Some weeks ago, while discussing politics in Africa with a Malawian acquaintance, I was interested to discover that two decades after the departure of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who ruled that country with an iron fist for 30 years, some Malawians look back to his era with nostalgia.

In Banda’s Malawi, according to one academic commentator, “the security apparatus enforced Banda’s power and that of his elite with considerable ruthlessness.”

What to some Malawians represents the golden age gone by, is also the time when conduct construed by the powers that were as undermining the authority of the state or public confidence in the government was punishable by up to five years in prison.

It was also the time when the president had power to detain people indefinitely without charge; the press was strictly controlled and journalists routinely locked up; and when the only news available domestically was government-generated news on state-owned electronic media.

It was also the time when one could be locked up for possession of books such as George Orwell’s “deeply subversive” Animal Farm.

So with all this in the background, why do some Malawians hanker after what seems like a terrible past? This, clearly, is an empirical question.

There are, however, anecdotal indications as to what turns them off about the present. For one thing, they have concerns about multiparty politics and the divisions they claim it has caused in society, the freedom of speech that came with it that allows anyone to say whatever they want regardless of the consequences; and the “rising indiscipline” manifest in people behaving whichever way they want, including questioning or disobeying lawful orders.

It is important to contextualise all this. It is noteworthy that throughout Dr Banda’s three-decade rule Malawi was a peaceful and politically stable country, something that evoked much pride among Malawians as wars and coups raged across the African continent.

Stability had a lot to do with Dr Banda’s total control over political space, which was fully occupied by his Malawi Congress Party. With the introduction of multiparty politics, however, the political arena has become something of a free for all, leading some Malawians to claim, with some exaggeration, that it has destroyed the uninterrupted peace they once enjoyed.

There is, however, something even more fundamental: Values. Democracy, some Malawians claim, has undermined important values to which they attribute the golden past they claim they have lost.

Listen to one Malawian speaking to a researcher during the Banda era: “You know why Malawi is peaceful? Because we are taught to respect our elders. We respect our parents; we respect our teachers; we respect those above us. All Malawians believe in unity, discipline, and obedience.”

Last week, as I followed developments across Uganda in the media, my mind went over these intriguing things I have heard or read about Malawi every now and then.

Three particular events struck me, raising questions in my mind regarding what it is about Uganda that makes them possible: One report narrated how a female Member of Parliament representing a rural constituency had been ‘beaten and left with a swollen jaw by tax collectors after she tried to intervene in an argument they were engaged in with traders who were not willing to cough up money they owed.

In a normal country, an MP would not interfere in the work of agents of the state so brazenly. And they, in turn would dare not take the law into their own hands in the event that such undue interference occurred.

Elsewhere, a small group of youthful informal traders in a small town outside Kampala were reported to have fought spirited battles with the police when the latter tried to evict them from a public space they had occupied illegally, which the local council accused them of rendering filthy, and which it wanted to reclaim and clean up.

The police triumphed, but only for a short while. After they scattered the traders, demolished their kiosks and left, the traders returned and started building new kiosks.

Brazen violation of the law is hardly uncommon in Uganda. Anyone who has been to Kampala would have noticed that the vast majority of the city’s motorcyclists operating motorcycle taxis otherwise known as boda boda, ride without safety headgear.

Many carry more than the recommended one passenger, some ferrying as many as four, right under the noses of seemingly powerless traffic cops.

One consequence of this peculiar state of affairs is that there are more people with broken limbs and cracked heads in the city’s hospitals than should be there if traffic laws were enforced with the required consistency.

As for motorists, again if you live in Kampala ,you would have seen many drive or park on pedestrian sidewalks.

Ask Ugandans why all this happens. Many will claim “too much freedom” and blame it on “democracy.” Call it simplistic and, truth be told, it is. Interestingly, many Malawians and Ugandans would disagree and possibly point to authoritarianism as the answer. Is it?

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]