embraces feedback from listeners, unlike information, which is more of a one-way transfer. Unfortunately, in most of Malawi's development projects, information experts like journalists, are confused and labeled as communication experts without understanding the multidisciplinary skills that communication engrosses, especially in relation to living with indigenous communities. What does living with the people mean?

Living with the people is a process that requires tools. It requires a communicator's willingness to learn indigenous knowledge systems. On the part of the people, it requires that they be properly informed as to what the project is all about and why it is important. And this is where most projects stop because the information experts are interested in marketing development projects to communities. Genuine participation however, requires that communities be in a position to question the need for the project, be it a school, a hospital or a rural growth centre, because they are the ones to use it. Most planners consult community leaders, arguing that these leaders represent their communities. It is important to remember that in a multiparty democracy, the legitimacy of representation is often being compromised by bribes, illiteracy, unfounded fears and mistrust, worsened further by the politicisation of traditional decision-making structures. Consulting the village headman therefore, does not mean consulting the whole village because, when the water pump breaks down, the village headman will not single-handedly be responsible for its repair. Or when an antenatal clinic is built, it is not the village headman who will deliver in there. Consultation therefore requires making constant contacts with the majority of the beneficiaries themselves, without manipulating them to accept outsiders' thinking towards a particular problem. Listen to this communicator: "We have observed that this village does not have a clinic, as a result, many women and children are dying during delivery. If we build a clinic here, women will have safe deliveries. Funds are available and we are ready to help you build this clinic if you are interested." Then listen to another communicator: "We would like to discuss your thoughts and see what we can do together with regards to official reports showing rising deaths of children and women during deliveries."

The first communicator is obviously selling a clinic project, by linking the deaths of women and children during delivery to the absence of clinics. He is actually asking villagers to offer a ground for the construction of the clinic. The second communicator converses communicatively with his audience, by not mentioning the clinic, but instead, pointing them to extant numerical evidence about the deaths during deliveries and motivating them to do something about it. Such consultation enables communicators and their listeners to develop a mutual understanding, which will lead to the establishment of causes of and solutions to a particular challenge. Consultation is therefore an ongoing communicative process through which intended beneficiaries are motivated to initiate a project. Consultation goes on even after the project has been implemented. Participation on the other hand, is the beneficiaries' actual resource input towards that particular project in from of commitment and opinions.

Back to our Blantyre scenario, vendors have, from inception, refused to have anything to do with the Flea Market: "Akalowamo okha mumsikamo ndithu!" (The authorities are going to use the market-not us) Notwithstanding such resentments, the City Assembly procured funds from Press Trust and constructed the Market according to its architectural conception. Some would argue that the Assembly consulted the leadership of the vendors, which brings up two crucial issues. First is the lack of representational legitimacy by leadership anywhere as substantiated by political prostitution of many Members of Parliament during the Third Term debate. All things considered, the vendor leadership is not going to use the Market on its own. Secondly and importantly, vendor leadership is a fluid and shifting term, because unlike traditional structures, it is not geographically stable. The organisation of vendors is more of a fluid workers union than a social structure, to which one can choose not to belong.

The first consultation would have been with vendors themselves, through a strategically designed participatory communication process of sharing concerns on city cleanness, security, taxation, overpopulation of streets, tourism and its contribution to national development. Such discussions would have likely brought up issues of unemployment, poverty, HIV/AIDS and extended family systems. The Assembly, probably motivated by its information experts, developed a linear solution to a problem which, to vendors themselves, does not exist. A second method-driven communication stratagem involving other town-dwellers and customers in appraising the aforementioned concerns would have learnt of popular views on vendors, their businesses, security concerns for women and children and their feelings with regards to design and location of the proposed Market. Such participatory communications may have yielded results, for the Assembly may never have needed to build the Flea Market after all! Even in the event of having to build a Market, the need would have come from the vendors with the approval of customers and its location and design would have taken into consideration their fears and opinions. Does the current location and design of the Flea Market perpetuate the mythical stigma that vendors are thieves?

About forty kilometers from the Flea Market, a water pump was installed at Thyolo District Secondary School, three years ago, away from the nearby Ntokotha and Kwanjana villages and along a road that leads out of the campus. Many villagers stopped drawing drinking water from the popular drinking well of Nanjoti because of the pump, though it was located further from their homes. Though having their own taps, most secondary school students used the pump to wash clothes as its location under the gmelina trees provided shade for telling and listening to latest gossips. During the day, the students were discouraged from using the pump by the many villagers who swarmed the pump, who, in some instances, were bathing and washing clothes right on the borehole! When the pump broke down, the villagers simply went back to Nanjoti and the students simply proceeded with the usage of their taps. For once, it was evident, no one owned the water pump and no-one remembered who installed it and for whom it was installed. Today, the water pump is just another graveyard of a development intervention.

In Blantyre, even if the Assembly employs Police force, vendors will always resort to covert forms of resistance and we could help them. The continued use of Limbe's old bus depot by mini bus operators with the collaboration of many passengers offers us a point of reference for this sort of resistance. Should government then abandon important projects because prospective beneficiaries are refusing to identify with them? In such cases, communication campaigns are necessary to sensitise and motivate people towards those projects before implementation, because the catchword is, no consultation no participation.

The painful certainty is, Malawi's many development projects, like Blantyre Flea Market and the Thyolo Secondary School water pump are just abandoned "cemeteries of development" to use Alfonso Gumucio's words, on which intended beneficiaries like vendors, are refusing to erect epitaphs, and rightly so. A caution for Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) and other development organisations as well!

Many thanks.

Linje Manyozo
Linjem@libero.it

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Please participate in a Pulse Poll on this same theme -

If you are journalist then you are a development communicator.

Do you agree or disagree?

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This issue of The Drum Beat is meant to inspire dialogue and conversation among the Drum Beat network.

To read contributions please click here.

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RESULTS from our last PULSE POLL:
as of September 3, 2004

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's Economic Adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that "African countries should refuse to repay their foreign debts." [BBC News July 6 2004 - click here for the article]

76.34% Agree
21.51% Disagree
2.15% Unsure

Total number of participants = 93

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This issue of The Drum Beat is an opinion piece and has been written and signed by the individual writer. The views expressed herein are the perspective of the writer and are not necessarily reflective of the views or opinions of The Communication Initiative or any of The Communication Initiative Partners.

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