There is a morbid and yet fascinating joke about coffin makers that goes around on social media and in other gatherings, where people have intercourse.
The line often goes: Imagine the prayers of a coffin maker each night when they go to sleep. Indeed, it is not easy to stand in the shoes of someone who makes a living out of death.
A coffin maker sees death besides its callousness and brutality. To them, death is something that puts food on their table and they cannot live without it.
The point I am trying to make here is that, in order to understand certain things, we must try and imagine ourselves in the shoes of those who are on the other side.
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For most of us, the Covid pandemic, for example, was something that should have never happened. It was the worst experience in recent human history, where we saw hundreds of people losing their lives every day to the pandemic.
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But for a coffin maker, they may also recall that time as the period in which they made a fortune. Some finished their building projects and others were able to boost their businesses because death was plenty and they made profits.
Defining something as good or bad directly depends on which side of the table you are sitting.
Now think about the business of selling coffins as a metaphor for the dirty game we call African politics.
In a country like ours, it is only wise for the powerless to regard politicians in power as coffin makers.
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These are people who thrive on the suffering of the masses. What are problems to most of us are actually opportunities to these people.
If we lived in a country where everything was in order, politicians would not be relevant, and they know it. Our politicians benefit from our suffering, and that is why they do not want to see an end to most of the problems that we could have dealt away with by now.
If you remember correctly, politicians made a lot of money during the Covid pandemic in allowances and other means. There are some who even stole billions of kwacha and they were never taken to task.
Believe me that even cyclones Anna and Freddy were payoff points for some of our leaders and they made fortunes out of our deaths.
Even the hunger that we fail to address in this country is something that benefits politicians, and we must not dream of achieving food security anytime soon.
As we speak, Admarc is said to be out of stock as it sold most of its maize to private traders just some months ago.
Some investigators have speculated that the sales were deliberate and that the company will soon buy the same maize from these traders at a high price using our taxes.
And as you may rightly guess, most of these traders are politically connected (to be politically correct), or they are politicians (to be blunt).
They know that the only way to make money is to create a situation where some Malawians have to die. History has it that most of those who have made supernormal fortunes did that in times of crises.
For years, most naïve Malawians have asked why a country like ours – blessed with myriad natural resources – fails to feed itself.
For decades, students in our institutions of higher learning have conducted research that makes recommendations to policy makers on food security. Such proposals have been ignored and most of the knowledge generated here has been useful in other countries as we continue to suffer.
Malawians must realise that our lack is self-inflicted. Politicians know exactly what to do to alleviate the suffering of people in this country, but they deliberately choose to do otherwise because they profit from our misery.
The fact that these people have all the right things to say and all the solutions to our problems during political campaigns should tell you that they know exactly what they are doing.
The only way to make your dogs submissive is to let them know who is in charge. Feed them at your discretion. Withhold food from them. Make them feel that they need you. That is the typical Malawian politician for you.
