By Wesley Macheso
We, as a country, are deep in crises again. Presently, people are back to wasting their otherwise productive time on fuel queues, trying to fill up empty tanks as if there is a war going on in this country.
Many are times when these people spend the entire night on those queues and they never get to reach the pump as they would be told that the precious liquid is finished.
What is even more infuriating in this is that the government was warned beforehand that this would happen, but they deliberately chose to ignore the counsel.
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Many months ago, Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) Executive Director John Kapito was all over the news, asking government to adjust the price of fuel because the current pump prices do not reflect the reality on the ground.
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Kapito insisted that, if the government, through its agencies, did not adjust the prices to make them realistic, petrol and diesel shortages would resurface.
Indeed, this was a topic of discussion on our radio stations for two weeks or so, and others joined Kapito in these calls.
But as usual, the Tonse Alliance administration chose to ignore this and pretended that they had everything in order. Today, we are back to our struggle with fuel and Kapito is vindicated.
Come to think of it, this is not the first time that the Tonse Alliance administration has goofed in their pretense at sanity when they know quite well that their administration is a madhouse.
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This is a government that, from its onset, has championed pretense over anything else. They came to power pretending that they knew what was wrong with the economy–promising to solve all our problems at the click of their fingers.
They lied to us that the prices of maize and fertiliser would be drastically reduced. They even pretended that they had connections with people from whom they would get the money to heal the land. Four years down the line, we are beginning to accept that the Tonse Alliance is nothing but a hot air balloon.
The shortage of fuel is not the only ailment borne out of the government’s cluelessness and hubris. The current value of the Malawi Kwacha, which the government pastes on walls of authorised dealer banks, is not the true value of the money, and they know it.
This is one of the reasons why foreign currency in this country is as scarce as the actual gold that money mimics.
Because of the government’s failure to generate forex for a sustainable economy, ours has become a black-market
economy and the true value of our money is on the streets, controlled by gangs who truly run the economy.
All the while, the government is still pretending to be in control–to lie that there is no devaluation of the Kwacha when it is poor Malawians who are suffering from such administrative follies.
Most recently, concerns have been raised on alleged corruption in our Judiciary. When the vocal lawyer who brought this out to the public started naming and shaming, some thought he was mad and the cowardly warned him about the fire that was going to burn his hands.
But as the man refused to relent, others came in to corroborate his claims. And from the statements that are coming out from big bodies and those in high seats, it seems like the issue of corruption in the Judiciary is not news.
They have known this is happening and yet those in power choose to keep this under wraps.
They love to pretend that the Judiciary is a sanctuary of holiness at the expense of Malawians with no names.
Our woes in this country never end mainly because we have political leaders who have no idea of what leadership entails. It is not in our best interests to have leaders that thrive on pretense and selling false dreams to the masses when they know that our reality is otherwise.
