A holistic approach to bullshit: How NGOs and the media have failed Malawians
About two decades ago, as a cub reporter at one of the two print media giants, I was a newsroom resource of little consequence and so my editors placed me on call to periodically travel the country with several NGOs, covering their projects and documenting the success stories (only success stories) for the newspaper’s features page.
It was during these numerous sojourns that a new catch phrase happened: holistic approach.
While this phrase did not seem to have particular ownership and proprietorship among the NGO sector, it was generally used to define the NGOs’ rounded and inclusive approach to human life – from health, education to sanitation.
For purposes of clarity, the quasi-dictionary on my laptop defines a holistic approach as taking care of something totally in all aspects.
“As an example, when we are saying holistic living it means a complete and vast understanding of all the aspect of our life and way of living, it covers everything that enable us to live healthy and happy.
“…it includes the status of our body, mind and spiritual well-being, it is not restricted to find out the disease if there is any and cure it. It is taken as all the component of a being are interdependent and affect others in less or more way to get overall health and to create and maintain a healthy and blissful state of our body, mind, and spirit.”
What I understood the NGOs to mean was that, in their unflinching quest to cast out the demons of poverty, they were keen on ensuring that all aspects of a person’s needs were addressed – hence, holistic. As in whole.
Like I alluded to earlier, that was many years ago.
I was a tired, mostly hungry, impatient, rash, underpaid, underappreciated and overworked young cub reporter.
So, once the tour of duty was completed and I had drunk away the particular NGO’s ‘allowance’, I sat down on the computer to compose a flowery feature to impress my benefactors, who in turn, would use the article to impress their sponsors.
It was a win-win situation. They eat, I eat. We all eat. No crime was committed here.
Of course, my judgement was partially impaired and heavily compromised and, in all honesty, the articles neither represented the situation on the ground nor did they try to examine the underlying problems.
As I have moved up the ranks in the newsroom – sub-editing and then editing – this tradition has continued to exist and grow and has become a sub-culture in its own right. Reporters knocking off on Thursday for the weekend will ask you if you have any chipondamtengo assignment for the weekend.
And then the chipondamtengo stories start flooding in on Sunday and Monday.
While one feels a moral obligation to curb this vice, how does one stop a lowly-paid junior from trying to make ends meet? Regardless of the means?
But I do realise now that this folly of thought is one of the major problems that has allowed this malaise to become the rule rather than the exception.
As journalists, we have been amiss in our duties as gatekeepers; in holding those in position in the NGO sector to account.
We have been complicit in this crime and, over time, we seem to have forgotten who we serve between the people and the paymaster.
I wish we showed the same enthusiasm and hunger in investigating the NGOs as we do with government instead of parroting verbatim off their little red book.
For starters, while reports of massive corruption and cases of Cashgate in the NGO sector are common knowledge, they usually go unreported by the media. And even if these cases are reported, it is not with the same enthusiasm as is done with katangale wa boma.
That aside, one has yet to see the NGO sector being held to account for the many problems that they have brought to the rural masses or the lack of accountability for their projects.
We remember truly well how DCs in Ntchisi and Rumphi in the past years raised concerns on how the NGOs in their areas congested their resources in certain areas while in other areas in the same district there were no NGOs for miles on end.
It makes one wonder what kind of impact the NGOs seek to impact when they seem so grossly out-of-touch with the reality on the ground.
Which brings me to the final point.
What impact can the NGO sector point to in Malawi since they entered the fray versus the billions of dollars that have been spent on eradicating poverty?
Because, if I remember pretty well, the global poverty index says Malawi is poorer today than she was 20 years ago.
While it is government’s core duty to work towards alleviating poverty, one notes that most of the NGOs say that their mission is to complement government’s efforts. And, in all fairness, when these efforts come to nought, both government and non-governmental organisations should bear the brunt.
And both parties should be weighed on the same scale.
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The issue is that donors do trust NGOs believing they are transparent and committed to using the funding they get for the intended purpose. However, this is not the case as most of them are so corrupt than the government itself. For instance, if you talk of eliminating corruption in the country like Malawi who do we pin first? Its public institutions that’s all. We never mind what is happening to “our” money in civil society organisations or “our” money in the private sector. These two sectors are never publicly audited and trust me they are the ones making Malawians poorer than ever. We do not hold them accountable and they go free and will never be asked to account for their wrong? Their procurement officers inflate prices of raw materials and transportation costs entirely for their personal gain. The cost is silently transferred to poor customers and there goes the day. Noone knows and not even ACB can catch such thieves unless one within the system reports them, but this hardly done so goes the day. The same happens to NGOs through faulty procurement, recruitment of so-called consultants etc. But looking at the public sector, NGOs and private sector then we will be talking about holistic approach to ending corruption.
Been waiting for an article like this.
I remember when donors decided to channel funds through NGOs rather than Government. The reasoning behind it was great. But the solution!
I am a contractor and would like to take the opportunity to ask NCIC to find a way to look into the shameful activities of NGOs involved in building. Their procurement is eish!! – no words to describe their ignorance and malpractices. Yes, ignorance as well. Government departments will employ qualified people in correct numbers to produce a bid document and conduct a real bid evaluation. Compare with the donkeys that sit on works procurement systems at NGOs. The result is loss through ignorance. And corruption hides in this ignorance. They never really get anything built of quality and quantity befitting the amounts given to them.
Donor money is still best channeled through government because even when there are such things as cashgate, government still has those systems of checks and balances that eventually root out the culprits. You stop chanelling money through government as a response to cash gate. Then you start doing it through NGOs. NGOs probably siphon more of your money and get away with it because they are not answerable to the same checks andbalances that expose government malpractice. If audited, an NGO will say they are being witch hunted, and we are quick to believe.
Congrants Wongani these are the issues that we should be discussing here on how we can deal with them obviously the NGOs and Media while they are playing a great role, but they have failed at times.eg. on issues of service mobile providers they have portrayed no negative News, yet there are a lot of issues.Maunits pena amangotha zosaoneka bwino, but no single or honest brave journalists who has written any viable article something wrong with our media.For NGOs they just liquidate money most of them they know themselves that they will not enter the kingdom of God unless they repent the money meant for orphans which have ended in their pockets.
Do you know that the money that donors pour to NGOs can be 5 0r 10 times than government budget but no accountability. We only target civil servants in government for cashgate saying its our taxes, yet also the money given to NGOs or CSOs are meant for Malawians. BRAVO for the article.I ask you just to analyse for one council in Malawi the money that goes to NGOs and that government spend in the council. Do a comparative analysis and see if there is impact or not for both NGOs and government so that we know the truth that between the two who is the worsest between the two, so that they are taken to task.Osamangodzudzula Boma naga inuyo. GOD BLESS MALAWI.
This article makes me really sad and angry. Since 2008 I have been sponsoring a boy, his family and community through an international NGO. There has been Cash Gate, Tractor Gate, Maize Gate, all the corruption happening at the Parastatals. Not a single Kwacha has been recovered. During the biggest hunger crisis, you have a president that tells his own people to eat mice and shut up while he flies his entire family to the US for any minor medical treatment. You have a president that brings the entire country to a standstill whenever he decides to drive from one palace to the next, in a motorcade so big that even Donald Trump gets jealous. It‘s the government that selects the areas where NGO‘s can work. NGO‘s have to work within the limitations of local rules and regulations. Yes, they can decide to leave the country and help people elsewhere as the NGO I support has done last year. Leaving Malawi because the projects have not led to the expected results. I personally have spend money and energy to find a school where my sponsored child could get an informal education to become a bricklayer after failing to pass grade 6 of primary school three times in a row. He ran away from that school several times during his informal education because it was too hard work. During that time he impregnated a young girl and now he sits at home doing nothing. With no idea of how to feed his family. Having wasted an opportunity that millions of poor children would give everything for. Is it now my fault for trying to help him get out of his own poverty? Yes, maybe you can blame the NGO‘s for not being perfect but maybe it‘s a question of character too. Why else do all the community structures break down again once the NGO‘s stop paying allowances?????
I guess you have learned the hardway what the causes of chronic poverty are. It is not the lack of money that makes people poor – rather it is the inability to produce goods/services. And this inability stems from tardiness, lack of motivation and bad behaviour. Next time identify a hardworking, motivated and well behaved African and sponsor him/her and you will be successful. And if all sponsors and NGOs adopted this approach, their success rate would be very high.
Beautiful advice I have one graduating this year two girls at Lilongwe technical one grade 1 and another grade 2 . The pleasure is enormous when they bring excellent results. Our friend should drop this rascal and find a more deserving boy or girl. There many out there. You will get the fulfillment like we do but don’t stop that’s your ministry.
Indeed. So, the media is only now revealing the collusion, as it were, with NGOs?
This is not revealing, as we can all witness the expensive houses built by NGO Bwanas, in places like Chileka, like they are on first world wages; only for the houses not to be completed, and sold off, when the NGO donors stop the charity donation – Chitsime chimauma nthawi zina!
This is a very great and important piece. I agree with you and I have had similar observations. I once worked as an intern conducting evaluations for this other NGO in Mnchinji. Farmers were told to construct fences for empty pieces of land and were given bottles of Fanta so that they lie to us that those fenced pieces of land were vegetable gardens. I was convinced based on the responses I got from the interviews that there were indeed vegetable gardens until I visited a home where hunger was written all over the kids faces. This made me curious because the woman was bragging as to how the project had helped them to be food secure. I then decided to check out the garden which she refused me but I insisted and she spilt the beans that no one had a garden. But this was the last week of the research and I had been in the area for a month. This meant that I had a lot of questionnaires that indicated that people in this area were food secure and hadvegetable gardens which translated into a success story report. It’s high time as Malawians we become responsible and call out such malpractices. It’s high time we stop being selfish and greedy and call a spade a spade if the country to attain any form of development.
It’s also the culture of lying through out teeth we need to eradicate in this country. Lying to steal, lying to cheat even your partner … Simply put, lying faster than we walk, abale inu.
Yes. NGOs are the biggest curse. A big bull shit
Good article and I agree with you that there has to be a change in the way NGOs, donors, governments, CSOs and communities should work. There has to be very solid Service Level Agreements developed and clear terms agreed and transparently practised by all. I actually disagree with you that it is an NGO or media fault. I thinks the fault is a collective one. Donors included. Also you haven’t provided any examples of the corruption in NGOs. it will be good if you can write another article to expose that. Suffice to say that the impact of NGOs can not be underestimated. They have performed well in reproductive health sector, in Disaster Risk Management and in Emergency Response. But areas that have failed in my opinion is Agriculture, Water and Sanitation and Education. These sectors need an overhaul and reexamination.
Even in those areas you say performance has been exemplary, a chunk indeed a very big chunk of the money is still sucked up by the corruption culture in NGOs.
I salute you. You are one of a kind. What kind of a world we could make if we were all to accept our mistakes. But, we also have to make these kinds of mistakes in order to learn from them.
good article
Wonderful piece with great observations. You may wish to know that the donors who supply to NGOs provide very strict rules what their funds should be spent on. If you don’t stick to the rules, you lose funding. It is all about white man’s philosophy to keep us poor and begging. If we want economic freedom, then the answer is “us” not some donor money working magic. However we can can take advantage of NGOs presence to focus only on SUSTAINABLE investments, while we let the chaff to NGOs. However that path is slow and demands a lot of patience… NO ONE SHOULD CHEAT YOU THAT THERE’S A QUICK FIX TO THAT…
I agree with you. Every Malawian is responsible in developing this country. Be it by planting some trees at home or by implementing policies. Now that you have spoken about these NGOs, may you start exposing them for who they really are. If not to the ordinary Malawian, then to their sponsors.
The western donors are also tax payers ..they too have their own disabled ..elderly ..and homeless to look after…some of the people who donate money are poor people who want to feed children dying of starvation only to realise that the bosses in ngo used the money to buy a third massive house for themselves ..people in the West are realising that Africa is poor coz of corruption..they wonder what makes malawi poorer even after billions of donations over the years..a lot of people don’t want to donate anymore…..something needs to be done quickly to stop NGO s financially abusing the poor…maybe people who work in NGO s need to work as volunteers first for a year to make sure they get staff members who really care and not just in it for the money for themselves. .
Yes you committed a crime ‘fraud’.
Important discussion you’ve started here Wongani. Write articles exploring this topic. You do be serving your people to do so. How much of these monies are spent in Malawi and end up in Malawian hands or directly benefiting Malawians. Explore differences in pay between local and international staff. Recently we’ve heard of #metoo stories in the international NGO sector from harassment for employment, sex for aid disaster areas, babies left behind by NGO staff, etc. We’ve heard very little about Malawi.
Yes…check the white guys who work im NGOs also….like NASFAM has a big thief in Gerard Grant….