The politics of maize

By Kondwani Nyondo

On Saturday I was on my way to Crossroads when the road from Kamuzu Central Hospital Interchange to ADMARC slowed to a crawl. A long, unbroken line of trucks sat in traffic, each one loaded with maize. Sack after sack, covered with tarpaulins, stretched as far as the eye could see. It was a picture of abundance. And yet, in a country where millions struggle to find their next meal, the sight was unsettling rather than comforting.

Inside the minibus, someone finally said what everyone was thinking.

Where was all this maize before? Why did the government go all the way to Zambia to buy maize if we have this much here? And why are all these trucks rushing to ADMARC?

The driver joined in. He said he knew some of the truck drivers and had been told most of the maize was coming from Kasungu. Then he added, cautiously but loudly enough to be heard, that much of it allegedly belonged to politicians~some even former Cabinet ministers in President Lazarus Chakwera’s administration.

No one could verify that claim. No one laughed either.

Another passenger raised two questions of his own.

Is it true that we failed to harvest enough maize because of disasters year after year? And if that is so, how were these farmers lucky enough to have so much now?

The minibus had turned into a moving seminar. Street economists. Political analysts. Hunger philosophers.

Then came the question that sounded political and naïve at the same time~but it still landed.

So,if some ministers are commercial farmers themselves, was hunger ever supposed to end in this country? Or was it just part of the business model?

Silence followed. Not because people disagreed,but because the question was too close to the bone.

Another man broke it, angrily,explaining how elites had displaced his parents[smallholder farmers] in Mchinji from their land.They were turned into labourers and watchmen on soil they once owned. Yet,these were the same people who used to grow maize and sell it~only now they were buying it back at elite prices.

So how did this begin? someone asked.

Another passenger said it started when fertiliser became too expensive. Smallholders could no longer afford to farm, so they rented out their land to those who could. Hunger didn’t fall from the sky. It was structured.

And the poor will always surprise you with how they remember things. One man in the minibus reminded the passengers what Chakwera told the nation in Parliament in his last State of the Nation Address.

“You remember what he said?” he asked.

“He told us a bag of maize was costing K100,000,the same price as a bag of fertiliser. He even sounded proud of it.”

He reminded us how Chakwera compared his administration to Mutharika’s, arguing that in the past farmers had to sell several 50kg bags of maize to buy one bag of fertiliser.

“But here is the question he never asked,” the man continued, his voice rising.

“Who actually had the maize to sell? Who benefited from that equation? Who was celebrating those prices?”

Heads nodded.

The argument in the bus was simple: millions had been excluded from the economy.

They said most Malawians lived in rural areas, and their main occupation is agriculture. Maize was their lifeline. It is what they produce to feed workers, towns, and elites.

If the rich become farmers themselves, they argued,then who is left to buy from the poor?

They warned that the rural should never be turned into a target market.

Now, because of artificial shortages and elite hoarding, inflation has punished them twice~first by denying them income, then by selling food back to them at cruel prices.

Someone summed it up neatly:

“Chakwera commercialised survival. And we are asking,which economy does that?”

I am sure wherever those thinkers from the minibus are, they are happy that ADMARC has stopped buying maize from the rich. Forgive them.

Their logic is simple. maize must never be commercialised for the poor. If it must be commercial at all, then the market should not be the hungry,it should be industry, or exports. It should be profit without hunger.

But when the poor become the market for survival itself, something is deeply wrong,not just with policy, but with the soul of the economy.

The majority become dependent, and the government is forced to keep coming in with relief,bought with the same taxpayers’ money that should have built production.

And the internet is full of evidence. Someone even shared data showing how hunger has grown over the years.

In 2019, around one million Malawians faced hunger. By 2021, that number had risen to 1.2 million. In 2022 it reached 2.5 million. By 2023, nearly seven million people,about 33 percent of the population,were food insecure. Of these, 5.7 million were in the worst phase of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

So,hunger was spreading, and the majority of the poor had no choice but to watch.

Yeo.