DASAdventureHunter t1_isexvu5 wrote on October 15, 2022 at 1:37 PM

Reply to comment by papadjeef in First female chief in Malawi, South Africa ends child marriage by messyredemptions

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

DASAdventureHunter t1_isdnaiy wrote on October 15, 2022 at 4:04 AM

Reply to comment by Majorian18 in First female chief in Malawi, South Africa ends child marriage by messyredemptions

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.