Malawi is going through yet another interesting time in politics. It is an uncertain time when nothing is assured and nothing can be disregarded.
The tragic events of last month have changed our political landscape in so many ways, bringing in new players and perspectives that will significantly affect the shape of next year’s general elections.
While those who survive on politics are having sleepless nights as to what may happen next, these are interesting times for neutrals sitting down somewhere, watching the circus.
When Vice-President Saulos Chilima died, people were on the lookout to see who President Lazarus Chakwera would choose as his replacement.
The choice of Michael Usi came as a surprise to a good number of people since the new man is not very well known as a politician.
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Usi wears many hats and the political one may be the smallest of these. Malawians primarily know him as a comedian, which is something that has overshadowed his other lives, even before joining politics.
As such, there are still people who are yet to accept and believe that the man they are seeing driving across the country in big cars in not the comedian but the vice president.
As of two weeks ago, the vice president started serious work on the ground – visiting government offices and chiding employees for coming to work late, among other things.
The first time we saw this was when an episode was captured on camera with him interrogating a seemingly tired and demotivated nurse in Chikwawa.
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From there, Usi has gone on to raid several other offices, demanding accountability and due diligence from those who are paid from taxpayers’ coffers. All these episodes were also captured on camera for us to see.
For the vice president, this may be a way of showing people, and of course his boss, that he is a man of action. Maybe upon seeing him on TV talking business, those who ever doubted the serious side of his life would recoil to rethink their biases.
While this is the case, some spectators may still question the effectiveness of his preferred approach to duty.
This is not the first time that we have seen politicians, new in hot seats, stretching their arms for people to know that they have the whip.
In the first days of the reign of Tonse Alliance, we saw the President the vice president and others on similar roadshows that, for a while, made us believe we were in a progressive dispensation.
We were promised that heads would roll, and indeed our heads are rolling from the disappointment of what those roadshows and promises failed to deliver.
As such, Usi should know that his visits to random public institutions will not bring the change he imagines, unless he tells us that he will be visiting these institutions every day.
Ramming into offices with a whip will only give the big man an illusion that people are working and us an illusion that he is working when there is nothing changing at all.
We have seen this before, even in primary school. When noisemakers see the tough teacher walk around with a whip in his hands, his shirt tightly tucked in, they would always shut their mouths for a while.
The moment that teacher is at the edge of the corridor, disappearing to where he had come from, the noise resumes. These are simple lessons for decision-makers – your authority must not reside in a whip. It must rather be felt and acknowledged, even in your absence.
The point here is that there are more effective ways in which the vice president can contribute to our ailing public service.
The roadshow he is on may be of benefit to his political persona, bearing in mind that he has a mountain of uncertainty to climb in the near future.
But if he wants to do work that will benefit Malawians, then he should demand the implementation of that hidden public sector reforms report that late Chilima and others were tasked to produce.
Our civil service can only improve with serious reforms and not through roadshows. It is painful to watch people play politics when there are more important things at stake.
