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.
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.
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kodi ntelo
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