President Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi has said that nearly half of his country has been damaged by Cyclone Freddy, which has killed hundreds of people and become the longest-lasting tropical storm on record.
In an exclusive interview, the president asked for help from the international community and said the structural destruction was vast.
“This demonstrates that climate change issues are real and we are standing right in the path of it,” said Chakwera, who added that the climate crisis had the potential to keep “a national like Malawi in perpetual poverty”.
By Saturday, the death toll in Malawi stood at 438 and families and rescuers spent the weekend digging through mud and rubble, often with their bare hands, looking for the missing.
“The damage is across 13 districts, almost half the country, and it is not just the numbers of our people who have lost their lives, but the damage and devastation,” said Chakwera, who added that while the country’s early warning system had saved lives in some lower-lying areas, it had failed in others, and the landslides that devastated the city of Blantyre had been especially unexpected.
“We need everyone’s help and support for this tragedy to be mitigated,” he said. “We are suffering and we can’t meet the needs. We have set up temporary camps and food is needed, shelter, yes, but must go past that and build stronger because of the damage.
“Some 36 roads are broken, nine bridges washed away, and cases still where people are stranded, whole villages we can’t reach.
“It’s not just here and there, we are at the receiving end of the worst of the climate change.
“I just feel that we need to be talking about this, keeping the conversation alive. It’s not a matter of saying be charitable to your neighbour, this has to do with loss and damage, this has to do with responses that are not tokenism.”
The 67-year-old former pastor pointed out that Malawi had been hit by three cyclones within 13 months.
“We had been trying to build back from Cyclone Idai in 2019, and then the pandemic, now Freddy.
“We are in a perpetual cycle of trying to pull ourselves up and getting knocked back down.”
Cyclone Freddy first developed off Australia in early February and travelled almost 5,000 miles across the Indian Ocean, making landfall twice in south-east Africa, bringing torrential rains, high winds and killing more than 700 people across Mozambique, Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Malawi, including 16 onboard a Taiwanese-flagged ship. As it dissipated on 15 March, meteorologists said it was the longest-lasting and most travelled tropical cyclone ever recorded.
Chakwera said he visited Blantyre hospitals on Friday. “It is clear there will be psychological as well as social needs because of the depth of trauma people have suffered,” he said. “Even the doctors need support as well after dealing with so much trauma.
“Once the rains subside we will need to help these families stand on their own two feet. We need roads, we need hospitals and schools. Otherwise we are in big trouble. Malawian people to their credit are resilient people. So many of them grow up poor, it’s part of life.
“This is what we were trying to change. To give hope that Malawi can become a developed nation with industrialisation, to give young people more of a future than sustenance farming, to have modern sustainable agriculture. This is the vision we wanted to be casting, a country that can stand on its own feet.”
Last month, Nick Hepworth, executive director of Water Witness International, criticised the British government for slashing its contribution to the £90m Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters programme, known as BRACC in Malawi, as part of the UK’s 2021 cut to the aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP.
Chakwera said: “We understand that the British government has had its own problems. But from 2015 to the moment, the help that has come from the British government has significantly been reduced.
“We need help, significant help from everyone, but we cannot necessarily be pointing the finger at one government because we understand everybody has troubles.
“The devastation and impact of this is the worst yet we have seen – many people have told me they have never seen anything like this in their lifetime.”
With all the problems the world is facing, calamity is something people get used to, he said, urging people not to “get weary” of helping.
On Saturday, the British minister for development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell, said 27 members of the UK International Search and Rescue Team and six emergency medical personnel had left Birmingham airport for Malawi.
