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.

Radical Musings

It is not common to expect updated news on Malawi news websites. It is for this reason that I usually feel I deserve a pardon for my over-excitement whenever any of such perennial updates as rare as an eclipse of the sun occur. I was in the same mood today. I was very glad upon discovery that it had pleased the powers that be at The Sunday Times of Malawi to timely update their site. Immediately I dived into the news items to explore what is happening and not happening back home. There is this Muckracking on Sunday column, one of the major reasons I always bought this paper back home no matter how dry my pockets would be. I read him today. Soon my excitement translated into anxiety due to what I read. He wrote nothing new. It is the recurrence of what he wrote that has set me thinking, wondering, and asking. I have been asking recurrent and (at least to me) familiar questions. These are questions about the African and her political behaviour. These are radical yet unanswered questions we must explore with all bravery, sincerity, if we are to make progress.

Briefly, the Muckraker column was about the suspense the Muluzi candidacy has created in Malawi, that it is no tell of ingenuity to see the possibility of Muluzi’s candidature causing legal complications that might even disrupt the electoral calendar and its delicately interwoven events. However this would be the least trouble the candidacy row would bring. It has the huge potential of turning violent. Hence the columnist upon paying homage to the rule of law still asks if leaving the Muluzi candidacy unresolved and waiting till we get closer to the election is besides being legally sound is practically prudent. The fear that is resonating is about the candidacy of Bakili Muluzi should he be rejected or should any side of the coin contest it in court. This is what most thinkers and organizations have feared. It is not a new fear. It is well understood in Africa. It is common in Africa. It was there in Kenya where matters electoral turned neighbour into a foe as macabre murder of the new foe was not only the right thing to do but a duty to fulfil. This was after such acts also had also taken place in Nigeria. Kenya took the same path. The rest of the world watched. Fellow African countries watched. Not that there was anything pleasant and amusing to any rational and sane being (whatever this implies), but still Africa full of the surprises that she has she watched. Did they watch in shock? May be not. Or else the Zimbabweans would have learnt that that was no way of running elections. For sure nature’s instinct and common sense would have had them realize that spearing an opponent and brutal killings followed with house torching do not constitute part of the electoral process. So Zimbabweans practised the same brutality as the Kenyans.

It is nearer to the norm therefore that every time there are elections in an African country except (Botswana, Ghana, and Zambia who are models at least to me), the major fear of people and the international community is whether the election will go peacefully. Whereas in the northern hemisphere and most other countries outside Africa people fear elections because they produce a candidate whose policies they do not like, on my dear continent elections always carry with them the pregnancy of violence. The troubling and begging question is, WHY is it so? Until when shall Africans realise that an election and violence are not one and the same thing? Why of all other relevant things should matters of peace be the major fear among people? In the rest of the world elections go on with worries placed elsewhere except on peace. Peace is the elementary requirement for the establishment of any community and society. Indeed talk of fairness and law without peace is impossible. To be candid and straightforward, peace is the condition for civilization. The haunting question is, ‘Being central to the sustenance of society and civilization why don’t we Africans dread violence? Why is it very easy for us to resort to killings and murders because of elections?’

Upon courting the wrath of most African ‘patriots’ the response they give is that it is inappropriate to compare Africa with the rest of the (‘developed’) world. It is claimed this is because their democracy and political systems have also been through such stages before they attained the ‘maturity’ characteristic of them today. We should give Africa more TIME. Time. Time. Time.

Time? I am not satisfied with this for an answer to the ‘whys’ that bother me. It is like saying that because Thomas Edson discovered the right way of making a light bulb after a thousand or so attempts then any one interested in learning how to make bulbs should also try that much. If this is not re-inventing the wheel then I am yet to know what is. We cannot cry and demand for more time just as the others had for us to know how not to conduct elections and transfer of power. We should by now know that there is something within that we must confront to appreciate the fact that Africa is not synonymous with violence. The indifference of African states to the suffering of fellow Africans in Darfur, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe coupled with African hostility and resentment to any ‘external’ non-African voice to save humanity from the man-made injustices is equally appalling. This is not to vindicate the motives of the ‘external’ voice dismissively labelled as imperialist. However at the end of the day suffering people need salvation. From whom it comes is least important in circumstances where the human life is on the borders of death. No. No. No. We do not have to wait as long as it took those who are now ‘democratic’ to be there. If our task is only to learn, then we should learn from their failures and successes. If at all we are learning we should by now have known the rightful place of violence in elections and politics. Again I am not endorsing western democracies to be a kingdom of saints. They too have an own share of domestic as well as international injustices. The degree however is what matters.

I find the ‘give us time’ excuse unconvincing. It is an excuse to the painful but rewarding exercise of self-examination. The desirable change we need in Africa will not happen to us in the process of time. In time we have to identify areas that are deprived of it and confront them. We have to work for it. And it starts with us. The ‘time excuse’ is an implicit acceptance to the fact that Africa will always trail and follow others. That she cannot be innovative on her own on how best to handle elections and power transfer and its use. If we are always trailing the rest in our ‘learning’ we should not at any moment be deceived that those ahead of us will stagnate and halt in their self-improvement or development. The leaders of the way whom we are learning from are also progressing. They will hence always lead us if we accept this time argument. This is why we know it is not the appropriate answer. Neither is it a true one. We do not have to take eternity to learn that violence is not a way resolve matters or that only one side must win an election. The longer it is taking for us to learn does not imply complexity of the discipline or the lessons themselves. Instead it is a sign that we probably might be bad learners. Recognizing this is a better and promising step of not only learning but absorbing the knowledge. It is called self-assessment.

There is a certain stock of Africans that denigrate the continent. Acts of some if not most African leaders are ammunition to the fallacious assertions by others that Africans cannot properly manage themselves. They are mistakenly led by the acts of such men as Mugabe whom African leadership either dreads or adores. Yet despite one’s previous trophies how one treats human life should be a cause of concern that is weightier than the glories heaped on you yesterday. Whether Mugabe was a hero yesterday does not immunize him from reprimand of how not to treat human life. Whether he is fighting ‘imperialism’ or not does not give him a license and passport to mishandle the sanctity of human life, even if it is a single life. Whether the man has a noble cause or not he should either know or be told that he has out stepped his borders and that we cannot watch or better we cannot watch anymore. African leadership however manages to watch. Is the suffering and undignified deaths of poor but noble citizens something worth watching?

I am still hunting for answers to my question: Why violence on Africa by Africa? I am at times trying to reframe the question but still there has been no answer.