The State and Labour Control in Malawi: Continuities and Discontinuities between One-Party and Multiparty Systems

Dzimbiri, Lewis B.

AfricaBib

bibliographic database
Line

New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article

Leiden University catalogue

WorldCat

Title:	The State and Labour Control in Malawi: Continuities and Discontinuities between One-Party and Multiparty Systems
Author:	Dzimbiri, Lewis B.
Year:	2005
Periodical:	Africa Development: A Quarterly Journal of CODESRIA (ISSN 0850-3907)
Volume:	30
Issue:	4
Pages:	53-85
Language:	English
Notes:	biblio. refs.
Geographic terms:	Malawi Central Africa
Subjects:	labour policy labour relations Politics and Government Labor and Employment Development and Technology Economics and Trade politics Labor unions One party systems Politics, Practical Labor policy Industrial relations
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483835
Abstract:	An analysis of State-labour relations in Malawi over a period of four decades reveals, like in other countries in Southern Africa, tendencies towards continuities and discontinuities in labour controls. While Malawi's political system has undergone a major transformation to democracy in the 1990s, after three decades of dictatorship which was hostile to trade unions through administrative, political and legal apparatuses, the democratic State has been marked by 'diplomatic' hostility through divide-and-rule and hide-and-seek tactics. Using different means the State has succeeded in curtailing freedom of association in varying degrees during the one-party and multiparty periods. Thus, while labour control as an objective of the State has not changed, the means have changed dramatically. The desire to achieve political stability and economic development, against a changed international political order demanding human rights and good governance in the 1990s, explains the current 'diplomatic' hostility in Malawi's industrial relations. The role of the international donor community in exporting democratic structures and values to societies that do not have an in-built culture of democracy similar to Western societies is viewed as a further explanation for the creation of significant degrees of discrepancies between labour policy and practice in Malawi. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]