Is the legacy of competition before collaboration and scarcity before sisterhood hindering the growth of Malawian female musicians?

I keep hearing the same tired refrain “Malawian female artists don’t support each other.” And every time it hits my ear, I refuse to swallow it whole. I sit with it. I examine it. And I ask myself the real question; Am I unknowingly contributing to a narrative designed to make women blame each other for a system we did not build?

People speak, even men like Gwamba, telling us to “do it for each other,” to emulate the brotherhood that seems to come so easily to male artists but let’s be brutally honest;

How do we copy a model built on male privilege when men were handed the blueprint centuries before we were even allowed in the room?

Angelique Kidjo once declared, “If you silence a woman, you silence a nation.”

And for too long, this industry and so many others have tried to silence women by dividing us. By convincing us that only one of us can shine at a time. By teaching us competition before collaboration. Scarcity before sisterhood.

Let’s call it what it is!

A design. A patriarchal tactic. A system engineered to keep us small.

But African women have never been small.

Busiswa said, “A woman who knows her power is a revolution.”

And revolutions don’t whisper. They don’t wait. They don’t apologise!

So let’s talk about this industry with clear eyes.

It was built by men, for men. Its doors were opened for them long before we were allowed to knock. And now, somehow, women are the ones being blamed for not floating in perfect harmony within a system that was never designed to hold us?

No.

We’re done carrying that misplaced guilt.

Yes, Gwamba was right women should support each other. But support doesn’t grow in environments where only one female artist is allowed at the damn table. Where the spotlight isn’t shared; it’s rationed. Where Black women have to fight to prove they belong in spaces we help keep alive with our creativity, our resilience, our brilliance.

One of my favourite quotes by one of my favourite female artists Brenda Fassie once said, “I was not made to fit in. I was made to make a statement.”

And that is exactly what this moment calls for.

The truth is simple.

We are not lacking support.

We are lacking space.

Space to breathe, to create, to fail, to rise, to take up entire stages without apologising for our volume.

Space to see each other as allies, not adversaries!

Space to recognise that every woman’s win cracks the ceiling a little wider for the rest of us.

This industry may have been designed to crown one woman at a time but we are redesigning it.

We are rewriting the script.

We are reshaping the table.

And there will be more than one seat.

There will be many.

Because women, when we rise together, are not just stars. We are constellations.

And constellations do not compete they illuminate the entire sky.