The path to democracy is long and weary, experience has shown. Unfortunately there is no shortcut that one can take because the entrenchment of democratic thinking has to be firmly anchored in the mind of the nation through experience, sometimes very painful. It is a good thing for us that we do not have to re-invent the wheel. It is there, rolling in our lives, and sometimes we take this for granted.

Malawi joined other countries Wednesday in commemorating World TB Day - this to draw attention to a disease that claimed two million lives last year, according to the World Health Organisation. However, the efforts of Malawian officials to curb tuberculosis are being dogged by the theft of TB drugs from state hospitals. Felix Salaniponi, Programme Manager for the country's National TB Control Programme, says the stolen drugs are often used to treat ailments other than TB: “These include non-specific coughs, bloody diarrhoea, sexually transmitted infections and some HIV/AIDS-related conditions.”

Ombudsman Enock Chibwana, whose contract expired on March 10, has been taken by his members of staff to the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) on allegations of abuse of office during his five-year term. ACB public relations officer Egrita Ndala confirmed on Tuesday that ACB is in receipt of a complaint against the Ombudsman.

In its role as a dual membership organisation, comprising 16,000 individual lawyers and 194 Bar Associations and Law Societies, the International Bar Association (IBA) influences the development of international law reform and shapes the future of the legal profession. The International Bar Association (IBA) is seeking a Legal Specialist to work for a period of six months to undertake capacity building work with the Malawi Law Society.

Accusations of political bias are piling up against Malawi's state broadcaster in the run-up to general elections scheduled for May 18. In the latest salvo to be fired, a group of religious leaders has asked the courts to ensure equal air time for all political parties.

Economic, political and civil pundits last Thursday frowned on a new 45-strong Cabinet announced by President Muluzi, saying its attribute was “a pain” and its size was “a rebuff of the aims of a loan the House approved only last week.” “The size of the new Cabinet defeats the purpose of a structural adjustment credit [of US58 million] which the National Assembly approved last week for fiscal reforms,” said Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) spokesman Perks Ligoya.

Thom Chiumia and Chikumbutso Mtumodzi, two journalists who are also politicians, halted printing of the privately owned "The Dispatch" newspaper on 29 January, and seized the printed copy and plates. Chiumia is president of the New Dawn for Africa (NDA) political party and Mtumodzi is the NDA's secretary-general. The NDA supports the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) party and is widely believed to be funded by UDF supporters.

Vera Chirwa is a prominent human rights activist in Malawi, a prison rapporteur for the African Union - and someone who was imprisoned for speaking out against authoritarian rule under former head of state Hastings Kamuzu Banda. But this pedigree wasn't enough to earn her a shot at Malawi's presidency during the May elections. Chirwa's candidacy was rejected a few days ago by the newly-formed opposition coalition, Mgwirizano, which decided on a male candidate. Republican Party leader Gwanda Chakuamba will be the coalition torch bearer in the upcoming poll.

Malawi is building measures into all facets of public policy against HIV/AIDS in an effort to stem the spread of the virus and improve treatment and care for the 14 per cent of its population living with the disease. A national policy President Bakili Muluzi launched earlier this month in Blantyre would require legislative changes to promote prevention and better protect those living with HIV/AIDS, including invalidating infection as grounds for job dismissal and offering tax incentives for employers who provide comprehensive HIV/AIDS programmes.

Reports that police had fired shots during an opposition rally at the weekend have raised fears that Malawi's upcoming May elections could be marred by violence. News reports said two people were wounded when riot police fired live rounds at a crowd to stop a rally by opposition parties in the southern city of Blantyre.

Aid agencies are on red alert for a possible food crisis in Malawi as drought threatens to decimate crops, but will not call for an emergency before assessing this year’s harvest. “Everyone is monitoring the country closely to be able to respond to anything that could happen,” Jacob Asens, health and nutrition advisor at Action Against Hunger UK (AAH-UK), told AlertNet.

Grace is a happy woman. She is about as poor as you can be, earning just £6 a month selling shoes from a tiny market stall. But in the past year she has been spared the prospect of a premature and painful death. Grace Matnanga is HIV positive, as are one in three of those around her in the streets of Malawi's capital city. But unlike them, and thanks to an act of human kindness, she is on antiretroviral drugs.

Families in the rural villages of Malawi face many challenges. Most are subsistence farmers who struggle to feed their children. Education levels are generally low – a third of the males and two-thirds of the females cannot read or write. Hunger and disease kill many thousands of people – particularly children – every year. One of the most common killer diseases is malaria, which accounts for as much as 15 to 20 percent of deaths among school-age children in the region. But a new Save the Children program has bought down death rates from malaria by 72 percent in some villages.

Malawi's President Bakili Muluzi on Tuesday urged Malawians to break the stigma attached to Aids as a first step in fighting the disease, which has infected more than 14 percent of the country's 11 million people. "My own brother, third born in our family, died of Aids three years ago," said Muluzi as he launched a long-awaited official programme to fight the killer disease.

"I cannot pretend that every thing is rosy in a polygamous marriage. There is a lot of misery and hatred which is sometimes beyond description." These were the sentiments of a wife in a polygamous family with three other women in Mangochi. "I am often subjected to mistreatment just because I'm now regarded as a spent force," says Rosemary Jamali, the first wife to a small-scale fisherman in the lakeshore district. Polygamy, says Linly Kantengeni, a women's rights activist, does not only pose a physical threat to most women but is also a psychological ailment.

Malawi has launched a fishing project that will benefit more than 300,000 people who depend on fishing for their livelihood. The project, known as Lake Malawi Artisanal Fisheries Development Project, aims to improve household income in the lakeshore districts of Likoma, Nkhatabay, Nkhotakota, Salima and Mangochi. It was launched on January 24 and is expected to improve fish stocks as well as catches from Lake Malawi. The first component of the project will include construction of working tables, portable water, drying racks and fish storage facilities.

As the clock ticks closer to a sell-off of ivory stocks in Southern Africa, questions are being asked about why Malawi's legislation has not yet been strengthened to meet the dangers posed by elephant poaching. In 2002, delegates to a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) agreed to a one-off sale of ivory stocks by Botswana, Namibia and South Africa after May this year. Although Malawi will not partake in the 2004 sell-off - also intended to finance conservation - there are fears that the country's laws are too weak to prevent poachers from trying to cash in on the sale. Environmental analysts say the National Parks and Wildlife Act needs to be reviewed so that penalties for illegal ivory trading are brought in line with the gravity of the offence.

Malawi's three main opposition parties have pulled out of a coalition deal that seeks to wrestle power from the ruling United Democratic Front in the May 18 general elections. The refusal to join the coalition has dashed hopes of a united opposition ever getting into power in Malawi as did Mwai Kibaki's Rainbow Coalition in Kenya in December 2001. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and the Movement for Genuine Democracy (Mgode) last Friday snubbed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony in the commercial centre, Blantyre, leaving six other relatively small parties to go it alone.

The Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) says it expects the Electoral Commission to seriously consider extending further the registration period for elections later this year to enable those that failed to register because of lack of materials to have a chance to register. "The registration exercise should serve as a lesson to all stakeholders (donors, civil society organisations and the MEC) on the importance of voter and civic education for the success of this election. It is hoped that the lack of resources by civil society organisations to conduct voter and civic education, which has negatively affected the registration process, will be rectified so that the electorate will see the need to fully participate in the May 18 elections.”

Participants at a recent small arms conference in Malawi noted that the country has not been as affected by the spread of small arms and light weapons as its neighbours. However, Malawi has been experiencing an increase in firearms-related crime including armed robbery and poaching, and there are growing concerns about the influx of weapons from neighbouring countries and the local production and use of muzzle-loading guns. Participants agreed therefore that the time is right to develop a new initiative to tackle the spread of small arms before the situation gets out of control. As a first step in the process it was seen to be important that more research into the problem of small arms is carried out. The Malawi National Focal Point Stakeholders Meeting was held between 9-10 December 2003 at the Lilongwe Hotel, Malawi.