By Daniel Zimba:
Vendors in Ndirande Township in Blantyre Friday protested against the rising cost of living in the country.
The demonstration came on the back of two other protests by vendors in Lilongwe on Wednesday and in Limbe on Thursday over similar concerns.
The protest happened even though the committee that had organised it announced on Thursday evening that they had suspended the demonstrations to avoid interrupting President Lazarus Chakwera’s events in the city.
By around 8 am Friday, things got tense as vendors gathered in defiance against the suspension the committee had announced.
The situation erupted soon afterwards as police fired teargas to disperse the crowd for blocking streets and quell acts of stone throwing and vandalisation of property around the main market.
That degenerated into running battles between police and the protestors, a development that took siege of a section of the township, especially the one along the route between the main market and Chimseu.
Several shops were looted.
As we went to press in the evening, reports indicated that after a period of calm, police returned to the township and fired more teargas to disperse looters.
Chairperson of the committee that had organised and suspended the demonstration, Chance Widon, distanced the protest committee from this incident, describing it as illegal.
He said those who incited the protests Friday did not understand the purpose of their suspending the exercise.
“People have indeed come out to demonstrate, despite the fact that we suspended the exercise yesterday. We feel these demonstrations are not the ones we wanted to conduct because our purpose was to deliver our concerns to authorities and not necessarily cause violence.
“This has happened because some people failed to understand our message of suspension. We will still march to deliver our petition but not today,” Widon said.
On Thursday, vendors in Zomba also announced they would hold their demonstration on Tuesday, March 4.
Malawi is in the grip of an economic crisis.
Prices of commodities are rising almost on daily basis and forex is in critically short supply in banks and other official channels.
The forex shortage has led to the thriving of the informal market where the US dollar is now going at more than K4,000 against the official rate of K1,751.
During question time in Parliament this week, Chakwera blamed the economic situation on collusion between an opposition political party and a section of the business community.
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