In the past two weeks news sources have reported plans by the clergy of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian Livingstonia Synod to hold a march to present a petition to the government and the response of police with riot gear and tear gas surrounding the church offices to stop the march.

The first news story discussing what information was known about the petition and planned march came from the Nyasa Times.  This article from December 20 discussed the fact that a petition would be presented to the government but said the final wording was not established yet.  The article says “Officials at the Synod headquarters say there are a number of issues which they are petitioning the government but top of the subject is the education quota system which has seen the northern regions share of form one secondary school selection dropping to less than fifty percent.”  The root of the complaint is an on-again/off-again quota system for students from different regions of the country to get into public schools.  The clergy are advocating for a merit system.  (This article outlines the chronology of the use and dropping of the quota system.  The government has indicated they will use it again in the coming year.)

The second article, from Afrique en ligne, begins with

Heavily-armed police officers Thursday used tear-gas and road blocks in the northern Malawi city of Mzuzu to stop a protest march organised by church and civil society leaders, to protest against the policies of the administration of President Binguwa Mutharika.

It goes on to say

“They used teargas to prevent reverends from getting out of church premises,” said Yeremiah Chihana, a politician and bitter critic of the Mutharika administration. “We are ready to march but police are everywhere in the streets. They are threatening to shoot us.”

This second article adds more details about the perceived problem with the quota system – the charge is that the quota system unfairly limits students from the northern part of the country where Livingstonia Synod is located.  One of the arguments made is that the system should be competitive to keep the education system strong and counter a trend towards laziness.

There is no word on what is next.

One of the most interesting things is the comments on the first article.  One person identified as Khowu says

Livingstonia Synod, please wear your armour and let’s match on! And you people who are calling our clerics names, you mean you do not see that this is more than this stupid quota thing? You cannot see that this is the beginning of ethnic cleansing? We shall fight and you know what, we are going for a federal arrangement…

Livingstomia [sic] Synod, you are the custodians of our faith, our culture, our development, our inheritance, our pride. PLEASE PROTECT US!!

Another, writing under the name Malawian, adds an interesting detail:

To understand the Livingstonia Synod one has also to consider the fact they actually run the best primary school system in the country and in many ways it is this system that accounts for the success of the “North”. The government should try to understand that incredibly successful system and see how it can be “nationalised”.

In this case I read “nationalised” to mean taking the model national, not to have the national government take over the school system.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.  Three of the CCAP’s five synods are in Malawi and each represents not just a region but strong ethnic traditions.  In addition, it has been my impression that the synods have significant autonomy and the central CCAP organization is not particularly strong.  At the present time statements are made on a regional level by the synods – it would be interesting to see some unified, and more influential, action taken by the three synods together.

UPDATE: Victor Kaonga in his blog NDAGHA has posted on “Which way Malawi and the Faith Community?” where he mentions the Livingstonia Synod clergy actions in the larger context of what is happening in the country.  Thanks for the context.

Addendum: On a completely different topic, but related to the church in Malawi, there has been a series of moderate earthquakes including a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in the Karonga area of Malawi on December 19.  The current numbers that I am seeing list three deaths, 256 injured severely enough to be treated at hospitals, and upwards of 6000 in need of relief aid.  There is work within the CCAP to round up relief supplies and among the world-wide appeals include those in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the PWS&D of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (and many individual PCC churches have gotten the word out on their web sites) who are working with the CCAP.  Within the PC(USA) there is a situation report and fund at PDA and Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery has a Malawi Partnership and is soliciting relief aid on their web site.