Last
week, Thoko from Bangwe shared with us his views about the on-going national
identity registration exercise. He highlights the benefits of a national ID
scheme; at the top of the benefits being the possibility of an efficient public
service delivery system. By and large, Thoko also highlights the challenges
that a national ID scheme may bring; disenfranchisement and the excesses of a
nanny State among others.
The
national identity registration exercise has also revealed a rather unfortunate
scenario. Those who consider themselves Malawians – born, bred and walk the
soil – and yet they are not ‘black’ or indeed speak ChiChewa/ChiNyanja with an
‘accent’ have had their claims to what I call the Malawi genus questioned or
outright thrown into the trash can. These sad stories are awash in both social
and print media.
The
revelations point to a deep-seated narrative of what constitutes the Malawi
genus – species – of us the human beings who for one reason or the other call
this potato-shaped territory of this Earth home. This deep-seated narrative
relates to the conception of ‘identity’. The conception of ‘identity’ has
exercised academics, legal and policy makers over the years. The limitations of
space here are such that I cannot fully espouse the conception of ‘identity’ in
the Cultural Identity school in the academy or its configuration at law and
policy. Suffice it say, for present purposes I will seek to share some thoughts
on ‘identity’ based on a ‘Belonging’ / ‘Othering’ dichotomy.
There
are aspects of ‘identity’ that are based on categories such as ethnicity, race,
language, religion, a (national) culture, gender, orientation or citizenship. The
way we identify ourselves depends, in large measure, on how we feel about, or value, that which we consider as the dominant influence of our
being. The feeling (the psyche) or the value-system we attribute to ourselves
will inform the dominant weight on that which defines our sense of belonging.
In this way, there are some of us who place more weight on one category more
than the other in the process of identifying
ourselves. In this way, a person may place weight on ethnicity, race, language,
religion, a (national) culture or citizenship to differing degrees in order to identify themselves.
Othering
in relation to ‘identity’ is oppositional. Othering involves a process where
oneself conjures an ‘identity’ of difference; of denying. The ‘self’ that is
othered is often denigrated as lacking the state of ‘same-ness’. So, we learn
that Greeks called – othered – all non-Greeks as barbarians. Barbarians did not
have the same-ness of Greeks. Barbarians were different. Barbarians were denied
the characteristics of reason, dignity or nobility that defined
human-being-ness according to the Greeks. In modern society, the Other may be a
race, a religion, gender or nation-state. In other words, the process of
othering is almost always underwritten by a sense of superiority.
Indeed,
othering has been a result of clash of civilizations. This is pervasive in
history: The voyages of discovery and the scramble of Africa are some examples.
Othering has also been a result of the Freudian ‘narcissism of minor
differences’ whereby group A others group B because group B is seen as a threat
to the identity and pride of group A. This Freudian dimension has led to the
Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and the Bosnian Genocide.
[A
rider: the categories of ‘identity’ may at once be empowering and subjugating.
History and context will matter.]
So;
what is the Malawi genus? Who is in the Malawi genus? The Malawi genus is
primarily defined by citizenship. Who becomes a Malawian citizen is down to,
generally, the circumstances of one’s birth, the process of naturalization or
even as a result of marital relations. Broadly described, our citizenship law
allows a child born in the country to acquire Malawian citizenship; a person
acquires Malawian citizenship through naturalization on account of long-term
residence; and a person acquires Malawian citizenship on account of marriage.
The
episodes, therefore, of those Malawians who are ‘not-black’ or speak
ChiChewa/ChiNyanja with an ‘accent’ and had their claim to u-Nzika questioned or denied are most unfortunate and deplorable.
We need some robust reflection in this country. We must realize that the Malawi
genus is not composed of a unified and (easily) determined ‘identity’. The
Malawi genus is a mosaic of ‘sub-identities’ which – to use the language of
Cultural Identity scholarship – is often contradictory or unresolved
identities. Hence, in the exercise of State authority, a public officer – at
whatever level – must not be clouded by the lenses of skin colour or lingua. We
must move from m’Tumbuka, m’Chewa, m’Chawa, Nguru, m’Mwenye, m’Kaladi yada-yada. There are robust ways of verifying one’s
Malawi-ness. And one of those ways is not the colour of the skin or (purity of)
accent. The othering must end.
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