Most Malawians are known for their claims that they fear God. Indeed, a lot of people in this country are religious, to the extent that others make the mistake of thinking that we are a Christian nation. While religion is a good thing as far as enforcing morality and social order is concerned, there have been instances when it has been used negatively, resulting in very dire consequences. In most instances, religion has often been used by crooks who dupe and trick people in the name of faith.
When it comes to politics, most African leaders have ridden on religion in order to amass votes from the masses, many of who love a god-fearing leader. In countries like ours, people can give somebody the vote simply because they belong to their church or they share the same faith. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni and his wife, Janet, have often presented themselves as uncompromising Christians, which has won them massive support despite the failures of the big man over the years. The same goes with presidents in Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and even Malawi. One cannot even imagine an atheist winning an election in this country.
What is interesting is that these politicians have known how much we value our faiths and they have capitalised on that as one of our weaknesses. If something good happens in our country (or most other African countries) political leaders will attribute that to the power of God. The narrative will be that God has been good to us and that is why things are going as smoothly as they are. But how many times do good things happen in countries like ours? It is mostly negative things that happen – natural disasters, economic upheavals, hunger and the like. And when these happen, the politicians will also ask us to pray for our land so that God may show us some mercy. Simply by doing that, they are somehow absolved of all responsibility.
A very recent example of this was when the immediate past Zambian president Edgar Lungu asked citizens to pray for their economy. Zambia was sailing through turbulent economic times and the whole president organised national prayers to see the country out of that trouble. We have also had our presidents here in Malawi asking us to pray for problems that demand practical and very obvious solutions from the leadership. But because we do not want to question somebody who mentions the name of God, we somehow look the other way or simply close our eyes in prayer. It is that aspect of religion that we ought to be careful of – where we lose critical thought and common sense, risking being duped by the clever.
Over the last weekend, our State president also made the call for us to pray for Malawi because God has been giving us trials and temptations and he wants to see how we are going to sail through. God is testing our faith as a nation. The President mentioned natural disasters like Cyclone Freddy, the Covid pandemic, our never-ending hunger, among others. While him, as a man of faith, is allowed to believe that prayer can solve our problems, we should be mindful that there are also practical solutions that can mitigate and/or solve these problems. It is good to pray for our country while being mindful that God gave us the ability to practically solve our problems. We have brains, we have limbs, we have natural resources we can put to good use in order to live in a safer and more successful country.
We, as a country, are responsible for most of the ailments we suffer from because we do not want to be responsible. When Covid hit, many of those in leadership saw it as an opportunity to milk the poor. We have fresh water running across the country all year round and we can’t be praying for bumper harvest instead of making use of such resources to eliminate hunger. We were warned about Cyclone Freddy but we somehow managed not to get prepared for the disaster. We know that our economy is dead because we do not invest in things that matter. What needs to change in this country is our attitude and the greed and selfishness in our leaders. Maybe we need to pray for them instead of the country.
