Geography and Perception

Is there a link? We see that Malawi went through a period of sustained crisis not only economically, but politically, and as a result humanitarian crisis followed. What do the people perceive as the cause or perpetuation of the crisis? Years of drought compounded by inefficient irrigation systems led to famine. AIDS increased the dillemma as a whole generation of children go without parents, without education, and with little food to survive on. In addition you have other factors such as malaria, cholera outbreaks, high transportation costs, few medical facilities - I'm alluding ultimately to a crisis of geography. Can't these issues be overcome through technological advancement (The US southern states eradicated mosquitoes and built A/C to prevent malaria)?

The crisis results chiefly from years of successive droughts. Though the country has one of Africa's largest lakes, irrigation is limited and changing climates have decimated the largely agrarian economy. The harvest in 2005 yielded 26 per cent less maize than the previous year.
The nutrition status of children was already quite bad. Stunting affects 48 per cent of Malawian children under five, 5 per cent are wasted or dangerously thin and 22 per cent are underweight. But what makes the food shortages stretching across Malawi and elsewhere in southern Africa most overwhelming is the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Malawi has a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, which affects an estimated 14.2 per cent of people aged 15 to 49. Some 500,000 children have been orphaned by the disease, and many of them are now cared for by relatives who already faced economic hardship.
A joint study by UNICEF and the non-governmental organization Action Against Hunger, conducted between May 2004 and March 2005, revealed that up to 26 per cent of children older than 15 months admitted to Nutrition Rehabilitation Units were HIV-positive. In the most hunger-affected areas of the south, HIV prevalence among children was as high as 40 per cent.
Source: UNICEF, 25 May 2006. Posted on: Relief Web

So how do the people view the crisis? Do they blame politicians? Do they revert to nostalgia for the "greater" days under Banda? What role does the timing of political change play in the overall picture? Is political change a result or a cause of economic decline in Malawi?