Do we still Need Traditional Birth Atendants (TBAs)?

The recent banning of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA’s) has set rolling the wheels of public debate. Apparently most people regard the banning of TBA’s as being inconsistent with the state of the reality on the ground. Despite coming out in different shapes the common and recurrent argument in defence of TBA’s has been that public health centres are not as immediately accessible to the expectant mother out there in the core rural Malawi as are the TBA’s. Appeal has also been made to the brain-drain that has particularly hit the medical profession. Most of such arguments seem to be intuitively appealing. However the oversight common with all claims anchored in intuitions is that some more efficient alternatives are ignored in favour of the intuitively appealing status quo. Attempting to question the legitimacy of long-held intuitions is usually perceived as nearing the borders of abomination. In the end progress is hurdled as we defend the status quo without bothering to critically explore the available alternatives. Upon learning of this ban my intuition also forcefully classified it as unjust and out of step with reality on the ground. However in careful and critical retrospect everything changed.

I would not hesitate to claim that our intuitions about the ban being unjust are only characteristic of that which deters us as a people from making substantial progress: our rigidity when necessity demands making some conceptual paradigm shifts in our enterprises both as a nation as well as as individuals. It is incontestable that giving birth at a public health centre is safer, with minimal risks as contrasted with giving birth at the TBA. Generally the health centre is in this case more superior in terms of quality assurance unlike the TBA and hence logically it ought to be given greater preference over TBA’s. The two are incomparable. Thus holding all factors constant preference falls on the public health centres.

However the fact that the factors are not held constant does not raise the TBA’s over the public health centres. We concede that not everyone has immediate access to public health centres. Nevertheless one can still contend that in dire circumstances of acutely suffering from other diseases or medical complications all people in our remotest areas still endeavour to ensure that in one way or the other they get to a public medical facility in utter defiance of the long distances to be covered in getting there. This is where the opposition to the TBA’s ban manifests the problem of our unfounded reluctance to make a paradigm shift when there is every sufficient, efficient, and motivating reason to do so.

In our arguments over this pertinent matter we have to firstly bear in mind that the events and process leading to child birth are neither accidental nor unforeseeable. As such it is improper to regard a woman’s going into labour as though it totally ambushes with raw suddenness the mother-to-be, her family, and her community. The expectant mother’s advancing in days towards the day of delivery is, except for some isolated cases, of some other complications is something that is both anticipated and predictable. In any case this is why in our wisdom laden Malawi society we rightfully and meaningfully call a pregnant woman as expectant. Expectations co-exist with preparedness and the requisite fore-planning. Given the significant risks of giving birth at TBA’s planning in advance about being at the nearest health centre for delivery is the key that prudence would demand if indeed we are as mindful about the merits of giving birth at a health centre. If we see conventional public health centres as being an indispensable and crucial avenue towards the reduction and ultimately elimination of the immoral and unacceptable high infant and maternal mortality rates then embracing the public health centre, of course with its cost, must be the noble thing to pursue. It is not that health centres are in every local community’s immediate reach. However there is just nothing wrong or impossible with expectant mothers relocating to the nearest health centre or any place close by around two weeks or a week before the baby is due. Aren’t the consequent costs worthwhile? If indeed we place great value and un-paralleled preference in the health centre’s services such should seem a worthwhile alternative. Were the whole community (neighbours, relatives, chiefs, religious leaders etc.) to be collectively and actively engaged in ensuring safe child delivery by making sure that they do what is within their capacity to ensure that the expectant woman is taken to a health centre in time given the distance challenges among others, the unsafe and risky deliveries at the TBA’s would never pose as an indispensable option in safe maternity discourse. Essentially this is a matter of our community’s commitment to safe motherhood which if it be told, has a cost. The cost essentially demands a paradigm shift where upon appreciating the role TBA’s have played in our society we should still be able to exploit the greater opportunities and security guaranteed by their alternative. We must all aspire to have our mothers deliver at health centres no matter the cost. All we need to attain this are not health centres in every village. From the available dispersed health centres we can safe child deliveries if we have the will. Hasn’t the force of will power ever landed man on the moon, a once universally long-held impossibility?

Cry Malawi Cry!

Thursday 9^th July 2009 I was out in the outskirts of Mchinji that border Lilongwe. I was attending a funeral of a relation. The journey to the village was full of lessons. There is a lot, I realised, I do not appreciate about the continent. I discovered too that there is a lot that we are to do to ourselves if we are to snatch away as many of us that face the ultra-sharp canine tearing teeth of poverty. There is poverty out there. There is undocumented suffering in the outskirts. Yet along the way and throughout my interaction at the village I came to note that which we often ignore and take for granted. It is a paradox. In the depths of the poverty there are common smiles shining on the faces of the children on whose un-bathed tender bodies hung dirty threads of discoloured rags. How they afford to maintain the authentic smile and still anchor their heads in hope, in utter defiance of the poverty reigning on them is outside the realm of comprehension. There is a sense of contentment, hope, and satisfaction that the poverty must have failed to take captive.

At the funeral as we waited for departure to the cemetery for burial we were engaged in conversations about several different things social. How could we fail muse over what absorbs the working hours of almost each of the folks in the village? When the ultimate goal of their occupation is the other side of the coin of human survival, how on earth could we not afford to talk about agriculture and farming? We started talking about fertilisers subsidized by the government in the previous growing season. The people appreciated the gesture (for ethical reasons please read service) extended to them by the government. However the people bemoaned that were accessibility of the coupons timely and just then there would have been maximum benefits from the subsidy program.

I further learnt with great wonder as to how deeply sunk the nation is in the sickening waters of corruption. There is a time when what you hear from the technocrats and elite public officers is what ought to be the primary conception of the matter at hand. Yet there are other matters which minimally demand that the elites’ mouths be muted and those on the receiving end, the grassroots should be the voice of relevance and influence. How things are turning out on the ground is what tells the way progress, development, hope, and expectations of a future nicer than today’s misery is going to be shaped. It was disheartening to hear the sad tales that betrayed the characteristic injustice of our modern times even at the very grassroots. The people mourned and moaned about the escalation of corruption in our community. Manifestly future-threatening in their laments was the fierce fact that the corruption that had almost become a facet of the state’s local institutions was a mere glimpse of what life is on the higher rungs of state power. No sane person who cherishes companionship with reason and is committed to logic’s deduction would be faulted upon concluding that there was more rot up the hierarchy of political power and that this corruption rottenness was merely spreading down.

Malawi is already with great frailty attempting to drag her feet under the obscenely burdensome yoke of HIV-AIDS. This is a challenge of huge proportions that insatiably eats into our national development’s strides and prospects with utter destruction and detractions. Yet the hurdle of HIV-AIDS is dwarfed before the beast of corruption our which our nation is taming to the shock of progress. Corruption is the problem of Malawi today.

Whereas ideally a 50kg bagful; of fertiliser was supposed to be sold at K800 in government-established selling points those for whom the scheme was designed were left pleading, and usually merely wishing they could pay for only the real cost of the bag. The K800 price set by the government was by all means much far from as I later learnt what it had to take for a coupon holding person to buy the fertiliser. Suddenly it became impossible for those local ADMARC officials in the selling points to whom the responsibility of selling the subsidized commodity given to freely provide the services they are paid for delivering without soliciting bribes from the pitiable porous pockets of the poor people. My people narrated to me with a permanently established and vivid sense of resignation as to how they had to cough four times the official selling price in bribes to the selling personnel to get their legitimate and well-deserved share of the input. This was generally the trend in all ADMARC selling points in the area. What baffled me is that fellows from a quite distant village at the funeral claimed that the bribes my village-folks were to give were ‘fairer’ than the one’s they were to give in their respective areas if they were unready to literally spend at least 24hrs on the queue, waiting, hoping, wondering, angry, and frustrated, all in vain as still they would not lay hands on the bagful of input. With raw horror and anger I heard them narrate how you would stand on the queue with just five people ahead of you before your turn to pay the legitimate and official selling price for the commodity and yet you could spend more than six hours stagnated there. In the interim to your disbelief, shock, and powerlessness you would see bags of fertilizer being carried out through both the backdoor as well as right in front of you without the queue ever getting any shorter owing to other people having been served.

But these are people for whom the subsidy program was meant for. From their tales it was unmistakable that the greatest they appreciated about the program’s execution is its exposure of the state of corruption decay our state institutions are ruinously sliding into. An ADMARC depot in Malawi is among the most locally accessible and representative of state machinery. This is why I together with the people of my village feared for our nation. If some cabinet ministers illegally possessed and sold thousands of the fertiliser coupons and then this secret mutates and develops immunity to concealment and finally makes its way to and grabs the front page space for daily newspapers and nothing corrective and retributive is done and we still maintain our national expectations, then we must be a pitiful nation that takes pride in unjustified and perilous self-assurance. We all remember well how cabinet ministers have been caught in the web of smouldering allegations of corruption which in a society of those that esteem justice either instituting an inquiry or the alleged suspect’s resignation from office were to be the expected; and yet life has kept on as usual. We are like a nation that is either undecided or undetermined of the rightful treatment of injustice and any of its semblances. Somehow you are convinced that of the unknown motivations and interests that drive our political leaders surely it is without contention that the national interest is just manifestly none of them. Perhaps this is the nature of human nature as political philosophers of old have noted: that man is by nature selfish. Perhaps our leaders are just being what they are (is it ought to be?): human?

When we talk of nations as political communities we cannot afford to leave the fragile national goals in the hands of mankind’s selfishness. What gives political communities legitimacy is their primary ability and requirement or condition that leadership should never assume independence of the governed unless they have cleansed the leadership from the folly of man’s egoism. This is why the moment a nation does not place hope and confidence in building established and lasting political institutions it in essence is reduced to a mere aggregation of human beings either without a shared aspiration or plain ignorant of how to attain it or worse still an absence of both. The paradox of it all is that owing to man’s egoism one would hardly willingly and freely establish such institutions. It is a product people’s efforts. We should by now stop pleading with political leaders to be accountable. It is our onus to make them be accountable despite them hardly liking it.

Corruption suffocates all other institutions in the nation. It annihilates initiative, hope, and patriotism. Collective national goals are trumped under feet and there is hence zero justification for adhering to order and protocol. Hard work loses its essence as the toiling and worn out hard worker is double sure that making an achievement is through cutting corners through the immoral path of corruption. On the opposite side of the weigh balance frustration and mistrust of both public institutions and fellow nationals prevail. In the end it corrodes the value of commitment to and identification with national aspirations. People finally live in a country and not in our country. They seek every opportunity to evade paying taxes. They do not mind that by being nepotistic they are treading down another national in the painful boots of social injustice. So long as personal ambitions are served in a country it does not matter. Not that they take pride in afflicting harm and suffering on others. Perhaps if they had or were in a nation of their own they would honour the demands of social justice and would have cared. The fact is they do not live in their country. They live in a country. I can say it without fear that many a Malawian today are living in a country Malawi. I am yet to see people in droves who live in their country called Malawi. This is the epicentre of stagnation, retrogress, and deep sinking in the mire of poverty. The nation might be progressing and moving forward yet there is even a higher possibility that through the eagle’s spectacles we are either stagnant or face retrogression.

... But has Bingu brought the candle of hope?

I have never conversed with President Wa Muthalika let alone been any 10m closer to him at any public gathering. Yet I firmly know that he has not enjoyed his presidency right from the presentation of his inaugural speech in May 2004. The man has never been short of foes. Critics have come out of all intents and even in contrasting shapes. Some critics have been propelled by something bordering on vengeance that it has been tricky for both the president and most Malawians to draw a borderline between well-meant criticism and that at the service of personal hatred. Whatever the case there are some fundamental realities that whether we like their taste, doubt their articulators or like them do not alter the content of their truth.

From the very beginning Bingu’s presidency was characteristic of a change in the doing or happening of things on our political landscape. Change whether positive or not or a compound of both. During the first half of his first year in office almost everybody was wondering from where the critics of the president would get the weaponry for criticising him with as it seemed then that almost the entire population was with him. That is the unique part with African politics. Very few leaders score less than distinctions in their first year. People praised Bingu. Who could not when you were for once assured of no brutal and heartless beatings of opponents by strange people who were ironically both ‘young’ and ‘democrats’? Who could not when the cabinet size was almost half of the one of his predecessors? I don’t know how any decent and dignified Malawian could not be happy when he saw promise of no mudslinging and uncivil language saturating the waves of the national broadcasters. There was anticipation that at last heed would be granted to common sense over the (ab)use of state institutions for party agenda. The promises both in word and action were sweet and many, and hence promising.

Then came the generally successful first implementation of the fertilizer subsidy, the debt cancellation and the resurgence of the fight against corruption though it ended in an unpleasant ‘indirect truce’ brokered by political convenience. Then the president’s ratings in people’s minds started shrinking. Criticisms were made against his over-bloated cabinet to which the president responded with a new meaning of bloated, yes different from his inaugural speech one. Then there were constitutional requirements the executive was supposed to comply with but it chose not to abide by.

Soon the pundits and think tanks and those in the world of academia reached a common agreement irrespective of their formulas in their assessment of Mutharika’s presidency: he has done well on the economic front but miserably on the political front. The jury was out.
My contention in this article is that Muthalika’s performance on the economic front has been fairly good. This is pleasing news for a country like Malawi that for almost the entire days of Muluzi’s reign pitched up tent in the economic doldrums and the situation was worsening and noticeable even without the technical spectacles of an economist. In normal circumstances Bingu’s performance should be an re-ignition of a faltering flame in the tangible darkness of despair that had characterised Malawi for a long time, a period where almost everything not only seemed not to work but everything was depressingly failing. But has Bingu brought the hope we need to build on for a prospering and moving Malawi say for the next twenty years?

For Bingu's success to make meaning to the future of Malawi we have to see his achievements and shortfalls not only in the confines of the present. Whenever people have acted without a sense of forward-looking robust achievements have failed to alter the future. Bingu and for sure any next leader of Malawi if he is to bring promise to Malawi we have to work out on the foundations of our success. Building up a nation cannot be a task of a single man no matter how wise and prudent. Neither can it be a task done only during one’s tenure. It is as it is a task that must interlink with the next successor friend or fiend.

Why are many praising Bingu? He for sure has done something new. Not is wrong to praise Bingu. Not that he has done nothing significant praiseworthy. He sure has. But if you are to take notice the troubling thing that threatens a prospering post-Bingu Malawi is the fact that everything is built on a personality – Bingu Wa Mutharika. Nothing inherently bad with this. It is good for a community and nation to prosper and for one individual to spearhead the prosperity. However in the interest of sustaining prevailing prosperity it is safe to consider it dangerous and uncomfortable for designing, determining, and driving national change to be the sole responsibility of one man no matter how brilliant. This is the point that separates achieving leaders and wise leaders who build enduring establishments that outlive the person and generations.

What Bingu and any Malawian leader must do now as a matter of urgency is to build a culture for the prosperity. I strongly believe that lasting change for good or for bad is never independent of a foundational culture. What is this culture? For sure it has nothing to do with dances, and rites of passages. It instead has everything to do with establishing a revolution mindset in institutions. It is about entrenching a spirit that will inevitably either lead to success and prosperity or will severely undermine and incapacitate the re-known obstacles that stand in the way of development. Bingu should set up lasting establishments of anti-corruption, transparency and accountability regardless of one’s prowess, sensitivity to merit and unquestionable integrity in positions of authority. All this ultimately ends up in empowerment of the ordinary people. They should be confident that there is no way they should mistrust the many government workers for they know once they are exposed to be corrupt, the entire system is ready to rid itself of such contamination. It ought not to be as it is that it is the prerogative of a prudent leader to determine when a corrupt officer should face the law. This is the only ground that is conducive for sustainable development. As things are now, I am afraid I can sound as the pessimist that no one is no longer afraid of committing corruption in Malawi. They know for sure that as long as you belong to the right side of the political chasm or you are independent you are beyond the indicting touch of justice. Woe to you if you antagonise the ruling side!

We are all aware of cabinet ministers who have been strongly accused of engaging in corruption since we condemned poor Mwawa to the cooler for the similar crimes. Nothing has happened to them and they have defied calls for resignation claiming they would do so only when their employer the president (only him since the rest of us have no value) tells her to do so. The president has never commented on such allegations and we might not be able to hear what he said but our common sense serves us without fail and difficulty with the realization that their continued holding of office that implies he has not ‘told’ them it is yet time to resign. This is why I am now not seeing Malawi in the next twenty years moving beyond from the present if this is how we build our nation. The task in short is too huge to be rested even in hands of the most prudent and most intelligent human being walking on the planet earth.

For Malawi to take a leap forward and start walking along the path to prosperity we need a legacy that will be greater than one individual. Beyond one president. Something that goes beyond a personality. Through Okonkwo Chinua Achebe notes that no man no matter how great is greater than his people. There is the greatest thing Bingu can give Malawi which I reckon is greater in value than what he can personally deliver in ten years (assuming in 2014 we don’t demand a third term amendment in the constitution). It is laying down a spirit of making things work on their own even in his absence. Such is invaluable treasure that even the next hard core dictator would not be able to suffocate and trample under feet. It is the spirit of letting no one be above somebody. Letting transparency and merit define our structures and institutions of power and authority.

As things are we should always be waiting for a prudent man to come and build what his predecessor plundered. This is if we only count on the prudence of the leader. We need empowerment of the masses and autonomous operation of the various systems of the state. Then we will imagine a prosperous and excelling Malawi even after none of us who is alive today would no longer be determining the tide of the nation.

Pausing and Remembering....

It is so long. It is so windy. It is fascinating, intimidating, and amazing. I mean life; the journey of life. Like any other journey you are not perpetually in travel. As you travel it is natural and necessary that somewhere, sometime, somehow you have to take a rest. You rest to re-invest extra energy into the journey. This is the time you take stock of the journey. You look at what remains ahead of you and the mind tries to wander around as to how it will get itself there. Somehow you find it is inevitable to reflect on the past, the distance already travelled. Somehow you seek to understand how is it that you have gone that far. You reflect and relive the past. You see it. You note its highs and valleys. You remember how it all started taking shape. Perhaps you could have foreseen it all shaping out as it has turned out today. Usually though how the past interwove its events in order to make the ladder leading to the present fascinates and amazes you. Sometimes it makes you cry. Sometimes you wish other things had not happened. You wish things had turned out in a different fashion. It generates bitterness, anger, and hate. Yet somehow you must submit to the realization that what has been done, the past, cannot in anyway be undone (Trevor Phoya 2004). This is what makes you appreciate the valuable packages the past contains. Later you realise there is never pay in hating and being bitter about the past. You discover you have got to put to valuable use all the contents of the past by learning from it and its mistakes.

The process of reflection is awesome. I have been reflecting myself about the past of late. Today 9th June 2009 the Year of Our Lord I have just graduated with a Master of Applied Ethics at Linköpings Universitet, Sweden. It is awesome. Minus the tribute I wrote on 15th March 2009 about my late great dad I discovered there are many and many more people I both remember and have to remember to have put me and kept me on course. This is the course whose very rail has helped me get this far. They made great contributions. They might not have known it neither been known themselves. Today I paused and was soon remembering some outstanding people who inspired me.

I remember that young beautiful and decent female teacher whose name I just cannot remember. The year was 1987. I was only 5years then and was doing my standard one class. She was very kind to me. She was assuring and gave me a sense of security at the school. She was also a friend of my mother herself a teacher at the same school, Kasungu L.E.A. School.

In pausing to reflect I remembered my new school at then the new and modern Kasungu Demonstration Primary School in 1989 when I was seven and started my standard 3 class. I remember Mrs Kasakula our STD 3 teacher. She had long hair. She never shouted but always spoke softly in her teaching. She was quiet and spoke in a tender tone. I do not remember seeing her angry and mad at a pupil. She had rare talents as I now realise. I liked her. I was sure even if I made a mistake in class she would take it wisely and treated us with dignity. I now realise pupils and children might not know what respecting human dignity even in the under-aged is all about. These are too abstract terms to be comprehended by their immaure minds. Yet one should never be misled into assuming they do not feel it as everybody else when their dignity is undermined. They know it best. In my memory’s eye I can see her teaching her us how to read a clock and tell the time. She was great.

I remember Mrs Mateche Banda our Standard 4 teacher. Unlike Mrs Kasakula she was not a quiet personality. She liked talking. Never take this for a weakness or a dent. It suited her well. We all liked what she talked about and how she did. I can say she was probably the other of the two motherly teachers I have met in life. I can actually remember that she is the first teacher who started giving us advice as to how we were to live a worthwhile life. She was just a mother. Whenever you messed up or misbehaved you knew she would sure punish you. However we knew that her punishment was always out of love. We did not hate her for that. She interacted nicely with us and the sense of a family was unmistakable.

In the course of my reflection I remembered about my Standard five experiences. I remember Mrs Chauma our teacher. She was, just as Mrs Mateche, motherly. She was hard working. She was kind. She was scarcely angry but spoke kindly and gently and usually in a pleading tone. She could arrange extra lessons in the afternoon. She taught us geography and about Malawi’s neighbours. That is how I first learnt the meaning of the word neighbour. She taught us of deciduous and evergreen trees and why they behave such. That was when I was ten. I can remember.

Getting to standard six I remember Mr Gerald Kasekani Banda who was teaching us Arithmetic. There was no mathematics in primary school then. He was very good at it.

If there is a class I just do not remember much about it is my standard seven experiences. I do not know why. I do not have much to remember about this class. I do not however undermine the contributions of the teachers for this class then. As far as I can remember this is the year when my primary school grades were the worst I think. It was my entire fault.

I remember Mr Mlamba my standard 8 English teacher. This man was a teacher. He motivated me a lot. He spoke fluent English with a very nice accent. He was a confident man proud of his efforts and his knowledge. Who did not like him? I scored well in his composition exams. I usually emerged the best. He also spoke French. When you got some question right or wrong he would respond with French expressions that sunk in all of us that we were able to make out their meanings by ourselves. Mr Mlamba was also a nice singer. I was told he weekly sung in church with his wife.

1995 is the year I remembered also. I got into secondary school that year to take new challenges and the new teachers that come with them. I met Mr Medi the junior secondary English and Biology teacher. He was good. He was bold and confident in his lesson delivery.

I remember Mrs Yiwombe, one of the great teachers in my life. She taught us Geography from Form one through Four. She was just in a class of her own. She retired in 1999 after seeing us through out of the whole secondary school. Apart from her excellent communication her lessons were usually packed with pieces of advice pointing to real hard work that revealed the reality of life in the prime of our innocence about life.

I remember Mr. Charles P. Inani my form two History teacher. He awakened the quest of catching up with current affairs and international issues through the stories that accompanied his lessons. He provoked in me the curiosity that always gets me to newspapers and TV news channels.

I remember Mr Chithonje the senior secondary English teacher who awakened a sense of critical thinking through his literature classes. He helped me start appreciating the value of raising questions and embark on an own search for answers. He helped me develop love for the beauty of literature.

I remember Mr Nkhata the senior secondary Mathematics teacher. He was sharp. He easily explained the stuff so long as you chose to be attentive.

I also remember Mr. Leslie the VSO volunteer teacher who simplified Biology in his lessons. He was a dedicated young man. We heard that he was only 19 when he started teaching us in form 3 in 1998 through to form 4 in 1999. We did not verify it but it was stronger than usual rumour. I will remember him particularly for simplifying otherwise intimidating concepts and subjects in biology.

From 2000 till 2004 I read for my bachelor’s degree at University of Malawi’s Chancellor College. There were also great men and women who inspired me. However most of such already have names and titles and society generally appropriately recognises them. Hidden from the scene though are the many teachers who did not have a name established for themselves, yet I bear and represent traces of their hard work and commitment.

Pausing and sparing a thought for such great children of Malawi is refreshing and gets you to the conclusion: I have come from very far to graduate today at Linköpings Universitet, Sweden. Some of these probably might have passed on. But they were gallant sons and daughters of Malawi.

Haven't We been Here before?

Elections can cause anxiety back home. The anxiety is usually least about what sort of policies will emerge triumphant through the party that cherishes them. Usually peace and stability are the issue of concern. Will the results be mutually accepted by the concerned contestants? This is the multi-billion Krona question (being in Sweden I will do her good justice to speak in her currency). Then, when you look at what you make out to be the ultimate motivations driving some of the major candidates you are scarcely at ease when you imagine what the future of the nation you love most will be like with such motives’ hands on the reigns of power. The anxiety multiplies when you see those you think do not represent interests that are to the advantage of the nation emerging to be popular by the day. Not that you hate them. Not that you despise and undermine the rationality of those that follow them in growing multitudes. It is just that you feel that popularity aside their ambitions are not compatible with the national good. Sight of this national good can only be captured by the lens of foresight. Using the lens of foresight requires that you remove your dark glasses of ethnic, petty party, and religious fanaticism and consider Malawi, and Malawi only, the nation loved most.

When elements you think are not as representative of the national interest seem to be gaining numbers you become worried. You then wonder whether the other side seeing such pressure is not contemplating rigging. You realize and know that it is an option that can never be sidelined and left un-pursued , whether successfully or not. Then you wonder whether all this does not give the ideal recipe for rejection of the results, which is the light match to the tinderbox of chaos. Though in Sweden, you can somehow sense the tension on the beautiful dusty streets of Malawi. It is a mood of suppressed tense and floating un-expectation. It is worrying.

But I have just discovered the worth of reflection. Sometimes reflection is good. Looking back sometimes re-arms and re-assures you today. You get unknown but effective strength that lets you carry on in hope. You have a flicker of hope in pitch darkness when despair ceaselessly wages attacks on your expectations and reasonable wishes. I have just reflected on and remembered the past. It is full of surprises. Pleasant surprises. It is not a long past, but a past though. It is a short past of long lists of moments of tension. Interestingly the tension has always revolved around the current three major political players of Malawi in this election, Muluzi, Tembo, and Bingu. Tense days they were. More often than not justice was cornered somewhere, enough reason to let go of hope. Yet somehow what prevailed was not that which was unjust. Despite its fierce rage evil never ever managed to stand on the champion podium.

The year 2003. Muluzi through his legislators were fighting for an open term bid in parliament. There was no fierce and muscular opposition then that would force its way, or the people’s way in parliament. But John Tembo was there in parliament, leading his MCP. He supported and voted for the bill. Chakufwa Chihana the onetime fear-proof legend who risked his precious life to tell Dr Banda the dictator that there was no more room for life presidency in Malawi to the shock of us all supported the bill. There was every reason to give up hope. Yet justice could not be murdered. A one Peter Kaleso, Muluzi’s own MP and Kate Kainja of Tembo’s MCP perhaps under the influence beyond their personal convictions rose to the occasion and did not disappoint. They heeded justice’s SOS. Through them and another legislator I have forgotten the bill did not pass by 3 votes.

I was in the library of Chanco on that day. Nobody could concentrate on studies that day. The tension was notable. This was during a period when any publicly expressed dissent to Muluzi’s comeback would be rewarded with machete hits on the head containing the ‘uncooperative and misleading’ brain of yours. How dare you resist Muluzi’s life presidency? The next day after the defeat in parliament The Dailytimes’ front page cried with the headline ‘SAYIMANSO!’. Even though a sometimes illiterate newspaper vendor is always far from being responsible for the publishing the contents of the paper on whose sales he earns a living, Muluzi’s Young Democrats were in town assaulting the vendors on the streets just because of the front page news story. A tense Malawi that was. Somehow we made it through.

2004-05. There was a plot to impeach Bingu right in the tender morning of his term. Muluzi was engineered it all. He had Tembo’s blessing. Not that Bingu is a saint, no not even by politicians’ heavily compromised standards. But when one looked at his political devilishness and compared with that of Muluzi he emerged a necessary evil that you could live with. So tense was the debate of the impeachment. Signs were that this alliance of Tembo and Muluzi was going to have its way. Apparently it seems it is easy for despair to colonise our hearts when justice is under siege. Despair reigned yet again in 2005. So rife was the tension that the speaker of parliament collapsed in shock in attempting to restore order in an august house that was turning wild. But later the tension passed. Remember it was about the same personalities, Muluzi, Tembo, on one side and Bingu on the other. It is not the first time a Muluzi-Tembo alliance has rallied against Bingu. Where justice or injustice has been laying is up for prediction.

2006-08. The national budget was used as tool for blackmail by the opposition. Let me be clear here. I agree with the spirit of Section 65. Not that parties should hold their MP hostage forever, but that when the legislator seeks to cross the floor she should seek a fresh mandate from the constituents. It is a necessary good for our country. However basic and freely given common sense tells me and everybody that existence and use of this section presupposes some other background. It presupposes a background where to begin with the constituents who are to give or deny this rebellious MP of theirs a fresh mandate are in good health, have proper shelter, and their children can afford an education. Access to an education implies that teachers receive their salaries from government etc. Now in the context of a conflict of priority it is sheer neglect to hold the greater good at ransom just for the sake of a good whose meaning depends on the very great good. I do not agree with the tactics the government employed to shun Section 65 implementation. But they were legal though. Actually it is the legal aspect of the case that made implementation of the section ‘impossible’ besides being ethically wrong. The opposition led by Tembo and Muluzi could not take anything of this. Perhaps we think that, “I can demonstrate my leadership abilities when given full charge of responsibility.” Little does it ever occur to us that how we respond to crooked or straight actions by those in authority is the greatest test that betrays our true leadership abilities and motivation.

For five years impasses have characterised every of our budget sessions. I was a new recruit of the most loved ministry, the Ministry of Education, teaching at Mulunguzi Secondary in the beautiful Zomba city beloved Malawi’s education capital. I was greatly involved in the running of the school’s boarding. There were strong empirical fears of there being no funding months due to the section 65-budget impasse once the three months of provisional expenditure allowed in the absence of a national budget expired. Expiring they did before the budget was deliberated. What it meant was that there would be no money to pay for the electricity bills for the school of 800 students’. No money to pay water bills. No money for the purchase of cleaning utensils in students’ hostels. The rational and inevitable thing would be for the school to close. Not only this school, but possibly about 50 or so in the whole Malawi in a similar predicament; all because of the artificial section 65-budget stalemate. But somehow the nation has kept moving. Somehow we survived. It was never easy. It is even more painful to the many Malawians that do not subscribe to any political party. Imagine you are such a one. Imagine you fail to get your salary. Imagine that the sole reason is that party conflicts in parliament have stagnated the national budget. Again I am not undermining the worth of section 65. All I think to be reasonable is that given different interest value and alternative options for approaching a problem approaches which cause more harm than good are not worth the trouble. If we talk of Malawi, we should also consider that there were more than 30 or so independent legislators. Why should those that voted for these independents be held hostage over an issue about someone jumping ship and joining another party? It is just not in their interest! The poor approach taken on section 65 was a problem of strategy on the part of the opposition. Matters of poor strategy are not only costly but make reflections about leadership quality.

As I said interestingly these elections are again characterised by the same three personalities, Muluzi, and Tembo on the one hand and Bingu on the other. We are at a crossroads. A key and historical decision must be made. Previous history about how these three (or is it these two sides?) relate adds more fuel to the anxiety. I personally think that we all know by now what each of these camps represents to the Malawi dream. Let us choose on the19th.

Today there is tension of course in the air. But upon reflection we know that we have been here before. When all hope was lost, and despair and fear attempted to impose themselves in us, somehow they did not succeed. Somehow we survived. This time around we will not survive somehow. We will survive by GOD’s grace, ever present with us. So, may May 20 come as soon as possible, because we have ever been there!

Kasungu Town Assembly Sets the Trend!

It is always difficult to make sense of politics on my dear continent and my Malawi. Most people are disinterested in politics because of the face it is given in Malawi. Politics is portrayed as for the elites and as lying beyond the comprehension of the masses who are generally poor and illiterate. Their role is merely endorsing what the elites think is the way to do things. But things ought not to be so. Politics is for everyone. It is for everybody. 

Local governance is what I think is the bedrock for democracy and politics. It is rarely active in Africa. Yet we need it. This is why I was so glad today when I heard a story carried on Malawi’s local radio station Zodiak the only Malawi radio station streaming live online. In Kasungu one of Malawi’s districts where I grew up there is an interesting story similar to those cases which  I have more than thrice read in my studies’ literature as representing the conflict between the state’s principles and cultural or ethnic interests. In Kasungu the town assembly has dragged to court and is asking the court to ban from the district the Seventh Day Adventist Pentecost church because of the religious group’s values. Apparently the group forbids its pregnant women members from seeking conventional medical attention during and after the pregnancy. Young children are prevented from accessing immunization from fatal diseases in the name of religion. A good number of maternal deaths have been reported as well as high infant deaths linked with membership to this religious group so argues the Town Assembly. So there they were, the members of this group, at the court chanting songs of inspiration claiming that they ought to be strong as it is inevitable for them to face such ‘persecution’. The magistrate is yet to deliver his verdict over the case.

In the western world this is no news and there is nothing significant about such news. I am uninterested in evaluating as to what ought to be done, that is, which interests should be prioritized. Instead I am so delighted that Kasungu Town Assembly has set the trend of how politics should be conceived. Politics is about matters involving everybody especially the illiterate and poor. Definitely I know that a debate has ensued among the residents of Kasungu town. Reasons, arguments and counter-arguments are being given as to why which view is ideal. Public deliberation is at work now. The issues under debate are not far removed from the people. They are issues that concern not every Malawian. They are matters restricted only to Kasungu, their town. The issues demand the attention and decision of the residents of the town. You do not need a better presentation of how local governace and local democracy should be shaped. We only hope that the local assembly’s involvement and commitment to local issues should extend beyond these issues, to issues about local health, crime, town by-laws etc. 

The chief executive of Kasungu Town assembly ought to be commended. S/he has set a trend un-parelled. It is something all local assemblies should emulate. Then democracy and politics shall cease being elitist and exclusionary, a club of the elites. It will no longer be a no-go zone field for the ordinary locals. May the lessons be learnt please!

Moving in Circles

If the days of the calendar were licensed and that usage should follow a fee, then in Malawi who ever would own the copyrights of the calendar, the date 19th May 2009 would have attracted the highest returns. Malawians go to the polls on this date. The anticipation has increasingly been built up. Those seeking power are all over the place, moving, pleading, promising, lying, and worse still cursing. They that have the power of voting are also occupied, wondering, asking, deciding, and some only watching. It is elections time. Things happen. They are happening.

Like it or not, believe it or not, Bingu and Muluzi are at the centre of the happenings. Tembo comes in the picture because of the bad blood between Muluzi and Bingu. Personally I have no problems seeing politicians make manoeuvres of whatever sort as long as they are not only legal but ethical as well. Nevertheless when I see that in the pursuit of political office what is unethical is regularised and thrown into the sack of the normal I fail to be indifferent. This is what has been troubling me of late.

For one thing, I do not like dwelling on the mud some politician slung on their opponent. Decency and ethics are virtues that cannot be compromised at the expediency of political convenience. There are things we can wash down; things we can let pass unexamined. Nevertheless this does not include elements that threaten and undermine social decency and social morality.

Some things are not in themselves worth re-bringing into the present. The recent happenings in Malawi are very surprising to me. Muluzi and Tembo have joined hands to face their common political enemy, Bingu. Tembo believes an election victory was snatched away from him (it is unclear who specifically engineered this ‘theft’ whether it is by Muluzi or Bingu). At least he has fixed his finger of blame on Bingu. He (Tembo) alone can account for the motivation behind this settlement for Bingu and not Tembo. Muluzi claims Bingu is ungrateful for snatching away the victory he (Muluzi) gave him. Now, this is where Tembo’s choosing of Bingu (only) to be the 'thief' of his victory requires more than logic to be accounted for. This is beside the story I am looking at though.

Muluzi whatever his intentions were, thought of being with Bingu for a much longer if not all the way of his presidency. Whatever his motivations were he felt that the intentions were betrayed and crushed underfoot by Bingu's quitting of the party. It is clear bitterness had been generated in Muluzi. He attempted to contest himself despite the constitution barring him. Upon being turned down by the Electoral Commission, Muluzi has spared no possible (not necessarily un-contradictory or unethical) alternatives to dislodge Bingu. He had done everything to have Bingu elected. It is no secret that Bingu has no public speaking appeal to woo the masses as Muluzi is renowned for. Political commentators and all have hailed Muluzi's skill in persuasion of the masses. I have a different outlook. I agree Muluzi has tonnes of jokes and knows how to come down on the ground and connect with the unknown nobody on the ground. It is the content of Muluzi's persuasion that throws a fly into the ointment.

In his selling of Bingu, Muluzi went to lengths describing how unsuitable one of Bingu's major contenders John Tembo. Tembo has now become Muluzi's friend. Yet in 2004 Muluzi described an image of a Tembo to be like that of a one immunised from mercy and all humanity, one who personally executed gruesome atrocities against the then one party regime’s dissidents. More times than can be remembered he told all those who cared for Malawi and the characteristics of her political leaders that even though they did not like his promoted candidate (Bingu) they had no moral basis to have the preference of Tembo as their main reason. The man told us that Tembo's hands were dripping with not water or hope but ........... shed by the murdered victims. Actually he had a tape he used to play about how cruel Tembo had been. Those that thought that this was an anomaly and unethical put it to the president that he had to desist from making such slanderous remarks seeing that the courts had acquitted Tembo and that if he had new evidence the ethical duty he had was to make a fresh case in court. Could Muluzi have any of that? So concerned was he about the welfare of Malawi that he retorted later that the fact that the courts have acquitted you is no sign that you are innocent. So said Muluzi and so believed him the people.

Five years later in his bitterness with Bingu Muluzi has afforded the rare audacity of rebranding Tembo as the only appropriate leader to replace Bingu. It should be clear that as far as I am concerned, John Tembo is an innocent man since he was acquitted. My citing of these graphic and crude matters which are to my discomfort too is to reveal what we are perceived to be by other people. I should not be vague here, I find those that follow Muluzi, and they are many, very surprising and acting strange to me. Not that I have a problem with their supporting or following Muluzi. Not at all. What I cannot understand is the failure of them in the course of their following Muluzi to demand and obtain a reconciliation of facts and truths, and ultimately the motives driving their party. For one thing when you compare the reasons Muluzi is against Bingu and those he levelled against Tembo, common sense and intuitions tell us that Bingu should be a lesser evil than the other. Bingu has chiefly among others been accused of being ungrateful by the Muluzi side. Ungratefulness is something you can cope with than terminating people's lives. I wonder that those that follow Muluzi are not demanding an account for this sudden turn of events that shocks reality. Well, may be I am the one who is out of step with common sense and logic. The simple question I am asking is what has happened to the virtue of truth which seems to either be sidelined or trampled as though this has no moral cost?

Some quarters have responded by claiming that in politics this is the norm. You have no permanent friends or enemies. Wait a minute. Is this an absolute principle like the laws of nature? Why should we submit ourselves to this notion when all it is brooding over are malice, bitterness, and selfish motives? This tells me how politicians perceive us. We do not deserve truth and honesty. They can cheat us and not only go away with it but also with our blind and non-inquisitive loyalty. We applaud them. We are not that ethical enough to jealously guard against some cherished values we would not want even our dearest kith and kin trample underfoot. Then suddenly we wonder and complain at the institutionalization of corruption and fraud in public institutions. Somehow so it seems we miraculously convince ourselves that there is no link between honesty, truth, (or their absence) and corruption. We somehow believe that one can publicly and systematically contradict the truth and in private prudently manage public resources when there is a weak or just no mechanism that would hold him accountable.

Personalities matter a lot to our society than some lasting principles that hold a decent and noble society together. A society or community that condones such ethical contradiction as demonstrated by Muluzi makes me sad. I sympathize with all those who follow Bingu because he is Bingu. Those that go wherever Tembo will go. Those that are ready to live by Muluzi's whims albeit ethically contradictory. I of course do not want them to have an ethical outlook as mine. They have theirs and I respect them for their outlook. Yet I sympathise with them with what I understand to be against common sense morality. I am not too sure whether this is common between us. But the fault could be with me I also suppose. Perhaps ethics has zero relevance in the legitimacy of our institutions in today's society. May be we all should obey the artificial but conventional law that in politics you have no permanent enemy or friend. In other words we should also accept whatever it is that the law brings along with it. May be I am the odd one out. If it so be, still changing my outlook I will not. I will rather proudly remain the odd one out in the modern Malawi of no permanent political friends or foes.

Don't Dare undermine Muluzi's Legacy!

Kwasfrim is my African buddy in these distant lands far from the continent. Usually I am with him in the computer labs doing our assignments. He is the guy who introduced me to Linköpings’ Baptist Church. He is typical of what I like in those that are my close friends - talking and never in want of fun and laughing stuff. The boy also has a liking for African politics and keenly follows the happenings on the political landscape of the land of his fathers, Ghana. Hardly a day passes before we laugh at some political madness that is never short of display on this our continent we both so much love. Whenever Kwasfrim finds me in one of the university computer labs working on my computer the first and usual question he raises after extending his greeting is “Is there any news from Malawi?” He knows we are having elections in May. Due to his inquisitiveness I have often times narrated to him almost the legacy and record of every of Malawi’s politicians. In the same manner I have learnt a lot about Ghana’s politics, politicians, and history from Kwasfrim of course even though it might be biased but who said there is unbiased information?

So with Muluzi making news in Malawi I have always shared with him that the former president is seeking a comeback. But instead of letting the due process of the law take its course Kwasfrim immediately started lambasting me and Malawians as to how we can allow a man to come back into office. I told him that it is not our fault but that we are all waiting either for Malawi Electoral Commission or the courts to interpret the constitution for us. I told him that Muluzi is counting on the linguistic ambiguity of one of the constitution’s sections about term limits which other than just stating that no president shall rule the country for more than two terms the writers complicated things by stating that “no president shall be allowed to run for office after serving a maximum of two consecutive terms.” Now, Kwasfrim never delays in lambasting African politicians. That day when I explained to him this linguistic source of the controversy he immediately took to lambasting the framers of the constitution. “Why do Africans make things sound complicated? Why didn’t they just put it in simple and straightforward words? Look, now they are giving loopholes to Maluzi to come back”.
“Muluzi.” I said to correct him. He didn’t give a damn.
“No one should rule for more than two terms. That is unacceptable.” He lambasted. His passion and conviction were unmistakable.
“Now that man will come again. He will rule you again because of your unnecessary piling of words in the constitution”. He was firm. That for him was the cost we should pay for trying to impress with our language. But I told him the man would fail at one stage or the other.

Since then it became a norm for him whenever he finds me in the computer lab to ask “What is Mazzulini saying today?”
“Oh Muluzi?” I would correct him the African way of not boldly telling him that that was not his name. “No news from Muluzi” I would respond.

This week though when he asked the routine question I had a different answer.
“What is Maluzu saying today?” At least now he was gradually zeroing in on the correct pronunciation of the man’s name.
“Oh Muluzi? He is hiring some 2 British QC lawyers and also another prominent South African lawyer together with dozens of other local Malawi lawyers to make his case in court about his eligibility upon being rejected by the electoral commission to contest”
“Eh!” He went into his usual screams of immense suprise. “That man won’t win. If he is hiring all those powerful and expensive lawyers then it means he is in doubt himself. But still the ambiguity of the constitution gives him some room” He betrayed some hesitance.

Now, recently I have been reading that Muluzi is being called Obama by his supporters. I followed Obama’s campaign. He was named Obama throughout. But whether Muluzi can rightly fit in Obama’s unprecedented garments is one question. The fact however is that the people have seen something greater in Obama that at least is not in Muluzi or at least to which he is aspiring to achieve and has still some way to go. In short for them Obama is greater than Muluzi. In other words Muluzi is not as great as Obama. In other words Obama is an inspiration to Muluzi. In other words Muluzi is not as inspirational on the international scene as is Obama.

But if you believe this may you please prepare to change your outlook. Muluzi is inspiring people out there in the international world. As long as Kwasfrim is Ghanaian and not Malawian and therefore international then there is a story you must hear, a story I will tell.

Kwasfrim has just been among the un-noted whom the Muluzi inspiration is catching out there in the world beyond the Malawi borders. You see, Kwasfrim had an assignment for his coursework to do. Three days ago he told me it was due today Friday 27th March 2009. So today he was so tied up and very quiet on his computer working on his assignment which yesterday he told me was due at 12pm today. There he was. Working. But he had confessed more than thrice that the assignment was quite difficult and that yesterday he had lost much time as he had to do his round of work at the place he works. The pressure was on him. He finally confessed that given the context he had resigned to submitting it after the stipulated time. He said he would risk having some marks deducted as a penalty.

I was also quietly working on my thesis when suddenly I heard him shout at me asking, “What is the date today?”
“27th ” I responded without looking at him.
“Oh!?” He was puzzled.
“What’s up?” I took my eyes off the computer and looked at him.
He was looking at me with a brighter face.
“Look at this! In class the lecturer told us that this assignment is due on Friday. But on the assignment question that he sent us it is written that the assignment is due for submission on Friday, 28th March 2009!” He screamed pointing to the page bearing the said information on his computer monitor, inviting me to read it. Now today Friday the date is 27th March 2009 and not 28th March which will be the Saturday, tomorrow.

I then saw Kwasfrim’s face brighten up and the pressure he bore before vanished. He sprung out of his chair in relief and started pacing around triumphantly as he who has just solved an age-long bothering puzzle. I laughed out loud and was puzzled by what he said next as he walked around in relief.

“Yeah now I will be like Muluzi. I will submit it tomorrow [Saturday] by 12 mid day. If they ask me I will say that the written instruction on the assignment states that it must be submitted on 28th March [which is a Saturday]”. He said counting on the mistake ignorantly committed by their lecturer.
“Muluzi needs three QCs to defend his case. My case won’t need any QCs. I will say it myself.”
However he stated that he was sure that the lecturer had intended to write Friday 27th 2009 which is the only correct day-date match unlike the wrong and incongruent Friday 28th March 2009.
“I will be like Muluzi! I will capitalize on that mistake” He repeated with smiles.
Such is the legacy of Muluzi. You must never undermine his influence henceforth. Shall you?

African Puzzles

The African puzzle is one which is very mutative. Recent mutations seem to be competing with the HIV virus as far as tracking and pinning down are concerned. I have been shocked at how on this continent of ours we cannot prioritise on core issues. I must confess that the happenings on this our dear continent are increasingly escaping the reach of comprehension.
I hold two countries responsible for my increased failure in understanding the happenings on the continent - Malawi and Madagascar.

It is no other date other than 10th March 2009. This is the day the International Monetary Fund was not at its seat in Washington but in Tanzania making scary forecasts about the African economy, that the world is facing its 'greatest recession' and that Africa will feel its full force. Gloomy pictures. Leaders of the world's economies which always determine Africa's economies are up and down trying to make sense of or put sense into this economic crisis. Gordon Brown has just been meeting Obama over the economy. The EU has been in countless meetings over the economy. These are the economies which when they sneeze Africa's catch a serious cold.

While a few African countries and citizens are concerned about how to sail through the economic turmoil's water, at least the people in Malawi and Madagascar have some other things more urgent and that demand priority over the economy.

Today the army chief in Madagascar has issued an ultimatum to the struggling sides to either concentrate on holding the nation together or risk a military take-over. The capital's mayor has had his supporters staging bloody protests demanding an exist of the president. About 100 people have been killed in such protests in the past two months. Some sections of the army have vowed to side with the renegade mayor. They think the future for whatever the ills they can see about the present government can only be cured and good governance secured not by reformation of systems and structures but only through the installation of the mayor as the next president. This is looking not into the future, looking not beyond now, not beyond the capabilities of the individuals in the present, but just what is subjectively convenient now. This is a big problem in Africa. Even if the president might be the problem, his removal at least by following the due process of the law is a first step towards the right solution. Even if everybody wants him gone by yesterday, still the future is not insured by just swapping responsibilities to another 'nice' man. It lies in the reformation of systems and institutions. The people of Madagascar should by now know that the current president is facing his fall in the same fashion he rose up. They should have learnt by now that their style of change of leadership which always costs human lives is not among even the least efficient ways of changing government and making progress. May be they know better. May be they should be left alone.

Now to the Warm Heart of Africa. Elections are around the corner, 20th May2009 to be exact. Instead of focusing on how they will handle the economy in light of the global economic crisis my dear Malawi politicians with the current state of the economy are conducting themselves as though this were the period the world economy registered an unprecedented growth. John Tembo was out on Monday at a rally. His theme of the rally: the numbered days of the tenant of the state house. His message is one of the party forming government this year. That there will be universal fertiliser subsidies. But when thousands of tax-paying citizens of the donor countries are losing jobs, the tax which finances Malawi's (40%) budgetary support is it prudent to continue with making promises as usual when things are not that promising? When the citizens of the donor countries are being given of coming days of perseverance and collective effort in overcoming the economic difficulty is it not surprising to see Tembo promising free fertilizers as his friend Muluzi promises free secondary school education without any tuition fees? So you have leaders in donor countries urging their citizens to tighten their belts even harder in order to sail through, whereas on the receiving end the cunning Malawian politician is promising his citizens and counting on the money the squeezed citizens of donor countries will give that they should expect relaxation of contribution to the state coffers and that this is not a moment that demands extra commitment in our whatever enterprises. Instead as they put it this is the moment of receiving for free.

This is how it goes on my dear continent I love so much. I love it the more irrespective of such paradoxes that she is never short of.

Herbert of Batumeyo Village

365 days ago the world lost one of those that it had hosted for 58 yrs. This is not to say the man himself was lost. He only departed. He departed because this was not his destination. He was only passing through. He was a sojourner. 365days ago he left. Usually pomp and trumpets and a gathering of society's important people characterize the death of those that ere famous, powerful, re-known and sometimes even the wise and great. Human nature being frail and undiscerning as it is, easily removes the barriers that lie between the famous, powerful, rich, and influential on the one hand and the great or wise on the other.

I have had the privilege of at least once escaping from this common trap. I did when 365days ago on a Thursday like today 12th March 2009 one the great men and wise men of my lifetime left this life for the other. There was no pomp and publicity to mark his departure which nobody wanted it took place so soon. His name did not even grace the pages of the cheapest newspaper in Malawi on that 13th of March 2008. Yet I remain convinced that one the greatest men in my lifetime fell that day.

I am writing this piece in a room which has been my abode for the past six months whose address Bjornkarrsgatan 8A23, Linkoping 584 36, Sweden. Exactly at this time last year I was approaching Salima from Zomba to mourn and 48hrs later bury this great man Herbert Manthalu in Batumeyo Village, T/ A Mavwere, Mchinji. For most people getting where I have is one of those things that happen. For me it is the grace of God. Yet this man called Herbert who was my father ensured that the tender lives under his custody as his children manage to get the opportunities of life. What amazes me is the great wisdom this man had. For this reason I have called him a great man. The man was wise. The man saw for his children of which I am the second born among the six. Not only did he see ahead of the moment but he managed to see beyond what some men of letters cannot see for their kids.

The man had no greater education qualification than a Malawi School Leaving Certificate and some other Human resource management certificate or diploma which he got almost twenty years in public service. In simple terms his education was not any attractive. It was not great. This inevitably affected the shape and quality of life we led in the family. We were just kids of a government clerk whose wife was a mere primary school teacher. That is how it was, that simple and real. We spent a lot of time in Kasungu and were staying in by then a medium density location. Most of the neighbours were men of relatively big positions at their respective places of work. Generally, with an exception of a household or two, we were the most unenviable household as regards economic status in the neighbourhood. The man however did not submit to fate. He had failed to get a diploma in his life. His wife is only a primary school teacher with a Junior Certificate qualification. He had every justification to source hope for us from other things, elsewhere except in education. How could he prioritise this realm of education as though he or his wife were an inspiration and models to us? This is where traces of his greatness start to emerge.

Growing up in our home of four boys and two girls in that order of birth was interesting. We might have been poor but were rich in laughter. The home was always noisy. Noise of laughter and happiness of course. But this happiness would suddenly disappear once we had our dinner. The man would command everybody to get his books and be on the dinner table for studies. Were it to end there then it would be a very pale reason not enough to dismiss happiness in the home. It was thicker than this. A sizeable rod would always stand in the corner waiting for use. It could be called to duty once one of us was caught dozing. Mercilessly (but now I know hopefully and lovingly) the whippings would awaken you into reality. Sometimes powerful slaps would follow. Or if there is persistence in dozing, cupfuls of water even during the coldest month of June would do the trick. They would be poured out on your head till your clothes got drenched. No chance to go and change clothes. They should dry while on the body. I do not remember anybody who ever dozed over his book when it reached this far. This was when we were in primary school. Once you got o standard four you always knew moments of happiness were being shortened.

The moment you got to standard 8 where you sit for national Primary school leaving certificate examinations and get selected to secondary school it was much hotter and demanding. No more going out to play even on weekends. There was a timetable for studies not drafted by us but by him. It had breaks of no more than one hour. There was just no freedom but study. To make sure you are not just staying idle in the bedroom, he would administer a test may be fortnightly. Your grades in that test would tell whether you had been studying or not. Not only would the grades tell but a very strong whipping would follow to testify that you were not studying as seen by your failure in the test he gave us. There was as such no choice. You just had to get the good grades if you love living in peace. You just had to study. The results were overwhelming as I now see in retrospect. I can safely say that almost throughout our primary school the average position for each of the six children of us was position three. On very rare occasions was a child of Hebert Manthalu below position five. You knew the reward for such poor positions. I remember that when about three of us were in primary school attending the same school people would envy us. During the pupils' assembly on the closing day there was a public announcement of each class' results and the positions for everyone. Manthalus in their respective class would almost always be on position 1 or 2 or 3. That was it. Then the other folks would admire us and claim that we were an intelligent family. May be they were right. But I do not think that had they ever peeped into the routine of the rigorous study life in our home they would still firmly hold their claims. End of school terms were usually the best times for we could at last get praises from our father. Soon we would sleep and the happiness return unrestrained. But it would not stay long. Few weeks before opening gradually the 'normal' order would return.

Failing an exam or scoring an average grade was always a frightening thing. You always knew that there would be no peace at home. There were no other choices except to study and pass. Not just pass with average grades. But passing with brilliance.

When we got to secondary school the demands were the same. Aim high. Whenever the man met or had some new young graduate bosses whom he had to respect at his work place he would take it wisely. He respected them all. This is usually a problem in a culture where the young must always look up to and respect elders. But he did not let it end there. He would come home and motivate and counsel us to aim at going to university, whose only door was to have nice grades in the national examinations. He always said hard work is the key even for the most poorest of the poor. He emphasized hard work and personal commitment (uyikilako mtima – in his exact vernacular). About 80,000 post-secondary school students then fought for the only 3,000 university places. Your grades had to be good and better. The elder brother did it. Then I did it. My immediate younger brother did it. His younger brother did it too. He had barely finished a semester in his freshman year when the man who had sighted the success for him and forced him to walk in its way slept.

I had thought that now that I had had a bachelor’s degree then I should be contented and much more so should be my dad who had not even a diploma anyway be contented. I was amazed. He called us when my elder brother was about to start work. We needn’t be contented so he said. We should aim at getting a Masters degree. “The world is competitive these days." He would say. Such words? From one who has no tertiary education? I am amazed every time I look back at this. Soon my elder brother went to do a masters degree in the UK. He was always encouraging me to get the opportunity when I find it and that I should continuously be searching. I was searching. There was a time I was shortlisted for an MA in political science in our national university in 2007. I was not successful. My younger brother later told me that the man was very concerned that I had not been picked. He was always raising the issue when they were at home. I had been working though at the time, teaching at Mulunguzi Secondary School. The next year the same opportunity availed itself again to me. I did all I could in preparation. Again I was not successful. This time what made me bitter was not just that I had failed again. But even importantly that I had made the man my dad be even more worried and concerned. I had once told him the previous year that I was in the process of applying for MA studies in Sweden. I had talked about it with him only once. My mother later told me he had been earnestly praying for me to succeed on this one. When I received the news that I had been offered the scholarship I called my mother and broke it to her. After talking with her I hung up the phone. But this was not normal. I would not hang up after talking with her only. I had to talk with her husband, my dad as had been the norm. Not on this day though. Not over this news that I am too sure would have pleased him more than it did please me. I could not talk with him. I wished I had told him the news. But no! How could I? Do you talk with one whose body you have just buried a month before on a 15th of March 2008?

Today I have about two months to finish my MA studies. How I wish that man was there to see it all! But his absence does not make me bitter and bad. It makes me celebrate. It challenges on how to focus and live life. Seriously considering others. Today I am not engaged. Not even do I have a girlfriend. I have no wife and as such I am not a head of a family. Yet this does not prevent me from knowing what it takes to be a great father. I know though a distance away from the institution of marriage of how to be a great father. I have learnt it. I have seen it all in Herbert. Herbert Manthalu of Batumeyo Village, T/A Mavwere Mchinji.

No More Pleas Please!

I am constantly being puzzled by the politics of Africa. It seems to me that contrary to all expectation we are regressing away from maturity and stability by the day. The political analyst struggling to pose in un-matching optimism would respond that what we are going through is part of maturity that our democracy is being tested and we are making progress. How I wish I had such hope and optimism for Africa and Malawi.

Why I am desperate for such optimism which I nevertheless cannot afford to have is the fact that we are failing tests whose skills ought to have mastered. I am so concerned with elections in Africa. One of the urgent things I would seek to understand than how a NASA space shuttle docks at the international space station is why is conducting an election in Africa is so troubling a problem that there is always the threat of or indeed the actual loss of human life as the ultimate cost?

But part of the reason as I have discovered this week is that the African society is still stuck in the unrewarding tendencies of not asserting itself. Leadership in our society is given unnecessary power. In the end we do not entrust the leaders with our power but we transfer and give them power over us. In the end these leaders become our deities. We adore them. We always hear from them. We cannot make them listen to us. We are at their mercy. One would think that in a democracy such tendencies would diminish but alas!

There will be presidential and parliamentary elections in Malawi on the 20th of May this year. The centre of attention, for usually the wrong reasons, is on Bakili Muluzi and Bingu Wa Muthalika. This is not to suggest that these are the only favourites. Actually when you factor in J.Z.U. Tembo of MCP, the question of a favourite becomes more indeterminate. It is the relationship of the two aforementioned men that is part of news everyday. Muluzi a former head of state ruled Malawi for 10 years until 5years ago. To the disappointment of the inner circle of the party he picked Mutharika who was a complete outsider of the party for the presidency after (Muluzi’s) failing to secure amendment of the constitution to cater for at first an open term and then later on a third term limit for the presidency. However upon assuming power the two became enemies and Muthalika finally ditched the party and formed his own. Muluzi became furious and vowed to wrestle back the presidency from Muthalika. His candidature though counts on a linguistic ambiguity of a constitutional phrase that semantically would also accommodate a former president to come back yet morally and as per intention of the section according to the constitution conference that arrived at it there was an unequivocal spirit of putting a sealed limit on the number of years one can rule in one’s lifetime.

The contest between Muluzi and Muthalika has led into a sour relationship between the two that defies the monumental natural hatred cats and mice passionately love to have against each other. They have castigated each other. They have accused and counter-accused each other. They have abused the media to bedevil each other. There has been debate as to whether the country is currently under some political tension or not. Some say there is none. Others claim there is clearly more than it.

As for the clergy this is not a contentious matter. They are very clear: There is tension in the country. Political commentators and the civil society organizations too have repeated the same tune of possible violence. The electoral violence alarm has been sounded and resounded. On 25th and 26th February 2009leadership of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM), the Malawi Council of Churches (MCC), the Muslim Association of Malawi (MAM) , the Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM), the Quadria Muslim Association of Malawi (QMAM), and the Hindu Council, came together to deliberate about the pending election. Whatever they deliberated they communicated the cream of their deliberations through a press statement. The theme of their statement was worry about the electoral process. They in the end urged the major leaders to avoid violence.

Now, in Malawi the influence of religious leaders is not like it is in America or Sweden. Actually each of the candidates belongs to some church or religion and the influence of one’s religion is no small matter. This is where I find everything wrong with Malawian leaders (the clergy, the media, Civil Society organizations, and political commentators). The best these people have done (assuming there is tension) in Malawi is issue statements of appeal and press the violence scare. So too have the media, Civil society organizations and political commentators. Sounding the alarm for whom?

It is high time we realized that the least we can do to these politicians is plead with them. It is very clear that almost the major contenders in this race have personal scores against each other. This is no secret to everyone. Malawi however is more than Muluzi, Bingu, and Tembo. Malawi is greater than MCP, than UDF. She is greater than DPP. There are more Malawians than there are DPP members. Surely we have more Malawians than MCP members. Malawians outnumber UDF members. Malawi is greater than any individualistic ambitions embodied in whosoever’s personage. This plain reality seems to have eluded our civil society, the media, political commentators, as well as the clergy leadership. On the fundamental background of Malawi’s greatness over strife-breeding personal egos these contestants should be told by the clergy, the media, civil organizations, and political commentators of what to do and how not to conduct themselves pertaining to the elections and stability of the country. We should not engage in the shallow waters of pleading for what rightfully belongs to us. What I am saying is that there are 13 millions. Less than 500,000 of us are party radicals who have nothing to lose and are eager to unleash violence (don’t question my intuition basis for this figure). Why should the 12 or 10 million of the rest of the others kneel down to a mistaken few and plead for an election that is fair and violence free? Why should we press the panic button? For whom? Surely it is not for these leaders who are deliberately piling up the tension.

If there is tension in our country, we are its creators. We are to bear its blunt. We should pay with some of our women’s dignity and children’s blood. Still it will be us who will be responsible to finding a solution later on. In every respect the whole spectacle is all ours. We should therefore not hesitate to highlight each of the contenders’ specific contribution and what they are obliged to do to in order to leave the country’s stability intact. No pleas please. As long as we agree Malawi is greater than these people we should not mince words to them. How on earth can we afford such passivity? It is in this that we find the current violence scares unnecessary and a default of our responsibility for the moment.

Our Poverty of Patriotism

Change is what Malawi and Malawians need. This is not a luxurious change. It is that change that will ensure transformation of the state of life in Malawi and of course Africa. Now than ever before everybody seems to have realised that it is outside the normal to be in such deep levels of poverty we are currently in; that every year scores of people should succumb to such preventable diseases as cholera. Most people now than ever before believe our lives need to change for the better where going without food or having a meal a day will be due to the dictates of loss of appetite other than scarcity of food.

It is hence unsurprising to see everybody up to politicians rising and moving in the swing of the moment. The international community has equally realised the timing and is also widely involved in assisting Malawi so that the life of the Malawian should be uplifted. It should however not escape our minds that the duty of lifting up Malawi from the ashes of poverty entirely depends on the Malawians. What the donors and their team offer to us is only support. Support is meant to sustain that which is already set and established, that which is already curved, built, or established. This is where the Malawian vision (assuming there is any) appears to me to face some huge challenges. These are challenges if not reflected upon with sincerity and purpose will falter the vision. They will suffocate the dream’s realization. These are problems of Patriotism. There is no patriotism in Malawi.

At no other moment in the history of Malawi have people become increasingly occupied and influenced by their ethnic identities than now. Yet this is the time we should collectively gather all our ethnic diversity into the bag of common purpose and with the propulsion of unity energise ourselves for the marathon of the Malawi dream. Poor as the timing might be, we are a nation that lacks even the very concept of a national dream. May be it is only for Americans and Californians to dream. Nay. Even the poorest of the poor dream. It is a free gift of nature that awakens one from the slumber of self-pity and limitations. A dream places your attention in the direction of potentials which apart from being ignored, taken for granted, and undermined are henceforth understood as rich deposits rich of promise. This is why a nation that aspires to progress must aspire to carve a dream for itself.

Many Malawians have had dreams which they are magnificently realizing in style and in an enviable manner. Today Malawians are all over the world. You can trace their footmarks on the corridors of the world’s universities of repute, in giant global transnational corporations. More than many Malawians now realise that that which was once labelled an impediment, an obstruction wall, that stood between the possible and the much desired life on the opposite side of the ‘impossible’ is now demolished. An army of accomplished Malawian achievers witnesses are there to spear to death any doubts about progressive change. Nevertheless this hope has not been traceable at the national level. As a result of an absence of a national pursuit we have seen the many of us searching for ultimate goals in our respective ethnic identity. Today to many, Malawi is smaller in worth than are ethnic identities.

Sadly enough those that are supposed to lead have chosen to cement these identities and they have honoured them above the nation. Politicians and political analysts all seem to have resigned to the unrewarding fact that we are to esteem our ethnic tags first before we value our national identity. They have told us that these are permanent and natural that they will defy any departure from them. This is why parties are defined by ethnic identity. It is hard to tell today what it is to be Malawian. We all claim this is inevitable. We say it is normal. Whether it is right and proper we shun from addressing. Political commentators have offered little critique to make us all realise that we only start to see the faint and cloudy sight of a prosperous Malawi on the edges of the horizon once we have departed from tribalism. It is only when we are Malawians first.

The days of Kamuzu Banda the first head of state after independence are interpreted variously by many people as regards patriotism. Most are usually quick to point out that the dictatorship then forced us to be loyal to the nation without our consent. As such so it is said we cannot call that patriotism. This is the time when there were the four corner stones of Malawi (though promoted through the only party then) of Unity, Loyalty, Discipline, and Obedience. This is the time when there was a deliberate state initiative of Best Buy Malawian products where it seemed then that almost everything was Malawian. Today in our assessment and dismissal of that time’s dictatorship we fully imitate the proverbial mother who in her dislike of dirt threw away the dirty bathwater together with the baby. We seem to fail to realise that the fact that forced ‘patriotism and unity’ are immoral and unjust, is different from another independent fact that patriotism and unity are very rewarding. The evidence to this distinction is the very past of oppression. Despite the unity then being forced on people, we were still able to realise the fruits of unity and ‘patriotism’. Our task today should not be to discard the project of nationalism but consolidate it in the current political environment.

Today most Malawians do not even imagine making sacrifices for the nation. Nurses, teachers, doctors, engineers, clerks, police officers and their popular traffic officers, and immigration officers just among a host of others are no longer motivated by the nation interest in their execution of duties. No wonder monstrous inefficiency and flying levels of corruption now characterise our public service. What on paper is an obligation for a public officer to fulfil and a right for the common person to benefit from has mutated into a privilege owing to the upsetting nature of entrenched corruption. The ordinary person today only has the right in his hands for that is the much he can get since discretion of who is to benefit from the right is with only those that on top of having the right have money with which to bribe public officials.

Without pin-pointing them as the worst offender the powers that determine who should have a driving licence or not in Malawi seem to have a lot of house ordering to do. I know of people who have the license without ever following the procedures. Some other guy actually had to learn how to drive after he already had his driver’s licence. Another fellow confidently told me that instead of renewing his licence that expired 5 years before he would just ‘find’ another one ‘very easily’. Then there was this accident in the Northern region where this teenager was driving a lorry carrying some church members off to a conference and along the way the vehicle overturned instantly killing some 19 plus people, some of whom were families. The drunken teenager driver was only injured. It was discovered that the guy was as far as his age was concerned not supposed to have been issued with a driver’s licence, at least not the type he had. But there he had it! The most shocking thing here should not be the sudden end of such lives in an accident; rather it should be how we remain indifferent to the system responsible for driving licences that was a catalyst to such tragedies. In the absence of patriotism all we would do is condole the bereaved families and express our shock as we return to our ‘business as usual’, maintaining (if not jealously guarding) the immoral status quo.

I have no space this time to talk of the political leadership most of which falls far below the patriotic standard. They have encouraged the decay in our society. Most of them have no principles which they would defend at whatever cost. They have frustrated the civil service and hence promoted the grounds for corruption. How does one take the requirement placed by a legislature to base their emoluments on the regional standard of other countries when you are the poorest of them all? How then does one understand that the Southern African region standard in terms of emoluments should be restricted to members of parliament only and not teachers, nurses, police officers and every public service worker? Why in the first place should a legislature set its own working conditions and wantonly change them when they feel like doing so? These are the things we should depart from if we are to rise up as a nation. We need to change if we are to be changed. Change does not happen to us though. It is something we consciously and effort-fully make to happen. Its foundation however is patriotism. That which we are desperately poor of now. Change is what Malawi and Malawians need. This is not a luxurious change. It is that change that will ensure transformation of the state of life in Malawi and of course Africa. Now than ever before everybody seems to have realised that it is outside the normal to be in such deep levels of poverty we are currently in; that every year scores of people should succumb to such preventable diseases as cholera. Most people now than ever before believe our lives need to change for the better where going without food or having a meal a day will be due to the dictates of loss of appetite other than scarcity of food.

It is hence unsurprising to see everybody up to politicians rising and moving in the swing of the moment. The international community has equally realised the timing and is also widely involved in assisting Malawi so that the life of the Malawian should be uplifted. It should however not escape our minds that the duty of lifting up Malawi from the ashes of poverty entirely depends on the Malawians. What the donors and their team offer to us is only support. Support is meant to sustain that which is already set and established, that which is already curved, built, or established. This is where the Malawian vision (assuming there is any) appears to me to face some huge challenges. These are challenges if not reflected upon with sincerity and purpose will falter the vision. They will suffocate the dream’s realization. These are problems of Patriotism. There is no patriotism in Malawi.

At no other moment in the history of Malawi have people become increasingly occupied and influenced by their ethnic identities than now. Yet this is the time we should collectively gather all our ethnic diversity into the bag of common purpose and with the propulsion of unity energise ourselves for the marathon of the Malawi dream. Poor as the timing might be, we are a nation that lacks even the very concept of a national dream. May be it is only for Americans and Californians to dream. Nay. Even the poorest of the poor dream. It is a free gift of nature that awakens one from the slumber of self-pity and limitations. A dream places your attention in the direction of potentials which apart from being ignored, taken for granted, and undermined are henceforth understood as rich deposits rich of promise. This is why a nation that aspires to progress must aspire to carve a dream for itself.

Many Malawians have had dreams which they are magnificently realizing in style and in an enviable manner. Today Malawians are all over the world. You can trace their footmarks on the corridors of the world’s universities of repute, in giant global transnational corporations. More than many Malawians now realise that that which was once labelled an impediment, an obstruction wall, that stood between the possible and the much desired life on the opposite side of the ‘impossible’ is now demolished. An army of accomplished Malawian achievers witnesses are there to spear to death any doubts about progressive change. Nevertheless this hope has not been traceable at the national level. As a result of an absence of a national pursuit we have seen the many of us searching for ultimate goals in our respective ethnic identity. Today to many, Malawi is smaller in worth than are ethnic identities.

Sadly enough those that are supposed to lead have chosen to cement these identities and they have honoured them above the nation. Politicians and political analysts all seem to have resigned to the unrewarding fact that we are to esteem our ethnic tags first before we value our national identity. They have told us that these are permanent and natural that they will defy any departure from them. This is why parties are defined by ethnic identity. It is hard to tell today what it is to be Malawian. We all claim this is inevitable. We say it is normal. Whether it is right and proper we shun from addressing. Political commentators have offered little critique to make us all realise that we only start to see the faint and cloudy sight of a prosperous Malawi on the edges of the horizon once we have departed from tribalism. It is only when we are Malawians first.

The days of Kamuzu Banda the first head of state after independence are interpreted variously by many people as regards patriotism. Most are usually quick to point out that the dictatorship then forced us to be loyal to the nation without our consent. As such so it is said we cannot call that patriotism. This is the time when there were the four corner stones of Malawi (though promoted through the only party then) of Unity, Loyalty, Discipline, and Obedience. This is the time when there was a deliberate state initiative of Best Buy Malawian products where it seemed then that almost everything was Malawian. Today in our assessment and dismissal of that time’s dictatorship we fully imitate the proverbial mother who in her dislike of dirt threw away the dirty bathwater together with the baby. We seem to fail to realise that the fact that forced ‘patriotism and unity’ are immoral and unjust, is different from another independent fact that patriotism and unity are very rewarding. The evidence to this distinction is the very past of oppression. Despite the unity then being forced on people, we were still able to realise the fruits of unity and ‘patriotism’. Our task today should not be to discard the project of nationalism but consolidate it in the current political environment.

Today most Malawians do not even imagine making sacrifices for the nation. Nurses, teachers, doctors, engineers, clerks, police officers and their popular traffic officers, and immigration officers just among a host of others are no longer motivated by the nation interest in their execution of duties. No wonder monstrous inefficiency and flying levels of corruption now characterise our public service. What on paper is an obligation for a public officer to fulfil and a right for the common person to benefit from has mutated into a privilege owing to the upsetting nature of entrenched corruption. The ordinary person today only has the right in his hands for that is the much he can get since discretion of who is to benefit from the right is with only those that on top of having the right have money with which to bribe public officials.

Without pin-pointing them as the worst offender the powers that determine who should have a driving licence or not in Malawi seem to have a lot of house ordering to do. I know of people who have the license without ever following the procedures. Some other guy actually had to learn how to drive after he already had his driver’s licence. Another fellow confidently told me that instead of renewing his licence that expired 5 years before he would just ‘find’ another one ‘very easily’. Then there was this accident in the Northern region where this teenager was driving a lorry carrying some church members off to a conference and along the way the vehicle overturned instantly killing some 19 plus people, some of whom were families. The drunken teenager driver was only injured. It was discovered that the guy was as far as his age was concerned not supposed to have been issued with a driver’s licence, at least not the type he had. But there he had it! The most shocking thing here should not be the sudden end of such lives in an accident; rather it should be how we remain indifferent to the system responsible for driving licences that was a catalyst to such tragedies. In the absence of patriotism all we would do is condole the bereaved families and express our shock as we return to our ‘business as usual’, maintaining (if not jealously guarding) the immoral status quo.

I have no space this time to talk of the political leadership most of which falls far below the patriotic standard. They have encouraged the decay in our society. Most of them have no principles which they would defend at whatever cost. They have frustrated the civil service and hence promoted the grounds for corruption. How does one take the requirement placed by a legislature to base their emoluments on the regional standard of other countries when you are the poorest of them all? How then does one understand that the Southern African region standard in terms of emoluments should be restricted to members of parliament only and not teachers, nurses, police officers and every public service worker? Why in the first place should a legislature set its own working conditions and wantonly change them when they feel like doing so? These are the things we should depart from if we are to rise up as a nation. We need to change if we are to be changed. Change does not happen to us though. It is something we consciously and effort-fully make to happen. Its foundation however is patriotism. That which we are desperately poor of now.