Admit it you just don't like her

Two days ago the president of Malawi, Joyce Banda, fired all her ministers.  A government corruption scandal dubbed "cashgate" forced her hand.  Donors were getting angry and her prospects for winning the upcoming election next May were becoming dimmer by the day.  They are so dim in fact that it is pretty well understood by many in the country that getting rid of the ministers will not be enough.  She still has a lot of convincing to do.

Frankly this stuns me a bit and leads me to believe that many Malawians particularly in the South and Central regions are happy that they now have a respectable reason to publicly dislike someone whom they have always disliked privately.  A darling of the international community Banda has never garnered equally widespread support at home.  Even Malawian women leaders have largely kept their distance.

The complaints all seem to coalesce around the idea that she has not been "transformative enough."  But I can't help believe that for a large percentage of Malawians who have never really embraced Joyce, this complaint masks a stubborn refusal to change rather than a desire for more of it.

Let us remember the narrow margin by which she squeaked into power in the first place following Bingu's death.  Much of the country would have been quite happy to usher in Peter for continuity's sake rather than embrace the "radical" change of a female president from a different political party.

To this day the sheer unexpectedness of Joyce's presidential reign has left many of the previous powerbrokers in the country with a bad taste in their mouth and resentment over their subsequent need to scramble to find their footing within the new administration and PP.  Joyce's willingness to simply reshuffle many of Bingu's ministers in her cabinet was a compromise with this element.  Far from wanting transformation, the minimal changes that came were unexpected and unwelcome.

Finally the latest "cashgate" saga was triggered by someone in Banda's administration trying to affect change, and look where that got him.

Now the above is not so much a defense of Joyce as it is my reasons for being skeptical of those who claim to dislike her because of her lack of "transformation."