Sexual behaviour in the face of risk: the case of bar girls in Malawi's major cities

The first case of AIDS in Malawi was diagnosed in 1985. The close association of AIDS with sexual promiscuity led the Ministry of Health to mount a campaign to create awareness of the dangers of promiscuous sex. Surveys so far carried out indicate that about 80 per cent of bar girls carried the HIV virus. This study sought to investigate why young women became bar girls, how much they knew about AIDS, and why they persisted in what is regarded as a high-risk occupation. The study revealed that economic necessity was a major consideration in engaging and persisting in commercial sex. Poverty then may be a major factor in the rapid spread of AIDS in Malawi

Emerging Reality in Customary Land Tenure: The Case of Kachenga Village in Balaka District, Southern Malawi.

This paper discusses land tenure changes that have occurred in one village in Balaka district, southern Malawi and the forces that have been at work. The current land tenure system departs in a number significant of ways from what is supposed to be the ideal situation. Among the important changes are the diminishing role of the group village headman as allocator of land rights, increasing importance of family heads as allocaters of land rights and the development of an informal land market

Immigrant-Host Community Relations in Malawi’s Community Based Rural Land Development Project (CBRLDP)

Access to land among land-poor households has always been contentious. In Malawi, the government,  aware of this, started Community Based Rural Based Land Development Project (CBRLDP), financed by the World Bank. The project brought to the fore the latent antagonistic relationship between immigrants and host communities. This paper examines the antagonistic relationship that developed between one of the beneficiary groups of the project and their hosts in Chigumula village, Traditional Authority (TA) Liwonde’s area in Machinga district. Focus group discussion reveals that Resettlement of groups, whether sponsored or spontaneous, carries with it a potential for conflict with resident population arising from among otherthings competition for resources, status, power and dominance.Keywords: resettlement; relocation; beneficiary groups; host community; land redistribution; land poverty

The Marital Immigrant. Land, and Agricultue: A Malawian Case Study

The central and southern regions of Malawi predominantly follow matrilineal succession and inheritance and practice uxorilocal marriages. Women, rather than men, own the primary land rights. Colonial government officials and some Eurocentric scholars have argued that the system of uxorilocal marriages and female ownership of land rights are inimical to agricultural development principally because men lose the motivation to make long term investments in land which does not belong to them. This study of marital immigrants sought to investigate whether the location of land rights in someone other than themselves affected the way they viewed agriculture and made farm decisions. It found that while short term decisions are not affected, long term investments are influenced by perception of security, understood in terms of marital stability.Keywords: marital immigrant, uxorilocality, patrilineal system, matrilineal system, matrimonial village, maternal village

Dimunition, augmentation and pejorativeness in lciNdali: The semantics of classes 5/6, 3/4, 7/8 and 21*

No Abstract

lkyaNgonde : A preliminary analysis*

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Chichewa political poetry in Malawian newspapers*

No Abstract