Our Unexamined Life

It was all coincidence but a type of coincidence that jabs you into critical reflection. In one of our course seminars there was a discussion of the divide in technology between the North and the South. Apart from the usual reasons the debate explored some hitherto areas that are taken for granted. Somehow somewhere Africans have a responsibility over the escalation of the problem. One reason in the inquiry is that an African scholar is never taken seriously in his homeland. Everybody immediately assumes the all knowing radical critic who is ready to dump to the dustbin every theory or intellectual explanation of any local phenomena. The seminar thus among others explored the need for a changed mindset across the continent.

Then the next day it was about the big Brother Africa 3 show in South Africa where a favourite Malawian contestant was beaten to the prize apparently by a seemingly non-favourite for the $100,000 prize. Nevertheless this did not regulate calls for turning the young Malawian lady into a hero, a celebrity of some kind. This is where my critical inquiry was awakened. Here is someone becoming a celebrity. For what task? Just staying in some other house and relating with fellow housemates and getting votes either from within the housemates or viewers as to who should be evicted or not. So far no qualms about it. Nothing wrong with people getting thousands of dollars from idleness.

I then started thinking about other things including the modelling industry which is a cousin to such Big Brother Shows. I found out in the process that there are actually more related ways of ‘earning’ at the local level. However just as we do with our own prophet local scholars we dismiss them. I started wondering why we apply different standards to totally similar situations. Why do we reprimand those ’timing’ – the young men who sit inside a minibus to create an impression to the ever-rushing would-be-passengers that the bus is almost full save for few empty two or three seats - whose idleness is to woo more passengers into the bus? Several times I have heard passengers castigate them and at times I have shared such sentiments? But why should sitting ’idle’ in a minibus for advertisement be radically dismissed from its cousin, ’idleness’ in a Big Brother House?

Then there are minibus callboys. They have over-received the advice from angry people that they better to the village and engage in farming other than earn their money from shouting hoarse their voices in attracting passengers aboard a given minibus. If we are to take out the ’rotten’ misbehaving from their numbers, I fail to understand the principle upon which they should be talked ill of as we on the other hand accommodate fashion modellers. On what principle is modelling right and non-violent minibus touting wrong?

Then also consider the so-called lottery and jackpot competitions. Big lottery companies and casinos are recognised and frequented by the elites of our society yet the local typical Malawian who dares engage in his own version of lottery along the streets is arrested by law enforcers. I am sure something is wrong with our orientation about wrongness. I know several people including myself who have at one point or the other harboured hard feelings about the many GANYU boys in town who run after every stopping minibus to carry some load for payment. The fact that some elements of such people misbehave for sure does not outlaw the entire practice. What has our response been: ‘You are just lazy beings. Go and engage in some serious enterprise at home, farming’. Yet we are comfortable and envy the fashion model who gets thousands of dollars for just wearing some other piece of clothing and parading/cat-walking before live TV cameras. It is ok.

Such double standards betray the enormous homework the African must do if she is to realise her own goals. No one should blame colonialism or the West here. It is purely short-sightedness on our own part. It should be made clear that this does not translate into branding fashion shows and Big Brother shows as unjust and evil. Instead focus is on our similar situations here on our continent that operate on the same principles and motivation as those on the international arena, in the West. The problem is one of double standards being used to evaluate similar situations. It would be too demanding to engage the intellectual acumen of ethicists to school us of the dangers of double standards.

To me this tells me that Africa is not moving in her own path understood and designed by herself. We are living other people’s script. I don’t think we should blame those whose script we are trying to adapt to. In any case we should give them (the West)credit for being so original and devising ways of life that are not only good for them but very appealing to others who are not part of their society.

It is naive to think that this mode of thinking, of applying double standards to the detriment of your own initiatives, is restricted to the world of entertainment. Nay. We are a people who still believe that the best potential employee is one who has been trained overseas. This has some practical and empirical foundations in some respects. For example in science and technology, we have some (not every) reason to expect someone who has been trained in an overseas institution to be much more updated and at pace with the trends of technology whose only permanent feature is its dynamism. In some disciplines however we greatly need the local scholars to seriously engage in some disciplines that do not necessarily appeal to universal scientific standards, e.g. Governance and ethics. Home grown scholars are bound to demonstrate rare skills in addressing problems in these fields than we ever expected of them.

This is a call for a change in the mindset. Indeed it is high time that we became original and innovative about addressing the issues that stagnate our progress. We have to have confidence in our efforts and abilities. This though is not synonymous with the call to detest anything un-African for that would be entirely foolhardy. It is just being virtuous the platonic way: knowing what to outsource and what to produce from self-initiative. Unfortunately we seem to be a people who are far from turning not only to but into ourselves for key clues for our own solutions. We are our own enemies. This is why I have little recognition for the conspiracy theories about the underdevelopment rampant across the continent. This is not to claim the external hand has not troubled the waters to our roughness. It is a denial however that they are the problem.

It is advisable at times not to distrust other humanity other than yourself. Indeed sometimes prudence demands that you be very jealousy with where you place confidence in. However it is imprudent to on any grounds mistrust and have no confidence in your very self. It does not matter how uncountable an army of people that have confidence in you might be. As long as you have zero confidence in yourself, which is the initial step towards arrest of self initiative doom is the next destination. This is much more dangerous when a people who have no confidence in themselves have a territory of their own. It is even more scary when they have for themselves an entire continent.

Who Is african Enough?

Yes I am asking if there is someone on this planet of ours who knows what is to be African. May they please step forward and fix the collapse we are calling Zimbabwe.

Apparently it is plain to Mugabe and his sympathisers both within his boundaries and without that every mortal who dares critique his administration is a puppet of Brown, or Bush. Even academicians on this dear continent of ours are too quick to co-relate critiquing Mugabe with being mentally colonised.

Just today in the demonstration of his ‘African-ness’ Mugabe has refused entry into Zimbabwe, Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, and Jimmy Carter on their mission to have a firsthand appraisal of the humanitarian condition that is increasingly getting out of hand to the indifference of Mugabe.

Is this really how far somebody can suffer in the quest of defending one’s land? It is plain that the land issue in Zimbabwe has deliberately been taken advantage of by Mugabe. Is the killing and brutalization of the opposition right from their leader to the least known opposition member on the pot-holed and sewage flooded streets of Harare, whose impoverished body lies under an unmarked grave, after being silenced by the ‘War Veterans’ that refuse to retire, a way of defending rights for ancestral land? One thing human beings always ensure prevails in every complexity of life is the balance between the means and ends of an action. When no chord can be struck between the two we immediately and reflexively push the moral alarm button. What had violence to do with the re-claiming of the land in the first place? Can a whole government with the police and army at its disposal indeed fail to ‘forcefully’ evict farmers from their lands? Why should in any case redistribution of land, a government policy be undertaken by youthful and militant ‘war veterans’? How different is such uncivil conduct from that of the colonizer who acted similarly? Is the violent re-taking back of the land a correction of the immorality displayed by the coloniser or outdoing him in causing unnecessary pain?

I take pride in the African people except in their leaders who occur to me to be a lot of people who have no distinct values to defend. I pity them. To them telling a fellow leader who is busy killing the people he is supposed to protect is unpatriotic to Africa. Telling someone no matter what his previous honour and heroism that he ought to keep his machete wielding hands off innocent lives whose political ideologies differ from his, is disrespectful.

Mugabe has indeed a heroic past. No one can take it away from him. But it should be emphasized that we are living in the present. The people of Zimbabwe deserve better. Food is what they want over Mugabe’s heroism. Basic security is what they yearn for and not defence of Mugabe’s legacy. These people have a present to confront and a future to shape. Stories and reminders of Mugabe’s patriotism to Africa will be among the irrelevant things they need to help them limp forward.

When people are tortured and killed for being opposition members (for a puppet party or not) for sure it is not about human rights, it is not about the West, it not about puppets, neither is it about the IMF or World Bank. It is neither African nor for Zimbabweans only. It is about that which was there before men came to know civilization, the sanctity of human life. It is sacred.
If there is someone out there African enough, as African as Mugabe, as African as his Southern African Development Community (minus Botswana) leaders, can they come and tell Mugabe what we ‘puppets’ have taken to be a lifetime time truth: no man no matter how great has a license to violate the sacredness of human life no matter how poor they are. All ‘puppets’ knew this before their first lesson on their way to civilization.

No More Free Sympathy!

Malawi’s opposition leader has recently been in the media crying and laboring to monopolize our attention and sympathy for himself and his party by moaning that rigging of the general elections next year has already started. Humanity and nature’s instincts urge us without question nor hesitancy to immediately heed the emotional complaints of those crying and seeking mercy. We are not in control of who to sympathize with for this is the prerogative of our emotions. It is emotions that forcefully and without consultations overtake us in such situations. Yet there are times for one reason or the other we find ourselves failing to roll out our sympathy for those pleading it even if everybody or indeed most are obeying their instincts.

As the leader of opposition was making his clarion call for the rest of us to invoke feelings of sympathy to duty, I for once managed to tame my instincts. I afforded to be economical with my feelings and I discovered that it was indeed worthwhile not to have called them to duty on account of the content of Hon John Tembo’s pleas. Now I think that I will still continue being stingy with my sympathy towards politicians.

I don’t want to go into the atomic content of Hon. Tembo's worries except to wholly present it by stating that he is worried that the way the registration process is progressing there are bound to be some ripple effects on the outcome of the election. He has worries about the independence of the Electoral Commission that it is manipulated by the government and that it is not independent as it ought to be. Now Hon Tembo is not being perfectionist for being a fellow mortal he is always mindful that perfection is not of this world hence it is improper to accept a near perfect work from anyone. For him this is a scheme by a government that is up to no good intent except that of rigging the elections. For him as quoted in the Nation newsonline: “Rigging has started”. Now Tembo is not just a media professional who would want to rush to us and claim the accolades of the first to bring to us the prized Breaking News. Be not fooled. Tembo is not a journalist for you to take his assertions as being purely informative. Those that said one man’s food is another man’s poison couldn’t find any other time for vindication. Tembo is least interested in having us just be informed of rigging that has just started. His interest and cause are greater than that of the scribes. He is rallying for our precious sympathy.

Now let us take his claim as truth that the rigging has started as he so ceremoniously announces (as though it were anything enviable). If the government is rigging, whose direct responsibility is it to ensure that this does not take place? Most of us on the patriotic side will immediately claim it is everybody’s duty. But we must pinpoint specifically whose or else the public goat will indeed die of hunger. Our society is such a one where we have clearly shared the duties. No one is responsible for everything and everyone is responsible for something. We can now go and ask he or she whom I entrusted with the onus of making laws as to what has to be done or not in my society. These are the law makers whom we have tasked with legislating against all such vices as election rigging. Now this is the legion one of whose sides Tembo has been leading, as Leader of Opposition. Tembo has had a majority of legislators on his side both as MCP president and leader of the opposition in Parliament. Actually in his wailings about the rigging Tembo draws us all back to 2004 where he claims he had had an election win snatched from him due to rigging.

It is clear that Tembo knew that there is a possibility of governments rigging an election. From his recent cries he occurs to me to be a person who has magnificently huge hatred against vices such as cheating. He must be a man who likes defending and living for honesty, fairness and nobility. How privileged for the rest of us to have such a man as leader of the most numerous side of our law makers! Such a virtue pursuing man leading those that make laws! Who would ask for more? Law is meant to deter evil. Tembo knows this very well and so do we all. As to why in that privileged position we entrusted him with Tembo could not push for reforms of electoral laws baffles my reason. That is my duty which I delegated to him. Therefore that was just his duty. He had the influence. He changed the law in the form of the national budget about funding of MBC, TVM, and the Ministry of Information. Reason? These were falling short of the virtues of fairness and respect for human decency. Brilliant that was!! What rising up to the occasion!!! Then was the monumental section 65 which he spearheaded just for the zeal the man has for fairness. Despite the fact that his party had lost a meager three MPs to the ruling side Tembo overzealously and gallantly nearly succeeded in grinding government to a stop in his spirited drive to let the renegade MPs face the law they broke with classic impunity. Not with the law he cherishes!! What commendable zeal! I thus fail to make out how this steel zeal manages to melt down and later evaporate in matters of electoral reform. I fail to see why the domination Tembo commanded could not be used to emancipate the Electoral Commission so that hence forth no one and indeed no one henceforth manipulates the operations of an independent Electoral Commission and hence leave its sanctity intact?

Conventional philosophical logic has a fallacy called 'You-too' fallacy: you cannot dismiss a claim on the grounds that the person advancing it does similar things to those he is speaking against. My stand can therefore be easily claimed to be treading in similar footmarks. “John Tembo failed to change the system when he was far much capable of doing so therefore he has no moral ground to condemn the government’s rigging” so would go the interpretation of my argument.May be it is a sound deduction but I am sure not true. The discipline of politics has logic as one of its ingredients. However more critically important is the cardinal value of motives. Leadership must be encrusted to those who have well set motives. It is hard for mortal man to foretell the motives upon which another man is acting or going to act. This is precisely why Immanuel Kant the sage said that nothing in the universe is good without qualification except the goodwill, the good motive. It is Tembo’s goodwill that is being tried here. Unless he tells us the motives upon which he didn’t ensure a fair reformation of the law, we are not ready to release our tears and now treasured sympathy for him. Unfortunately Tembo ought not to call another press conference to make known why he under-used the powers granted to him? We are aware. Which one is a more enduring course in effect, section 65, MBC and TVM votes on the one hand and a reformed electoral system? The conduct has spoken and betrayed the motives of Tembo. I have come to learn that whenever man acts he is immediately in a moral situation. Immediately he exposes his motives. I have Tembo’s motives for not reforming the law. He is waiting for that prophetic day when he will be the first citizen. There will be the need to consolidate his tenancy at The New State House. Every means will be necessary. By hook or crook. Reformed electoral laws will not be one the favorable conditions that would guarantee a prolonged or even eternal tenancy at the New State House. Better not tamper with them now. Tampering them now in the name of reforms would be digging pits in which they would fall in themselves in their day of occ

Indicting The Malawian Print Media

Since I was very young I have always wanted to legally attain success whatever form of moral definition it carries along in its broadness. As such I positively envied and admired those people of high social standing. There was a time I dared admire becoming a president, via the legitimate way of course. I’m saying ‘was’ for now the things I wouldn’t want happen to me whilst alive is becoming a state president. Thanks to my freely exercising of reason. Practising law and medicine are excessively restricted, so is flying an aeroplane (at least the conventional one). Driving a car on the roads requires a licence so does teaching where you should be issued with a license to teach. Everything requires expertise except ridiculing and battering your head of state. Justifiably or not, it doesn’t matter. There is no reservation to right of entry into the borderless world of scrutinising and blaming presidents. Just as they say football is the only sport and actually one of the few activities in the polarised world of ours that put on one side the diversely rich with their poverty stinking counterparts, the uneducated and the learned, so does free art of bashing the president and his government policies. The media too joins the fray always scampering around to assume mastery in president bashing to the amusement and approval of the rest of the ordinary masses, the ordinary lay bashers. It has been tempting for most lay people to accord a saint status to the media that they are a rare species of humanity dedicated to truth even if it means taking an adventurous extra mile in getting at truth.

I almost started trusting the media. Yes I correctly say ‘almost started’. They took the role of bashing the president and his government in calling for the passing of the access to information bill. It was all over their editorials showing sense to the rest of us the naive that it was all for our own good though we didn’t seem to know it. Everyone who holds public information must ensure they disseminate it to the public. This too has been said to be the mandate of the media that their commitment to truth does not move parallel to profit making but only parallel to the truth and no other thing.

It is not easy not to perceive the Malawian media as the only presently living candidates for beautification by the Pope as contemporary saints. The passion with which they have lobbied for the passing of the access to Information Bill will make even the dissenters nod in approval. I hadn’t been spared of such admiration for a selfless service the media was rendering to the nation. Well not anymore since the past three weeks.

While I was in Malawi somewhere in July, Stanley Onjezani Kenani in his column which runs in the weekly Malawi News complained of the lack of update of online new sites for the country’s major newspapers The Nation and The Dailytimes. I did not fully grasp the relevance and weight of his argument then. Not anymore this moment. Having been outside Malawi for sometime now, I have greatly struggled to get a semblance of an independent news source to keep me in touch with what is happening on the dramatic and unpredictable political stage in Malawi. More so when the citizenry jury is about to go to the polls to deliver its verdict on the political leadership. Even more so when you are addicted to newspapers and would not afford the luxury of staying out of touch for twenty four hours. My country has two major print media houses. Loudly they have both been part of the ceaseless call for the government to especially the legislature to pass the access to information bill. So patriotic and concerned for the importance of accessing information have these media houses been that they have been devoting their editorials and some even giving out space to run columns urging the ‘insensitive’ legislature to acknowledge the moral obligations it owes Malawians by passing the bill. Their appeals were never in vain. At least I also joined them on their wagon and sped with them into the dream world where vital information is readily accessible and how transparent and accountable society is. In that world of imagination, courtesy of the passionate calls by these houses who had all along been believers in unhampered access to public information that whosoever is entrusted with it would ignore and somehow overcome any other temptations of crookedness and injustice that would seduce him into abusing his position of holding information.

Today though, I am afraid that I was indeed only dreaming. The two major print houses, The Nation and The Dailytimes were not at all with me in the dreamland or maybe I should say that I was not at all with them in the dreamland. This is why today I am indicting them for duping me.

One of the vices the media worldwide has thrived upon is both the condemnation and exposure of double standards. The Malawian media too is of the same genotype. The media serves the people. The media is the self-touted fourth estate of government. The media knows the interests of the average and honesty-longing masses. The media knows the people hate double standards. They hate double standards by politicians. They hate double standards by civil servants. They hate double standards from the profit driven private sector. They hate double standards by traditional leaders. They hate double standards everywhere by everyone. So what should one expect when one shockingly discovers the media too has double standards? The lawyers have a better term out of the bagful collection of what is to the layman nonsensical and intimidating terminologies: they call it betrayal of trust.

Betrayal of trust is what I have just experienced. I can no longer locate nor trace the trust I had about the Malawian print media when it comes to sincerity. You see I now know there are thousands of Malawians who are living in the Diaspora at this very moment. These are people of various levels of influence ranging from criminals to professors. They are in the Diaspora yet no dozen hours ever pass without thinking about home. Their home is Malawi. That is where their hearts, memories, ambitions, loved ones and even hopes are. They hence have every right to know what is happening in their beloved dear country. This would have been a problem in the days of yesteryears. No more today. Don’t we have the internet? Isn’t it correctly touted as that mystery which brings the entire world and its huge vastness onto one’s fingertips?

This is why the two media houses saw sense and indeed the full view of it in establishing newsites to keep everybody who cares about Malawi in touch with their country. Given the standing of The Nation and The Dailytimes, this was not just doing the Malawi nation a gesture of goodwill. It is an obligation. They started well. But come and visit their sites later.... It's is pathetic. You have a page for daily news un-updated for a week. You have a news item that occurred in May still glaring on the front pages. You have links to columns and features that have remained undeveloped for months. You also have one of the most awkward search engines whose results are as surprising as they are out of pace with basic search engines’ functionality.
When I conducted my own survey as to why this happens I am informed and I believe it, that it is because these media houses do not make money in terms of advertisements from the online publications. My! My! My! Profits for what? I also hear that they are afraid that their sales will dwindle once they timely update their news sites. Malawi.... Malawi .... Malawi....

What has happened to the access to information zeal? Who isn’t sniffing double standards’ scent here? Profit versus access to information!!!! How different is this from the DPP politician cum civil servant or minister who for his own benefit and his group’s withhold information relevant for a specific time and releases it ‘anyway’ after the time when it was craved for? I have now established why newspapers must not share the trust we reserve for our kin and our traditional leaders. They have several interests. Even if we concede the feeble concern about less profit, where then does the justification of having May news headlines still reigning the homepages in October come from?? This is shocking! Is this as well the influence of the sensitive hand of profit making? My thought was that I could bear with the appetites and commitment to maximising profits, and would not lose a lot anyway in having the news page being up-dated at 4pm daily after those who buy the newspapers have already bought them so that may be those in the Diaspora might be independently informed. But what do you get at 6pm if it is not May news headlines glaring in the manner of Breaking News?

It should be noted that there are also other people who matter to the country in the Diaspora, or if you differ on their relevance at least the country matters to them and as such they deserve to be given the information about their beloved country by whosoever has that responsibility. This is why for example out of the twelve million many of us we only let in a handful individuals, journalists, to have access to the first citizen whenever he is travelling in or outside the country to communicate with him on several issues on our behalf. Now having an audience with a head of government is not among the easiest things to achieve in the world. But it’s all on our behalf. Thus we at least demand to know about our country through those websites which might start getting rusty now because of underutilising them.

Malawi could be a poor nation. But the standards which are being portrayed by The Nation and Dailytimes’ websites are an exaggeration of what we are incapable of doing. A very bad reflection on the nation. With such neglect should we soon honestly complain of western stereotypes about our nation’s standards. When they criticize us our media will immediately react with vigour. They will be bashed in our daily newspapers. Who has never seen double standards??

MY VOICE

I have been nurturing this thought for sometime. I wanted to put out for sharing most of the views I have for sometime just been stuffing within myself. Not that I am to any extent an expert. Miles away from it!! Its only that I too have an opinion for that which I passionate for - the continent and my country. Sometimes I feel I am overzealously patriotic about the 'little' that is there to warrant my loyalty. But that it is just what it is perhaps, only a feeling. It comes and goes but love endures.

Now here do I go today. This blog is going to address and comment on the crucial issues of African and Malawian politics. These are matters that are alsways on my heart. I think we have more than wider room to make right most of the self-inflicted injustices. We have lots of opportunity to redirect our affairs into the desirable and efficient path that will lead us to meangiful actualization.

The scope for sure going to be wide and broad. Anything that has an attachment to the politics of Africa and Malawi will be pure raw material for scrutiny here. After all elections are around the corner in Malawi, Mbeki has just left the South African hot seat ironically immediately after ensuring a controversial peace pact in Comrade Bob's Zimbabwe. The Zambiams too are having a hsitoric election after the unexpected (as though any death is ever confessed as timely) demise of their head of state who was shaping for himself a legacy few in our region can identify with.

There is just a lot and a lot more awaiting focus.

Enough for the day