Aford says DPP ‘blindfolding’ North Malawi on cruel quota system
Alliance for Democracy (Aford) has hit at the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of ‘blindfolding’ northerners that it will abolish its controversial quota system.
The quota system, which the Malawian government refers to as Equitable Access to University Education, requires higher education institutions to admit students based on where they come from. It is aimed at discouraging a trend under the merit system that saw people from the north entering higher education in greater numbers than students from the south.
In a statement made available to Nyasa Times signed by Aford president Enoch Chihana’s spokesman Saulso Thindwa said the controversial quota system “is not only cruel to the people of the region, but also inhuman as it suppresses brilliant Northern Region students while promoting average students from other regions to have space at the University. “
The statement adds: “The quota system has become very unpopular among Northerners as most deserving students with good points, fail to have entry into the University.”
According to Aford, President Peter Mutharika wanted to make announcement of abolishing quoat system when he commissioned the Chitipa Water Supply Project.
Aford said: “DPP must be told that it is just wasting time on its plan to blindfold Northerners on the evil of the quota system of education. Let it be aware of the fact that Northerners have had enough of such harsh treatment under its leadership.”
However, Aford said government should construct public universities in the northern region as is the case with the Central and Southern regions.
Aford said it is “ an insult to the people of the Northern Region “on the plans that the DPP-led government to turn public Secondary Schools in the North into Universities.
“We have witnessed the state of the art university, which stands magnificently in Thyolo, Southern Region. We also have College of Medicine, Polytechnic, and other constituents of the University of Malawi in the Southern and Central Regions; yet North has none,” reads the statement.
It further states: “It is now rumoured that DPP intends to turn Mzuzu Government Secondary School into a University structure. For once, why can’t the Government build a proper University in the North other than turning Secondary Schools into universities? This clearly shows that the DPP led-Government does not value Northerners. DPP must stop taking Northerners for granted.”
President Mutharika has said groundwork for Mombera University in Mzimba is epxetced to start.
DPP spokesman Francis Kasaila rubbished Aford ‘s statement as “cheap political propaganda.”
Kasaila said quota system was introduced by Malawi Congress Party administration and not DPP, saying the Equitable Access to University Education is a government policy not party matter.
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Let’s agree with AFORD,there is nothing that can be told to Malawians on quota system,especially the hated Northerners.It is Banda who came with this divisive notion which still hangs in our dreams.In fact,what prompted Banda to come with this tribalistically motivated inclination? According to the UN San Fransisco Conference of 1945, which promulgated the Charter,stated that Education is the right of every human being,why does the Malawi government insists on hellish QUOTA SYSTEM which has dangerously divided our beloved fatherland? God’s talent is impossible to take it away from anybody.Quota System or no quota system,nothing will deter the people of the North from fulfilling their dreams.ONE MALAWI,ONE NATION!!!!!!!!!
Shaa! Kani Shaulots Tchinjwa alipo? Good to hear he has joined politics.
Ok! From football let’s go to soccer!!!!
The MCP led government silently abandoned quota system after some students studying law at Chancellor College in 1991 challenged the criteria in the High Court whose ruling was delivered in 1992, the criteria having been introduced in 1989. The matter came before Justice HM Mtegha of the High Court, as then was, who ruled in the students’ favour.
When it comes to substandard projects, the DPP throws them in the north. In fact, this nonsense of turning non-tertiary institutions into universities was also done by Muluzi. I am inclined to believe that southern leaders do not wish the north anything good, from education to economic and social development, and yet they have the audacity to go to the north and talk rubbish about development and political fairness.
Mutharika was just barking in Chitipa. He should have been shown how substandard Karonga-Chitipa road is. Kasaila has never impressed me with both his looks and understanding of issues. He is as bad looking as his lack of connecting the quarter system to Bingu Mutharika. The MCP introduced it but it eventually ceased to have full implementation. The fact is the DPP leadership likes to use people during elections and then marginalize them thereafter. The north is never or has never been a priority in development. The region is regarded as a threat to other regions.
Denying smart students to go to college is an evil calculation to restrict production of future technocrats who would eventually transform the region or should I say the leadership visualizes a dominance of technocrats from the north in all government sectors hence the introduction of elimination through quarter system.
Kasaila, you should know that your days are numbered in government and DPP risks extinction come 2019.We will not let this evil party rule us beyond 2019.It is DPP which is a party of death, darkness, and backwardness, and not MCP.
Tell DPP You NEED AIRPORT;
STADIUM ; MOMBERA VERSITY which they promised your people there
PEOPLE NEED DEVELOPMENT
NOT STORIES
THATS WHY I HATE THESE FAMILY PARTY POLITICS
I am a Northerner and very proud to be.
I am also a very angry Northerner, because Northerners have become so dull, that they are content to live on past glory.
It is natural, for people to want not to look stupid, that is why people from other regions claim that they were just as educated as people from the North, but the truth is, until recently, there were more educated people from the North than there were from the other two regions put together. This is why there were more Northerners in all sorts of high positions in a diverse range of responsibilities. Contrary to propaganda by others, these people did not get there by nepotism, they got there by education, just like now, people from the rest of the country are where they are because of education.
What AFFORD is saying, is very counter-productive for the North.
The North has become complacent and Northerners have been made to believe that they are naturally educated, which is rubbish. Education is acquired through hard work and Northerners abandoned working hard in school in favour of Quota rhetoric.
Because of this complacency and living on past glory, Northerners have been overtaken by the other two regions as far as education is concerned, and banging on about quota system is not helping.
Truth be told, that as we speak, Northern region school children are probably the dullest on average because they are being fed and are lapping up this rubbish about Quota system.
If as Thindwa is saying, that Northern Region students are brilliant, surely the Quota System should make no difference. Produce these brilliant students that Quota System has suppressed. Surely as a nation, if such students were brought to light we would not sit by and let brilliant minds go to waste just because they are from the North?
What Northerners forget is, if you tell someone “Mulije mahara imwe” that person will try to prove you wrong and work hard for it. This is what has and is happening, Children in the South and Centre are working hard to dispel the myth that the North has the brightest students, at the same time students in the North are doing nothing to maintain their status, thereby being overtaken by far by their counterparts in the other regions. I would go as far as saying Northern region students are probably the worst behaved compared to others.
I would therefore advise Northerners to stop this ridiculousness of telling their children, “Even if you pass well you will not be taken to University because of the Quota System”
What does the child do, stops working hard, and passes badly, and blames Quota System.
Please Northerners stop living in the past, break this cycle of Quota System, Quota System, Quota System, Quota System. Encourage the children to work hard Quota system cannot and should not be their educational ceiling.
Please Note: Nowhere have I mentioned “Tumbuka”, these days there are more people in the North that have come from elsewhere, that regard themselves as Northerners and have fallen into the self-made Quota trap as well.
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking” —Albert Einstein
Very stupid post by this fake northerner.
CHALLENGE: REMOVE YOUR QUOTA SYSTEM TODAY (27/07/2017) AND LET THESE KIDS MEET IN AN EXAM ROOM AFTER A TERM OF LEARNING. RESULTS
NUMBER 1= NORTHERN REGION
NUMBER 2= CENTRAL REGION
NUMBER 3= SOUTHERN REGION
These are facts. You can turn, fall down, jump or even snooze…….. this will be result.
My son got 14 points from a rural school in the north yet he was not selected. I bought him all the books required for his school including Chanco manuals. Yet I noted with sorrow students with up to 23 points from South being selected into public universities.
IS THIS FAIR??????????…………………….ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!!
Ungwelu,
My point exactly, have you made the right noise about your son having 14 points, and have you pointed at a student with 23 points who went to University and asked why?
Chances are you are lying that you have a 14 point child, or that a 23 point child went to University? which is which. If both are true then you need to be talking about that, to expose the system, not just saying Quota System is evil, show it with facts.
Your reply to my post also just proves my point, Northerners, are becoming dull, can you prove that if you took 3 kids at random from the three regions the Northerner will be 1st? That is what I am saying you are training your children to be complacent, as a result they do not do well.
By the way your child is not the whole Northern region.
Your point looks foolish about quota system. You seem to be DPP sell out……
You will be talking about Quota, while your friends children are learning.
Muzamulila, when you discover the Educated North has indeed become the DULL North.
Kasaila mutu wako! Government policy ndiye kut chani? Policy yonunkhayo? To hell with your Equitable Access policy! Dont bring in MCP in this – DPP introduced this stinking policy during the second stupid term of the equally stupid Bingu wa Mutharika! Afordddddddddddddddd, Victoryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
No. Analyst, hold your fire. Do not not utter insulting words, please. Quota system was introduced by the MCP in September 1988 during the graduation ceremony at Chancellor College presided over by the Chairman of the University Council, JZU Tembo who represented Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. In February 6, 1989 teachers from the north were deported back to northern Malawi. In 1990 students at the University of Malawi, notably Ambokire Salimu, Chipungu, Charles Chidongondo Mhango and others challenged the University Council in the High Court on the selection procedure of students to the university. The matter came before High Court Judge Michael Harris Mtegha who ruled in the students’ favour. Quota system was silently abandoned. But the continual surge of students from northern Malawi led to the introduction of the same quota system disguised as “Equitable Access to University Education” during the Bingu administration. At one time High Court Judge Joseph Manyungwa handled a similar case on the quota system, and in his well articulated ruling he granted reliefs which the applicants had sought, and quota system was revived. However, northerners have every reason to complain. Most want they children to go ahead in pursuit of higher education. It is just unfortunate that Malawi is not keen enough to build as many universities as possible to accommodate all students irrespective of ethnicity. Those who are failing to get it should be assisted with enough resources and where they are failing they should advised to collect the mistakes. On the other hand, parents ought to take responsibility of taking care of their chidren. They should not just produce children and let them fend for themselves. Let them guide their children in their education endevaours. To be where the northerners are to date, in terms of their education, it dates back to the coming of the missionaries. This is illustrative in passages from a Nyasaland book. The edited parts are entirely mine, and are reproduced:
“In 1878 the missionaries of the Scottish Presbyterian Livingstonia Mission established their first posts in northern Malawi. The reasons behind these successes lay in the Mission’s profound attractions for different Tumbuka groups who maintained a coherent culture and economy, and visitors frequently described them as content to live their ‘idyllic lives’ uninterested in any change. The Tumbuka-speaking Henga who lived in Ngonde territory were despised as being refugees who run away from the Ngonis. Their formal religion was largely dead, and they were both ready to experiment with a new one and eager for the sort of mission education that would enable them to become successful traders, clerks and teachers. The Henga are alleged to have responded enthusiastically to the new educational opportunities. The Henga are a keen, vigorous, progressive people, the great majority of the church members are from among them; their schools are well attended, the pupils alert, and the boys and girls in about equal numbers. Through their embrace of an education which had a substantial English language component, the Henga were well on their way to developing an educated petty bourgeoisie with values shaped by Victorian missionary teaching and example.
For the Tumbuka under Ngoni domination the situation was somewhat more complex. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Ngoni leadership invited missionaries to live amongst them out of economic and political considerations.] At the same time, however, the Ngoni feared the corrosive impact of Christian teachings upon their military ethic. Rather than educate their own children, therefore, the Ngoni permitted the children of their Tumbuka slaves to attend the Mission’s schools. The subordinate Tumbuka were thus the earliest converts to Christianity in large numbers. For the Tumbuka, an added attraction of the Mission was that, from 1894 on, its main station at Kondowe was situated between the Ngonde to the north and the Ngoni to the south, in the very heart of empty territory then gradually being reoccupied by returning Tumbuka refugees. They thus saw the Mission as politically neutral.
The Mission’s educational work was remarkable. In 1893 there were ten schools with 630 pupils. By 1901 there were 55 schools which had an average attendance of 2800 pupils. By 1904 one station alone maintained some 134 schools with over 9000 students.[21] As evidence of the Mission’s educational impact, when Nyasaland’s governor visited it in 1911, he was told that in 1910 the area’s people had purchased 1200 lbs of writing paper and 30,000 envelopes from its shops. As the Tumbuka embraced western education … they … had been the first to grasp the new educational opportunities …” “ … English was central in the local school curriculum … pamphlets about local history … were published in Tumbuka for use in the area’s many primary schools …” Later John Gondwe, who became the next Chikulamayembe following the demise of his father Chilingozi Gondwe (who was Chikulamayembe from 1907 to 1931), sanctioned “compulsory education for all children in his chiefdom, the Nyasaland chief to do so. Within six years, a district officer could comment that ‘compulsory education in Chikulayembe’s country has ceased to be an experiment and is becoming an accomplished fact’.” Like his father, he had been educated at the Livingstonia Mission’s school.”
“When Scottish missionaries established the Blantyre Mission in 1876, they attracted their first converts from the defeated and enslaved Mang’anja. Mang’anja became the language of preaching and education, the language used in Biblical translation, and the first language of the country to have a scholarly dictionary… Vast estates comprising almost one million acres were obtained by a handful of settlers and companies during the 1880s as part of their strategy to induce the British government to annex the Shire Highlands. In 1861, missionaries had found the Shire Highlands thickly populated with Mang’anja villages. Disruptions from Yao invasions, the expansion of the slave trade, and a disastrous famine in 1862 soon resulted… With minor exceptions, it was this largely unoccupied and uncultivated land which was alienated to Europeans in the 1880s. The planters were thus in a strong position to defend their interests against both government and missions after the British annexed the area in 1890, successfully insisting upon the de facto right to run their estates pretty much as they wanted, without governmental interference and without an unwanted mission presence. Most planters barred mission work on their estates, and, therefore, in the south no networks of mission schools located in the villages developed as they did in the north. In the Southern Province education remained a relatively rare phenomenon. From the 1890s onwards, the issue that dominated the politics of southern Nyasaland centred on the nature of the terms on which Africans would be permitted access to the mostly empty lands held by the European planters.”
In the central province “The Chewa were also distinguished by an institution of remarkable resilience and vitality, the nyau societies, which served to unite the people in times of social stress and acted as powerful curbs on the influence both of missions and chiefs or headmen. Many Chewa desired Western education, but they had a well-founded fear that mission teachers would assail Chewa culture in the classroom and consequently hesitated to send their children to the mission schools.]All education, moreover, was controlled by French-speaking Roman Catholics and Afrikaans-speaking members of South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church, both committed to policies that de-emphasized the use of English because of a fear that its use would encourage labour migrancy.”
From the above, Malawians drew you own conclusions. But the question is: is it worthwhile stopping building new universities because of stiff competition generated by students coming from elsewhere in Malawi? Mzuzu Government Secondary School is not suitable to be a university. It is somehow too old, just too small a structure for that purpose. One cannot compare it to Mzuzu Teachers’ Training College which was built in MCP era and was later converted into a university during UDF era. Let us emurate Zambians or Kenyans who have built modern universities to accommodate increasing number of students. Quota system will never put Malawi on the map of countries that are able, at least, to accommodate all students. But eeeh Elizwe liyoneke!!!
Foolish and Selfish Northerners!!! Mwatha manda athu ku Chitawira apa!!!
Heeyi!!! Sheeh! Mudala Hlabezulu Ngonoonda wa hlaba kakhulu!!!!!!!!!! It would be foolish to continue debating on the Quarter System after this well articulated reasoning. Except for fools. The bottom line is that Quarter system was evil and still remain evil.
I also salute the writer who wrote that Ambokile and others took it to court. So what else do we need to prove that this is EVIL? NORTHERNERS DO NOT BE FOOLED , DPP WILL NOT ABOLISH THIS BECAUSE IT IS THEIR BABY THEY WATCHED IT GROW! NEVER ALLOW MZUZU GOVERNMENT SECONDARY SCHOOL TO BE A UNIVERSITY. AYIIIIIIH!!!!!
Give facts not fiction.
Quota was started with Dr Banda, those that old enough know that when the academy started Dr Banda announced that students will go to the academy on merit. He said they will be listed from number 1, 2, 3 etc. until the Academy places are filled. These students were Standard 8 students.
The first intake was listed and given to Dr Banda. All students were from the North.
That is when Dr Banda decided, that merit was not a good idea, but he would take the best 10 from each District. He then extended that to university intake, by identifying districts where there were very few educated people. The first districts to use quota to go to university were Chitipa and Nsanje. While the whole country was selected to University on merit, 10 places were reserved for Chitipa and 10 for Nsanje.
While Dr Banda was busy doing other things, someone decided, why stop at Chitipa and Nsanje, why not the whole country.
That is how the Quota system started.
To show that “Analyst” is just a political idiot, how come during Muluzi there was the same talk and Cases in court about Quota System, was Muluzi DPP?