Away with Crocodile tears!

25^th 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?

MALAWI GOING SOMEWHERE?

Recently there was a discussion elsewhere about Malawi of late appearing on the spotlight frequently. The Malawi national football team’s landmark victory over Algeria, the country’s former Finance Minister receiving a international award, etc led many a Malawian to ask whether the country is now standing on its feet and making its way to claim a place for its own in this world. The responses were instantly those in the affirmative type, asserting that the promised time is finally here and that we should be ready to see more of Malawi. Litanies of great Malawians who have greatly achieved great feats in great nations were cited. A mood of hope was spreading.

I however took a cautious position. It seems when some of your own soil outstandingly achieve some form of recognition many believe that OUR time has come. I also believe so. I have also believed so for some time. Nevertheless how I wish success was to follow such happenings. This is national success.

I dared to take the doubting Thomas’ view. I stated that it was very true that the kin of us are doing wonders elsewhere. But we should never dive into the unsafe conclusion this is a declaration of change for Malawi. I indicated that individual Malawians elsewhere and some in Malawi are doubtlessly excelling. This however should not elude us into gazing upon the false hope that a new chapter for Malawi is being scribed. Change is both induced and planned. Scarcely does it happen on its own accord.

Even though we are required to hope there are conditions that require us establish foundation for the hope. Personally I think there has been some change in Malawi. These changes have in essence been a redirection of the ship that is Malawi. The sailing in the right direction I believe has not really begun.

To be fair and honest Malawi has not been developing but deteriorating. Unless we open our eyes and confront the diverse rot in our country blocking our noses or using disinfectants won’t take away the rot.

Education.

It is very painful to realise that the quality of education in Malawi is nose-diving. Practical evidence is everywhere. We have exam leakages, collapsing education infrastructure, poor work conditions for the staff. An obvious cited indicator for poor education levels has usually been the ‘poor quality English’ both post-secondary school and even university graduates speak and write today. It is no secret that it is not good. A certain school of thought washes away the implications of this by stating that this is an insufficient ground for concluding that education qualities have gone down. How I wish I believed them.

Given the role of English in the Malawian school system, it is very hard if not impossible to never correlate quality English with acquisition of sound education. The two variables in Malawi are in a relationship that significantly entails each other. For starters, no one can be awarded a certificate if they have failed English. Every student knows that his passing in every subject must never exclude English. He offers the same levels of commitment to English as he does to the other subjects in his studies.

It is also worth-noting that the grammatical content students are requested to demonstrate in English is below 50% (of 200marks) of the examination. To a greater part an English exam aims at communication skills. Take for example Composition writing (40 marks), Comprehension (50 marks), Note-making (30marks). These are basically tests of how a student has developed his communication skills. Nothing about one’s grammar competence.

Health

It is discomforting to learn that the doctor to patient ratio is not impressive in the country. I am unsure as to whether there is any district hospital with more than two doctors. I am ready to be surprised by any contrary news. I know of a paediatric ward which I with a friend had been visiting when his late son had been sick was on average registering an average of five deaths a day usually due to lack of doctors and nurses. I once went to a public hospital for medical check-up. I stayed there for eight hours yet I had been there almost at the time the hospital doors opened in the morning. I was told to come the next day where despite being early I had another five hours of waiting. There was the paying option which I deliberately did forgo on that day so as to have a feel of the treatment of life for the average unsung Malawian. The reason for the abnormal delays: Not only few medical officers but also that the available few work to their own rules as regards punctuality and pace of work.

Corruption

Corruption remains Malawi’s rampaging worst enemy for Malawi. Corruption. Corruption. Corruption, Corruption, Corruption. My heart bleeds for Africa and Malawi when I note the rate of corruption. My wary of corruption is its pervasiveness in both the corridors of power and even the streets that host the poorest of the poor. There is rampant corruption at the grassroots. It is almost practically the case that nothing will work until you are extend a bribe. The heavy stench of corruption in Malawi is neither distant nor hard to detect for those who travel by public commuter minibuses and have seen what happens when an un-roadworthy bus is stopped by the police. Awarding of tenders for the procurement of some public institution’s resources is as murky at the bottom as it is at the top. We cannot continue like this. We cannot convince ourselves to prepare embracing a dawning new Malawi when we remain indifferent to such malaise. I know of some university entrance exams that were leaked before they were administered. I am equally found wanting for being indifferent to such a rot in our society. As long as we let corruption determine our decisions at the school level, at the community level, as long as we can’t raise even the tip our finger in rebellion against corruption it is not prudent for us to harbour the thought that things are positively getting different for our country.

I know of at least two people who have just had driving licences without ever being to a driving school let alone undergoing the official test by road traffic examiners. When I expressed shock at this a close friend shocked me for being shocked with this as though it were a secret. “When I went to the office of responsible for car licences issuing men of repute and holders of public office placed their ‘order’ for a licence to be processed for their child, a licence for driving lorries.” No! Malawi is not moving in the right direction. Not when innocent 19 adults are killed in a road accident in The North because the driver though he had a license is under-aged and just doesn’t deserve to have a licence. Yet the entire nation accepts that it was an accident! When has corruption ever been an accident? Malawi!

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!