In the aftermath of a national tragedy
Excavating memories of Cyclone Freddy in Malawi
Malawi, 2023. Fanny Shaibu beside a field after Cyclone Freddy. The storm destroyed her crops, house and took the lives of her husband and two children. Photo: © WFP/Badre Bahaji
Personal and collective experiences of loss intersect within the broader framework of national mourning, as explored in this study based on Cyclone Freddy in Malawi.
The cyclone resulted in more than 1,200 people reported as either dead or missing, and more than 2,100 people injured. It disrupted the lives of approximately 2.3 million individuals. Beyond documenting these figures, the research in this paper interrogates the structural conditions that rendered the nation particularly vulnerable to such a disaster – including chronic infrastructural neglect, political inertia, and deeply embedded social inequalities. By weaving together individual testimonies and communal narratives of grief, the study situates the cyclone within the longue durée of Malawi’s socio-political fragilities.
Informed by Jacques Derrida’s theorisation of "impossible mourning", the analysis foregrounds how trauma sutures past and present, elucidating the emotional and material afterlives of catastrophe in contexts defined by enduring structural precarity.
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About the Claude Ake Memorial Papers
In the aftermath of a national tragedy: excavating memories of Cyclone Freddy in Malawi by Professor Nick M. Tembo was published in the Claude Ake Memorial Papers (CAMP) series, which honours the memory of late scholar-activist Professor Claude Ake. The series is co-published by NAI and Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research. This and all other papers in the CAMP-series are open access and can be linked to and read by all.
About the author
Nick Mdika Tembo is a Professor of English at the University of Malawi and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His research is focused on trauma and memory studies, particularly in African life writing, genocide, childhood, child soldier narratives, and digital media. In the fall of 2024, Professor Tembo was the Claude Ake Visiting Chair holder in Uppsala.