Granted. Malawians are a good lot.
Apparently, they have also been good— too good to be human— to a certain monster: Corruption.
Whatever name it takes— graft or corruption— this is a vice, the enemy of progress.
More so because corruption has been eating through the fabric of the Malawi society since no-one-knows-when.
It is as if people are in a hurry to steal as much as they can, and then go away from Malawi to enjoy the corruptly obtained trappings elsewhere.
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By elsewhere, I mean in private places— where the poor people whose wealth is stolen cannot see.
It is as if the concept of Ubunthu no longer applies to our daily activities.
In the past, life in Malawi was all about love.
In the typical village setup, no one was an orphan as, after the death of parents, others would take over.
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The extended family system was in full gear, with grandparents playing the role of the society’s anchor.
And, then, HIV and Aids came, disrupting our way of life.
HIV and Aids did not just ravage people’s health; it turned life upside down.
As HIV and Aids have been ravaging society, the Covid pandemic has reared its ugly face in our affairs, disrupting economies [with Malawi’s economy being on its knees, literally].
As a result, even our leaders have been attributing their failure to fulfil some of the promises they made on the campaign trail to the Covid pandemic.
Not just Covid; the Russia-Ukraine war has been thrown into the picture, too.
It is as if, Russia and Ukraine being elephants, the grass [Malawi] cannot escape the negative effects of events taking place across the seas. Globalisation is real.
Malawians remember, pretty well, that they were promised jobs; one million jobs at that.
Malawians were told that they would buy a 50 kilogramme bag of fertiliser at K4,500.
Malawians, voters in particular, were told that the Kwacha would rebound and start pushing shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States dollar.
Farmers were promised good prices on the market, as if the government would be buying farm produce. Somehow, our leaders forgot that ours is a liberalised economy— where market forces are at play.
When demand is high, commodity prices rocket; when supply is high, demand plummets and prices tumble. That is a fact of life.
Now, the reality seems to be sinking in in our leaders’ minds, with prices of basic commodities rocketing, the price of fertiliser becoming too high for the comfort of the farmer and the government playing hide-and-seek on the issue of the approach it will adopt in implementing this year’s Affordable Inputs Programme.
This is happening when drugs are still in short supply in public hospitals and workers continue to get peanuts.
The most worrying thing, though, is that corruption levels show no sign of receding, such that hope is running low in the citizenry.
And, sadly, all the government can do is promise and promise and promise— to do something about the situation. It is as if we have become the land of promise and not Canaan, as someone told us we would become.
We have been moving in circles since 1994. Even after development partners pulled out aid, we seem not a tad interested in ridding the country of the vice called corruption.
We are, instead, treating it warm-heartedly.
In so doing, we continue to condemn the majority of the population to poverty.
In an ideal situation, our leaders and us, ordinary but vote-wielding citizens, were supposed to be shaking our heads with rage.
Rage because, for the most part, we remain a miserable people. If ever one wanted evidence, they just have to travel on the Lilongwe-Kasungu Road via Mponera. The potholes represent the ruggedness of our combined hopes— and pains.
This, Dear Pain, really pains.
