Malawi's New Look: Television, Miniskirts And Long Hair Are In

BLANTYRE, Malawi - Foreign nannies are out, and so are white classics professors of Latin and Greek. A ban on miniskirts has been lifted, television will soon air, and men can now grow their hair long if they wish.

Four months after coming to power, Malawi's first democratically elected government is dragging this poor southern African country out of a three-decade time warp fostered by former dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Prudish dress codes have been repealed by the Parliament, television should be broadcast next year, and new restrictions on work permits for foreigners stipulate that if locals can do the job, outsiders need not apply.

"We told the people we would create employment for Malawians. There are many local nannies available," said Peter Faatchi, home-affairs minister for the ruling United Democratic Front, which defeated Banda in elections May 17.

Banda had ruled the Pennsylvania-sized country of nearly 10 million people since independence from Britain in 1964.

He allowed the wealthy to employ foreign nannies. A fierce supporter of Western conservatism, he hired mainly British executives to run the central bank, the state airlines and his own business empire of farms, stores and bakeries. Even the head gardener and housekeeper at Banda's Sanjika palace in Blantyre were whites from abroad.

As a classics scholar, he also gave his backwoods nation - one of the poorest in Africa - the largest educational institute in the world, where Latin and Greek are compulsory subjects up to university level.

But the privately run Kamuzu Academy, founded by Banda near his birthplace in central Malawi and staffed by British teachers, failed to convince the government that only foreigners can run it.

Few Malawians other than businessmen and Banda allies who became rich through their government posts can afford to educate their children in such a manner. Under Banda, development was reserved for government facilities, with rural areas growing poorer.

Banda, in his 90s and now retired from politics, often asserted the languages instilled mental discipline in African students.

The 400-student college was built in 1981 to copy the exclusive private schools in Britain, where Banda lived for nearly 40 years before leading his nation to independence in 1964.

The crenelated castlelike walls, sweeping lawns and fountains have symbolized an enclave of privilege amid the bleak African bush.

The new government has said it is not against private schools but wants them to be more accessible.

Faatchi said teaching ancient languages would be phased out unless Malawians - most likely former pupils - could take over.

Repealing dress codes enforced by Malawi's government since the hippie era of the 1960s, new President Bakili Muluzi has allowed women to wear pants instead of obligatory ankle-length dresses and permitted men to sport shoulder-length hair for the first time.

Though pro-Western, Banda disapproved of liberal Western fashions and feared foreign influences that television could bring. The U.S.-trained physician and former Presbyterian church elder, himself always attired in a dark suit and Homburg hat, was unshakably old-fashioned in his rule.

Banda, ailing after brain surgery in South Africa last year, has rarely been seen in public since his defeat at the polls.

He was forced to call the election after anti-government riots and a Western-aid freeze protesting human-rights violations under his last years of increasingly brutal rule.