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Majorian18 t1_isd08kq wrote

Wait, I thought Malawi was a republic

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taronosaru t1_isd2npp wrote

From what I understand, many countries in Africa have a kind of mishmash government, where traditional chiefs still maintain some level of power over their own people, but laws and foreign policy are decided by whatever formal government is in place.

Of course, I only know this from Googling whether Nigeria even has a prince, so I am by no means an expert...

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DASAdventureHunter t1_isdnaiy wrote

Malawi has the overarching government but most people only have interaction with people in their tribe. More specifically in their Traditional Authority (TA), kind of like a collection of villages.

There's a chief in charge of a village (maybe 30 households).

A Traditional Authority in charge of several cheifs (several hundreds to thousands of housholds).

A paramount chief who is charge of a whole tribe (several thousands to millions depending on the tribe).

That's the tribal structure which almost kinda acts parallel to the republic of Malawi. For the republic government there are Districts (kind of like states/provinces), and then the national government (parliament, president, and supreme court)

In the less populated parts of the country people tend to interact more with tribal chiefs than the main government. This might have change since the Chewa tribe lost the presidency but idk.

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papadjeef t1_isdp6mw wrote

First: nice! Malawi is awesome. They, like lots of places, have post colonial, modernism, and urbanization problems but they are generally preserving things they do right that western countries get wrong.

>most people only have interaction with people in their tribe.

A large percentage of the population live in Lilongwe and Blantyre-Limbe. Tribes are not well delineated in those urban areas. I was just talking with some friends there about the cultural changes coming from so many children born in cross tribal marriages.

Also, I don't understand how she could be the "first" woman chief. Yao and Sena are matrilineal and tend to prefer women as chiefs. I was just in Zomba where the "Village" (or neighborhood) chiefs are women.

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DASAdventureHunter t1_isexvu5 wrote

True on all points. Lilongwe, Blantyre, Zomba are very different from the rest of the country.

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Boggie135 t1_isedzrd wrote

She’s a chief in a region of Malawi. This is very common in Sub Saharan Africa

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