My country surprises me intensely
My country is strange, very strange indeed.
This is a country where political leaders and many ordinary mortals too insist on living like Pharaohs in a run-down economy that has created more paupers than middle income citizens.
I am terribly surprised at a nation where to live large many scramble for the little available amid promises of moral aptitude, institutional reform even as corruption escalates.
In my country, money is a large a god so huge it is normal to deprive widows, widowers and orphans of an only inheritance without any compunction. Sub-humans nursed to retirement by a criminally tolerant public service have over time created illiterates, drug addicts and beggars by abusing resources of deceased parents.
This is a country with little room for neither simplicity nor humility not to talk of honesty. But as Backbencher said recently if politicians only became simple more of the county’s resources would be channelled towards worthy causes.
Well that’s not exactly the case, desirable as it is.
This is a country that prioritises people in high positions. My country is one of places on planet earth which mercilessly milk the poor to bones; where the majority with nothing are enslaved to sustain the few with everything.
Imagine if you will a country, whose leaders place stiff embargoes on local papers, never to read them let alone believe what they project from and about millions surviving in angry silence. What a serious contradiction?
How are leaders to understand people’s concerns without following the media? Seriously, where do you see Malawi if not in her media? Perhaps all emerges from advisors who sadly have their own personality disorders and often manipulated to sanitise reality
I am surprised at my country. I do not know how public servants work with politicians who have neither use of nor faith in public opinion. Perhaps naively, I would have thought advisors build upon public opinion to guide leaders’ decisions on emerging concerns.
It’s incredible but this is a country where leaders believe servant leadership is so hardit’s near impossible.
But then how does one serve the people if one believes one can’t be a servant? No one will achieve servant leadership who insists on planning for the people. The people must plan for government charged with delivery and monitored by citizens.
If you ask me, it is perfectly possible to become a servant leader if government only learnt to separate party manifestoes as campaign tools from people’s development. Development is possible where leaders transition from politics for domination to a post-politics realm which thinks people and development, not politics and control.
This is a country where leaders break promises with impunity. Yes, leaders promise peace for all. Manymore promise inter-party and intra-party peace from which ideally should emerge genuine national peace unencumbered by stupid party allegiances
But look around and what you see is inter-party bloodshed and death threats to patriotic citizens sponsored by leaders who will purportedly transform Malawi into a modern democracy where opinion holds free sway.
Evidently, party sponsored killings are back. Lies and rebuttals enjoy renewal. The hope of democratic peace is shattered. Prospects for civilised modernist politics are getting dimmer by the hour. Malawians are soon to be re-shackled for a few to play gods.
This is my country all the same.
My country is a beautiful richly endowed place where food, water and energy are known emergencies and yet leaders require to be shouted at before they take the right course towards increased food production.
You cannot believe this but this is a country where education has become so bad that a levy has to be instituted to resuscitate growth and quality of higher learning.
Alright, levies are not unusual. They are less suspicious means to getting both rich elites and helpless paupers to fund their own development; an easy source of money into public coffers. However, that’s half the issue. The other half is about the how of the use of the resources.
I am most surprised at any form of excitement about another levy when there are zero guarantees the money will actually serve that purpose. I admit this expresses extreme mistrust but need I apologise when theft, corruption and money laundering are a national narrative?
This is that same country where one third of public resources fall into institutionalised abuse. If there is anybody out there who solemnly believes anything has changed let them stand up and be counted.
Well this is my country and I say it amazes me enormously.
Much emotion has been poured over the famous IMF credit facility. Alright this is a source of much needed cash straight into the Treasury, but can’t people see that it is a ‘credit facility’ not a grant facility?
Given a famously porous Treasury and revoltingly manipulative elites show me the source of your faith that re-engagement of IMF with my country is worth celebration. Take or leave it, this may well be a case of enslaving posterity to feed reigning opportunists
If politics is about who gets what, when and how much in the spirit of equity, why should it also mean winner take all? Where is the God-given love for fellow humans thrown into the abyss of neglect and suffering?
And there is a most strange development, where academic excellence is ruthlessly raped by a fondness to placate the powerful, reward the unpredictable and yet sober up enough to honour the humble and deserving, all in one sweep. This is shameless acquiescence to manipulation. This is depressing support for mediocrity by people associated with educational integrity.
But then life must go on, blatant moral absurdities regardless. Yes, Malawi this is not time to quit shaping a commonwealth of creatures capable of humanness, wisdom and sense of future.
I for one won’t quit for my country is without identify. It’s no time to quit the shift from legalism towards shaping a values-led society and leadership with a better sense of humanness so greatly lacking in matters of our governance.
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