25th July 2010.
An imposing challenge for the many optimists of this country: Does our destiny contain a moment when guiders of this nation will learn to be motivated by the larger picture, the long-term? The species of politicians in Malawi never ceases to amaze, astound, and shock with their increasing short-sightedness, lack of direction and the misplaced zeal to seem impressive.
This week some foreigner’s (who’s white) ferocious dogs have brutally attacked and injured his watchman in his seventies, biting off his ear and nose. The president commented on this as he was leaving for the African Union summit in Kampala, particularly condemning the dog owner’s lack of remorse and sympathy as he requested an HIV test on his guard lest his dogs contact the virus.
Tirades of condemnation have followed and flowed from many. Suddenly three or so cabinet ministers separately visit the poor guard in hospital. What they were up to before the president made the condemnation on the apparently racist attitude displayed by the dog owner is mysterious to common sense. Just to seem impressive? Some went as far as revealing that they had donated to the injured guard about K20, 000.
However most of this is not in any least meaningful measure impressing. It is ordinary stage acting. Isn’t this at least the third time a person has been set upon by very ferocious dog specie that in an otherwise caring and forward-looking society that both listens and relevantly learns from tragedy, keeping such species would have been banned way back? Wasn’t some noble tax-paying and law-abiding Malawian in the Kameza residential area in Blantyre killed by such ferocious dogs as he was in his self-discipline jogging exercise early in the morning? Now everybody is emotively making the anti-racist chants (albeit some being racist as well). Such crocodile tears fail to impress those that have at least basic memory and have the slightest sense of foresight ever acquirable. Those that are able to imagine and seek ways of attaining their majestic goals will actually feel ashamed to (in shortage of authentic tears of sympathy) feign shock and disbelief in such sad moments. Wasn’t a great entrepreneur mauled to death by his own ferocious dogs right in this nation just a few years ago? Again weren’t those a very ferocious specie of dogs inappropriate to be kept within our neighbourhoods? Weren’t those that are expressing shock now shocked and horrified then when these tragically fatal incidents hit the headlines so as to warrant preventing them from ever occurring again using the various institutional tools at their disposal? Now, shock is an instinctive mechanism within us that directs our reason upon recovery, of the plain unacceptability of some acts and practices that are a cruel detriment to a progressive and ambition-oriented society. Shock, apart from overwhelming our feelings and emotions, and exposing our vulnerabilities it is only prudent that on account of such tragic shock we should attempt to mend the breakages in our public policy fibre that expose us to such fully traumatising yet preventable scenarios. One in utter incomprehensibility wonders how after two noble lives were lost to apparent yawning gaps in our public policies regarding what species of security dogs or pet dog species we should domesticate all we could shamelessly afford to do was shed tears and again put on our cherished spectacles of short-sightedness that are incompatible with distant forward-looking after a similar incident. Who can understand this? What more should it take for us to contemplate re-visiting laws to do with what type of pet one should keep? Until the deaths sky to hundreds? Or is it that thousands sounds more convenient to awaken us from our reformation slumber? Or is it that a life or two and three do not really matter that much so as to warrant reform or enforcement of such preventive laws (assuming colonialists cared to craft any for us)? Or perhaps is it that the social-political stature of they that have fallen victim to such gaping policies in our public policies is too weak and feeble to warrant an embarkment on necessary reforms? Isn’t it of greater folly when today without any ounce of shame we are chanting down ‘the racist’?
To anyone who has always miserably failed to make correct predictions in awe of the subtleness of the future be assured of getting it right over this one: there will just be no change in public policy over what dog species should be kept in our neighbourhoods, after the cosmetic crocodile tears we are shamelessly affording dry up. It will be back to business as usual, well, until another similar cruel tragedy re-unites us again in the crocodile-tears-shedding contest.
It should be known that for the observant mind most of the institutional commentary over this event is both shameful and in essence undermines the agony through which the innocent guard has been put through. Couldn’t this have been prevented? Have we proudly, adequately, and dutifully served the poor guard that all we should blame is the deplorable insensitivity his boss demonstrated? Sadly this is the characteristic attitude this nation consistently portrays in such unfortunate but alterable situations. More sadly this is un-strange on this continent. Why and how I still insist that my nation is not a failing state I cannot understand. Nationalism or the arrogance of hope?
