By Kate Tapiwa Kujaliwa

Public Relations (PR) has long been misunderstood.  Too often it is reduced to event planning, speech writing, or social media updates.

In many public institutions, the role of the PR professional exists in name only. The position is created, the title is there, the office door may even say “Public Relations”, but the influence, the authority, and the strategy are often missing. The whole PR Manager glamour exists, but stripped of authority, resources, and strategic value. What we are witnessing is tokenism. PR for appearance’s sake, not impact.

Too many PR professionals are placed in structures that look good on paper but are powerless in practice. You have a PR “Manager” who manages no one, reports to a supervisor who doesn’t understand communication, and is excluded from the very executive meetings where reputational risks are born. Yet, when things go wrong, everyone turns to the same PR person for damage control. Irony at its finest.

Across Malawi’s public sector, you will find Public Relations professionals whose role, instead of shaping public perception, advising leadership, and managing reputation risk, is often confined to reactive communication, that is preparing press releases after crises or documenting events for internal reports. The absence of PR in the decision-making process means institutions continue to operate without cohesive messaging, stakeholder engagement strategies, or proactive reputation management.

This tokenistic approach undermines not only the professionals but also the institutions themselves. A PR manager without influence is like a pilot invited to sit in the cabin while someone else steers the plane. The public sector loses opportunities to build trust, communicate reforms effectively, and strengthen public confidence, all because the communicator is treated as an accessory rather than a strategist.

True public relations is not decoration. It is not about issuing statements or organizing events. It is about shaping perception, influencing behaviour, and fostering mutual understanding between institutions and the public. It demands strategic thinking, crisis foresight, and active participation in policy discussions.

If Malawi’s public sector is to communicate with credibility and coherence, PR must be repositioned from token presence to trusted counsel. Let us stop creating PR positions merely to tick boxes. Instead, let us empower them to lead communication strategies, influence decisions, and represent the citizen’s voice at the heart of public administration.

It is time we redefined what it means to have a PR Manager and started understanding what it means to use one effectively.

Until we stop treating PR as a token position and start treating it as a strategic function, we will keep missing opportunities to tell our stories right, engage meaningfully with citizens, and build institutions that people can believe in.

So yes, PR is misunderstood. But the bigger tragedy is that some institutions still don’t see the cost of keeping it that way.