Ananiya Alick Ponje

Life Is Rotten At The Core

2012-01-06T21:58:00.002+02:00

Well, life is an unpredictable progress where we are not sure of what will happen tomorrow. Death is perfect evidence that our mission on earth is now over, for if we are still living, we must wait to accomplish a task. I am here today, and tomorrow I may be no more; but what matters is someone should see me as someone who has lived long enough.

In the midst of time, my frustration is that I had a task I never tackled diligently. Yet, if I must die today, I should hope there was no hope I would ever fulfill the task. We fought many fights together: we fought tribal segregation; we fought corruption; we fought neocolonialism; we fought all those battles which may be hidden in the mist of time now. Even though we haven’t seen our victory, we should thank God, we did something, for if we slumbered forever and let posterity be choked by those whose days are numbered, my soul would never rest in peace.

There is a strong reason I believe life is really rotten at the core. After numerous struggles; after persistent fights for freedom, it is ironic that one must depart when the flowers haven’t even blossomed.

I must acknowledge that death is a tragedy, but only for the living, for we are yet to find out what really happens beyond the veil. We are yet to get a sniff of life in the other side. But, we must be cautious that we should have hope of thriving even beyond this life.

People say many nice things about the departed – that seems a traditional convention. As for me, as people gather to escort me to the most durable house, my plea is that if you are there to praise me, maybe it would please my soul if you kept quiet, for I know I have erred a lot and my hope has only been in the divine grace of the Lord. Say nothing at my funeral, for it won’t change my destiny.

I have spoken to people; I have written resistance essays, but I haven’t thought of writing why I must die. I believe that as death is the final point of life towards which every one of us walks, I shouldn’t waste my time thinking about it anymore. We rarely discuss the theme of death in our affairs, yet ironically, it tends to be a very prevalent one. We choose to let death and its grim images go the other way, but that doesn’t really change its effects, neither does it defeat it.

Life is rotten at the core because at best, life is brief. When we decide to rest and enjoy a little fraction of our life, death often strikes. That is why life is rotten at the core. At the very centre of life, where its meaning must be derived, life is completely rotten. It is full of tragedy; it rarely conforms to the predictable precepts of our decisions.

Well, life is good; life gives precious experiences of what death can’t, and therefore life must be celebrated ever after. Life must be accorded its deserved crown when it ends; when death becomes the ultimate loser in life’s activities. But, because life sometimes fails to be easily given to our desires, it is indeed rotten at the core.

Shiftin the Archives, Twisting History

2012-01-05T20:21:00.004+02:00

The strength of history doesn’t necessarily lie in its ability to repeat itself, but in its resistance to alteration. There is a kind of original history that will exist everywhere; that unalloyed account of some past events that has filtered into our time.

Some ancient drab structures continue being nurtured simply because they are historical and historic. And in any historical progress, the issue of space matters as much as does the material that the space holds. That is why a well-meaning historian will resist the temptation to support a decision to shift the archives.

History shapes the future; thus, it must be thoroughly benefited from. And the location where the archives are always supposed to be should be better understood from an examination of who needs them most.

We all need history in one way or another, but there are others who demand it. That makes all the difference. Yet, now, those who came up with the idea of shifting the National Archives from Zomba to Lilongwe seem to have found enough ground on which to base their decision – most principally, to finally invalidate the significance of the ‘original’ location.

Well, the basic reasons for shifting the archives, I should believe, are not available to everyone else, but if anything, they should transcend social and political affiliations. The moral obligation of a working committee that would come up with a decision as this should have initially been to do proper inquiry on how people from different areas would feel if the National Archives is shifted.

I am tempted to believe the decision was reached at in just a casual manner, disregarding the significant implications it would have on our history. The fallible part with the status quo hasn’t been highlighted; we are simply left to speculate there is some force that erroneously believes the capital city should be the administrative centre of every government section.

Zomba is a city – even though it really doesn’t have what it needs to – but shifting government departments ironically operates against the initial spirit that elevated it to its current non-provable status. Well, this doesn’t presuppose that everything that is in Zomba must remain there forever, but shifting the National Archives is a terrible attempt to twist our history.

The archives hold our history, and any study in history hardly excludes the aspect of the original space. In this case, we are creating extra complications of our past. Well, this may be deemed to be more theoretical than practical, but let us look at why Zomba deserved the National Archives.

I am not a history student myself, but I have been reliably informed times without number that a good history research paper which a Chancellor College and Domasi College of Education student can write should seldom exclude information sourced from the National Archives. In fact, that doesn’t really need to be proved; for we should know that the archives usually keep the original material.

It is not only students who benefit from the archives, but lectures and professors too. These members of the academia compile documentaries which shape our present and future, and they are assisted by the archives too. Now, shifting the archives to a location where we don’t know who will need them, is one of those policies made recklessly by officials who compel us to believe they don’t understand the precepts of history.

It seems pretty paradoxical that authorities at the National Archives appear not to be satisfied with the fact that we have ‘subsidiaries’ of the archives in Lilongwe already and Mzuzu. It would have emerged a brighter idea had the authorities struggled to make sure the already existing archives in the mentioned locations were being thoroughly furnished. If it is a strategy of reducing expenditure, then why not shift the Lilongwe sub-archive to Zomba. Or are the authorities simply interested in exposing themselves to the bustle and hustle life of the capital city other than the ‘dull’ and ‘still’ life of the former capital?

It must be understood that the Zomba location of the archives itself is a historical concept and changing it equally implies changing this concept. Decisions that are likely to have far-reaching consequences on posterity should not be made out of a desire to show that one has authority. After all, the basic tenets of humanity impel us to let the creation of hope for posterity rise above all other personal interests.

The Poor Shall Always Be With Us

2011-12-29T14:24:00.000+02:00

In a country where top government officials can influence the admission of unqualified students into secondary schools without being prosecuted by the Anti-Corruption Bureau; where the ruling party dictates the distribution of public funds and positions; where peculiar discounts are offered to peculiar buyers, the fight against poverty is just an attempt in futility.

We will always embrace the sting of poverty as long as we allow corrupt men, disillusioned octogenarians, inconsiderate legislators and fearful murderers to decide the fate of our progress. Freedom will only be enjoyed by those in power if we don’t rise up and change the course of our nation’s progress.

Ask the state president if he is feeling the pangs of the poorest villager in Chididi in Nsanje who cannot have her millet ground because the only mill in the village has run out of diesel. Ask him if at all he is concerned with the soaring prices of basic commodities. Better still, let the president give his opinion on the increase of maize price at ADMARC by 50 percent.

Well, if at all we haven’t reached a point where we can be described as a failed state, then no country has ever had. Even Zimbabwe has the audacity of asking those who think it is a failed state to check with Malawi first. That is how ironic state affairs tend to turn out. The very same country that was on its knees, asking anyone to assist it – including Malawi – is now placing itself above us.

The end of this year is closing nigh but there is no single hope for Malawi, for the poor, for posterity. In fact government officials are not promising any improvement: we should just brace ourselves for more problems. They are problems experienced in Malawi and not Zambia or Mozambique; problems hatched by this administration and not our neighbours or our donors. We are rolling in inequities masterminded by a regime that feels Malawi is a laboratory where political and economic governance can be researched.

That is why the poor will always be there. They will even increase in number. They will be here with us, always there to remind the happy octogenarians that there is someone in the village who can’t afford a packet of salt and hasn’t been able to buy the subsidised fertilizer because it was never there.

We will only reduce poverty if the majority of us decide to side with the poor. After all, that is the class where most of us belong; therefore, we should fight a good war for ourselves and posterity, for our parents and our friends. We should fight for those who can’t rush to the streets because there is none in their location; to those that can’t boo the president because he never visits them.

The pangs of poverty are becoming irresistible. The poor man is dying because there are no drugs at the nearest public hospital and he can’t afford to buy them at the nearest pharmacy. Yet, those top government officials will not hesitate to fly their sons and daughters to South Africa the moment their throats itch.

The poor will always be among us if we let things take the course they have taken. The poor will not see any light at the end of the tunnel if we don’t take to task this insecure and pessimistic regime. The poor will continue being trumped upon by the oldest men we keep where they don’t belong if we don’t care to take a leading role in realigning the way things are moving.

Mission Terminated - Short Story

2011-12-26T20:09:00.003+02:00

Author's Note: This short story was published in Malawi News

Above the cold silence, the wailing was very piercing. Nakana, the mother of the diseased, narrated between her wailing how much she had expected from her son, her only child who was now peacefully resting in a gleaming coffin that was coated with white Formica and was partly draped with a white linen.

To the poor bereaved woman, life meant nothing in the absence of her only child, her only pillar of hope. She had banked all her pride on him, but now he was a corpse waiting to be interred in no more than an hour.

She remembered how much she had struggled single-handedly to send him to school – those winter mornings when she could cover distances of not less than ten kilometres on bare foot to look for piece-works just to make sure her only child got the best education. She also remembered those gentle jokes her son would crack when he returned from school. They were all gone. His soft smiles would never be seen on any other human being’s face. They were gone.

“What shall I do?” lamented Nakana. “Richard, my only son, you should have waited and depart a little later. Why this to me now? Why? Who sent you, my son?” The lamentation was a complete story that narrated how the young man lying breathless in the coffin had come to the end of his twenty-two-year chapter.

“It is not long ago since your father closed his eyes eternally and you have decided to go and join him, my son. You should have told me and I would have organised a farewell party in this life. What do I have to do now? I am left with nothing. What should I live for?”

Those trying to comfort her had a hard task and their efforts came up against a brick wall.

The wailing reached the climax when finally the coffin bearing the remains of Richard was being lowered into his final resting place. His school mates lowered their heads in sorrow and paid their last respect to their departed colleague.

“…dust to dust…,” bellowed the Reverend.

Nakana was now banging her frail hands on the wreaths laid on the fresh tomb. She wished it were a nightmare from which she could wake up and breathe a sigh of relief.

Why would lightning strike in the same place twice? Only three months ago, she had been sitting at the breakfast table with her husband who had revealed nothing about his failing health or that he would be visiting his doctor. He had been diagnosed with a disease of the inflammation of lungs and he had not told his wife either.

When she had arrived at the hospital three hours later, her husband had been lying there on the hospital bed that had become his deathbed, breathless, eyes closed and a thick black lined wrapped around his belly. Stains of blood had been clear on the linen. It had been an unsuccessful medical operation. His facial features which had looked so strained at the breakfast table five hours earlier or so had relaxed.

And now it was her only child – from whom much had been expected since much had been given. All her dreams had been shattered into smithereens. What a painful and sad return for her unwavering efforts to educate her only child.

“…death saddens the heart but it is a perfect tool of sharpening our understanding. When man is born, all is left of him is to die. Birth is life’s most wonderful moment; death life’s most painful reality,” the Reverend preached as the burial ceremony was approaching the end.

The preaching only exacerbated Nakana’s sorrow and now her eyes were becoming turgid. Tears could no longer flow from them. Picking her late son’s necklace, she slipped its pendant between her fragile fingers. The object was going to be the epitaph to the twenty-one years she had spent with her son and now she was sorrowing with every fibre of her being.

As the sun was setting, Richard’s death was an absolute reality to his mother. She decided that she had to live to make a virtue of necessity for she did not find the deep essence of living.

Richard was an awfully principled man. He was also a hard-worker when it came to school. After being selected to college, many people from his village had challenged him that he would finally succumb to peer pressure and lose all his sound principles but he proved them wrong until when he was in his fourth year.

As he walked in corridors, girls stood still, feasting their eyes on him. Handsome and always smart, he had no parallel. When the temptations of the fresh came his way, he did not fight tooth and nail to deal with them. The statement ‘I am on a mission’ would comfortably escape from his mouth and waft into his tempters’ ears. That was all – he was on a mission and he had to accomplish it.

“What is your mission, Richard?” his room-mate asked him one calm night before the two drifted off to sleep.

Richard smiled and cleared his throat as if he was about to address a very big rapt audience. “You see, mesho, I want to leave by example. This college is associated with all sorts of nasty things. People here drink like fish and the place is a den of all disreputable people and you know what – when you go out there and tell people you are from this college, they have no respect for you. All they see in you is hell.”

He paused as though allowing his room-mate to absorb what he had said. The moon shone fitfully in the heavens and partly illumined Richard’s bed. He heaved a deep sigh as though a heavy load had been taken off his shoulder.

“The kind of freedom that we have should not be something to make us go astray. We have to make good choices out of our own free will.”

Richard’s room-mate nodded in approval. Exactly three weeks before writing his final year exam, Richard’s friend, Luntha, visited him after being tied up with assignments for about a month. He put up in another hall of residence. He appeared to be a young man who was in perfect harmony with his soul.

“Have you heard that we are demonstrating against government’s delay to give us our book and stationery loans?” Luntha asked with keen interest.

“Of course I do.”

“So what are you here for?”

“I am on a mission.”

“You have always said that, Richard. Come on; let us be part of it. After all, what sort of mission would be greater than the mission to fight for a good cause? Moreover, it is going to be just a peaceful demonstration,” he tried to convince him, blinding him with all sorts of philosophies.

Richard tried to resist but he could not find enough ground on which to base his refusal. And so he finally gave in to his friend’s wish. What was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration turned into a horrible violence. The students went on rampage, vandalizing everything within their vicinity.

The police tried to contain the violence by threatening them by shooting in the air. It never worked. Meanwhile, the students attacked the police themselves. One policeman lowered his gun and shot several times at the demonstrating students. As they dispersed, three of them were lying on the ground, blood oozing from different parts of their bodies. Two hours later, news about the death of the three students was disseminating like wildfire. Among them was Richard, the man on a mission.

The Turning Point - Short Story

2011-12-26T19:59:00.000+02:00

The nave of the church was bulging at the seams. Pastor Dr. Kingsley Mbisa walked softly towards the pulpit to feed his flock with the word of life. His black gown was flying loosely as the wind blew tenderly through the open windows.

His smiley face traced the kind of joy that was hidden in the deep recesses of his heart.

He had founded the church four months ago and it was already rewarding him handsomely.

“In this world, it is not what we receive but what we give out that makes us rich. Blessed is the hand that gives for where it takes God replaces tenfold,” preached pastor Mbisa in the church as he left the pulpit and began to walk across the pews.

His church was one of the many divergent churches that had mushroomed everywhere across the earth and it was just in its honeymoon. He always preached about prosperity. He was a man of forty and he had no first degree in theology or any other field, yet he comfortably embraced the doctorate title.

He did not extol the virtues of soul salvation but always preached about wealth. He had reached the point of claiming that only his flock would be saved from being damned and they worshipped the ground he walked on.

As he returned to the pulpit, he placed a big plate near the lectern, telling the congregation to come and throw money into it and proceed to receive blessings. “Give and receive, this is the greatest commandment,” said Pastor Mbisa, walking across the nave with a gait of a man eligible of being revered.

“Shall a man who has devoted his whole life to feeding the sheep of God with the word of life sleep in the wilderness? Shall he starve in a land of plenty?”

“No!” in unison the congregation responded.

He dipped his hand in a bowl of baptism water and sprayed the water at the hilarious congregation. “Therefore, go out there and bring more lost sheep. Remember that everyone out of this church is lost. There is no redemption outside this church,” he said and added before winging up: “this is not my ministry at all. I’m only a carrier of good news to you.”

His eyes, brown and clear, were glued at the plate which was brimming with all types of banknotes. A young girl who resembled him took the money into the sacristy.

Everything was over and the pastor was alone in the sacristy, making final arrangements. He was satisfied with what he had made that day. He had discovered the trick: people were eager to buy blessings and sometimes they bought them with all what their pockets held.

As he stood to leave, he heard someone knock at the door of the sacristy and he ushered them in. In front of him sat a girl clad in top-of-the-class clothes. “I have something to tell you, pastor,” said the girl even before taking the load off her feet.

“Have a seat, please.”

“Without wasting much of your time, let me say that your message in the church today was very misleading. You forced people to give.”

Within seconds, his eyes were gleaming with indignation. “My message was misleading?” He darted her a warning glance.

“Yes, pastor; extol the virtues of soul salvation not worldly wealth. Preach about the kingdom of God not man. If you know that you cannot serve God honestly, then I’d advise you to stand down as pastor.”

“Whoever you are, do you think you are a paragon of wisdom? Would you get the hell out of here! Otherwise, I’m going to rip you open now, you bastard.” And those sour words were coming out of the same mouth that had been pouring blessings on people about half an hour ago.

*****

The following night Pastor Dr. Mbisa was in the church together with five members of the youth organisation of his church. They were praying for the spirit of God to be always there at the church for rumour had been rife that some people were on a mission to destroy the church.

Out of the blue, Pastor Mbisa’s wife and his daughter appeared, such that there were eight people in the church altogether. As they went on with their prayers, the pastor saw the greatest mystery of his life. One of the five youths was being carried into space by imaginary powers.

The pastor, his wife and his daughter dashed out of the church, screaming on top of their voices. The other four intrepid fellows remained there, unfazed and unflappable. They began to pray again as the pastor watched them through the window.

The candles were burning out and the girl amongst the youth lit others. When the prayers reached the climax, a sudden rush of wind blew across the church. Enigmatically, three out of the four remaining youths were missing. The only one who remained was lying there on the arctic floor, sweating like a pig.

Pastor Mbisa called his wife and his daughter who were a good distance away from where he was. They all stared in amazement at the clothes, Bibles and hymn books belonging to the missing people.

The pastor gathered them and began to pray together with his wife and his daughter. When their prayers trailed off, a rush of wind blew across the church again. Then a person in a pure white robe and with a face that was shining like the sun held Mbisa’s left hand and said in a resounding voice, “you are not eligible of entering the Kingdom of God.”

He slapped him and he screamed. He was panting like he had just finished a marathon He had been dreaming. Heaving a sigh of relief, he wiped his face with a wet napkin and looked at a piece of paper on his wife’s dressing table. It had not been there all along.

He picked the paper and held it cautiously between his thumb and his forefinger. The writing on the paper was brief: “confess and repent, or you will indeed be left behind.” That dream together with the note marked Pastor Mbisa’s tuning point

Lindeni - short story

2011-12-26T19:51:00.000+02:00

Author's note: This short story was initially published on this same site, but now it has been improved for new purposes

I looked into her brown eyes that betrayed an unknown feeling that was hidden in the deep recesses of her heart. Her lips parted but apparently all what she wanted to utter froze in her mouth. Another look at her sent a chill down my spine. I could instantly feel a strong impulse to talk to her and tell her I was interested in her.

We had passed by each other at this very same place many times but now it appeared it was a different day altogether. I had never greeted her before but this day I did it with the courage of my convictions. I held her palm in mine firmly and inquired her name.

“Lindeni,” she purred. Her voice was like music, yet her name was all she could say when I wanted to hear more from her.

Then she just stared at me blankly afterwards and then I told her I was willing to offer her a lift. She shook her head and then continued with her journey. As she walked, I followed her with my eyes. Her musical voice that had mentioned her name kept resounding in my head. It was that kind of voice that almost sent me crazy.

I then veered my Toyota Camry into a nearby lay-by and backed it slowly before taking it into the direction I was coming from – the direction where Lindeni was going. I found her still walking and she had covered a distance of about 200 metres from where we had met.

“Lindeni, let me give you a lift,” I proffered again, sounding as decent as possible. “I am willing to take you to your destination at no cost and with no strings attached.”

She looked at me and smiled. I thought that perhaps now she was going to accept my offer but I was shocked to the bone when she just carried on with her journey. I began to feel that it would be healthier for her to tell me something than not to respond at all.

Her petite face shone in the embers of the setting sun as she turned around slowly and waved at me. I reciprocated the gesture, shook my head and swallowed hard as I looked at her. Then she disappeared into the gathering dusk.

As I sunk into a sun-lounger in the sitting room of my house, I found myself concentrating on nothing else but Lindeni. I pictured in my mind’s eye how she would react once I told her that I had fallen in love with her. Perhaps she could just stare at me blankly and never say a word.

The following day, I saw Lindeni in town. When she saw me, she faced the other direction but I walked briskly to where she was and greeted her. She reciprocated my greeting and told me that she was busy.

“Can I book an appointment then?” I said. She shook her petite head. Then I saw her dip her hand into her handbag from where she fished her business card which had all her details and she gave it to me. She waved at me as she flagged down a winged taxicab.

I learned from her business card that she was a journalist for The People’s Magazine. But contrary to how she behaved, I knew journalists to be very friendly people. I called her that very same night. “It’s me Mike, do you remember me?”

“Yes,” that was all she could say.

“Can I take you for lunch tomorrow?” My lips trembled as I coughed out these words. There was some silence. I became irritated but I could not cut the line. Then finally she said something.

“I will see,” she said.

“Alright, then have a blessed night.”

She did not return the goodwill. I held my phone against my chest and breathed a sigh of relief. At least she hadn’t rejected my offer, even though she hadn’t even accepted it. But I convinced myself that the cards were stacked in my favour.

At exactly 11:30am the following day, I gave Lindeni a tinkle and inquired if she was ready. She appeared to be reluctant in the first place but finally budged. Upon hearing her own voice confirm that she would be willing to have lunch with me, I jumped up and down in my office, combed my hair again and gazed into the mirror, until I was satisfied that I was fit to go out with one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen.

It only took us ten minutes to arrive at my best hotel which was in the outskirts of Kadole City. We ordered the best food in the restaurant but my appetite was hidden in Lindeni. I ate only to make a virtue of necessity. “Lindeni, I love you,” I said stiffly.

She looked at me inquisitively as though not comprehending what I was saying. “Don’t you think it is too soon? I mean we haven’t known each other for a long time.”

“Time matters less in love.”

“It does. You know little about me and I know very little about you. And now you are talking about love. Do you think people love each other just like that?” She said, much to my embarrassment.

“Or do you have a boyfriend already, or you are already married?” I asked with impatience smoldering within my inner self.

“I am single and I am not dating anyone. I just want you to know that true love has to lead to marriage and this is a lifelong commitment which requires not only ultimate preparation but also ultimate consideration. I don’t mean to turn down your proposal, but I just feel we have to discuss this issue more than we are doing now.”

Those words warmed the cockles of my heart. At least I was sure that there was a trace of success. I blamed myself that perhaps indeed I had rushed to extend my love proposal. She looked at me and beamed radiantly exposing her gleaming ivories which were as white as snow.

“Mike, I have known you from a tender age. How you easily forget. Don’t you remember that we were together at Chisansu Primary School, then at Kasaghala Secondary School in Chitipa?” she narrated and I was dumbfounded with shock.

My mouth gaped open. I could hardly believe what Lindeni was telling me. During our secondary school days – if at all she was the Lindeni I had known – we had been very good friends.

“But the Lindeni I know had Mukumbwa as her surname and here you have Peter as your surname. Is it your husband’s name?”

“Yes,” she said amidst open beams which disturbed me somewhat fierce. Why the hell was she teasing me like this? “I am sorry that I have wasted your time. But something significant lies in the background of the wasted time. I told you that I was single because I wanted to know more about your behaviour.”

She paused as I forced myself to listen. “It is very difficult to find a good wife in this town. All that glitters is not gold. Don’t feel I have fooled you,” she said. I had thought there was eloquence in Linden’s silent look but the moment she disclosed that she was married, I developed terrible paroxysm of hatred towards her.

I jumped onto my car and sped away leaving her behind. Through the wing mirror, I saw her standing behind the table and I was seized by a strong pang of conscience. Then I stopped the car and backed it slowly till I reached where Lindeni was standing, bewildered.

“I am sorry,” I said.

“I understand. Don’t worry; it’s all human and typical of men for that matter. Look into my eyes and trace my deep love for you that is hidden in my heart; it is true love,” she said, much to my amazement.

“But you are already married.”

“I was testing your character. Just like fire tests gold and silver so a prospective husband’s reputation also has to be tested.” She walked towards me and spread her arms but I gave her a wide berth.

“Your test is not over, is it?”

“It is Mike, it is. Don’t worry about the name. I usually write political issues and I have to hide behind the pen name for fear of reprisals,” she said and her eyes vindicated the veracity in her sentiments.

I could hardly resist her lips which were like pink rose petals. She moved closer and I did the same until there was no distance between us. She pushed herself into my hold and we embraced like nobody’s business. It was just unstoppable, unbelievable, very electrifying. It was like everything in life had begun there at the hotel.

Suicide Pact - Short Story

2011-12-26T19:35:00.000+02:00

There at the interrogation desk in a small room at Katowo Police Station sat Penjani, waiting for the detective to come into the room. The correctional facility was staring in his face and all the money that was buried beneath a huge bed in the massive bedroom was silent. It could not work for him alone when it had been meant to be for them all.

When the detective silently walked into the interrogation room, he immediately informed him that one more count had been added on the charge sheet. “Of course you know that you will not find yourself on the right side of the law. Not when I am the one pursuing this case,” the detective said.

Penjani lost himself into a gust of make-believe laughter to allay his conscience. But still what had gone around was crudely coming around to haunt him; to taunt him and to hound him. Time for his bumpy ride had come and it appeared to have come in its fullness.

During his arrest he had rumbled about character assassination but now the words were sheer echoes in his confused head. He had only spent two days at the police station but he had already grown into a wraith-like creature – a sorry sight. And the fact that he had been a man who had been commanding a great deal of reverence was fast fading into oblivion.

He was now a prisoner and outside the police cell walls his reputation was fraying around the edges.

“Chickens come home to roost,” the detective said as he spread a paper containing Penjani’s case details on the table.

“Brother, you rule things here and I accept it. But don’t you think you can do something that may earn you some fact bucks. At least it is going to be the line of least resistance to both of us,” said Penjani.

The detective slammed his hands on the desk and it shook. He was wrathful. “I am going to include that on the charge sheet. Look here Mr. Penjani, you are trying to bribe a police officer and that is a very big crime. Of course, you know that you can’t bribe me. I am not that type. You are destined for the prison – a place with complete fetters.”

Penjani looked at him and tears welled down his cheeks. The detective left the room and it was as though he was giving the prisoner more time to think about his plight. He cursed that pistol. If only it had functioned properly, he wouldn’t be in such a place. He would be dead by now and he would no longer be grappling with life in this sty of a police cell.

He would be resting in peace in the land beyond flowing rivers and meadows and lakes – at least that was what he had been told about the afterlife. Above all, he cursed that day when his parents had been killed in a car crash. It marked the onset of his lifelong tribulations which had finally landed him in this musty place called a cell.

It all started four months after Penjani’s parents died in a car accident. Being the only child in the family, he was left in possession of everything that his parents left behind. But because of succumbing to the pleasures of the youth, by the end of four months, he was left with nothing. He had withdrawn all the money that his parents had been saving in the bank.

And now the new owners of the house informed him that they would be moving in in three days. He had already squandered the money. A month later he joined a gang of three men who earned their living by robbing banks and other big institutions.

No one knew that they were armed robbers and people were according them so much respect for they were living in a very big house and always donned classy clothes. And they drove the latest models of cars. After all, they were known amongst many people to be international consultants in accounting for that was what the signpost at the turn-off to their house claimed.

This other night, they robbed The Natives’ Bank and two days later their photographs were almost in every paper informing the whole nation that ‘these criminals robbed The Natives’ Bank’ and anyone who would provide information leading to their arrest would receive a reward of K500 000. Even on the nation’s sole television station, the advert appeared now and then.

As they sat together in their lounge, watching TV, Penjani and his colleagues were attracted to the screen like never before. It was not the announcer that attracted their attention but the information she was disseminating: The police in all neighbouring countries have been alerted about these criminals lest they try to get out of this country. If they are hearing me now, they better surrender themselves because they are going to be caught, whatever the case.

“What should we do, gentlemen?” Penjani asked. One of the robbers glared at him with his bloodshot eyes.

“This is no time for asking stupid questions. I think we should be talking of how to escape. The police can say whatever they want but the last thing we will do is to surrender.” He looked at his colleagues who remained silent. “That is my opinion. No risk no venture. We have to give it a try.”

“I can’t subscribe to that,” another robber chipped in suddenly.

“It is a matter of choice.” The robber who was considered the leader of the gang finally said authoritatively. “He who chooses to escape has to escape; he who chooses to stay has to stay. Choice. Period.”

Long at last a consensus was reached. Two of the criminals made up their minds to escape while Penjani and another decided to stay. They decided that they would go to any remote village and stay there for some time until the coast was clear.

“Fare thee well, gentlemen,” Penjani said to his colleagues who picked their rucksack to God knows where. Only two hours later, news about the arrest of the two robbers was disseminating like wildfire. The caught robbers had revealed everything about their colleagues. And the police again announced that the remaining two should better surrender.

“What do we have to do now? We are squeezed towards a tight corner,” Penjani said to his colleague tremulously. “Now I can see that every road is pointing in our direction and every road that we take appears to be pointing to the police station.”

“On my part I think I have finally made up my mind.”

“What are you going to do? Surrender?”

“I have to end it all.”

“Suicide? The last thing I would do,” said Penjani.

“Don’t you think you have reached the last option? What is the essence of living when you are being hunted like a wild animal? Friend, suicide is the gentle end to life’s tribulations.”

“How dare you utter those words as though you have ever tasted it?”

“Anyway, the choice is yours now as I have already made mine.”

But finally Penjani gave in after being equally convinced that life would be full of tribulations once the police got hold of them. And it was a generally accepted suicide pact.

Penjani’s colleague picked the pistol, drove its burnished barrel into his mouth and opened fire. His body slumped onto the wintry floor like a bag of sand. Penjani picked the pistol but when he pulled the trigger, nothing came out of the gun. As he tried to reload it, the door violently flung open and there into the room stormed three police officers who were armed to the teeth.

“Hands up. You are under arrest for robbery. You reserve the right to remain silent for whatever you may say now may turn against you in the future in a court of law. It is your constitutional right to remain silent,” one police officer said.

And when he arrived at the police station, he was informed that another charge had been levelled against him. “You murdered your fellow robber, perhaps because you wanted to get all the money that you have been robbing. For this count as well, there is evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt. You may go back to your cell, Mr. Penjani. Good day,” said the detective.

The Triumph Of Art: Our Victory

2011-12-26T19:31:00.000+02:00

A message to the artist – the poet, the painter, the essayist, the musician – the artist

The best explanation of why we are supposed to die is because art lives. Art is the immortal component of our affairs which draws realities into a realm of perfectness. Art cannot be repressed; it cannot be oppressed. Art cannot be silenced, because in its silence, it can shout the loudest. Art cannot be arrested; art cannot be censored, because that which is censored has seen the light of the day. Therefore, censoring art is a futile attempt because art flows from the inner conviction of our desire to paint something new in our progress.

Art will stand the test of time. Art will be there even after we are all gone. Art will still stand after all our pillars of resilience have fallen apart, giving in to economic, political and social inequities. Art will be the triumphant giant standing in a desert of intense heat and loneliness. It will be the last song resounding in the retentive memories of posterity. It will not be defeated by the bark of a rabid dog; neither will it bow down to the roar of a hungry lion.

It will be the lonely tree in a forest that has been cleared. It will be the swift river flowing relentlessly in the flaming sun. Art will be the final point of future transitions. It will be there today and in the afterlife. Art will be the final witness of our experiences. It will refuse to be bribed or manipulated; it will not be altered or cancelled. It will be the ultimate carrier of truth to Doomsday.

Kings angry for blood will not benefit from art; they will be rebuked. Art, like that of Frank Chipasula, in Manifesto on Ars Poetica, will spray these tyrannical leaders with terrible verbs of terror. Art will triumph even after its producer is no more. It will be there because it has always been there. Art will sing, art will write, art will paint, art will even be silent.

We need to be always mindful of the fact that we are living in an increasingly resistant and retrogressive society. It is a society where our final redress seems to be found in the courts of law. Yet, this is a society where the instant redress should be emitted from art. Art will not set a day when it has to come out, for it has always been there in our minds. It is already written on our hearts like radiant words curved on a marble.

The artist will always be targeted by those who perceive him to pose some threat. He may be chastised, repressed and even mauled to his death. But his victory is in his art, and that should be the greatest victory of out time: the ability to live beyond your time; the prospect of leaving behind hope for posterity. That is the essence of art. That is why, like sayeth the Holy Bible, our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough; artists, like all good men, must die, but the sting of death will end on the mound beneath which their bodies lie. Art will rise and triumph beyond the pain and miseries of our death.

We must produce art. We must not be in constant awe of those that will need to suppress it, for they will never succeed. Just like one of the greatest artists Alexander Pope said, “so vast is art, so narrow human wit,” we should penetrate into the core ideals of art, and explore it better than we have ever done. So vast will be our art, and so narrow will be the discernment of oppressors. That is where our victory will lie.
We are already in the midst of terrible inequities. As artists we are defending our fold from different fronts. That is where the challenge lies. The triumph of art will be our victory, that is why art should never cease to flow from our loins. Poet and critic Phillip Sidney said that a true knight if fuller of bravery in the middle, than in the beginning of danger. We must therefore rise and write more, paint more, sing more, speak more and act more. The negative picture of our surrounding should be the greatest inspiration. From it, a historic inflow of art can be created. Either, we will have to find a way, or we have to create one.

Like Henry Ward Beecher said, every artist – a painter, a poet, a singer – dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. That is where art wins; that is where art informs us that it never comes from a vacuum. It descends from the experiences of life, the trauma of rejection, the pain of oppression; even the hope for posterity.

The artist shouldn’t be troubled with the predictable perfections of life. He has the artistic license to present the way he wants. Morality should be his guiding principle. It should resurrect the hopefulness that will emanate from our desire to control our progress. Great art will live today, tomorrow, even in the afterlife. That is why the aim of every artist should be to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. I share this concept by William Faulkner.

Let art illuminate the darkest sides of our society. Let it expose the inequities committed in dark rooms planted on mountains and in forests. Its duty to send a searching light into the darkness of men’s hearts should be nurtured. Let the artist’s world remain limitless. It should be from within and without that the artist should explore life. Let him recreate. After all, like Henry Miller once observed, the artist is the opposite of the politically-minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

As an artist – as a poet; as a writer – you will conceive ideas that the teacher will love or hate; things that the politician will like or loathe; things that the doctor will condemn or recommend; things for which the policeman will want to arrest you or applaud you; things that the lawyer will invalidate or substantiate; things that your father will reject or respect. Don’t despair; you are an artist and give every man his proper dosage even if he will despise it. Its significance will be recognized later in this life journey.

Don’t worry of starting your artistic work because you are not sure if you will be able to finish it. No artist in the world ever finishes his work; we will all take it forward with a terrible speed, but life will force us to abandon it. We should be most interested to rediscover the universe; recreate the society; realign the political situation. Struggle not to complicate art. The farmer should discern it; the driver should uncover it; the politician should interpret it. Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

Our hearts should not grow weaker. Indeed we are burdened with the imposed inequities of our friends; those friends whom we cannot ignore; friends who are forcing us to love what we hate for to bring our society back to our roots, we have to show love by producing art that will rebuke them. As artists, we have unimaginable loads on our heads. And, yet, that is what should build our character because it is the nature of the strong heart that, like the palm tree it has to grow upwards when it is most burdened.

Well, this message is drawn from nature, the greatest form of art. Nature abhors a vacuum; nature desires that there should be continuity in it, that it draws together all forms of art. Just like Alexander Pope observed, nature itself is but art methodised. Art should retain its original position in government business. It should not conform to the laid down principles of politicians. It must not be in perfect terror of the loudest voices. Let art be like the soldier’s compass; a pilgrim’s staff. Art should be the basis of everything. Thus, we should produce art in abundance, for art summarises all life’s struggles.

Art has never slept, it only rests. Art will never be deleted, it may only be hidden. Art is the ultimate victory of our time, so should the artist be. Our deepest desire should be to produce more and more art. Let’s write poetry, let’s paint images, let’s sing songs, let’s even think aloud. And at the end, art will triumph. Art will reshape our society. Art will be the ultimate winner. And that will be our victory; the triumph of art.

The Urge Of A Desperate Heart

2011-12-26T18:12:00.000+02:00

Conventional predictions of life sometimes tend to misfire, but that is the more reason why life is often described to be unpredictable. But, there are those things that happen in our lives which are perfectly given to tenets of predictability.

Desperate men can do desperate things. That is a saying which may be mostly contested by those men who haven’t been desperate enough to finally resort to desperate options. But, for me, there was this time in my life when I was so desperate that the final option was to undertake a desperate attempt. It happened in July 2004.

Perhaps, there should be a better explanation why luck chose to favour me when, in all truth and honestly, I was on the wrong side. But, as they say, fortune sometimes happens to serve those who rarely deserve it. And in our lives, nature refuses to conform to foreseeable progresses.

I was one of about ten students who had been dismissed from Palm Private Secondary School in Chitipa. Our crime was that we had been ring leaders in the students’ protests which culminated in the vandalism of school property and subsequent closure of the school.

Well, today may not be the right time for me to protest my innocence. It is the events that followed my life in the near future that seem to be perfectly set to occupy a good space in my autobiography. It might have happened in the blinking of some divine eye, but it was much – it was unbelievable and enough.

It was the fear of facing my father’s wrath after being dismissed from school that instantly hatched a desperate idea in me. I wasn’t going home; my parents and siblings would not take my dismissal lightly. I could imagine how they would all spare some time to ‘lecture’ me on the price of pride and peer pressure. But as I was to learn later, my fears had just been blown out of proportion.

Nevertheless, they had driven me to making a decision of boarding a car from Chitipa Boma to Karonga, passing by my home which was only 25 kilometres from my departure point and some 80 kilometres from my destination. I was in terrible desperation and all I wanted was to stay away from my parents for some time.

My initial plans were that after reaching Karonga, I would do some peace-works and earn some money that would take me to Chikhwawa, where my brother stayed. I had departed with K400 in my pocket, and by then it would cost K300 for transport for one to travel from Chitipa to Karonga. This meant that after arriving at Karonga, I was remaining with K100 in my pocket.

The level of my desperation exacerbated. It was now coupled with hunger, exhaustion and fear. But, I told myself that the next decision that I would make would define me: was I man enough?

The problem that I found at Karonga Boma was that there were many people that I knew there who also knew me, so I was afraid to face numerous questions from them about why I was there instead of being in school. Thus, I thought of boarding a bus to Chilumba Jetty. It meant that I was left without any money now. The sun was setting and my stomach kept rumbling.

At Chilumba Trading Centre I met a man whose job was to wash tankers which used to park at a Filling Station there. He agreed to host me for some time while I looked for a ‘job’. I stayed with him for three days until I decided that I was becoming a burden on him. I had searched for piece-works but to no avail.

Another desperate idea struck my mind. I thought of organisations or institutions that would come to my rescue but found nothing. That is when I decided to go to police. It was a decision made out of confusion and humility. After all, what would you expect from the heart of a desperate man?

I took my bag and arrived at the reception of Chilumba Police Post where I reported that I was on my way to Chikhwawa and my transport money had been stolen in the bus that I had boarded at Karonga Boma. The police officer I found at the reception looked askance at my statement and asked to look in my bag, saying I might have put my money there.

It was when he took my exercise books out of the bag that my stomach began to boil.

“You are a student at Palm [Private Secondary School] and you are going to see your brother in Chikhwawa when school is still in progress, what is wrong?” he asked, looking straight in my eyes.

I didn’t have an immediate answer. That led him to the next question: “Aren’t you one of those that were vandalising school property and you are running away?” The story about the vandalism and closure of the school had already been carried in the mainstream media.

Nervousness got complete hold of me, but things miraculously worked in my favour. A senior police officer arrived at the scene and asked his colleague what I was doing there. After being told that I claimed to have my transport money stolen on my way to Chikhwawa, he immediately made a verdict.

“Chikhwawa is further than Chitipa; so the best way is for you to return home and start your journey all over again,” he said with finality.

By then, I was ready to face the wrath of my parents. What I had gone through was terrible enough to erase my fear.

The same afternoon, I boarded a police car that took me to Karonga Police Station where I was ‘dumped’ in the hands of the Victim Support Unit where I was cared for very well.

The following morning I was given a letter which I was supposed to present at Bwiba Roadblock so that the officers there would find any means of transport for me. A police officer escorted me but he found a car that would take me home even before we reached the roadblock. Even though I had lied to the police on how I had found myself at Chilumba, they did a commendable job to ensure a prodigal son found his way back home.

At home, my parents and siblings received me with smiling faces, and it was only a month later when my dad told me that a good reputation is better than expensive perfume and that pride goes before a fall. These were the sayings which I had printed myself on a piece of cloth that was hanging in the sitting room of ‘our’ house.

Dark Season

2011-12-12T15:08:00.002+02:00

So here we are settling
Wondering no more
Accepting the last straw
Anger slowly boiling
To its most passive point
We believe this the joint
Where we can never leave
Others can never believe
But that is how dark it is
A dark season for us
A dark season for you
A brighter season for one
One man who knows not
How we live; how we breathe

We long for light
So we may clear our plight
Our pain, our sorrow
To end today or tomorrow
And one man watches
One man listens with a grin
He ignores all the coaches
Despises their last order
And all we have now
Is a dark season
A hopeless season
A season for our joy
To wither into his ploy
For him to be, us to be not

MPs' Pay Hike Proposal: a Peculiar Priority

2011-11-21T14:24:00.000+02:00

There are rich countries in the world that have rushed to top-prudence spending strategies because they are cautious about the progress of their economies. They are planning to spend discreetly the money that they have so that they shouldn’t be caught napping should things get out of hand.

And there is a poor African country that was once placed minutely below oil-rich Qatar in terms of the rate at which its economy was growing. But this country is now in dire straits because of self-centred economic policies which were framed on improbable assumptions.

Yet those in leadership positions seem to carelessly undermine the welfare of those that are not involved in direct decision-making policies, and they are willing to spend the money that we don’t have.

Malawi is fighting inequities from numerous fronts. There is the president who has plunged the country in seriously unimpressive bilateral relations with both our neighbours and our donors. There are those learned men and women at the Central Bank and the Malawi Revenue Authority who have found a way of piercing us where it pains most by setting aside millions of our scarce currency to construct swimming pools for themselves.

That is not all; wait, there is more: Members of Parliament seem to have a perfect way of mocking Malawi. For passing numerous ‘erroneous’ bills, these people want to be blessed with a salary hike – a complete mockery to those they ‘misrepresent’.

Civil servants can only be given a salary increment of seven percent because government does not have money to carter for anything more – at least, this is what we are compelled to believe. Yet, while other countries are critically regulating spending for the sake of their economies, our legislators are eager to tell government to spend the money that is not there.

That is pretty ironic. Parliament ceased to make sense many years ago because its occupants seldom tackle matters of public and common interest; and for a job half done in realigning the progress of our country, someone somewhere still believes he deserves a salary increment.

Man’s wisdom sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. It is only a few bills that are passed in Parliament without some resistance from the opposition side, but the salary increment proposal was adopted by most, if not all members present. Such self-centredness perhaps can be condoned by a breed of people who do not care about their purpose in this rational generation.

There are no drugs in hospitals; erratic water and electricity supply is having numerous repercussions on both our lives and our economy. Then there is the rationing of civil servants’ salaries without considering their respective responsibilities; talk of the increase in fuel prices, the scarcity of forex and even fuel itself; the rampant rise of commodity prices and many more. It is shock after shock until we cease to talk.

Amidst these troubles, our MPs have chosen to draw our attention to their fold because nothing else matters in Malawi more than their welfare does. To them, it would be better to have people dying in hospitals because of lack of drugs than to have three hundred thousand kwacha as their salary.

Their consciences are telling them that it would matter less to have civil servants’ salaries rationed, or commodity prices increased without civil servants’ salaries considerably increased at the same rate and pace, or to have no water or electricity for a good week. What matters to them is to cart home fat purses – a peculiar reward for doing nothing.

Well, whatever our MPs are attempting to achieve is perfectly set to test Bingu’s rationality. Here is a whole load of those that are entrusted with the responsibility of making and passing bad laws testing if the president really values the masses.

It is in matters like this where one needs to employ the utmost level of rationality. Bingu has his ‘Yes Sir’ children who pleased him by passing many controversial bills which obviously he had influenced their framework demanding a ridiculous salary increment. And these DPP MPs are standing on the same ground with their opposition counterparts – a rare occurrence in our Parliament, which mostly comes about when outlandish proposals like this are being made.

It may just be a matter of the cost-benefit option. The president will have to consider many factors regarding the scary salary increment proposal by the MPs. Of course, there is this chance to win back a good fraction of the public’s trust by rejecting the increment; not just part of it.

These are trying times as far as our economy is concerned, and after numerous economic gaffes, one needs to be careful of the last straw.

The Price Of Our Humility

2011-09-25T11:14:00.001+02:00

Humility is a human trait that descends from the inner perception that the self needs to be aware of the peripheral in matters of mutual existence. It sometimes transcends love and compassion, for it may encompass them.

The humble do not always seem to be the victors in emerging African democracies; it is the rebellious that carry the day. Yet, any lesson in humility will always groom us to be calm and pacific even in the midst of turbulent waters.

On July 20, twenty Malawians were martyred in anti-government protests which for once, seemed set to bring Bingu wa Mutharika to reason. His subsequent national address a day later was initially somber-toned; but then that was a mistake the president quickly discovered: gentleness shouldn’t be part of his traits.

Twenty lives lost in your regime – where people are against your policies – should be a peace robbing scenario. In any case, their solemn souls must linger above your head, for if you never made the errors which those killed were trying to force you to realign, you would point fingers at others for the lost lives.

The 20 July demonstrations lasted a day in large part and that seems to be the reason we must pay a price. Perhaps, if the protests lasted a little longer, Mutharika would no longer be there at the State House today. But for one reason or another, the protests couldn’t go on, and that test on this regime appears to have been too little to stir anything at the State House.

We are just too humble, and for such humility, there is a cost. Our houses are being torched, our brothers are being brutally mauled to death after the presidential threat to smoke out any critic, but all we can do is sit back and be proud of our humility.

Coincidences occur in life, but then they have clearer explanations without suspicions if they don’t follow hot on the heels of anything. In any case, how do you explain a scenario where an authority threatens that all his critics will be dealt with proper, and then the critics begin to experience tragic acts? These shouldn’t be described as mysterious acts: they are clear manifestations of the threats proffered earlier on.

Robert Chasowa, a fourth year engineering student at the Malawi Polytechnic was the imminent pillar of hope – at least for someone. That’s where it stings deeper. Such a student who perfectly engineered his way into one of the most prestigious colleges in Malawi is finally no more, stopped by the accumulating evil of murderers in the making.

It is said he was being hunted by the police because of a one-page publication which used very critical language to rake the ills of the Mutharika administration. He was part of the crew that published the circular which came out weekly, and might as well go with his demise.

Robert was being hunted not to be tried, but to be killed. That’s how brutal life is. A young man who together with others was keen when it came to digging out secret information was supposed to be benefitted from. Some would use his undertakings to correct their problems, others would employ him in intelligence societies, but others still chose to end his life in such a heartrending fashion.

His mother did not have the energy to cry when she was brought to her son’s death scene. It was only her haggard body which spoke volumes of the pain that was smoldering in her heart as she tried to come to terms with the death of her beloved son. With all factors constant, Robert was supposed to leave college next year after successfully completing his Bachelor’s Degree. But, men with demonic hearts chose to cut short his stay in college – and on planet Earth.

The presidential assertion of smoking out critics is being perfectly implemented. The thugs target everyone deemed to be Mutharika’s enemy. They want to drive all of us into submission, or into hiding, or to our graves. All this is happening simply because we are so humble; too humble to ask the president to step down because of declaring war on his own people; too humble to band together and think of a better Malawi once and for all.

We are so humble that we watch one man – in his arrogance and stubbornness – steer our nation into untold tragedies, without forcing him to resign. And Mutharika himself knows that he is leading people whose barks are worse than their bites.

Our humility is costing our lives. It has filtered to the point where we seem to have no direction. A few people who would bring change to Mother Malawi are being butchered in cold blood, and we lack the conviction to let their blood not be shed in vain.

It only took the death of one man to initiate the revolution that spilt from Tunisia to other Arabic countries. Yet in Malawi, after the death of twenty-one people, those of us who are still living seem to be too humble to invade the streets of this country with our candles, our blankets and our cassette or CD players to dish out songs of freedom.

A few who have the inner conviction to fight are being killed; the rest of us are too humble to carry the fight on. And they must be turning in their graves now at a job they started which no one else seems to be willing to take up.

We keep waiting for the police to conclude investigations whose results they doctor before they even start – if they do them at all. Yet we pretty well know that these police officers are the very same people this regime is using to torment its own people. We are so humble that even if our brothers and sisters die brutally at the hands of this regime’s agents, we cannot do anything until we establish what really happened.

Mother Malawi is weeping – weeping really hard. She is crying for the lost souls that were set to bring change but have no one to pick up the relayed stick. Our country longs for men and women who will rise above the occasion and say enough is enough. These are the people Malawi needs now to save her from the pangs of agony she is rolling in.

Perhaps, for once, we should all be ready to die if that will mean saving our nation from destruction. We are the ones who can create hope for posterity. We can create a better Malawi for ourselves and our children. We must stand up and fight, or else we are doomed to be tormented by they that don’t even understand our history.

Well, as a writer, I have fervently refrained from writing my emotions in very explicit ways; but what is here comes from the deep recesses of my heart. Being a university student myself – my education progress brought to a pause by the gathering conceit of this regime – I keenly feel the pain of Robert’s death; this young man who will not be coming back sooner or later.

If death were some divine entity that would listen to the cries of they that are left behind, perhaps Robert Chasowa’s life would be revived by our tears. But death chooses to enter calm places where the pain would be so enormous. And, to those agents of death who slayed Robert, may peace be like gold dust to them. May they live to be haunted forever till they face God’s judgment at the end of their lives.

As we mourn the death of Robert, shouldn’t we sit down and reflect upon our country’s progress? Shouldn’t we judge that at least our patience has been strained to the limit? Should our humility continue costing lives that fervently fight for change? Perhaps, time has come for us to be humble no more. Maybe, this is the time we must rise and realign things in Malawi. We have the capacity to do so if we band together in hope and unity.

An Ugly Battle Of Wits

2011-09-13T18:31:00.000+02:00

There is no better place for a child’s character training than the school since this is where he has contacts with others. In fact, education in itself is naturally designed to develop citizens intellectually, spiritually, morally and, of course, physically. While at school, a child inherently seeks these types of growth even though he might not be immediately aware of this.

Every education curriculum in in Malawi seeks to develop positive personalities in individuals so that they do not only attain intellectual development. This is because we are all social beings that are supposed to interact with our fellow human beings in different scenarios.

In primary and secondary schools, pupils oftentimes take everything that their teachers say as the gospel truth and are compelled to believe it without much as hard work. This is why these teachers are supposed to be exemplary in their behaviours.

But in colleges, students are mostly left to develop their own personalities in practical terms, using theories, some of which may not work very well when put in practice. However, the mutual understanding is that college students are mature people who can take care of themselves, hence their teachers seldom concentrate on building positive personalities out of them.

Nevertheless, college teachers are not excluded when it comes to showing positive traits of humanity. They are social beings too who must comply with the dictates of society and must not act like animals that do not care about morality.

However, of late, there have been some peculiar cases within the main constituent college of the University of Malawi, Chancellor College, where some lecturers have taken it so personal that they have shelved their morals and engaged in very ugly battle of wits that at the end have just exposed very ugly sides of their lives.

Eccentricity in university colleges among students is not a strange phenomenon. And university colleges are supposed to be first places where eccentricity must be accommodated; after all, students in these places come from different backgrounds and therefore, eccentricity in this case, makes sense.

But eccentricity among university lectures may almost seem an impossibility. These are “more” mature individuals who are given the responsibility of finishing up the molding of future leaders, and we expect them to guard their morals as much as they can.

Yet, there have been cases of calling each other names like sorcerers, drunkards and many other undesirable names. Essentially, the whole ugly battle of wits has been going on at Chanco where some lecturers thought their colleagues who were fighting for academic freedom were not fighting for a right cause, or had taken things too far.

Whatever the case, the approaches in “countering” their colleagues haven’t been the best ever. There is one former Chanco lecturer named Linje Manyozo who in rebuking his Chanco colleagues who were boycotting classes used very undiplomatic language.

In his wisdom, the learned man (who calculated his way into one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, the London School of Economics, where he is studying for his PhD, or just chanced upon it), described the “striking” lecturers as drunkards and sorcerers.

One would never be wrong to doubt the educational benefit of this learned man. Isn’t education supposed to shape us into covetable human beings whose morals should be different from those of savages?

Then there is also one other lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the same Chanco who castigated his colleagues using very odd language. Instead of controlling his emotions, his emotions controlled him such that he lost touch with reality and began to think like he was dealing with animals, not human beings.

These ugly battle of wits paint a very bad picture of the university’s reputation. In fact, they lead to questioning the criteria that are followed when employing university lecturers. After all, there have been speculations that some of these “undiplomatic” lecturers have very undesirable records.

Above everything, university lecturers must refrain from using undiplomatic language when dealing with anything. They are considered as people who understand that morality supersedes any kind of intelligence, and when they engage in ugly battle of wits, we tend to question whether they have benefitted enough from their education.

Death The Ultimate Loser

2011-09-13T18:19:00.002+02:00

In memory of O'Brien Nadzombe

When death beckons a frail soul

When death knocks up a falling giant

When it breaks down a fragile heart

Even when it takes a willful soldier

Death will not dominate life

Death will always be the final actor

Death will not enjoy the final act

Death will end on a deserted stage

For death kills not, silences not

Death is just a crude inordinate point

An unjustifiable connection he is

He shouldn’t be a feared master

As though death could control life

He fears life that not so soon retires

For such a life lives longer than death

It lives after death, death the ultimate loser

Death cannot take away this verse

This pompous snag he cannot kill

This poem sprays death with poison

A verse like this lives after death

Death can’t be feared by this poem

Or any other poem recited before

When death comes death goes

Death lacks permanence in life

Death won’t be there after his arrival

Death shouldn’t be blamed, chastised

He shouldn’t be worshipped, praised

Death should be mocked, castigated

Because death is a toothless monster

Death is a broken hero, a failure

Death wins not in life’s fatal games

Life ends in death, death the ultimate loser

Life At Best Is Brief

2011-09-13T18:16:00.000+02:00

It is mostly the nature of life to be brief during moments when things seem to work the most. When we are drowned in an aura of all hopefulness because there is practically nothing to grumble about, life usually takes another turn and leaves us regretting.

Yet, such abnormality of life is normal: it has to take different turns so we do not develop a habit of its progress. But the problem is that while life is at its best for us, we often rest on our laurels and let things progress the way they may.

The brevity of life at best is common among all humanity. It affects entrepreneurs, civil servants, and even sportsmen. Thus, it is only wise to put in place all precautionary measures so that when life’s better moments are dying in the embers of ingloriousness, something should be there to propel us forward.

Sports is not a lifelong career for anyone. Even when one retires from being a sportsman and becomes a coach, there is no guarantee that the person would be in the job for the rest of his life. There comes moments in our lives when we may be incapable of working for ourselves so that we earn a living. These are moments when we are supposed to rest and depend on what we saved during that time when our life was at its best.

Yet, most sportsmen have shown that they do not care about saving a little something when they are at the acme of their careers so that they should not be hurting when mischance strikes. They take all pleasure in consuming whatever they have such that when they retire, or things just stop working for them, they have no shoulder to cry on.

Of course, it is true that most sportsmen in Malawi get very little rewards that they can hardly carter for their daily needs. But still, that little may be invested even if the starting point seems to be just too minute. If the sportsman clearly knows that at the end of his career, he will not have anywhere else to rely on, it is imperative to invest in something else for the sake of the future.

There are other sportsmen who do not get very little rewards as to prevent them from saving a little something so that they will not have untold financial problems when their best moments are over. Yet, they do not have time to think about this, and die poor.

We all know that sometimes when one has money, it is very tempting to squander it all without thinking about what will happen in the future. The spirit of letting tomorrow care for itself has seen many people having financial problems in the future.

Luxuries are good for life, but if you know that you will not be able to afford the most important needs, it is imperative to avoid luxuries because they are liabilities. Instead, you may need to invest in assets that will continue bringing you income even after your best moment is over. That little that the assets will bring might be enough for survival.

This article has not just sprouted from nothingness. I have personally seen how some sportsmen who were doing very well during they heydays are suffering now, simply because they did not invest or save for the future. During their most successful moments, they forgot that money comes and goes and should better be invested or saved so that there should be no regrets in the future.

I have also seen some sportsmen who spend money on luxuries that can be shelved for the future. Well, perhaps they have their own ways of taking care of their futures, but still it is important for sportsmen to minimize luxurious lives when things are best for them for they do not know how long that good moment will last. If they have other ways of getting their income, all fine.

All in all, sportsmen must know that life at best is brief. As such, it is important to put into place measures that will make sure things do not turn bad in the future when the good moments are over. This is just a concern.

The Paradox Of Information Sources

2011-09-13T18:12:00.002+02:00

The fact that the Road Traffic Department (RTD) was declared the most secretive public institution in the country by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa)-Malawi Chapter sometime back did not provide good reading, especially in this era when information dissemination is very crucial to development. Yet, it is not only the RTD that is economic with information when it comes to revealing to the media what they know.

When reporting on different issues taking place in the country and elsewhere, the media relies extensively on information provided to them by different informants. For verification of stories, there is need for some relevant or ‘highly-placed sources’ to say something that would either validate the story or provide more information on it or both.

This might be the case even where the report contains material that is generally known by almost everyone. News pieces are different from feature articles or opinions where someone can write their own ideas throughout the piece. They require interviews and sometimes even photographs which may ultimately substantiate the whole story that is being carried.

Yet in Malawi, there is a widespread tendency for people who would provide information on certain stories to refuse to talk to the media. Most stories carried in our local papers indicate that nearly half of the reports carried are never fully-fed because relevant sources are usually disinclined to provide information to the media.

Malawians have the right to access to information and this is largely fulfilled through the media because it is the most effective way of disseminating information. It is illogical that some individuals holding different positions especially in governmental and non-governmental organisations do not care about giving information to the media on issues which the nation at large needs to be aware of.

And the funny thing is that when reporters resort to other ‘anonymous sources’ for the sake of the readers, these unwilling individuals rush to bash reporters terming them unprofessional. Where do they think the reporters can get the information from apart from the ‘anonymous sources’ if they themselves are non-committal on commenting on issues in which they are directly involved?

It does not do Malawians justice to see a burning story end in suspense or never come out altogether just because someone does not want to speak to the media. And the most ridiculous thing is that these non-committal officers do not provide any reason for their unwillingness that can be worthy the fig.

There are many stories which are left underlying just because there is no one to validate them and reporters cannot report them for fear of finding themselves on the wrong side of the law. Those who would say something on the story (because they know something) usually shun the media.

In certain instances, it has been observed that they only promise to call back only to switch off their phones. In other instances, you find that instead of someone refuting a story that was validated by other sources, they only rush to hang the phone up or to tell the reporter that it is their paper that is doing what is said to have been done. Is this the way officers have to react to the media? If ‘highly-placed sources’ act like this, who will be the media’s source in Malawi?

Sometime back, I was in Tanzania on a certain mission and I tried to survey a number of the Eastern African country’s papers to see how sources cooperate with the media. Most of the stories carried made a very good reading because there was a lot of information on them. This was in virtue of the fact that people in the country, particularly high-positioned officers, are very much willing to speak to the media.

We do not need civic education in Malawi on how important it is to provide the media with information, relevant of course.

In other instances, there is also the problem of shifting the ball from one court to another until the reporter gets tired and time runs out. A reporter calls someone to source information on a certain story and that someone refers the reporter to someone else and a long chain is created where at the end is the very same person who made the initial ‘reference’.

It is not always the case that every piece of information has to come out through the public relations officers or the spokespersons. Sometimes there is need for the bosses themselves to say something and all they can say is that they are in a meeting. This is even if you saw them driving down the highway only some seconds ago

One For Our Coaches

2011-09-13T18:09:00.000+02:00

It is normally supposed to be the promise of football for a team to do better in the next game than in the previous one. Yet such a thing is not so common in Malawi football, and no soul can claim with all conclusiveness that such a scenario is going to happen because the performance of our football clubs usually heralds both hope and misery.

You do not necessarily need to have been a soccer star in the previous moments for you to become the world’s best football coach. It is only imperative that you know what a good footballer needs to possess and what the whole team as an anthology needs to do to win. This includes even if you yourself can never reach that level of perfection that you want your charges to attain.

A coach needs to put into place all feasible criteria that have the potential of making his team win; such is the sole intention of coaching. No coach ever wants to lose, and no club owner can be happy with losing, that is why most coaches get the boot when they fail to impress.

Real Madrid manager José Morihno has never been a soccer star in his life, neither does he possess any record to have played professional football anywhere. Yet, he defied the odds and is now one of the world’s most successful coaches.

Not that there is anything peculiar about him, but his passion for football brought him into the game and as his interest grew, he also improved his coaching tactics.

Another thing that makes Morihno “the special one” is his carefulness when it comes to selection of players who should grace his squad. There are many coaches who are given big chunks of money to buy players with but what they come up with are pathetic boys who can hardly impress on the pitch.

When he took over a pathetic Chelsea in the 2004/2005 season, no one understood at first what he had in store for the English football club, but a season later, he blazed the trail and his popularity made sense to most of us.

But the question that should be asked about the success or failure of football coaches, and of course, all other coaches is: what makes them so – successful of failing?

One thing that has to be appreciated is that coaches too need to be coached so that they improve on their performance. It is true that as they do their job, the next game is normally supposed to be better than the previous but this appears to be just so theoretical in Malawi.

We have football clubs that have coaches that were soccer stars at some point in their football career but they fail to deliver. Of course, there are many factors that contribute to this. One of these factors is lack of knowledge of their opponents.

It is only when you know all the weak and strong angles of your opponent that you can put into place valid strategies of approaching them. But most coaches in Malawi (in my opinion and from how I have seen it) usually use the usual common strategies even if they are meeting another team whose strategies are completely different from those of the team they last met.

Though this appears to be a small issue, it has the potential of adversely affecting the performance of the team because they do not necessarily know how to attack their opponents and how to build their defence.

Another thing is that most coaches are not eager to incorporate into their teams young and inexperienced players who can be perfected right there. They are always eager to get players who have already made it big and the result is that sometimes they fail to control the players because they might have their own ways of playing which can seldom be altered – it’s kind of difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, especially when you have owned it when it is already old.

Patience is another thing that lacks in most of our coaches. They usually do not take long to lose their cool when they see that one player is tripping and they subsequently make frustrated decisions by substituting the player. Hasty substitutions sometimes destroy the progress of the game and get the players disorganized.

Although it is usually supposed to be the nature of football for a team to do better in the next game than it did in the past, this is not so automatic. It requires coaches that are visionary and understand that they are not simply there to give directions to their charges, but to give them the winning formula.

And if our coaches need to do better, they also need to be coached so that they get some winning tips from some successful mentors. Otherwise, one may be forgiven for intimating with all audacity that football clubs in Malawi do not necessarily need coaches because coaches contribute very little to the progress of the clubs, as the clubs usually remain on the same rating.

Deliberating On Our Declining Principles

2011-09-13T18:06:00.000+02:00

Morality, oftentimes, tends to speak for itself. It is naturally embedded on hearts of all humanity, and always convicts us in whatever we do. Even serial killers have their good consciences which always knock at the doors of their hearts every moment they shed blood.

Sometimes in life, driven by circumstances, a human being is supposed to abandon his strong principles and adjust to change for the sake of progress. There is no progress unless one has allowed himself to engage into other ‘innovative’ aspects which were not peculiar to them in the first place.

Change always brings something new; but the most significant thing that counts is assessing what kind of change is morally acceptable. There are instances where change – even if it was not being approved in the first place – gets accepted and becomes an axiom of morality. This is solely because a human being is a social being who needs to adjust according to the dictates of circumstances while not committing an offence against himself or the society within which he lives.

However, still more, sometimes if some kind of change is necessary, but the majority does not hold with it, the minority needs to strategise so as to persuade the majority to adopt the new ‘development’.

In fact, without change, history would be meaningless. It is because humans and nature as a whole go through different levels in their lives that there is the need to preserve that which happened long ago. If that was not the case, it would be just as significant to look at what is happening now, for it would not be any different from what happened yesterday.

Governments change, generations change, natural elements go through processes of mutation and nothing remains the same forever. Above all, the world always changes and nothing in it will remain forever, for every change that it undergoes is a catalyst for changes of everything within it.

Yet in Malawi, it appears some people (pardon my bluntness) are still stuck in the past with so much stubbornness and tradition that to them every kind of change appears to be “a Whiteman’s concern”. These attitudes and behaviour that are characteristic of some Malawians are not conducive for development.

During the transition process from one party system of government to multiparty politics, some people could not just accept that such an aspect in Malawi politics was a very needful thing. They kept on worshipping the former president, the late Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, and went on to argue that they were not ready “to live without Dr. Banda at the helm.” This was just a manifestation of rigidity to change.

They had gotten so much used to Dr. Banda’s cruel system of governance that it had finally become part of their lives. To them, that which they had lived with for so long was better than something that they were not aware of. Yet, everything about multiparty politics had been advocated for times without number.

They were ‘safe’ in following the culture of ‘nurturing’ what they had instead of adjusting to that necessary change. In other words, they got so much used to the culture of suffering that to them, it was not necessary to have freedom. Such kinds of mindsets are perilous as long as development is concerned.

Sometimes, we take some of the things that would otherwise improve our lives as “those of Westerners” because of a culture of exclusion and self-segregation. It is high time we began to consider adjusting to change. However, scrutiny is always necessary; but stubbornness should never be welcome!

It is mostly true that culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is supposed to be a fragile phenomenon. It is supposed to be constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. And, therefore, it is only when we change our mindsets that we may adequately develop.

But, what does it tell us about adjusting to change when a girl almost goes nude in public? What does it pumps into the deep recesses of our hearts if a Malawian girl accepts that her humble body be the centre of public attention simply because it is not properly covered? What does it mean for us when Malawians shoot porn movies which are finally uploaded them on the internet? What does it tell us when a man ravishes his own daughter?

Perhaps, all these and many more immoral tragedies rocking Malawi speak volumes about why change has to be always scrutinized before it is accepted. They tell us that there are still some deviants of society who would never adhere to the conventional principles of how human beings are supposed to behave.

That is why an “Action Girl” had to have the pleasure of taking a picture of herself with only a scanty top and a wallet covering her private parts and sent it for publication in the Weekend Times of today. Whether it is for want of money or not, the girl’s action is just disgusting. She may have a right to do whatever she wants, but she has to take to heart that every right remains a right only if it is morally right.

In his book titled ‘At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry’, Steve Gallagher writes and I quote: “Unless you are at least 50-years-old you probably do not know what it is to live in a culture that isn’t obsessed with sex. Prior to the late 60’s, illicit sex was only confined to the seedy underworld or simply non-existent. It was rare for a man watching TV to come across anything racier than a couple kissing or a vague suggesting comment. Pornography addiction amounted to nothing more than a playboy magazine hidden under the bed.”

Steve wrote this with reference to the American society. However, if we are to apply this in the Malawi setting, we may say “at the beginning the second millennium” instead of “prior to the late 60’s” because issues of sex and pornography rocked Malawian societies first during the period.

Now, it appears we are living in the deep recesses of a dangerously sexualized society; a society that has put sex as the overriding passion of human survival. It is a society that has completely lost its values. Human wisdom has been utterly poisoned and those who advocate for a return to our roots lack all conviction. In regards to morality, our humble nation, is heading towards a horrible ‘head-on collision’ unless positive change is effected immediately.

Now there are social sites like Facebook, Mxit, Waplog and many more. The sites which connect people from different parts of the world have become places where youths think they can express their sexual desires and meet people whom they can interact with sexually.

In most cases of pornography, men are the ones who mostly appear to ‘institute’ everything due to the Malawian tradition that a woman can rarely propose to a man. This is argued against the background of the fact that women are mostly the ones who entice and lure men. Coupled with the nude pictures of women which addicted men may view, like that of the Action Girl, is the skinny dressing of most contemporary girls.

While a man will go out during hot weather like the one Malawi is experiencing putting on a short and a vest, a girl will find an opportunity of exposing herself by putting on ‘classy’ clothes like low-cut blouses which, as if the fact that they are low-cut is not enough harm already, do not even cover up the navel. Nowadays, most young girls simply understand that if they have to be noticed (by men, of course) they have to be scantily dressed.

Now, a man who might have spent a lot of time thinking of how to act out his lust will immediately ‘pounce’ on the scantily dressed girl who will rarely ‘protest’. Here, the man himself is to blame as much as is the girl after they succeed in sexualizing our culture, for it really takes two.

To another extent, it appears sexual captivity has undoubtedly affected different socio-economic and ethnic groups in Malawi. The idea of a Malawian girl going out almost nude and engaging in illicit sex being an immoral human being is fast fading into oblivion.

Well, whatever the case, we need to examine our moral standing once again and perhaps strategise to return to our roots. We are moral human beings who can easily navigate away from any sort of immorality. Our change should be for the better not for the worse.

The author is a final year student at Chancellor College, majoring in Literature in English. You may also follow him by visiting www.alickponje.blogspot.com.

For feedback, write to ananiyaalick.ponje@gmail.com

The Cost of Our Incuriousity

2011-09-13T18:03:00.000+02:00

If you are a very curious personality that never lets anything suspicious pass you without delving into its progress, you might have discovered that we Malawians are a very incurious breed of humanity. Oftentimes, we do not care to raise our suspicion in suspicious situations, and the result is that things finally get out of hand.

It was reported sometime back that government was losing more than K2 billion annually in payments issued to ghost workers. Such an amount should in a way have raised some suspicion in the hearts of the authorities long before this year.

The fact that the Ministry of Education tops all ministries when it comes to vacancies clearly tells us that most schools in this country do not have enough teachers. The direct implication is that it shouldn’t have been very difficult for the authorities to discover after many years later that most of the teachers that have been receiving their “salaries” do not in fact exist.

There are inspectors that visit schools on a routine basis and report to the District Education Managers (DEM), and in normal circumstances, these inspectors were supposed to know that the list of serving teachers in their jurisdiction is not proportional to the list of teachers who get their salaries at the end of the month.

Or if this does not concern the inspectors much, the DEM was supposed to know that the amount of money that his office receives as teachers’ salaries is far much more than the ‘legitimate’ one. At least, we cannot expect the DEM not to be aware of how many serving teachers are there in his area of jurisdiction, unless we believe the DEM is a very incurious individual who does not have time to analyse everything taking place in his area of authority.

Now, the top most authorities in the Ministry of Education, and of course, other ministries where ghost workers were prevalent, should be curious enough to finally find the actual culprits in the whole ghost workers scam so that the case does not rest forever like many others involving officials in higher places in government departments.

Many people commit many criminal offenses within government departments, but it appears the problem remains that those who would bring them to book are not very curious individuals such that they either ignore the crimes or just quash them as trivial altogether.

It has been reported before that government has lost thousands of hectors of trees in the famous Chikangawa Forest to bushfires. The loss of the trees means millions of kwacha have been lost to bushfires. Yet, the funniest thing remains that the issue of Chikangawa Forest being destroyed by unscrupulous individuals only got into the public domain then finally rested to its hilt.

It was even alleged that the people who started the bushfires were some disgruntled workers in the same forest. And the question now is: what happened after the allegations? Was anybody arrested and charged with any criminal offense? It appears no one was. Are we such an incurious breed that we fail to find solutions to situations that have been partly revealed already?

Then we have the government forests in the hills of Chikhwawa which are constantly on fire. Are the authorities at the forestry departments so incurious that they do not care who sets these forests on fire? If so, then we should not have trust in these departments.

All in all, the point remains that it seems that many government departments are so incurious about things happening in their areas of authority such that a lot of damage gets made and a lot of money gets lost while the culprits remain scot-free. Such is the price we are paying for being such a very incurious breed.

Are We In An Era of Sexual Immorality?

2011-09-13T17:59:00.001+02:00

In his book titled ‘At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry’, Steve Gallagher writes and I quote: “Unless you are at least 50-years-old you probably do not know what it is to live in a culture that isn’t obsessed with sex. Prior to the late 60’s, illicit sex was only confined to the seedy underworld or simply non-existent.

“It was rare for a man watching TV to come across anything racier than a couple kissing or a vague suggesting comment. Pornography addiction amounted to nothing more than a playboy magazine hidden under the bed.”

Steve wrote this with reference to the American society. However, if we are to apply this in the Malawi setting, we may say “at the beginning the second millennium” instead of “prior to the late 60’s” because issues of sex and pornography rocked Malawian societies first during the period.

Now, it appears we are living in the deep recesses of a dangerously sexualized society; a society that has put sex as the overriding passion of human survival. It is a society that has completely lost its values. Human wisdom has been utterly poisoned and those who advocate for a return to our roots lack all conviction.

You will be shocked to the core should you ‘accidentally’ bump into someone’s office without knocking. You will find them busy minimizing or simply cancelling a number of pornographic sites on their computer.

Instead of workers utilizing the internet to maximize the effectiveness of their respective jobs, most of them hunch over their computers staring at nude pictures of members of the opposite sex. One wonders what sort of citizens they are to be when they leave their workplaces and infiltrate different societies.

In regards to morality, our humble nation, is heading towards a horrible ‘head-on collision’ unless change is effected immediately.

Now there are social cites which connect people from different parts of the world and they have become a place where youths think they can express their sexual desires and meet people whom they can interact with sexually.

Steve Gallagher continues to explain: “For many, the powerful human drive for sex becomes the overriding passion of life. Kept in its proper place, sex is a marvelous means for a married couple to express their love to each other. However, when a person begins to indulge in some form of illicit sex, this passion can quickly get out of control.”

This is vindicated by different pornographic scandals that have taken place right here in Malawi. There are many examples of pornographic scandals that should obviously have caught the eye of stakeholders that advocate for high levels of morality only to be left underlying.

In most cases of pornography, men are the ones who mostly appear to ‘institute’ everything due to the Malawian tradition that a woman can rarely propose to a man. This is argued against the background of the fact that women are mostly the ones who entice and lure men. Coupled with the nude pictures of women which addicted men may view on their ‘screens’ is the skinny dressing of most contemporary women.

While a man will go out during hot weather putting on a short and a vest, a girl will find an opportunity of exposing herself by putting on ‘classy’ clothes like low-cut blouses which, as if the fact that they are low-cut is not enough harm already, do not even cover up the navel. They will also put on skimpy jeans or miniskirts that barely cover their thighs.

Nowadays, most young girls simply understand that if they have to be noticed (by men, of course) they have to be scantily dressed. Now, a man who might have spent a lot of time thinking of how to act out his lust will immediately ‘pounce’ on the scantily dressed girl who will rarely ‘protest’.

To another extent, it appears sexual captivity has undoubtedly affected different socio-economic and ethnic groups in Malawi. The idea of a person engaging in illicit sex being an immoral human being is fast fading into oblivion. In fact, the very same people who are sexualizing our culture are accorded so much respect because they are seen to be ‘men or women enough’.

The duty of laws appears to be non-existent. The fact that there are no direct laws to govern issues of internet pornography also contributes towards the sexualizing of our culture.

The only clear laws that are there govern the distribution of pornographic materials not the ‘shooting’, hence it appears there are no defined punishments to mete on pornographic actors. This is the government’s worst undoing.

The obvious reason for the absence of the laws is that government never thought incidents of pornography would have Malawians themselves directly involved. And they had to wait at least for things to get out of hand, which is indeed happening now.

Lindeni - Short story

2011-09-13T17:56:00.000+02:00

I looked into her brown eyes that betrayed an unknown feeling that was hidden in the deep recesses of her heart. Her lips parted but apparently all what she wanted to utter froze in her mouth. Another look at her sent a chill down my spine. I could instantly feel a strong impulse to talk to her and tell her I was interested in her.

We had passed by each other at this very same place many times but now it appeared it was a different day altogether. I had never greeted her before but this day I did it with the courage of my convictions. I held her palm in mine firmly and inquired her name.

“Lindeni,” she purred. Her voice was like music, yet her name was all she could say when I wanted to hear more from her.

Then she just stared at me blankly afterwards and then I told her I was willing to offer her a lift. She shook her head and then continued with her journey. As she walked I followed her with my eyes. Her musical voice that had mentioned her name kept resounding in my head. It was that kind of voice that almost sent me crazy.

I then veered my Toyota Camry into a nearby lay-by and backed it slowly before taking it into the direction I was coming from – the direction where Lindeni was going. I found her still walking and she had covered a distance of about 200 metres from where we had met.

“Lindeni, let me give you a lift,” I proffered again, sounding as decent as possible. “I am willing to take you to your destination at no cost and with no strings attached.”

She looked at me and smiled. I thought that perhaps now she was going to accept my offer but I was shocked to the bone when she just carried on with her journey. I began to feel that it would be healthier for her to tell me something than not to respond at all.

Her petite face shone in the embers of the setting sun as she turned around slowly and waved at me. I reciprocated the gesture, shook my head and swallowed hard as I looked at her. Then she disappeared into the gathering dusk.

As I sunk into a sun-lounger in the sitting room of my house, I found myself concentrating on nothing else but Lindeni. I pictured in my mind’s eye how she would react once I told her that I had fallen in love with her. Perhaps she could just stare at me blankly and never say a word.

The following day, I saw Lindeni in town. When she saw me, she faced the other direction but I walked briskly to where she was and greeted her. She reciprocated my greeting and told me that she was busy.

“Can I book an appointment then?” I said. She shook her petite head. Then I saw her dip her hand into her handbag from where she fished her business card which had all her details and she gave it to me. She waved at me as she flagged down a winged taxicab.

I learned from her business card that she was a journalist for the People’s Magazine. But contrary to how she behaved, I knew journalists to be very friendly people. I called her that very same night. “It’s me Mike, do you remember me?”

“Yes,” that was all she could say.

“Can I take you for lunch tomorrow?” My lips trembled as I coughed out these words. There was some silence. I became irritated but I could not cut the line. Then finally she said something.

“I will see,” she said.

“Alright, then have a blessed night.”

She did not return the goodwill. I held my phone against my chest and breathed a sigh of relief. At least she hadn’t rejected my offer, even though she hadn’t even accepted it. But I convinced myself that the cards were stacked in my favour.

At exactly 11:30am the following day, I gave Lindeni a tinkle and inquired if she was ready. She appeared to be reluctant in the first place but finally budged. Upon hearing her own voice confirm that she would be willing to have lunch with me, I jumped up and down in my office, combed my hair again and gazed into the mirror, until I was satisfied that I was fit to go out with one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen.

It only took us ten minutes to arrive at my best hotel which was in the outskirts of Kadole City. We ordered the best food in the restaurant but my appetite was hidden in Lindeni. I ate only to make a virtue of necessity. “Lindeni, I love you.” I said stiffly.

She looked at me inquisitively as though not comprehending what I was saying. “Don’t you think it is too soon? I mean we haven’t known each other for a long time.”

“Time matters less in love.”

“It does. You know little about me and I know very little about you. And now you are talking about love. Do you think people love each other just like that?” she said, much to my embarrassment.

“Or do you have a boyfriend already, or you are already married?” I asked with impatience smoldering within my inner self.

“I am single and I am not dating anyone. I just want you to know that true love has to lead to marriage and this is a lifelong commitment which requires not only ultimate preparation but also ultimate consideration. I don’t mean to turn down your proposal, but I just feel we have to discuss this issue more than we are doing now.”

Those words warmed the cockles of my heart. At least I was sure that there was a trace of success. I blamed myself that perhaps indeed I had rushed to extend my love proposal. She looked at me and beamed radiantly exposing her gleaming ivories which were as white as snow.

“Mike, I have known you from a tender age. How you easily forget. Don’t you remember that we were together at Chisansu Primary School, then at Kasaghala Secondary School in Chitipa?” she narrated and I was dumbfounded with shock.

My mouth gaped open. I could hardly believe what Lindeni was telling me. During our secondary school days – if at all she was the Lindeni I had known – we had been very good friends.

“But the Lindeni I know has Mukumbwa as her surname and here you have Peter as your surname. Is it your husband’s name?”

“Yes,” she said amidst open beams which disturbed me somewhat fierce. Why the hell was she teasing me like this? “I am sorry that I have wasted your time. But something significant lies in the background of the wasted time. I told you that I was single because I wanted to know more about your behaviour.”

She paused as I forced myself to listen. “It is very difficult to find a good wife in this town. All that glitters is not gold. Don’t feel I have fooled you,” she said. I had thought there was eloquence in Linden’s silent look but the moment she disclosed that she was married, I developed terrible paroxysm of hatred towards her.

I jumped onto my car and sped away leaving her behind. Through the wing mirror, I saw her standing behind the table and I was seized by a strong pang of conscience. Then I stopped the car and backed it slowly till I reached where Lindeni was standing, bewildered.

“I am sorry,” I said.

“I understand. Don’t worry; it’s all human and typical of men for that matter. Look into my eyes and trace my deep love for you that is hidden in my heart; it is true love,” she said, much to my amazement.

“But you are already married.”

“I was testing your character. Just like fire tests gold and silver so a prospective husband’s reputation also has to be tested.” She walked towards me and spread her arms but I gave her a wide berth.

“Your test is not over, is it?”

“It is Mike, it is. Don’t worry about the name. I usually write political issues and I have to hide behind the pen name for fear of reprisals,” she said and her eyes vindicated the veracity in her sentiments.

I could hardly resist her lips which were like pink rose petals. She moved closer and I did the same until there was no distance between us. She pushed herself into my hold and we embraced like nobody’s business. It was just unstoppable, unbelievable, very electrifying. It was like everything in life had begun there at the hotel.

Sending a Message of Suffering

2011-09-13T17:50:00.000+02:00

Nanzikambe goes socio-political in 'I Will Marry When I Want'

It is on rare occasions that Nanzikambe Theatre Arts Group disappoints when they perform on stage. Their performances are usually perfectly set; deeply thoughtful thematically; and just so touching, to crown it all. They seem to be stubbornly treading in the imaginary cornerstones of rebuking, entertaining and informing.

And last Sunday, August 14, the group lived up to the people’s expectations when they performed a contextualized adaptation of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s I Will Marry When I Want in the Great Hall at Chancellor College. The play was adapted for the Malawian setting by Mphatso Chidothe.

However, the idea of African time being out of touch with reality where it does not follow the rules of the clock was once more vindicated when the play which was slated to start at 7:00 pm only got rolling about 40 minutes later. This seems to have suddenly become an axiom of morality: it is rare for performances – whether music shows or plays – to start on or just in time.

As time approached 7 pm, the stage was still being set; a subtle image of a house, with all necessary props in place. With the adorable lighting, the final stage set was a marvel to behold. And on it, the actors seemed to feel like that was the only place where they would forever belong.

They neglected the feeling that it was just an idealistic depiction; but embraced the notion of celebrated actors – that while on the stage, one must agree that he is the character James, even if he is known as Marko elsewhere.

Those who have read or watched the original play must have initially struggled to come to terms with the fact that the adaptation would make sense in the Malawian context, especially considering the fact that it was written more than thirty years ago. But it was only a few minutes into the play that they, like the rest of the audience, could hardly resist the impulse to applaud the actors – or perhaps, the ‘adaptor’ – for the well-contextualized performance.

The audience which was only around 100 people was unusually quiet and only applauded intermittently, and at the end they seemed to be mutually satisfied that their monies had not been spent in vain. The silence among the audience was not that the play was lackluster, but because it searched earnestly for some food for thought.

Themes exploring modern life – be it social or political – are dominating current Malawian literature. Talk of short stories, poems, essays, analyses – they seldom tackle other thematic expression that are not linked to politics or social lives of modern day man.

And Nanzikambe too has to tackle the same in I Will Marry When I Want. In the play, there is a poor family whose breadwinner, Jonathan Malata, played by Henry Mtalika, works for a rich man Chinakanaka taken onto stage by Jeremiah Mwaungulu.

Just like in the original play, the adapted version doesn’t deviate from the theme of exploitation where the rich exploit the poor where the poor offer the whole production while the rich own the production to such an extent that the poor are treated “like dogs”.

Chinakanaka, who in the play is a symbol of the rich, uses everything to make sure he makes money for himself. He even uses religion where he propagates the popular message that “blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.” He and his rich colleague Dayiton Kamkwamba (played by Noah Bulambo) even reach the point of urging Malata to hold a church wedding so that he should be “accepted in the Kingdom of God”.

The wedding results in Malata losing his piece of land which is confiscated after he fails to repay a bank load. And, ironically, the bank has Chinakanaka himself as the top most boss, which implies he might have shares in it, or might still own the whole of it altogether. Exploitation is further seen where Chinakanaka’s son gets Malata’s daughter Chisomo, acted by Otooli Masanza, pregnant, but he has his father’s backing when he refuses to marry her.

Towards the end, Malata and his fellow labourers come together to “bang heads” so as to come out of the suffering they are rolling in. The Marxist notion of the lower class resorting to violence against the upper class seems to become prevalent as the play approaches the end.

However, the violence seems to be just in the thoughts of the lower class as there is no visible action taken against the ruling class. Perhaps the brainstorming is an important threshold towards the emancipation of the exploited.

The contextualized adaptation of the play comes live again when it tackles modern social-political and economic issues currently rocking Malawi. It makes sense to assume that Chidothe, the man who adapted the play, gave the actors enough leeway to improvise as much as they can.

This was vindicated when in the Great Hall the actors did not fail to tackle issues of increasing cost of living necessitated by exorbitant taxes. Malata complains to his wife, acted by Flora Suya, that in the past K50 would buy a lot of foodstuffs, while now it isn’t even enough for a bottle of cooking oil and some salt.

During the performance, interludes which were generally in forms of songs, also explicitly exposed the exploitation of the poor. However, to enhance the notion of exploitation, there were also religious songs which seemed to woo the poor into religion.

Kambombo Mumba (acted by Misheck Mzumara) also takes a swipe at the inability of legislators to consider the plight of poor Malawians. “Tenancy in Malawi is modern day slavery. Landlords exploit tenants. The tenancy bill hasn’t been tabled for over five years now. Officials don’t care because they are the beneficiaries. They own estates and exploit tenants,” bemoans Mumba in the play.

As though trying to take part in the current struggle Malawians are engulfed in where they are demanding government to address a number of problems they are facing, the play explores the gone days when people were detained, but still fought on till they succeeded.

Apart from the dominant theme of exploitation, the play also tackles emancipation and heroism. Mumba argues that real freedom fighters are not enjoying while those who were not here when the battle for freedom was being fought are the ones who are enjoying.

During the performance, the audience was generally being driven from a thoughtful and pitiful mood to a hilarious one. It was as if the director had deliberately designed the play that way. Take this instance: in a calm voice, an actor bemoans his poverty and says: “These people just use religion to exploit us. How come they say we the poor are blessed, while they themselves are accumulating wealth for themselves?” He goes on to say: “a leader who doesn’t listen is not a leader at all.”

Then afterwards, another actor says teachers are receiving their salaries on the 35th of the month. Well, it is a pathetic situation, but then it provided a moment of laughter for the audience.

After the end of the “multi-thematic” play, the audience seems to be mutually satisfied that their money had not been spent in vain. The students, who had to party ways with K500 praised Nanzikambe for the play.

“As usual, the guys did a very good job. The play lasted more than three hours but we sat glued to the stage to make sure we did not miss anything,” said James Munyapa, a fourth year student at Chanco.

I Will Marry When I Want is on a national tour where the group will perform it in different cities and districts. From Zomba, they are taking it to Mangochi, Balaka, Mchinji, Lilongwe, Salima, Nkhatabay, Mzuzu, Rumphi and Karonga. The people in these places should be prepared to be treated to an adorable feast of art.

No Fooling on Fools' Day

2011-09-12T21:19:00.000+02:00

Author's note: this article was first published in The Sunday Times

April 1, the day that is dedicated to “unreasonable acts, jokes and all foolishness”, has been losing its sensation in recent years. In the past, the day was marked by the commission of funny or humorous jokes of varying complexity. People would fool each other to the point where relationships strained. But that was just for a short time: it was dedicated to “foolish acts” and long at last, people would understand each other.

This year, when information was being spread on social sites, before it reached the mainstream media, that Chancellor College and the Malawi Polytechnic had been closed, people thought it was just one of those Fools’ Day rumblings. But it wasn’t; students were given two hours to vacate the colleges.

But, to Makhumbo Munthali, a fourth year student at Chanco, there was more tragedy attached to April 1 than the closure of his school, as he woke up in a prison cell where he had been dumped the previous day.

“It was really traumatizing. Finding yourself in a police cell during that period was the last thing one could think of,” he recounts.

“It was around 12:30pm [31 March] when I, together with my roommate and others, unexpectedly found ourselves in a Police land cruiser off to Zomba Police Station where we were to spend some considerable number of days according to the authorities,” says Munthali.

He adds that despite being an ardent sympathizer of the academic freedom fight, he never at any point imagined that he would be arrested; and “not just an ordinarily ethically-justified arrest, but one coupled with brutality”.

It is the nature of life that luck sometimes dawns upon those who rarely seek it. During the students’ protests that culminated in the closure of Chanco and Poly, it was usually those who were not involved in the demonstrations who were arrested by the police. And on Fools’ Day eve, the trend was once more vindicated. Munthali and four others were arrested in the comfort of their dormitory rooms where they thought they were safe from the bullets, the teargas and the police cell.

“On that day, I had made a stern deliberate decision to remain in my room so that I could concentrate on my dissertation proposal and assignment,” rekindles Munthali. “I chose to confine myself within the walls of my room where I thought I was safe, bearing in mind that the Police or any military were prohibited from invading the hostels. I was mistaken; a cell at Zomba Police Station was beckoning.”

In retrospect, he shares that at around 11:30am, about six policemen, dressed in their uniforms, invaded his room after breaking the locked door and proceeded to severely beat him, his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend who were arrested together with him.

“I started bleeding on the right side of my eye in the process, and such bleeding persisted even when we arrived in the cell. Thank God a Good Samaritan (one of the Police Officers at the station) noticed my bad condition and arranged for our transport to Zomba Central Hospital where after treatment I was taken back to the cell – to spend the night,” he relates.

Luckily, the arrested students were released the following day on April Fools Day in spite of earlier verbal threats that they would spend some days in the cell. Of course, the threats had not been just one of those Fools’ Day jokes, but well-calculated ones, as the students were to see later.

Munthali further recounts that an earlier communication from one highly-ranked official from the Eastern Region Police Headquarters made available to the arrested students while he was at the hospital, prompted him “to burst into a prayer of declaration”.

“This normally highly esteemed official, who also boasted of having passed through University of Malawi corridors, told us that we were going to spend several days in the cell. In fact, such sentiments were indeed to be proven to be true the following day when the state prosecutor bluntly asked the court not to grant us bail for this would tamper with their investigations. He instead asked the court to order us to be in police custody for the next seven days pending investigations,” says Munthali.

The arrested students, who were 19 altogether, were all charged with conduct likely to cause breach of peace, and unlawful assembly. Whatever these mean, it is hard to assess how a student arrested in his own room would cause breach of peace or be assembling unlawfully, wonders Munthali. Was this just another intent of Fool’s Day?

He adds that despite enduring harsh conditions in the cell, they had some lighter moments of fun because of the creative jokes which the inmates shared.

He sums up by observing that with diversity in terms of districts of origin, experience and fields of study – where the arrested students were well split over all three regions as there were students from Karonga, Mchinji and Thyolo, just to mention a few – “the cell offered the best platform for critical and analytical discourse over some political and socio-economic issues affecting Malawi”.

“Nevertheless, in all these experiences we saw the mighty liberating hand of God. God was indeed omnipresent amongst us, giving us the much-needed hope, strength and comfort,” he says. “The big lesson that I learnt in all this is that one ought to be still and just wait upon the Lord when in the midst of storms.”

Chanco Impasse: A Case of Peculiar Priorities

2011-09-12T20:28:00.003+02:00

Leadership is not a formula or a program; it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others – Lance Secretan

Malawi’s economy is stumbling; this is something the world knows now. Government is relying on its own citizens to bail itself out of this crisis, and untold burdens are pressing down on our lives. Innumerable voices of reason warned president Bingu wa Mutharika that the economic path he had taken wasn’t Malawi’s favourite, but the technocrat – who boasts an honorary professorial title – used all sorts of undiplomatic terms in very infamous counterattacks.

Practicing economists offered detailed options, but Mutharika chose to be the all-knowing man who shouldn’t take suggestions from “lesser humans”. Now, the Reserve Bank devalued our currency by 10 percent, and according to one Pecks Ligoya, this should not cause us to panic. We should rest on our laurels as prices of the most basic commodities are going up, taxes have been hiked and more economic tragedies seem inevitably imminent.

In the midst of Malawi’s economic downturn, it is beyond reasonable doubt that we should expect a government that has a world class economist at the helm, to minimize spending, and practice high-level economic prudence.

But Mutharika continues defying this basic prediction. It is as though he is stubbornly crutching his half-revered principle of not moved by predictability. He is Mr. Unpredictable, and that has been debated times without number.

Take this instance: while the whole country was mourning the death of 19 people killed on July 20 in his country, Mutharika was splashing beer parties to vendors and those who chose to drink. He is also on record to have given the vendors money to aid their businesses, something which was construed to be a way of buying their support so that they should side with him.

And those that lost their lives on July 20 must be restless in their graves in the wake of the president’s lack of a humane heart and a job poorly done in paying respect to the departed. It needs not be stressed that it is only an unfeeling leader who can describe the dead as having died in vain.

Yet, it is not only in the areas of condolence and sympathy lessons where Mutharika seems to be poorly performing; in his own field of expertise, the president has exhibited a real spirit of carelessness. A practical economist is explicitly mean with spending. He cannot allow money to go down the drain where nothing tangible is happening.

Mutharika knows classes have not yet resumed at Chancellor College, University of Malawi’s biggest institution. He also knows that millions of our devalued currency continue being spent in protracted legal battles between Chanco Academic Staff Union (Ccasu) and the University Council, in salaries paid to all Chanco employees, and more principally, to Sunbird Catering who run the college cafeteria.

And what is the president doing? Nothing! Or maybe he is just monitoring the situation with keen interest. That millions of kwacha are being spent on this period of non-productivity perhaps doesn’t ring a bell in the president’s head. And whether seeing more than 2000 university students wandering about in Zomba without looking forward to their graduation day, doesn’t call for a humanitarian action from the president, is the question Malawians have been asking.

It is difficult to understand why Mutharika has chosen to honour very peculiar priorities in the Chanco impasse. At the expense of Malawi, the president is proudly watching Council stick to their guns that Jessie Kabwila-Kapasula, Franz Amin, Garton Kamchedzera and Blessings Chinsinga should remain fired.

At the expense of more than 2000 students – who perfectly engineered and calculated their way into this institution of higher learning – Mutharika is waiting upon the courts’ decision on the ‘fate’ of the four lecturers. Yet, he pretty sure knows that court cases in Malawi have the tendency of taking forever before they are concluded.

At the expense of his own integrity as an academic doctor, the president is silently watching a university college hibernate into a slumber where students’ research projects, which are intended to beef up activities in the corporate world, have stalled for more than half a year now. Whatever, Mutharika’s priorities in this impasse are, they must be very peculiar priorities.

There are many popular paradoxes and ironies that have sprouted in the saga. Council and the president are waiting upon the courts to decide on whether Kapasula and company should indeed be fired or not. This categorically implies that these parties have absolute trust that the courts will make a binding decision which should be honoured. Why then can’t they also respect the injunction which was granted by the same courts that the four remain Unima employees?

Council argues that the four were fired because they were not reporting for work. It appears there can be no more explicit legal interpretation of this apart from the ordinary understanding that it implies it was the four alone who were not reporting for work while the rest were.

Mutharika said in his 5 June speech that there would be no casualties in the whole saga and that all court cases should be withdrawn so that some semblance of normalcy could return at Chanco. In a peculiar twist of events, Council appealed against the injunction which was granted against its decision to fire the four. Was the president simply fooling Malawians when he said all court cases should be dropped? Was he just trying to score political points when he announced that there would be no casualties in the saga?

It is difficult to surmise Mutharika’s priorities in this impasse as much as it is to construe his intentions. It is in moments like this where human wisdom should indeed be analysed. Why is it that president Mutharika wants Kapasula and company fired? Should his desire continue holding the whole horde of Chanco students at ransom?

There are those who wonder why the president should be blamed in the impasse when it is Council that is clinging to its decision that the four remain fired. Matter-of-factly, Council are just pawns who are being used to propagate the high-level presidential agenda. Otherwise, if the president ordered that Chanco and the Malawi Polytechnic should reopen on 4 July, what can stop him from ordering Council to drop all the court cases and let Chanco lecturers return to class?

If the president holds the top most position in the university hierarchy, what can stop him from overseeing decisions made by his subjects and come up with a solution where others have failed?

One may say with the courage of their convictions that the president holds the ultimate key to the resumption of classes at Chanco. There is no dispute that the impasse is a dent in Mutharika’s administration, but the question remains: why has the president chosen to respect very peculiar priorities? What type of leadership and administrative skills is he employing in the saga?

There is a question people have been asking all this while: if Council knew that there were some outstanding issues between themselves and Ccasu, why did they go on to reopen the college? It was speculated that they had initially put Chanco reopening on hold until the president threatened to fire all Council members, hence the abrupt reopening – which was announced the same day the students were told to report back to college.

Perhaps, they should use their own reason more than the president’s directives. It should be clear that these academicians understand the situation at Chanco beyond politics. They are making decisions against their consciences simply to save their purses. They pretty well know that if they were making their decisions independent of any political influence, Chanco wouldn’t even have been closed in the first place. The impasse would have been cleared long ago and the lecturers would have returned to class.

But the danger with politicians running the university is that they employ their stubbornness and pride in matters that would be cleared without much ado simply to show that they have power to do so. They always strive to consolidate their authority even in areas where such acts cannot be adored.

And now politics is being played by Council itself. They are assimilating with the authority higher than them who tells them what to do and they have no courage to ask why they have to do it. It is clear that they thought that after reopening the college irrespective of the fact that there were still some outstanding issues, they would mobilize the students to turn against their lecturers.

Take this instance: a long, winding, redundant Press Release which Council released in the mainstream media was distributed to Chanco students so that they should “scrutinize it”. Realities on the ground had been twisted to such an extent that the students discovered it and chose to reject the content of the Press Release.

And later, the principal of Chanco who also happens to be a member of the University Council by virtue of his position, urged the students to ‘revolt’ against their teachers when he told them that kufa saferana (Everyman for himself and God for us all). The students rightly construed their principal’s intention and snubbed him. They didn’t go against their lecturers; they just didn’t see any reason to.

Council is desperate for ideas. It seems they have exhausted all the options they had to continue towing the presidential line. But, if they are to remain in their positions, they have to continue doing what they hate – towing the presidential line. But Malawians are eagerly hoping for the day these academicians will rise above the occasion and defy the presidential order and tell the Chanco four to go back to class. Yet, such types of people are hard to find in a society that is ruled by people who answer to a politician.

And in another exhibition of desperation, Council asked to meet Chanco students’ representatives so that they should discuss a number of issues, perhaps, even those raised in the petition which the students presented to the University Office last Monday. In the petition, the students who had been holding a vigil at the University Office since last Monday only to be blocked three days later, said they would continue doing so until the day they would fully return to class.

The students snubbed Council on the proposed meeting. Perhaps, they were just very right; why would Council choose to involve the students in the discussion without the lecturers who are the principal parties in the whole impasse? It is obvious that, like they had attempted before, Council wanted to bulldoze the students into turning against their lecturers. Otherwise, it is hard to guess what would come out of Council’s meeting with the students which would lead to the resumption of classes at the college.

Heroism is a notion most politicians seldom want to be accorded to others other than themselves. If truth be told, Mutharika doesn’t want Kapasula and company to remain at Chanco because after everything is said and done, they will be construed as the ultimate heroes. This was evident in his 4 June speech where he used phrases like “false pursuit of heroism”. Yet, while trying to unmake heroes out of the four Chanco lecturers, Mutharika is becoming more infamous. Again, this is where it becomes hard to define his priorities. In any case, they must be very peculiar priorities.

We all know that even if the president is to make a directive that learning should resume at Chanco, he can use the same Council he is using to make sure learning stalls. In this regard, he shouldn’t be afraid of losing morale after having finally “given in”. It will be a bold decision that will finally settle the dust that continues rising at the Zomba-based college.

Otherwise, the kind of political leadership he is employing in the impasse isn’t the best. He can only speak a few words and things will return to normalcy and millions of kwacha will be saved from going down the drain. He must understand that leadership, as Lance Secretan said, is not a formula or a program but rather a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others.

He should consider the plight of the students who are at the receiving end of the impasse; he should prioritise those poor parents in the remote areas who are spending the last penny they had on their sons and daughters who have not been to class fully since February. He should take into account numerous voices of reason that have pleaded with him to normalize things at Chanco.

Mutharika should do some soul searching and understand that the greatest of all leaders is he who is willing to follow his people. He holds the key to the resumption of normal teaching and learning at Chanco, and if he himself doesn’t do anything, all other parties involved might just be struggling in vain.

The Trouble of Righting a President's Wrongs

2011-09-12T20:24:00.000+02:00

Being in a position where you answer directly to a state president isn’t a simple thing. Things should be more delicate if the president is as unpredictable as Bingu wa Mutharika; and almost unimaginable if the president is Mutharika himself.

The real trouble lies in the fact that Mutharika cannot only sack at will; he also has a peculiar choice of words when it comes to counterattacking his critics. He often defies conventional presumptions of how a leader would react in a certain instance.

If you have to survive in presidential spokesperson Hetherwick Ntaba’s position, you probably must study something beyond syntax and literature. Ntaba interprets Mutharika’s statements in very interesting ways.

He is a medical doctor by profession, but he seems to have some expertise when it comes to interpreting straightforward statements where no ambiguity can be traced. He can observe figures of speech in anything the president says, and strives as much as possible to interpret Mutharika’s statements beyond that which is the actual meaning.

The spokesperson always has a hard task on his hands. His job is one which only a few can manage. The man he defends is never short of controversies. That is where the trouble lies. Ntaba has one simple – or difficult – guarantee on his desk: if he has to be assured of getting his cheque at the end of the month, he must always listen to the speeches Mutharika delivers and the following criticisms. Then he has to quickly think of a way to defend the president.

But, sometimes the way Ntaba ‘clarifies’ Mutharika’s speeches leaves a lot to be desired. If he employs poetic or syntactic tenets in interpreting the speeches, then he must be doing himself and the president a great deal of injustice. We all know that Mutharika isn’t such a public orator who can enjoy the use of figures of speech in an emotionally-charged counterattack.

Yet, Ntaba always has a way of observing something different in what the president says. Take the way he defended the president after Mutharika declared that if the Civil Society leaders wanted war with him, they should set a day when the war should begin.

“Now, therefore, if you don’t want dialogue, tell me any day we can go to war, if that’s what you want,” said the president.

As expected, Ntaba had to do his job. According to the spokesperson, the president
did not mean the actual fighting of guns and blades, but the fight against poverty, disease and the like. So, the president was telling the Civil Society to set a day when he and them should fight poverty and disease because he has been “patient for so long”.

One wonders if the president himself smiled upon hearing his spokesperson put words in his mouth and twist the core of his threats. Of course, it is clear that they both understand that the threat was not necessarily going to poverty and disease, but to Civil Society leaders. But, how they reach a mutual understanding on the peculiar interpretation is hard to suspect.

There wasn’t any ambiguity in Mutharika’s war threats and people are wondering why Ntaba believes we can just fold our arms and comfortably take him seriously on his interpretation. Have we suddenly become so daft that we fail to fathom the very basic statements the president makes?

There are better ways of righting the president’s wrongs than Ntaba’s prevalent ‘clarifications’ which lost their salt long ago. Like all of us, Mutharika is human too, and is supposed to err. He is not some god who should be immune to vulnerability. And the best way of righting a wrong that has been made is by acknowledging it and apologise.

But, it appears, just as Mutharika himself doesn’t have the word apology in his vocabulary, Ntaba too doesn’t believe the president can ever be wrong. It might be the president himself who tells his spokesperson not to ‘give in’ but try his utmost to make sure his boss always appears right. That is where the trouble with righting a president’s wrongs comes in, again.

Well, speaking for a president isn’t a simple thing, and it is a job that shouldn’t be poorly done. And, defending a president like Mutharika certainly demands a lot of personal sacrifice where you have to lay aside your own principles and betray your own conscience times without number. This is exactly what Ntaba is doing. He has killed in himself the noble politician he was when he was in the Malawi Congress Party simply to tow the presidential line; to save his purse.

On Intraparty Democracy In Malawi

2011-09-12T20:18:00.000+02:00

Reading into the differences that exist between Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema, you wouldn’t think they belong to the same political party – a ruling party, for that matter. Zuma is president of African National Congress (ANC) while Malema is the party’s Youth League leader. The two seldom go together because Malema doesn’t tow the presidential and party line.

He is often described by his admirers as a young man who at the age of 30 is perfectly set to change the course of South African politics. He has also made some ‘scathing’ remarks about many African states’ politics. And, he, together with five other league executive members, was recently accused of having drawn the party into disrepute and sowing divisions among the party’s ranks.

When he was attending the disciplinary hearing, hundreds of his supporters burnt placards and t-shirts bearing president Zuma’s face. They were not arrested or charged with sedition.

The disciplinary hearing also followed Malema’s remarks that the ANC Youth League would send a team to Botswana to consolidate local opposition parties and help bring about regime change, as it believed the government there was “in full cooperation with imperialists” and was undermining the “African agenda”.

Malema’s supporters chanted his name while castigating Zuma and went on to say that the young politician would be South Africa’s next president. According to BBC reports, some of the youths even reached the point of saying that they would deal with Zuma the very same way they dealt with former South African president Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki didn’t lose a presidential election; he lost the ANC’s top position to Zuma and later resigned from the country’s top most job after the majority of South Africans lost confidence in him.

Well, Malema might be right or wrong, but it is the democracy that exists in the ANC that might amaze Malawians.

He has been in the news many times because of differing with some of his party’s ideologies. But the ANC has not just gone on to fire him. They accommodate others with dissenting views, and that is intraparty democracy at its best.

Democracy can only manifest itself in the main political realm if it is there in individual political parties. Political parties need to embrace those with dissenting views with the aim of reaching one common ground which can strengthen the party.

But, events that have been taking place in the main political parties in Malawi clearly show that intraparty democracy is a far cry as far as Malawi politics is concerned. The Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) appear to be the two main political parties in Malawi where every party member who doesn’t agree with the rest in the party is construed as a pariah who should be cast out.

In a very short period of time, DPP has fired a number of its top officials simply because they didn’t agree with the rest in the party. In this case, it is hard to accept that the party is as democratic and progressive as it claims.

Then, again, in MCP, everyone who disagrees with John Tembo isn’t given a chance to remain in the party with their dissenting views. Instead of utilizing the views expressed by those who disagree with them, Tembo and his other MCP admirers have resorted to firing the ‘stray’ members, thereby weakening the party further.

There are other parties as well that believe that everyone in the party has to hold the common views that are held by everyone else. This is sharply against the fact that in a group of many, it is difficult to stand on a common ground instantly.

Differing views are not always meant to break, but sometimes to build. And those who hold dissenting views shouldn’t always be taken as traitors, for they might just be patriots who simply want to bring something innovative.

Judiciary: Our Last Remedy

2011-09-12T20:13:00.001+02:00

Author's note: This article was initially published in the Daily Times of 5 September 2011...

In a society where people increasingly seek redress from the courts of law, wielding the blade of justice is a responsibility not to be undermined by anyone. It takes a great deal of soberness and concentration for a judge to reach the conclusion of a case. That is why these men of the bar are always urged to avoid answering to any personality in the course of their duties; but to tread carefully in matters of justice.

Of late, courts in Malawi appear to have become very hectic units where cases continue flooding them like nobody’s business. Of particular interest are the injunctions which courts continue granting to different parties to maintain the status quo, or to provide interim relief in different scenarios.

You surely have to be less concerned about events taking place on the political and social arena in Malawi to be unaware of numerous injunctions that different people have obtained from the courts.

Take these instances: when government withdrew part of vice president Joyce Banda’s convoy, she obtained an injunction against the development and she was successful. Additionally, on the eve of the 20 July demonstrations, one concerned citizen Chiza Mbekeani was granted an injunction that stopped the Civil Society Organisations from going ahead with the protests.

There have been so many injunctions, again, in the University of Malawi (Unima) where lecturers and students at Chancellor College (Chanco) have sought interim relief from the courts of law in different cases. There are also ‘actual’ court cases involving different parties in Unima.

President Bingu wa Mutharika reached the point of urging everybody within Unima not to allow the university to be run by the judiciary. That was on 5 June when he delivered his speech which we ‘misconstrued’ was supposed to lead to normalcy in the university.

A quick paradox was to manifest itself soon after the president’s plea that the judiciary should not be allowed to run the university. In a peculiar twist of events, the very University of Malawi Council appealed against the High Court decision to grant interim relief to the four Chanco lecturers that the Unima governing body had earlier fired. Who was fooling who?

Another irony was observed in Mutharika’s recent attack of the judiciary where he ‘doubted’ their nationality. He, having not even a diploma in law, believes the judiciary makes dubious decisions simply because government seldom wins in court cases. Yet, the core of justice isn’t necessarily to favour government or any other party, but to bend towards the convincing argument.

How the president easily forgets. It was the same injunction that saved him from a probable impeachment when he was faced with stiff opposition in Parliament during his first term in office. But, it appears to be the nature of politicians to have selective memories.

It also seems to be the nature of politicians to be indefinably myopic when it comes to decision making. Mutharika assented to a passed bill which bars anyone from obtaining an injunction against government before an inter-parte hearing is made. Of course, this is solely aimed at serving the current administration, since the president himself has clearly shown that he is not comfortable with the numerous injunctions which are obtained against government.

But, in a fragile democracy as ours where you are not guaranteed of thriving in your position if you hold dissenting views, it is only a completely independent judiciary which can provide the last remedy. Yet, the president is on its neck, trying to sway it into government’s loins. But, thinking that these learned men of the bar can be easily moved by circumstances, would be insulting their prudence. They have always been known to operate in the realm of impartiality. That is where our last remedy lies.

In fact, before the president even thinks of attacking the judiciary, he should do some soul searching and first ask why Malawians are seeking recourse from the courts more now than ever before. It should inform him that somewhere somehow, things are not gliding in the right track. The solution is to realign those things that have missed the right track.

Take the instance of the impasse at Chanco. The judiciary would not continue running the university if the president meant it when he said on 5 June that there would be no casualties in the saga. But, because there is so much politics involved in the impasse, the courts will always come in to provide the last remedy if need be.

Our society has slowly evolved into one where the judiciary seems to have become the dominant entity when it comes to order. Our democracy is being sustained by courts of law. Thus, this arm of government should be allowed to be as independent as possible because that is where people now seek the last remedy.

A Dangerous Song

2011-08-16T15:12:00.002+01:00

I cannot write, write to praise the mantle holder
I cannot write, write to create false hopes
I will not create a poem to raise a sad song
A song that was not sung by any poet
A sad song that could only be read in secret
A song that was censored in grubby dungeons
A song whose lyrics were never known
A song that was not published or condemned
It was only built in rumbling dark prison walls
Such a song I will resurrect towards the end
I will place its disturbing images on his face
Such a song needs the support of everyone
Everyone including those that have no voice
It is a song that can be sung in murmurs
It can even be recited in signs, in silent cries
Just this wacky song alone, this wicked poem
No one will be able to use it to praise the tyrant
It will be sung to rebuke him, to chastise him
This song is dating to the beginning of freedom
It was barred by your enemy, your worst enemy
It was loved by a few, a few who shed their blood
It carries their blood, that crimson blood
To your age so you can smell the flesh blood
It has carried the message to this generation
But you hate its content, its disturbing words
It’s not a song to be sung in this peaceful age
This age of hope, this age that desires its enemy
I cannot sing any other song, only this rude one
This snag must be ruined by an observant listener
I will sing only one trustworthy song
One song bearing only the truth even if painful
I will not sing that song that they all sing
I will not be their cheerleader, their leading vocalist
I will reject their changed freedom song
An innocent song whose lyrics have been changed
That song alone I will not be bribed to sing

Desires

2011-08-16T15:11:00.003+01:00

Desires abound in all humanity
Desires to strangle our integrity
Desires to kill every upcoming celebrity
Dangerous desires of his majesty
Peaceful desires that create curiosity
Desires trailing weaklings’ thoughts
Odd, strayed desires for a failed dynasty
Just desires placed forward with serenity
Desires of a wise African necessity
Failed desires, mauled desires, extremity
Tension abounds in wicked desires
As yet for life that so soon retires
Power everywhere like roaming fires
Justice nowhere, no subject acquires
Aides so noisy, protecting wicked desires
Convincing the caster with fake fliers
Convicting just, dissenting criers
Pinching them with piercing pliers
A carelessly chosen statement fear stirs
Judgments fail, first wisdom tires

Whispers Across Africa

2011-08-16T15:10:00.002+01:00

Terror and war rumble across Africa
Carrying with them whispers of death
Whispers that cook fear and loss
Whispers across Africa
Whispers warning the last child
To spare the life that brought it fourth
To bring down the weighing weapon
That is carried with agony
Whispers from mothers
Whispers from fathers
Whispers from the stranger
Whispers that Africa be calm
Loud whispers are everywhere
Pleading with the cruel hands
That authorize that we be killed
Dark faces that siphon our blood
Masters who adore themselves
They receive dangerous whispers
Send forth from dying Africans
Whispers that are carrying olive oil
Fearful whispers that speak not
Tearful whispers that cry not
Whispers across Africa
Whispers across the continent

Our Words

2011-08-16T15:09:00.002+01:00

As we write, we shall write again
With cruel pains and on dark papers
We shall portray again and again
The statue of this once glorious vulture
This rough bird whose rumpled feathers
We are sure will have settled
And with pride we will write again

As we sing today, we will sing again
Songs of joy, comfort and aggression
We shall sing songs of the vulture
That soars into the outer space
And sends his sharp, red eyes
Filled with cruelty, pride, oppression
This perilous prey whose beaks gape
To threaten gentle parrots, swallows
lapwings and even eagles
But we are mindful of one thing
With mockery we will sing again

Yet we won’t praise him again
As his might will finally disappear
But we will write and write and write
To portray the statue of the fallen vulture
And we will sing again and again
Songs of peace, harmony, not compassion
We shall sing about the rising vulture
As he will rise to the sinking bottom
With his dull eyes, closed beaks
To be dethroned by the eagle
Or even by the parrots, swallows, lapwings
So as we praise him today
We won’t praise him again
If we do, then with mockery and ridicule

A Legacy In Tatters

2011-08-11T17:51:00.000+01:00

If there is a day president Bingu wa Mutharika rues most in his political career, it surely should be July 20. This is the day that shook the foundations of the State House with emotions, tears, anger, frustrations and death from Malawians. It must have sent a peculiar sting down his spine, forcing him perhaps to lose touch with reality.

How he understood it seems to go beyond what we think: his 21 July national address spoke volumes of a frustrated president who in attempting to consolidate his firm hold of power only incurred the anger of Malawians more. His insight was instantly put to a ridiculous test when instead of finding ways of rebuilding the falling image of his empire, he invited more barrages of criticism from the Civil Society and others.

Mutharika isn’t God; that much the world knows, and that means he cannot manipulate minds of Malawians in any way so that they should instantly side with him irrespective of all the burdens his administration is pinning down on them. In essence, he must now know that his legacy now is no entity man can desire. If he does not deprive himself of truth and honesty, he must pretty well know that his reputation as a human being is at stake; his legacy as a president is in tatters; and his Democratic Progressive Party’s image has been terribly tainted.

In old age, man must strive to be happy, for these are moments of reflection where one needs to take stock of his life. As old age catches up with us, we are supposed to change for the better, not for the worse; we must pull people’s admiration towards us, not rebuke. Yet, these tenets are not automatic. Some men must contradict the conventional principles of life in old age, perhaps to draw our attention from the ordinary. But, it does not provide pleasure for us when the deviants of old age ideological predictions are public figures whom we tended to adore.

Mutharika played a good political game in his first term of office where when he was confronted with untold opposition from the beleaguered opposition in Parliament, he pretended to be the slaughter lamb that must be carefully handled. The Civil Society gave him all the support, university students sided with him, and numerous stakeholders sympathized with him.

Now, these quarters are on his neck because of political and socio-economic tragedies Malawi is rolling in. He achieved a lot in his first term, and he was adored; now he is on a mission of errors and he is being rebuked. The unfairness in this may only be spotted by they that despise honesty. He has been asking why all of a sudden the same quarters that supported him in his terrific first term have turned against him. Whether it is a rhetoric question or not, the point is that he knows the answer: it is simply because his current style of leadership keenly opposes that which he started with.

This administration has passed many unpopular bills. Bingu has engineered the endorsement of his brother Peter for the DPP candidacy – even though he and his admirers will claim he will not force anyone to vote for Peter at the convention. Many other ‘atrocities’ have been committed by his administration, and these are the things the Civil Society is interested to realign.

Closing a university college over academic freedom would always seem something out of the question. But, in this administration, it has been proved that such an act is practical. Well, after Chancellor College and The Malawi Polytechnic got reopened on 4 July, people, especially students, heaved sighs of relief as they thought they were back to make progress. But, as things stand today, normal teaching and learning has not yet resumed at Chanco. Whether this paints a good picture of the Mutharika legacy is perhaps something anyone may tell with the courage of their convictions.

In essence, if truth be told, Mutharika showed that he was not utterly convinced that the lecturers were fighting for a legitimate cause. His use of phrases like “false pursuit for heroism” in the 5 June speech clearly showed that the president was not satisfied that the lecturers were right in their pursuit.

And, it is clear that since Mutharika is Unima Chancellor and therefore formally holds the top most position in the university hierarchy, the University Council can in no way do anything contrary to what the president has said. And the only logical conclusion drawn from these premises is that it is Mutharika who wants to make sure Kapasula and company are fired, and therefore one may say without fear or favour that the president is the one who instructed Council that whatever the case, the four lecturers should not return to Chanco. This definitely puts this administration’s legacy in very bad shape.

The commonplace sayings regarding the passing of character traits among relations are “Like father like son” and “Like mother like daughter”, but of late, Malawians have been forced to coin another one which draws the similarities between a husband and a wife: Like husband like wife. Callista Mutharika has been the centre of public attention because of very infamous remarks.

This lady politician who chanced upon finding herself in the presidential palace by matrimonial virtues seems perfectly set to consolidate the palatial stubbornness and conceit. She was recently quoted in the media as having told Civil Society leaders who are championing for a better Malawi to go to hell. Such undiplomatic language from the first lady begs the question of what sort of advice she offers to the president.

Normally, first ladies are supposed to be apolitical women who must take the leading role of advising the president. There is a certain kind of softness that crowns men’s hearts when they are being talked to by their wives; and if Bingu remains obstinate, then we conclude the first lady is helping him to retain that status.

First ladies are not supposed to be compared, but it is hard to fight the impulse to compare Callista and Ethel (May her soul rest in peace). They are, of course, two different beings, but the dictates of their position demand that they be exemplary women who should refrain from petty politicking and mudslinging. We don’t expect them to be utterly infallible – for they too are human beings and are not immune to vulnerability – but we expect that in their fallibility, it must be understood that their intention was never to attack or offend someone.

But the first lady had calculated her speech in Mzimba perfectly. Whether written or imaginary, there might have been subheadings of aforethought insensitivity in the speech. She must not take the ululation from women as a sign of approval of what she said; it was simply the predictable response that people are always eager to offer to their leaders with words, but never with their hearts.

The same people who were applauding Callista when she recklessly attacked the Civil Society leaders must have been mocking her on their way back home. Amongst them, there obviously were women who understand the tenets of motherhood beyond or behind politics. It might not matter to them whether the first lady is a politician or not; that she is a careless mother might be the remnants of the whole speech. And this must be a strong move in the mission to maul her husband’s legacy.

After the expiry of his term in 2014, we would celebrate Bingu’s remarkable political career, but unfortunately things will go to the contrary. We will rebuke him, chastise him and perhaps even imprison him for a number of atrocities we have encountered. The goodies of his first term will not be remembered any more and we will wish we never saw him in Malawi.

Of course, those who are employed to right his wrongs will always tell us that between now and 2014, people’s anger will subside and the Mutharika brand will be the favourite. They still believe Malawians are still slumbering sheep that will wake up tomorrow and forget whatever happens today. But while it is hard to predict the course of politics, Mutharika’s future seems clearly dim.

Such an economic engineer who couldn’t see that changing the national flag, buying the posh jet for himself and donating maize and lending money to Zimbabwe would culminate in the current economic crisis, may only wish his brother should take over the high office. Such an economist who couldn’t project his strategies a little further – beyond the theoretical economic drawings – must rue his near past, the time when he rested on his laurels and sent packing Fergus Cocrane-Dyet.

No one can say with confident conclusiveness that there is nothing Bingu can do to “reorganize” Malawi’s economy. He just has to sink a little lower and apologise to the donor community for his egotism. After all, he himself initially understood that the budget would need donors to be fully implemented.

He should not waste time, for the greatest waste in this world that man can ever make which cannot be recycled or reclaimed is the waste of time. In fact, all wastes are done in the realm of time and we need to be careful not to waste time. Money and honour might be there in abundance, but a legacy in tatters destroys a man’s reputation. And this is what Bingu is doing – wasting the last part of his presidential term; battering his own legacy; missing the glory that is supposed be brought by old age.

There is no doubt that somewhere somehow Bingu is having or will have regrets. Regrets are pains of the memory that all mankind have. But the most painful regret is that which keeps you company when there was all hope and advice to avoid it. Mutharika could have avoided the current political and social-economic tragedies rocking Malawi if only he listened to voices of reason.

And still, he can retrieve a little bit of some confidence from Malawians if at all he is ready to embrace a kind of leadership style that should emanate from the heart and should consider the hearts of others; a kind of leadership that embraces the harness of compromise. That seems to be the last hope to recoup a staggering reputation; a legacy in tatters.

Divide Us Not

2011-07-25T15:49:00.001+01:00

Divide us not vulture
Though we are parrots, swallows, and crows
We are known to be one
Though our nests are attached to waterside reeds,
In mango tree foliage and meadows
We are all birds.
Though we don’t have the same fluff
We have more things that unite us as birds.
After all we belong to the same forest,
Then why should you be so bent at dividing us, vulture?

As you extol the virtues of unanimity
We would meekly ask of you
To partition us not your lordship vulture.
Though we are eagles, lapwings, and hawks
We are all identified by one universal name
That unites us each instance.
Stare not at the trees where our nests lay
For we can’t all have our nests in the same tree.
Though we don’t flock together,
We are united because we are all birds.
After all, we are all under your auspices, great vulture
Therefore leave us the way we were.

Don’t wreck us royal vulture
Don’t let the floor beneath our feet disintegrate
So that we get lost to the four winds
Where we will be intolerably crushed
But build us sovereign vulture
The great ruler of the bird realm.
Divide us not; unite us; love us and lead us
That perpetually we may stand unified.

Rule this great kingdom, king vulture
With wisdom, sober-mindedness and insight.
Though we are magpies, kites and ducks
We are all one under your rule.
Deem not the tone of our warbling voices
For we are sure this is one factor that makes you want to segregate us
But take pride, n-everlasting vulture
In this variety that prances in your kingdom.
As you rule, venerated vulture,
Take to heart one thing
Your splendor is just an ephemeral glance.
Therefore divide us not.

Payback Time

2011-07-25T15:46:00.001+01:00

Snuff out the guttering candles
Extinguish the brilliant illumination
You can even curse the lamp
If you want him to experience total distress
For hi is out of the fortress now
And all his immunity has vanished afar
He is now into the dark land proscribed by candles
Snuff out those guttering candles
And for his accolade make hell

Don’t strangulate his delicate body
And get rid of his soul too soon
Just smother the lights
To make him pick up from his illusion
In his wrinkled face
Curse the light for darkness to survive
Compel him to retain information
Of the modest souls he nipped out

Anyway, you may repress him
Agonize him like a viper
Wasn’t he one in the near past?
Slay him like a lion
Without clemency or concern
For he mutely preyed on you
And made you calm lives hell
Therefore, snuff the guttering candles
Dowse the lights
Or still more, curse the lamp
For his full reminiscence of the past
That is wholly back to haunt him

My Pen

2011-07-25T15:45:00.004+01:00

My pen has dug in deep and it refuses to die.
Its crimson ink desires to portray concealed dark images
Of the outlying past that were once trampled beneath embryonic
Loads of word stipulating the organic rules.
My pen keeps on marking down
Dark patches of his magnificence.
As it ignores the white ones good for the other side of olden times
But I can’t oblige it to put down what it does not crave to.

The hand fails to control the progress of my pen.
It takes its course without heeding suggestion
That would secrete the sticky patches of his lordship
That taint his glorious throne crammed with splendour.
It keeps on writing down
About days gone, money squandered, economic management.
It ignores the development that is seen through a microscope
Which is still part of the history made.
Yet I reserve no right to halt it
Let it write what, when and where its heart desires
For it is a stubborn pen in gentle hands.

My paper crunches itself up and moves into a dancing hearth
When my hand forces my pen to take opposite directions.
History can’t be twisted
To save a few avaricious faces
No! It can’t be suppressed
For every book holds the past.
That is why my paper cries for the truth
And only the truth to be put on it.
Then it will dance and fly across the earth
Informing all and sundry
That whatever it is, his kingship has made history.

As my pen refuses to die,
I picture the truth within the borders of my congested mind
That my grey matter forces it to refuse to dry
So that more people will drink from its ink of truth
As it makes another version of history without dying.
Let the paper fly to America, Europe and back to Africa
Then my pen will never ever refuse to die.
I will crush it in the dark corner so that it may finally sleep
And save the image of the king
After a few slaps of word.
Then my pen will die

I Will Not Wait

2011-07-25T15:45:00.002+01:00

I will not wait for his breath to resign
So that I can curse the activities of his office
He has to discern the lot before he goes to sleep
He has to be told everything while his eyes are wide open
And his expansive ears are perfectly pricked.
I will divulge the precision in written terms, songs and chants.
So my voice will live on
Even after his breath has resigned
I can’t wait for him to begin to breathe haltingly
I am safe and sound because I tell the truth
Before his breath has resigned

I will not look at the setting sun
And wait for darkness to completely shroud the universe
So that I can enlighten everyone about his hostile management
No! I will not do that
I will depict his inequities in hours of daylight
Exclusive of fear of reprisal
Because word dies not in any creation
That is why I will expose his shortfalls
So that he may be an education to others
Who will vie for the position after his breath has resigned

I will leave no stone unturned
When undressing his veiled activities
I will amass all the literature and put it on paper
And I will not ask for his observation or estimation
I will not look at his shriveled face
So that I may be filled with empathy
I will revolve my eyes away
As my pencil will be exploring the departed days
When he subjugated me and others
Then I will have no time to stare at his goodies
I will only publish his vices
When his breath is still entire
And I will not wait for his breath to resign.

The Vulture

2011-07-25T15:42:00.003+01:00

As we write, we shall write again
With cruel pains and on dark papers
We shall portray again and again
The statue of this once glorious vulture
This rough bird whose rumpled feathers
We are sure will have settled
And with pride we will write again.

As we sing today, we will sing again
Songs of joy, comfort, pain and aggression
We shall sing songs about the soaring vulture
That soars into the outer space
And sends its sharp, red eyes
Filled with cruelty, pride, and oppression
This perilous prey whose beaks gape
To threaten the gentle souls of parrots swallows, lapwings,
And even Eagles
But we are mindful of one thing
With mockery we will sing again.

Yet as we praise him, we won’t praise him again
As his might will finally disappear into oblivion
But we will write and write and write
To portray the statue of the fallen vulture
Where there shall be ridicule, retaliation, o-p-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n
And we will sing again and again
Songs of peace, harmony, but perhaps not compassion
We shall sing about the rising vulture
As he will rise to the sinking bottom
With its dull eyes, closed beaks
To be dethroned by the eagle
Or even by the parrots, swallows, or the lapwings
So as we praise him today
We won’t praise him again
If we do, then it will be with mockery, ridicule, oppression.

Grudges and More Grudges

2011-07-25T15:41:00.002+01:00

With grudges, grudges and more grudges
You shoot aiming at all your opponents
Brandishing your sparkling rapier and double-edged sword
And at the same instance
You extol the virtues of concord
In the limelight where your authoritative tone
Wafts into the ears of your foes
For whom we know that you clasp
Grudges, grudges and more grudges

For the snout sniffed not
That air filled with hesitancy
And you drilled him, uplifted him, plunged him
But with an aim in your addled mind
To tramp over him
Yet now he is tramping you and holds for you
Grudges, grudges and more grudges

We Should Draw His Face

2011-07-25T15:40:00.002+01:00

We should sketch his face in trees and let it be there
So that one and all can evidently see it and append some commentary
We must even illustrate it down roads far and wide
We should accompany it with captions packed with truth
Eye-catching banners should encase the face
We should not mask anything
Because our depiction will expose every pimple on the face
We should not be terrified
If his army oppresses us because of the portrayal
We will then even describe more
And add very absurd footnotes

We should even draw all the titles he has
For which dread is ignited in the recesses of our hearts
As we are reminded of the throbbing past
When our voices were censored in grubby dungeons
We should draw the face without conjuring up any images
All their connotations will be laid astride them
To exploit the meanings of the tyrannical titles
We should exhaust all his faces by drawing them
Even in rushing waters that will carry them to distant lands
The certainty should not be constrained here
Let it fly transversely across the earth
For it is offered in drawings of his face
We should not be in awe of him anymore
We should just draw his face ubiquitously

Life

2011-07-25T15:22:00.002+01:00

Warning: this verse is not to be believed or trusted or praised or romanticized. It is merely a product of a frustrated hand struggling to have its void voice heard. It contains nothing to think about; it is here to represent thoughts of disillusioned citizens of this world. It should be read at owner’s risk; it should not give you a splitting headache. It must be reviled and blamed; crashed and destroyed. It is a wicked portrayal of anything; it could even be arrested for its seditious remarks. It is a verse borne out of evil thoughts – the desire to pull down a well-built palace. That is why it must be read so that it must be carefully accused.

If life were the direct opposite of death; death’s own adversary
If it were a matter of freedom and bondage opposing each other
If it were an entity filled with war, hatred, confusion and love
If it were a tall mountain desiring to have its peak cut off
If it were a deep valley keeping nothing but death and all its aides
We would no longer care for our subsistence in this world
We would only let it be the controller of all our progress
We would not worry about agony and misery; joy and peace
Because if we did, we would go against the principles of life
We would be desiring to take control over things that we know not
For life is a long voyage on a stormy sea; a dangerous adventure
Life is a frightful advancement towards inevitable destruction
Life is just a fragile link between the body and the soul
A bewildered game played by prisoners against their guards
A bored horse no longer willing to take its master forward
Life is a slovenly nanny nursing a celebrity’s sick baby
Life does not tell anything about the future of mankind
Life does not calm a turbulent sea with raging fluffy tides
Life is not interested in giving peace and comfort to world citizens
It is not a Good Samaritan waiting to save a distressed soul
Life is no man’s ever-present companion; no driver’s flexible wheel
Life is just some emptiness filled with cold water and black smoke
A blooming flower that has not yet been discovered in the forest
A fruitless fig tree that is waiting for the painful moment of death
A purposeless exploration where kings have to care for themselves

If life were a football pitch with twenty-two players chasing a tiny object
We would conclude that human wisdom hasn’t yet been discovered
Even if life were a silent song resounding ignorantly in our minds
Breaking strings of mirrored images of our near and distant future
Covering our pain in greatest moments of our undeserved sorrow
Chasing children of our fathers to their weakest points of survival
Until they are defeated in their own shells where life is finally nipped
I would no longer want to be associated with life; with its definitions
I would sing songs that have no lyrics to praise life and paint its images
That are only there to give swords to leaders who are hungry for blood
If life were a fig tree growing on fertile soil and in perfect water supply
If life were a blunt knife used to make holes in our gentle bodies
If life were a mixture of sand and milk and water and romance
If life were not what most of us think it is while in real sense it is not
If life were a jugged log where foes are thrown to tear their buttocks
Then maybe we would no longer be interested in its progresses
Perhaps we would all want to make life something more different
Something that appeals to our wishes and needs even if futile
But life is not it; not its nearest colleague because it has none
Life is not living; life is not survival; it is not even death; not any
Life is a flower whose owner tends it vigilantly until it develops thorns
To keep away preys that have sharp teeth to munch it sketchily

If life were a corridor where many people are passing by each other
If life were a dark room where beauty and war are bartered
If life were a noisy bird singing in tall trees that surround us
Most of us would have shed innocent blood, putting life to an end
Leaders would be able to give us life and life would belong to them
Kings would be able to take lives at their own will without remorse
Mothers would be able to kill the unborn babies without care
Fathers would no longer care for their children who are suffering
Because life would control everything that takes place in our affairs
If life were a representation of a slave and his master and rebellion
If life were a secret search for truth and justice in this rotten world
If life were a raging storm in winter or a drying flower in spring
If life were a bed for enemies to lie together and feel good
If life were a collection of bones and leaves and stones and hatred
Then we would be able to find in it everything we may need now
But life is nothing at all; it is a pitiable participant; a deserted stage
A distant image of pain and suffering; an unjust connection
A delicate bridge that is waiting for a heavy truck to rupture it
A crooked progress that is celebrated by criminals and haters
A slippery playfield that portends failure, success, joking, swimming
A poorly written phrase on a birthday cake with guttering candles
Life is a disintegrated car engine failing to push forward its hood
Life is found in gentle children who do not know that they exist
Thus life is just a passing image; a shifting cloud; a roaring river

If life were a forsaken village track that no longer groans
After numerous footfalls are tramping on its bumpy face
Then after some time, life would defeat human intelligence
It would force everything else to be made in honour of life
It would rumble around and inscribe on our hearts extreme fear
It would be our guiding principle; our point of future transitions
But life is none of these; it is an abstract object that speaks not
It is a deaf master; a blind king; a crippled judge; a dumb plaintiff
Life is a burnt banknote; a careless striker; an unskilled goalkeeper
It is a selfish anecdote; a hungry giant; life is a rueful offender
Life is a messy child who desires nothing but his dangerous knife
Life is a complicated phenomenon; a deceiver of kings and masters
It is filled with cheerful illusions of unalloyed hope for the future
It is never contained in hills or rivers of forests or valleys or shadows
Life is a porous bucket that is struggling to hold steaming water
A brilliant flame shining relentlessly in the amber of the setting sun
A burning red rose in a garden crammed with magpies and bees
A peaceful snake whose hiss is like a mild flow of a calm river
Life is not a pot of hot water waiting to be cooled down
It is not a plucked fresh twig that was ready to bear the fruit
It is not a remorseful hippo that has destroyed a rice paddy
Life is not any of these; it is neither any of anything in the world
It is a red mark on the king’s face; a happy sword brandishing within
An angry wasp zipping irritatingly around a leader’s seat
Life is a disk jockey playing very crude music for a single listener
A thoughtless farmer who has planted nothing yet wants to harvest
Life could be any of these – or nothing of them, if it were us

If life were a darkened platform where poetry is recited by poets
An illumined dais where leaders reveal their treacherous manifestos
A holy pulpit where wicked clerics extol nothing but deception
A lofty tower from where the king watches his willing puppets evilly
If life were a multi-paged book with nothing written on its pages
If life were a poem written with all carelessness and vulgarity
If life were a swift rivulet flowing stubbornly in the blazing sun
If only it were a collection of poorly written verse and prose
An album of unsung songs with strong and disturbing lyrics
A compilation of censored and banned letters to the beloved king
No one would be struggling trying to describe and define life
We would all be having peaceful nights in our peaceful beds
We would no longer be writing to describe or define life
We would concentrate on something else and not life
Kings would no longer be blamed for shedding innocent blood
They would just be doing what appropriately describes life
They would live in their palaces without guilty consciences
They would rule ruthlessly if it means pleasing their wives
But we would still be in bondage, if life were a fool’s companion
We would not freely write accusing verses if life favoured kings
We would live in fear of them; contemplate suicide every minute
We would strive to please the king even against our conscience
But life is no respecter of imprudent kings or willing subjects
Life is not in awe of gilded palaces with deranged kings and princes
Life favours the humble, the brave, the generous, and the truth
Life cannot be predicted using a crystal ball or a glittering mirror
It cannot fall for human wisdom and let it freely offer a direction
Life is a willful collection of rudimentary paradoxes and contradictions

If life were a gentle breeze blowing in the midnight moonlight
With evil birds sounding their warning alarms to their prey
If it were a moving ship carrying coal mixed with diamond
If it were a story told by imbeciles and unconscious boxers
If it were a clever verse hiding behind horrific qualifiers
If life were a defectively managed stage for talented actors
A justified mistake by an untrained and willful play director
An overt contradiction of justice, peace, love and harmony
If life were any of these; or any of their connotations
Babies would no longer grow and become the next generation
Our population would be diminishing every second, every minute
But life is a cheerful giver to they that ask of it earnestly
Life is a fair object; a calm entity; an unsafe master; a singer
If life were a black pen comfortably releasing crimson ink
If it were a white paper with fine hazardous black lettering
If life were a small mouth eager to release chunks of rebuke
If it were a dead army commander or a dethroned king
If it were a hungry prince living in a palace of plenty
If it were a miserable queen who has deserted the palace
If life were what most of us would want it to become
If it were built out of our wishful thinking; our illusions
If life were as complicated as this description tries to make it
If it were not as easy as this verse wants us to believe
If it were never as difficult as these lines here assume
If life were any of what this dangerous piece propagates
If only it were this piece; this stubborn and uneducated verse
This complicated description that holds nothing in it
This cheerful container that is holding nothing but nothing
If life were this shameful verse; this carefree channel
If life were anything near this confused piece; this snag
If life were not even what this dazed piece says it is not
It would still be nothing; not even what is not said to be
Not even what it is claimed to be; to fight for a definition
It would only be life the way it is, not the way it is not
It would be filled with everything; anything; with nothing

Life is an expedition in winter; a lonely encounter with foes
Life is a tempting impulse to own everything; to be the leader
Life is a king’s oppressor; a conqueror of proud princes
Life is a sharp knife that no hand that holds it can control
It is a memorable event that has not yet happened anywhere
It is a book that has numerous authors, yet makes no sense
It is an enormous warrior who fears rats and blunt knives
Life is like a preacher putting on dark glasses at night
It is like a teacher who is reluctant to teach his own child
Life is like a seed that grows only where it desires
Life is like a match stick that gets burnt after forming fire
It is as pompous as mad kings; as fast as adolescent princesses
Life is like a hand that wrote this piece; this overcoming junk
It is like all kings in the world brought together to rule each other
It is like all princes murdering their fathers to take over
Life is a quick fire sparked by an unborn baby in its mother’s womb
Life is difficult to define; to describe; to discuss; to deduce
Life is not easy to understand; to estimate; to infer; to alter
Life is simple: it is not there to be analyzed; to be evaluated
It is not there for us to understand; to work out its meaning
It is simply there that we should appreciate it; we should value it
Life is completely different from anything given in this absurd piece
It is just a passing glance; a falling image; an overthrown throne
Life is as empty as this verse; as meaningless as this poem
Life is life: life is not anything, thus this piece fails to describe life.

Out of Mikuyu Prison

2011-07-25T15:19:00.000+01:00

(for Jack Mapanje and all Malawians who were imprisoned without trial during the Dr Banda era)

How did you feel in your wretched heart
When the stubborn gates of Mikuyu Prison finally clinked open,
When your hand hesitantly hung above the freedom register,
When the sun sprayed its beams on your mild face,
And provoked your darkness-oriented body?
How did you feel when you finally embraced
with your hostages of fortune,
When you walked in a land of freedom;
A land of a gentle zephyr, radiant bloom and swift rivulets
When the world welcomed you back with tears and cordiality?
You must have felt very sad
You must have felt they would call you back to Mikuyu prison
Or you must have felt you were only having a reverie.

How did you react to your freedom
When it was announced to all and sundry
When his magnificence ordered that you should be released
Just like he had ordered that you should be detained
And you were finally welcomed back where you belonged?
How did you react when you had not been prosecuted
Only to be given judgment
Which didn’t exist in any files at any courtroom?
When you were finally told that you were free
You must have reacted very wrathfully.

20 July: A Day of Sorrow In Malawi

2011-07-22T15:31:00.000+01:00

It is widely believed that human blood is seldom shed in vain. Its sacredness flows to the next generation and refuses to be buried in blurred images of the past. Christians ascribe the belief to the death of Jesus Christ whose blood is believed to have brought redemption for mankind. Others draw their beliefs from other inspirations; but they all believe that where human life has been taken because of fighting for a particular cause, things will never be the same.

20 July has always been just an ordinary day in Malawi; it has always remained a day when Malawians would wake up every morning to undertake their respective assignments wherever they were. It obviously is someone’s birthday, but never a day that drew our attention to its fold until this year, 2011.

It is a day many of us refuse to accept it really was. It is a day that drew the world’s attention to Malawi; a day that many wish only came about in a dream and passed away at the break of dawn. It will be etched on our hearts like screaming words curved on a marble.

Those who witnessed the tragedies in broad daylight must be struggling to erase the bitter memories; memories of ghastly scenes where human blood flowed from human bodies like deserted running water taps. They must be searching for therapies that will draw their thoughts away from the sounds of gunshots that littered the atmospheres of Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu.

Photos uploaded on social sites like Facebook were sending terrible messages of suffering from Malawians. They were photos of men drowned in pools of their own blood, photos of heroes attempting to save lives of the most badly wounded, photos of riot police officers wielding their guns in warlike positions, and photos of journalists nursing wounds inflicted on them by police officers.

For the first time since we attained our now fragile democracy, people were running to and fro in search of havens of peace. People were deserting their own homes – places where their very lives had hinged on only a few hours ago – to seek refuge in places which were never their second homes. Some who were not lucky enough were killed in cross-fires.

The scenarios in the three major cities namely Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu were typical of an empire on war. Gunshots are a rare occurrence in Malawi, but on July 20, they ceased to be. And the message that was being sent across from police officers was very clear: they were on a mission to kill.

You never use a live bullet and expect to just incapacitate; you use live bullets to kill. You do not descend on your unarmed opponent with a firearm; you do with rubber bullets which can heavily incapacitate without taking a life. But police officers thought otherwise. Their training of firearms use had to be put to evident practice on July 20. It was as if they were eagerly waiting for the day their hands would be crammed with human blood.

The people who died in the fracas are the martyrs, those who killed them the villains. But the irony of life remains that those who fight that it becomes better never live to witness it. Stories will be told of numerous Malawians who lost their lives on July 20 in the process of fighting for democracy, but one thing remains that it will be the killers whose faces will be seen around town.

In all truth and fairness, the Civil Society had organised the demonstrations in a kind of professional way, until an injunction obtained by one concerned citizen Chiza Mbekeyani seemed set to mar everything. People were trickling to all the cities of this country ready to march peacefully to relevant offices, but they were told that an injunction had been obtained stopping the march. That was where the trouble seemed to have started.

People had been preparing for the peaceful march all along and they felt cheated by the eleventh hour injunction, thus their tempers began to fray. However, they managed to hold on to their patience until the police decided to fire teargas canisters at the marching crowds.

Director of Institute for Policy Interaction Rafiq Hajat holds Chiza Mbekeyani, the unregistered lawyer who applied for the injunction, opposition political parties who hijacked the demonstration, Chifundo Kachale, the judge who granted Mbekeyani the injunction, and the police for setting up roadblocks in various locations to deter people from joining the march, thereby raising temperatures from the very start, and for their other “unprofessional” actions, responsible for the violence.

“… I am proud to report that Civil Society in Blantyre had no hand in the riots, looting and violence that ensued after our peaceful demonstration,” says Hajat in a note on Facebook titled Recollections From July 20th – A Postmortem.

It is often the nature of tragedy to strike hard those who can bear it least. We all know that even though our political leaders always tell us that Malawi is not a poor country, the fact is that Malawi is neither a rich country. And it is in such poverty as ours where tragedy chooses to enter. The damaged property should be worth millions of kwacha, and just another notable cancer in the already ailing economy.

Responsibility must outwit rights. Those who engaged in violent acts by destroying property of some people who even had nothing to do with the demonstration are no lesser than criminal thugs. But maybe as has been said before, if the police handled the demonstrators professionally, no one would have had an opportunity of engaging in any violent acts.

The world is crammed with opportunists: they only wait for an opportunity. There were robbers, thieves, thugs and the unemployed in the crowds. These are disgruntled and frustrated fellows who will take every opportunity to vent their frustration on anything. They might never be right, but frustrated citizens rarely consider the other side of their lives: that they too are moral beings who must adhere to the dictates of society.

Some have been arrested, others have been wounded; but it is those that have died that have spoken most. There is no joy in death no matter the circumstances. Whether one dies on a battle field or in cross-fire, death remains a tragic thing in our progresses. It is only kind hearts that pour out sympathy that will help heal the wounds cut in the hearts of those that have lost their loved ones.

Perhaps the death of people like Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin and Osama bin Laden, just to mention a few, brought some joy to those that had been affected by the inhuman acts of these villains, but they too had people who continue treasuring their lives. They too had relatives who mourned them as though they were the only people remaining on earth.

People have been sending messages of condolence to the bereaved families. And we expected President Mutharika to do the same when he addressed the nation a day after July 20. A rare opportunity to buy the confidence of Malawians was mismanaged when the president attacked the demonstrators, describing them as agents of the devil. That should not be what Malawians expected from him; at least a calm speech filled with reconciliatory remarks would have done it, not one where the president asked for dialogue while at the same time describing the demonstrators as working for the devil.

And those that have lost their loved ones will jam their fists in their eyes when they hear that the president never sent condolence messages to the bereaved families in his first address after July 20.

“I am informed a number of people have been injured and some killed due to the demonstrations. These problems are affecting everybody. Right now we do not have peace,” said Mutharika in the address. Perhaps, it would have made sense if the president never pointed out that he had been informed that there were deaths in the demonstrations. How would he know people had died and never ask their souls to rest in peace?

The president might have never believed what he saw or was told regarding the demonstrations. It must have been hard for him to come to terms with the fact that while he was delivering his lecture, thousands of those he leads were demonstrating everywhere across the country, not sparing Lilongwe, the same city where he was.

He must have been shocked to see DPP cars and offices up in flames, if at all he had the opportunity of seeing the pictures which continue circulating on the internet. It should have astounded him to the utmost to hear or watch on BBC, CNN, Aljazeera, SABC, VOA, France 24, Reuters and other international broadcasters that there was mayhem in Malawi, if at all he listens to or watches these stations.

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) thought the live coverage of the demonstrations was fuelling tension and havoc and subsequently banned live coverage of the events. But in this ‘Facebook’ generation, you can never hide information. Malawians were communicating through different social sites and the information that got across was more than that which the radio stations would cover.

Some private-owned radio stations namely Capital FM, MIJ FM and Joy Radio Station were off air for a considerable amount of time on 21 July. People were speculating that it was Macra officials and the police who had ‘destabilised’ the waves because these stations were still broadcasting scraps of the demonstrations which continued in other parts of the country.

The only radio stations which were still on air kept being very economical with the truth regarding the number of people who had died in the riots. Some were reporting 4 deaths, others 9 even when it was everywhere that 13 had passed on. Ministry of Health officials had already confirmed that 13 Malawians had been martyred and later it was confirmed that the death toll had risen to 18.

If death only meant leaving the stage for a little while only to return again in the next act, we would be eagerly waiting to welcome back they that departed. We would devise perfect measures of embracing them into our homes, but death is a cruel master. It often gropes into human affairs and strikes where it pains most.

People showed the greatest extent of love and compassion by trying as much as they could to provide first aid to those that were badly injured. In the eyes of those ‘saviours’ was a kind of sacredness that informed others that human life can never be taken for granted. And in the tears of the bereaved, there should be a glow of pain sending a message of overwhelming grief and untold love.

Perhaps, every dark night they will look at twinkling objects in the sky not as stars, but as shinning openings where the love of their lost ones will pour through and shine down upon them to inform them that where they are, they are happy for having died for Malawi. But, such tenets are only embraced by extremists who take the extraordinary beyond the extraordinary.

Luck sometimes dawns upon those who rarely seek it. One man, a builder, was killed while working on a house, some in cross-fire, while others in the stampede. Yet, thugs who were looting shops were only arrested by the police.

What is the benefit of our carefulness? What does it tell us when a person dies while in search of a haven of peace? Perhaps it informs us that security does not necessarily exist among human beings. Maybe, like Helen Keller observes “security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

But, were they supposed to stand still while gunshots were being heard in their directions? Were they supposed to wait and reason with officers who were angry for blood? Perhaps, all options would still lead to death. Maybe life had already been defeated and death was just waiting to manifest itself. After all, death is the final point of life towards where each one of us walks.

It is usually in tragic events like those of July 20 where memories of the past quickly flash in the minds of those that have retentive memories. Mutharika started his first term with bloodshed where a girl Epiphania Bonjesi in Chilobwe, Blantyre, was shot dead by a police officer during the mayhem where people were protesting that the elections had been rigged in favour of Mutharika.

Then lately the president described Peter Mukhitho as the best Inspector General of Police Malawi has ever had. He is the very same person who urged the police to shoot and kill all thugs and robbers.

And the best IG must have obviously transformed his boys to best police officers, and these officers had the audacity of using live bullets to kill Malawians. After all, some people in the riots were obviously robbers and the police had to execute the presidential directive of shooting to kill.

Now Civil Society leaders in the North who were part of the organisers of the demonstrations have vowed to take the police officers who pulled their triggers to kill demonstrators to the International Criminal Court. And perhaps like Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of evolution theorist Charles Darwin, once observed, “He who allows oppression shares the crime.”

In his address on 21 July, Mutharika seemed to imply he does not know Malawians have problems. His declaration that he who has problems should meet him so that they should discuss may not mean anything now. Problems of fuel and forex shortage, the impasse in the University of Malawi, poor governance and many others are what Malawians have.

The president has been given opportunities before to discuss the problems with the Civil Society and opposition parties so that together they could try to find solutions to the problems that Malawi is facing, but he never gave them a chance. It was reported sometime in the past that he once lost his cool during the discussions and banged his fists on the table in total indignation. Did he have to wait for lives of Malawians to be nipped so that he should realize that Malawi is not sailing in calm waters?

Martin Luther King Junior once said that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in moments of challenge and controversy. The president must now be working out strategic measures that should ultimately declare his position regarding the suffering of his people. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm, but it is when the tides begin to roar when the greatest among men must rise. This is time for Mutharika to embrace a leadership style that wears the harness of compromise.

Of course, we all know that in a position like Mutharika’s, before July 20, it was easy to roll in the illusion that the majority sides with you. But, in reality, such a feeling would only be there if one wasn’t curious enough to read the writing on the wall: are Malawians happy with fuel and forex shortage and the exorbitant taxes and many other burdens pinning down on their lives.

At least 18 people lost their lives while fighting for ‘genuine’ democracy. They are martyrs who have departed from among us and are somewhere beyond our reach. In their death, they have fought a good fight for democracy. The pain might take time to be erased from the hearts of those they have left behind.

Such are the torments of martyrdom: the real agony is most keenly felt by those that are left behind; they that saw the blood, they whose minds are crammed with horrible images of death. But, for some time, our admiration will be directed on the dead; the heroes who shed their blood on July 20.

Even though we know that there are some living heroes who showed their resolve during the demonstrations, death will always force us to fix our attention on it. Men of religion always inform us that while we mourn the departed, others are rejoicing to meet them behind the veil. In such a way, they take away a good chunk of our grief. Perhaps, death, which may indeed be seen as the last sleep is just the final awakening.

But wherever the awakening will be, among the living, gaps are created. These are gaps which may be hard to fill, especially when they were never expected at such a time. That is why joy is never found in death, even if flowers glow on the tombs. They may only act as a catharsis that will take sorrow away for a few moments, but the pain will need time to subside in the hearts of the bereaved.

Nevertheless, deaths of people fighting for democracy give us the hope that their blood has not been shed in vain. Blood is a sacred fluid that has power that changes things even if it will not take a day for the change to manifest. But the point remains that change for which blood has been shed can never be shelved forever. History will refer to July 20, a day that brought a dark cloud of sorrow upon Malawi.

Academic Freedom Saga: Where The Trouble Lies Now

2011-07-04T15:23:00.000+01:00

The closure of a university college over academic freedom would always seem an impossibility. People expect a university college to be closed on grounds ranging from lack of finances to tragic incidents that have entailed that security is lacking at the college.

But Chancellor College and The Polytechnic, the two main constituent colleges of the University of Malawi (Unima) were closed for close to four months over academic freedom which was deemed to be under threat. Now, these colleges have reopened, yet the lecturers are refusing to teach, a thing which may not make sense to most people.

Where does the trouble lie now? In a memo issued by Chanco Academic Stand Union (Ccasu) acting president, the lecturers are not committed to going back to class because the University Council has failed to meet one outstanding demand: that the ‘fired’ lecturers be ‘reinstated’ and all court cases be withdrawn.

And the question is: why is Council so bent at making sure Dr. Jessie Kabwila-Kapasula, Dr. Garton Kamchedzera, Franz Amin and Dr. Blessings Chinsinga are fired? Is there a very compelling reason that is forcing Council to hold Chanco and Poly students at ransom? Whose agenda is Council pursuing?

In any ordinary situation, humanity adores heroism because it tends to be rare, but in this saga, heroism is being valued because it seems to be everywhere. Kapasula, leading many others, has been pursuing a good cause with an unfazed and unflappable heart. Such is the hero Council and the state president seem to want to unmake.

One may ask: how does the president come in when he assured the lecturers of their academic freedom? The truth is that there was something beyond the assurance.

It takes more than intellect and wisdom to grope into a politician’s mind and deduce the real thing hidden in the deep recesses of his heart; it takes special insight – a thing that is not common among humanity. It is rare for politicians to walk in the realm of honesty. At least, such is the case in Malawi.

When Mutharika ordered the reopening of Chanco and Poly smiles indeed fritted across the faces of many who thought the president’s speech where he guaranteed all university colleges in Malawi academic freedom, marked the end of the impasse.

But, as things stand today, it seems the “actual” reopening of the two colleges is not so imminent. The president indeed guaranteed the lecturers their academic freedom; yet if you spare some time to dig deeper into the speech, you will discover that – like Ccasu President Jessie Kabwila-Kapasula observed – it was wanting in a number of aspects.

For starters, Mutharika showed that he was not utterly convinced that the lecturers were fighting for a legitimate cause. His use of phrases like “false pursuit for heroism” in the speech clearly showed that the president was not satisfied that the lecturers were right in their pursuit.

He further asked that all court injunctions should be withdrawn so that the whole impasse could be resolved in roundtable discussions. The lecturers were not convinced and they did not withdraw the injunctions. And their fears were vindicated only a few days later when Council appealed at the Supreme Court insisting that Kapasula and company should be fired.

This is where it is clear that Council is “contradicting” the president’s request that all court cases be withdrawn. And this is where Kapasula’s fears that the president was not really saying all that in good faith, get vindicated.

By the way, Mutharika is Unima Chancellor and formally holds the top most position in the university hierarchy. This consequently implies that Council can in no way do anything contrary to what the president has said. And the only logical conclusion drawn from these premises is that it is Mutharika who wants to make sure Kapasula and company are fired, and therefore one may say with all conclusiveness that Mutharika is not interested in seeing Chanco and Poly reopened.

If Mutharika honestly had the reopening of Chanco and Poly at heart, perhaps the two colleges would have opened even earlier than 4 July, but it appears the president made that speech simply to give Malawians the illusion that the stand-off was over. He might have it in mind that once he made the speech, criticism would wane, and therefore it would be easy for him to concentrate on something else.

It may not sound awkward to assume that the president told Unima Council to make every effort to ensure Chancellor College and The Polytechnic open on 4 July, and to do everything possible to make sure Kapasula and her three colleagues are fired.

Now the lecturers have vowed not to return to class until their “fired” colleagues are “reinstated”. That is exactly what was required of them. How could they return to class when their colleagues who were simply their mouthpiece have been “fired”? It would mean betraying them. In fact, you do not fire a representative for representing others.

We are all heroes of our own life stories; but it is the extent to which our heroism goes that matters. True heroism is not contained in the urge to outstrip all others, but the willingness to render service to others no matter the situation. That appears to be the character that is there in Kapasula.

In her capacity, the lady has dedicated her life to fighting for a cause worth the sacrifice. She has swept aside her personal interests just to make sure an important aspect in the university does not get trampled beneath inconsiderate desires of those who care less. That is the sole reason why they hate her; therefore, that is where the whole trouble lies.

Mutharika does not like Kapasula, Chinsinga, Kamchedzera and Amin the most. Yet, it appears these are the people he cannot ignore as long as finding a lasting solution to the impasse is concerned.

In Kapasula alone, there is that firm resolve of virtue and reason. You just need to listen to her a little and you will know that her care is not to please humanity without a purpose, but to help work out a future for those she cares about. Others may see her to go beyond the limit, but that is what fighters are deemed to do.

Firing her, Chinsinga, Kamchedzera and Amin shouldn’t even have been thought of in the first place. They are the key players as long as resolving the stand-off is concerned, and what was needed was Council sinking a little lower and displeasing the president a little, and the whole staff-off would have been over now.

It is indeed the nature of human wisdom to come out packaged in sharp ironies which entail more folly. The courts ruled that these four remain employees of Unima and as of now there is nothing that can stop them from executing any action in such capacity. But in their wisdom, authorities at the University Council choose to reject their names because to them, Kapasula and company are not Unima’s employees.

We cannot make ourselves heroes by trying to block others from becoming heroes. Kapasula and her colleagues have made themselves names because of their firm resolve which has seen them fighting on even in the midst of turbulent waters. They are the heroes we now know; the University Council is struggling to frustrate them and unmake their pursuit for justice.

Pride seems to be the character that is now blocking progress. Council authorities seem to believe that “reinstating” Kapasula would mean revering her. But honesty knows that even if Council authorities do not adore her, Malawi does, for in her has been seen that character that lacks in these Council authorities.

The beauty of Kapasula’s soul lies in the radiance that glows when she bears her noble duty as Ccasu acting president with covetable composure. She has high self-trust and self-esteem, and these characters help her become what we have seen. And these are the characters Council hate.

Kapasula is made of sterner stuff and such a human being was supposed to be benefited from. Just like Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, second US president, said “if we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.” But these are not just any other women, but those who will use their education to know their purpose in the latter-day world.

It makes sense to sense that Council authorities are doing whatever they are doing simply to please the president, but the truth is that they are doing him untold injustice. The Mutharika administration is already in crisis. It has come under fire from different quarters, both domestic and international, and as such, it was prudent to capitalize on every development that would impel Malawians to at least have some trust in it. And finding solutions to the academic freedom saga was going to partly ease pressure on the president.

It does not really paint a good picture of the Mutharika administration to see two main constituent colleges of Unima failing to operate fully, and solutions which are very common failing to be found. That closing a university college entails failure in leadership of a state is slowly becoming a cliché that will be copied by the next observer with purpose. It has turned into a song whose lyrics’ values have been drowned in pride and peculiar authority.

Mutharika’s conscience should surely convict him for forsaking very important issues in this country. The president should not be afraid to make Kapasula and her colleagues heroes; rather he should be afraid of unmaking a hero out of himself. In his capacity as the president, he is like a bird perched on a tall tree for all to see its next move.

Malawians are always monitoring whatever he is doing and it would have been wise for him to involve the greatest level of rationality so that some issues like that of academic freedom can be resolved with all ease. Otherwise, if Council maintains that Kapasula and company are fired, what was the essence of Mutharika guaranteeing academic freedom?

It is clear that now the whole trouble in the saga lies in the president and Council trying to avoid seeing Kapasula and company as victors. Perhaps these two parties feel that if the stand-off gets resolved and Kapasula and her “fired” colleagues remain Unima’s employees, then they will be the victors. Yet, that is the only way: they will remain Unima’s employees because fighting for justice is a crime only in dictatorship states, not in Malawi.

100 Days of Academic Freedom Fight: Moment of Reflection

2011-06-12T23:55:00.000+01:00

It is rare for academic professors to abandon their students for any other cause; yet if they do, we understand them, for they are very busy members of the academia. They are involved in research projects that are aimed at boosting course outlines that should reflect what is expected of university students the moment they step into the corporate world.

Yesterday, 27 May, marked one hundred solid days of the fight for academic freedom. This is a fight which appears to last forever; it has been marked by frustrations, contradictions, and desperation. Yet, in whatever way it may go, one thing is obvious: that we all look to the president who in his capacity as the chancellor of the University of Malawi (Unima) can put the matter to rest.

Closing a university college is not a thing that buys pride for any government. It entails failure in leadership and management unless there is any emergency like that which struck Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va. in the United States of America where a villainous student nipped the lives of many of his schoolmates before shooting himself. And things are worse when two main constituent colleges of a university are closed following a matter that could be easily negotiated and resolved.

Now a commission of inquiry has been established to find out what really sparked the current stand-off which has now turned to be between Chancellor College and The Malawi Polytechnic and the University Council. But amidst all this, one thing fails to make sense. Is the president really telling Malawians that Mukhitho did not tell him what happened? If he doesn’t trust the IG why can’t he bring both Dr. Chinsinga and Mukhitho together so that he hears both sides and resolve the matter in closed doors?

It is in circumstances like this through which hindsight blows as strongly as possible. Mutharika vigorously made a promise that he would not allow a university college to be closed while he remains in power. And the easy contradiction clearly reminds us that politicians shouldn’t be trusted, for when they assume power, voters no longer matter.

Of course, it is not necessarily the issue of being a good or bad politician that matters in this cloudy stand-off. In essence, it is leadership that does. The greatest of all leaders is he who is willing to follow his people. Such a leader finds ways of sitting down, meditating and making compelling decisions that should be applauded by the majority, in all truth and fairness.

But of late, Mutharika has shown that he is more a boss than a leader. Our president takes pleasure in driving and not leading. Coupled with the crooked advice that he gets from Ntaba and company, he sees no reason why the majority should matter.

Chanco and Poly lecturers are human beings – and those with high integrity for that matter. They have contributed a lot to numerous policies that government has adopted and is using them. They are the ones that are shaping numerous young men and women who are in some of the most challenging government positions, and such people are not difficult to reason with, yet they are not easy to bulldoze.

They are educated fellows and it shouldn’t have been difficult for the president to reason with them other than pronouncing at a public function that Mukhitho is not going to apologise to anyone. And there is a popular paradox that has now sprouted out of the president’s sentiments and his decision to institute a commission of inquiry that should establish what really happened between Mukhitho and Chinsinga.

Now the implication is that the president was making his thorny comments out of ignorance, at least, this is what we are compelled to believe. Perhaps, he was told something that he has now chosen not to believe.

Otherwise, it doesn’t really make sense to institute a commission of inquiry in a matter like this which even now can be easily settled. In his capacity as Unima Chancellor and Chief Commander of the Malawi Police, Mutharika would simply invite the varying parties and give them two or three words that would finally bring them to a mutual point. No one may say with all conclusiveness that it would be very hard for the president to bring the parties at variance to a mutual point.

And now, the commission of inquiry is just an establishment that is going to bring in unnecessary complications. It is going to consume funds that – no matter how little – could be used for other good purposes. Furthermore, it is going to take time thereby unnecessarily stretching the unproductive period.

The whole issue got blown out of proportion by the president himself. If only he did not utter the scathing comments that Mukhitho cannot apologise, the stand-off couldn’t have reached this point. The willing lecturers would have come to a roundtable with other parties so that the issue could be settled the earliest. In fact, this is what acting president of Chanco Academic Staff Union Dr. Jessie Kabwila-Kapasula has been saying all this while: that they are always open for discussions.

But Mutharika chose to inform Malawians that Mukhitho is the finest police chief Malawi has ever had and therefore cannot apologise to anyone (on anything). Such promulgation from the head of state disturbed many a people who saw the issue to be one that could be easily resolved. And from then, what was nearly going to be the end of the impasse only turned out to be the beginning.

Events that happened in the past once again come alive in a situation like this. Chancellor college students who are in their fourth year now are constantly reminded of their unfortunate beginning. It is a beginning that was characterized by two months of stay at the college without any lecturer turning up for a class. After the orientation which ran for three weeks, the students were to watch TV for a period that seemed to last forever. Some decided to go back home and wait for the day when their lecturers would return to class.

Now, these unfortunate students who were supposed to finish their undergraduate studies in October or thereabout are back in their homes, once again waiting for when their lecturers would return to lecture rooms.

The wait has been long already, yet if they have to be fully baked, it is a necessary wait.

Academic freedom is an aspect that surrounds every lecture, every academic research project, every academic paper, and therefore in practice, it affects students more than it does their lecturers. That is why these students stood in solidarity with their professors in their quest for the realization of this freedom; for they well know that they are its principal beneficiaries.

In 2008 when Chanco lecturers went on a strike, it was not in protest that they should be granted academic freedom. Rather it was a fight for a salary increase which the president clearly told them was out of reach. But for the sake of their students, the university dons accepted a 20 percent increase. It appears that is where Mutharika saw the weakness in these professors.

Their “giving in” might have been passed off as a weakness, yet in real sense it wasn’t. The lecturers put under consideration many things including the economic standing of this country and finally found it wise to accept the “meager’ offer. Perhaps that was recorded somewhere to be used as a reference point for the president so that once the lecturers “played” with him again, he would brush them aside and “concentrate on more important issues.”

People of letters like university dons are easy to lead, yet they are very difficult to drive. They may be easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. That is where Mutharika’s hurdle lies. He will lead them with all ease where it makes sense, but he will not drive them where they do not understand the purpose. He will govern them with coveted policies, but he will not enslave them by supporting a police chief who has placed spies in lecture rooms.

Our president may have the authority to do whatever he desires, including telling Mukhitho not to apologise to university lecturers. He even has all the power to institute a commission of inquiry to establish what went wrong, but that does not mean we shouldn’t raise our skepticism. After all, he too is human, and is bound to make errors like all of us.

That is why we keep asking if the commission of inquiry is going to put the matter to rest once and for all, with numerous cases on court files. Isn’t the commission of inquiry creating more complications in a matter that has many already? Or has the president done that simply because he has authority to do it?

The art of being a president – like any other leadership art – should be a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. We must always see in our leaders those qualities of positive influence, not necessarily peculiar authority.

We may talk about leadership, about authority, even about pride. But everything settles on one aspect of college education that is deemed to be under threat. This is academic freedom. Why should our sovereign constitution grant it when the IG – supported by the state president – cannot guarantee it?

With all what has been said about academic freedom, it makes sense to conclude that most of us now understand what it is all about. Just like William Orville Douglas said “the most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is continuous dialogue – questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.”

To marry or not to marry

2010-10-18T15:40:00.000+02:00

The estate of marriage is an entity which some people seldom want to be associated with; they simply do not want to consider getting married or marrying. They have their own reasons for not marrying, some of them being religious.

Radical feminists are completely against marriage, and some of them reach the extent of living separately from the rest of those who desire to get married. They do not even want to be anywhere near men and they live ‘lonely’ lives which they are but comfortable with.

They take marriage as a social institution that is aimed at disadvantaging women while putting men in a higher position where they are taken as heads of families and therefore need to be worshipped by women.

For all intents and purposes, these feminists are against the patriarchal structure in marriages where they view marriage to be an already prearranged male chauvinism supporter, with women being taken as lesser humans.

Yet still, there are other men who do not want to marry because of reasons which they think are significant to them. So, when talking about marrying or not marrying, both men and women are involved.

But if we view things from a Christian perspective, what does the bible say about marrying? Does it command everyone created in the image of God to marry; or does it not command, but just gives everyone the liberty to choose whether to marry or not?

Alister McGrath in his book titled Christian Theology: An Introduction points out that the theological task of the church is to interpret its faith and message so that they can be understood and affirmed in each new age.

The scripture must be interpreted so that it appeals to members of the church. This does not mean it should be twisted to serve churches’ individual doctrines which do not necessarily reflect the teachings that are there in the bible.

As such, even teachings which individual churches hold regarding marriage should be based on the greatest tool for human wisdom: the bible. It has answers to all our questions and provides solutions to all our problems.

Theologian Martin Luther is one of the most influential individuals as far as the issue of whether to marry or not is concerned. Among his concerns that led to the ‘original’ reformation was the issue of marriage. Luther found marriage to be a very essential thing in human affairs.

He advanced a point of love in relation to marriage: “Now there are three kinds of love: false love, natural love and married love…. But over and above all, there is married love, that is a bride’s love that glows like a fire and desires nothing else but the husband.”

In support of marriage, Luther further pointed out that the temptation of the flesh has become so strong and consuming that marriage may be likened to a hospital with incurables which prevents inmates from falling into graver sin. This is also the case with a part of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth where he says: “I would advise you not to marry, but because there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” – 1 Corinthians 7: 1.

St Paul further adds in verses 8-9 that those who are not married should remain like that implying that at least if we follow his teachings, marriage is not a command for human beings.

People are at liberty to choose whether they should marry or not. Above all, we all strive to enter the kingdom of God, and if an eye causes you to sin, it is better to gauge it out, for it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than go to hell with both eyes as the bible says in Mark 9:43. Thus, if you view marriage as something that may be a setback on your quest for righteousness, then it is better not to marry.

The bible further says that to be free from anxieties and serve God, the unmarried man should remain unmarried, for those who marry are anxious to please their wives and husbands while those who are unmarried are anxious to please God – 1 Corinthians 7:32-33.

On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that Adam was given a wife in the Garden of Eden so that he should marry her. God blessed the couple and told them to multiply. This implies that God himself ordained marriage, and was pleased with it, for he could not bless something that he did not like.

However, it is important for believers to pray earnestly for a suitable spouse for Proverbs 19: 14 says parents provide goods and houses for their children, but a good wife comes from God lone.

All in all, this piece has deliberately bent itself towards propounding points that argue that marriage is not necessarily a command. It is something given to mankind by the creator himself, and to those who find it necessarily to be in it, fine and good, but to those who feel like staying without marrying, they should also maintain their unmarried state without engaging into immoral sins.

A journey of memories

2010-10-18T15:35:00.001+02:00

If you want to be a failure and never be rebuked or chastised, it makes sense to become an athlete. You are involved in a prestigious tournament and you come home empty handed, yet in the midst of your failure, you are assured that there is always next time. Thus, you can rest on your laurels and wait for next time. Such is the case in Malawi; and such was the case with our athletes who went to India recently.

They flew across rivers and oceans, over soaring mountains and above throngs of humanity. Their mission was simple and straightforward: to compete in the commonwealth games that took place in New Delhi.

Yet, they did not only go there to simply have their faces beamed on television, but to come back home with gold, silver or even bronze medals, if circumstances did not completely favour them. But they returned home empty handed. For an anthology of 44 athletes, 37 officials and one team doctor, this appears to be too much embarrassment.

Their horrible failure cannot be overshadowed by illusory comments of individuals who always desire to cushion failure in soothing words that only have the potential of aggravating matters.

Be open and tell them the truth: they have humiliated the nation, and there is nothing beyond that. They are failures in all practical applications of the term, for if they were not, we would be singing at least one song of victory, even if it were a faint one.

We would congratulate them and invite them to a cocktail party somewhere in the comfort of our peaceful hotels and tell them to relax after a hectic voyage to the top, or at least somewhere near the top.

But our athletes chose to see things from different points of view; they desired to bring us nothing, to show us nothing and to promise us nothing. A bronze medal would have promised a silver one in the next encounter while a silver one would have heralded gold next time. But the absence of these two accolades clearly tells us that hope in the athletes should not keep us company.

Any position out of the ‘countable’ range might not make a lot of sense. The queens came back home embracing the same position that they achieved during the previous games. But, does the position matter now when they were not counted as winners?

Those who took the first, second and third positions are the ones who were counted as victors. At least, this is what the medals they got imply.

The queens indeed put up a spirited performance as some would argue, but the fruits of a spirited performance should be victory. They tried their best indeed, but trying is nothing more than a shadow which moves together with its source; it has never been known to become a human being. It will forever remain a shadow and trying will forever remain trying, even in the face of moving miracles.

For our netball team, one cannot avoid asking why it still entertains aging fellows whose energy and passion cannot remain the same with the passage of time. They are indeed experienced, but experience in this case has shown that it does not always result into victory.

Why can’t the energetic young ones take over and take the team forward?

Of course, all the sections that went to the Asian country deserve no mercy. Even though mercy is often greater than justice, let truth be told that we did not expect our representatives in India to return home the way they went.

There even is temptation to bash the comment made by Head of Delegation to the games Haxon Chapasa who said: “I hope we will bag some medals in the next games.” If next time were a genuine excuse for not making it now, then failure would be non-existent.

Chapasa should just have come out in the open to admit that they failed. The next thing would be to devise mechanisms that would ameliorate the situation. Otherwise, being satisfied with our athletes’ failure is no less than telling them to keep it up.

Even Youth Development and Sports Minister Lucious Kanyumba warned critics against making bad comments over the poor performance by the athletes. Perhaps, the minister needs to know that the mere fact that the athletes did not come back home with any medal is enough to warrant a barrage of bad comments from different commentators.

If bad comments cannot come in, then obviously we will be congratulating them; but how do you congratulate someone who has not impressed? We cannot keep on telling our athletes to keep trying. We need to tell them the truth, and this truth is that their performance was miserable.

A whooping amount in excess of K28 million was spent on the fruitless quest for prestige. But perhaps, the most memorable thing to the athletes together with the whole delegation is that they at least had a chance to see some of the places they had never seen before. They interacted with individuals they had never interacted with before. That alone might be an honour, an achievement, a memory.

The journey itself, of course, was one of great memories. They might be fond memories to the athletes, but to us who were never part of that trip, they are bitter memories. They are sour memories of embarrassment and humiliation imposed onto us by the dismal performances of our athletes.

rEFLECTING oN dIVORCE

2010-10-14T18:54:00.000+02:00

Numerous marriages in the latter-day world are at terrible risks of being broken; some of them have already seen the face of divorce tearing them apart. Some have even broken without any formal procedure, even if the partners went through all the ceremonial processes to get betrothed to their loved ones. The evil one has sown so much confusion in the estate of marriage such that even differences which would be settled overnight exist for ages in families and finally tear the couple apart.

But, out of any marriage breakage, it is not usually the parted parties that suffer. Usually, it is the children – in cases where the family had them – and sometimes even other relatives. The suffering may not necessarily be material of monetary, but mostly emotional. There is no pain in life as the pain that smoulders within the heart.

Sometimes, even if the couple has reached a mutual agreement that they should sever their matrimonial ties, for the sake of the children, it is wise to reconsider the decision and continue living together. Of course, most people who have found themselves craving for a divorce have usually argued that they have reached the painful decision of separating with their loved ones because of genuine reasons. The world may indeed understand, but to God, there is no sin which mankind cannot forgive.

In very delicate matrimonial hiccups, love is the most significant thing that counts. Love covers a multitude of sins; love looks at an individual as a potential failure who can be given a second, third, fourth, even hundredth chance.

Marriage is an entity that was fully ordained by God himself in the Garden of Eden when he gave Eve to Adam to be his wife. And in Genesis 2:23-24 as well as Mark 10:8, the Bible says that when two are joined together in marriage, they are no longer two, but one, and that God is not interested in any kind of divorce whatsoever.

If a man and a woman have decided to enter into the estate of marriage, they become one and no matter how miserably their marriage is progressing, they are supposed to remain one. Divorce, in God’s eyes, is not an option except in specific situations, like where one member of the marriage estate has committed adultery – and even then, forgiveness and rebuilding are usually best. Forgiveness is greater than a chemist’s drug and a surgeon’s knife. It heals deep wounds which no drug in the world can.

And Matthew 19:6 records that “therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” This implies that it should be by God’s command only that marriage may be broken, and this is where the issue of adultery comes in. The only reason which the bible gives as enough to permit a marriage divorce is adultery. Yet, this as well is not automatic, for the Bible itself teaches us to forgive one another. The process may be painful and may involve hard work, but the results are worth the effort since God is glorified.

Complete commitment to one’s marriage provides a basis of fidelity and trust. A partner always feels incomplete without the other and finds happiness in the company of their spouse. In such a way, they are able to go through tough times but always make godly solutions because there is a special connection between them. A lack of commitment erodes the couple’s strength and determination. It can lead to tragedy, and couples that are entangled in this mire can easily reach the decision to divorce.

In Malachi chapter 2 verse 16, it is recorded: ‘“I hate divorce,’ says the Lord God of Israel.” And in this case, if the institutor of marriage himself says he hates divorce, it only means divorce, whatever the case, cannot please God. And the Bible further says that in everything we do, we should do as unto the Lord.

Much as marital unfaithfulness is the only ‘sin’ that may lead to divorce, these days, marriages are seldom broken on this basis. Most men and women of today simply choose to part ways with their partners after attaining a higher social status. Some reach the decision to break their matrimonial testament after ‘finding’ another partner.

Some even choose to desert their loved ones after having discovered that s/he is not as ‘hot’ in the spirit as they are. But, this again is not enough to warrant divorce. In his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul the Apostle said that if any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him (1 Corinthians 7:12-13). The most important thing is to pray for the unbeliever so that s/he can become a believer.

Love is something that holds the couple together through difficult moments of life and implores them to improve where they were failing.

Divorce – whether it was done after a partner committed adultery or not – always has painful consequences. It has terrible effects on your relationship with your God; you also damage your spouse’s as well as your own reputation; you wound your children and family members, including friends. Above everything, you create a platform for future pain for yourself and bring shame upon the name of Christ.

However, it has to be acknowledged that Jesus said you may divorce if your spouse commits adultery. Nevertheless, he did not make this a command; he merely pointed out that it is permissible. Thus, love and forgiveness should be the overriding entity in marriages. As such, divorces will be avoided.

Poem - Life

2010-10-08T16:31:00.000+02:00

CAN MAN IMPRESS GOD?

2010-10-08T16:27:00.003+02:00

In this world, as we live, we sometimes struggle with issues to do with pleasing one another. There are many things that we can do to please our friends, our families, our bosses and even our juniors. In mundane affairs, it is possible to do so. And if such is the case, is there anything man can do to please or impress God?

Most of us ask ourselves: what should a sinful creature like me do to impress a holy and righteous God? Or still, is there anything I can do to impress God?

In all truth and fairness, in our natural state, it is impossible for us to reach that level of righteousness needed to impress a holy God. But still, that should not prevent us from making efforts in that direction. But such efforts should not be so oriented in the sole intention of impressing God, for it is usually when we don’t do something with the aim of pleasing God that we please him.

The Bible in the book of Isaiah says that our righteous acts are like filthy rags in the presence of God. If our righteous acts are like filthy rags, then it may appear that the only logical conclusion remains that there is nothing we can do to impress God. Or in other words, nothing that we do can be able to reach the extent of making God impressed with us.

The Bible further says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. In this regard, this fear of the Lord can be compared to the relationship of a parent and his child. The child in a normal situation is supposed to have reverence for the father, but not in a dangerous sense, but in the arena of security and boundaries.

Consequently, we, as God’s children should have that element of fear coupled with trust with our Heavenly Father. And this impresses God. In essence, impressing God can only happen when we do not try to impress him. When we do our works with the aim of impressing him, it is impossible to impress him.

In the book of Luke, Jesus talks of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Says the Bible, specifically in chapter 18, verses 11 – 14: “The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else. For I don’t sin, and I don’t commit adultery. I am certainly not like the tax collector! I fast twice a week, and give you a tenth of my income.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘oh God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

The Pharisee took himself to be righteous before a righteous God. He forgot that man is naturally a sinful being because of the original sin, and therefore cannot claim that he is not a sinner. Consequently, he was not blessed. It was the tax collector, who acknowledged that he was a sinful person, who returned home justified.

Sometimes after falling into sin, we think we can make amends to our God by doing some overt action in order to draw God’s attention to us so that we can impress him. Yet, there is nothing we can do to divert God’s attention away from our lack of obedience. God is much in love with our obedience than our sacrifice. For is it written in I Samuel 15:22: “…what is more pleasing to the Lord: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen, obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of lambs.”

Thus, our actions can do nothing to please God; but obedience can please him. We can not make amends with our God by good actions; but by submitting ourselves to him and acknowledge our shortfalls for “a contrite and broken heart he does not despise.”

Psalm 69:30-31 records: “Then I will praise God’s name with singing, and I will honour him with thanksgiving. For this will please the Lord more than sacrificing cattle, more than presenting a bull with its horns and hooves.” In this passage the Psalmist tells us that singing songs of praise and offering thanksgiving impresses God more than tangible items.

Humility is another thing that impresses God. Just like children need to be humble before their fathers, we also need to be humble before our God. I Peter 5:5 says: “In the same way, you younger men must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you serve each other in humility, for ‘God opposes the proud but favours the humble.’”

Above all, pleasing a righteous God cannot happen using our acts, for what we consider our righteous acts are like filthy rags before him. It is when we do holy things without intending to please God that we please him.

Culture and change

2010-10-08T16:26:00.001+02:00

Sometimes in life, driven by circumstances, a human being is supposed to abandon his strong principles and adjust to change for the sake of progress. There is no progress unless one has allowed himself to engage into other ‘innovative’ aspects which were not peculiar to them in the first place.

Change always brings something new; but the most significant thing that counts is assessing what kind of change is morally acceptable.
There are instances where change – even if it was not being approved in the first place – gets accepted and becomes an axiom of morality. This is solely because a human being is a social being who needs to adjust according to the dictates of circumstances while not committing an offence against himself or the society within which they live.

However, still more, sometimes if some kind of change is necessary, but the majority does not hold with it, the minority needs to strategise so as to persuade the majority to adopt the new ‘development’.

In fact, without change, history would be meaningless. It is because humans and nature as a whole go through different levels in their lives that there is the need to preserve that which happened long ago. If that was not the case, it would be just as significant to look at what is happening now, for it would not be any different from what happened yesterday.

Governments change, generations change, natural elements go through processes of mutation and nothing remains the same forever. Above all, the world always changes and nothing in it will remain forever, for every change that it undergoes is a catalyst for changes of everything within it.

Yet in Malawi, it appears some people (pardon my bluntness) are still stuck in the past with so much stubbornness and tradition that to them every kind of change appears to be “a Whiteman’s concern”. These attitudes and behaviour that are characteristic of some Malawians are not conducive for development.

During the transition process from one party system of government to pluralism, some people could not just accept that such an aspect in Malawi politics was a very needful thing. They kept on worshipping the former president, the late Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, and went on to argue that they were not ready “to live without Dr. Banda at the helm.” This was just a manifestation of rigidity to change.

They had gotten so much used to Dr. Banda’s cruel system of governance that it had finally become part of their lives. To them, that which they had lived with for so long was better than something that they were not aware of. Yet everything about multi-party politics had been advocated for times without number.

They were ‘safe’ in following the culture of ‘nurturing’ what they had instead of adjusting to that necessary change. In other words, they got so much used to the culture of suffering that to them, it was not necessary to have freedom. Such kinds of mindsets are perilous as long as development is concerned.

In fact, some people propose that culture should undergo review at least every half a decade because there are a number of changes that societies undergo, as nothing remains the same forever.

Some years back, there was public furore over the ‘right’ dressing for women. People were so much concerned about that issue that it was finally agreed that it was a misnomer and should attract a punishment.

The truth was that we were just stuck in the past with so much stubbornness and tradition. Much as culture is significant in the legacy of humankind, it has to pave way so that human beings adjust to change. In fact by adjusting to change, it is just a manifestation of culture itself.
Culture in itself was not supposed to be a threat to development, but the way we handle it in Malawi, one is compelled to argue that among many aspects that retard development, culture is one of them.

Sometime, we take some of the things that would otherwise improve our lives as “those of Westerners” because of a culture of exclusion and self-segregation. It is high time we began to consider adjusting to change. However, scrutiny is always necessary; but stubbornness should never be welcome!

It is mostly true that culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is supposed to be a fragile phenomenon. It is supposed to be constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. And therefore it is only when we change our mindsets that we may adequately develop.

Are we in an era of sexual immorality?

2010-10-08T16:25:00.002+02:00

In his book titled ‘At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry’, Steve Gallagher writes and I quote: “Unless you are at least 50-years-old you probably do not know what it is to live in a culture that isn’t obsessed with sex. Prior to the late 60’s, illicit sex was only confined to the seedy underworld or simply non-existent. It was rare for a man watching TV to come across anything racier than a couple kissing or a vague suggesting comment. Pornography addiction amounted to nothing more than a playboy magazine hidden under the bed.”

Steve wrote this with reference to the American society. However, if we are to apply this in the Malawi setting, we may say “at the beginning the second millennium” instead of “prior to the late 60’s” because issues of sex and pornography rocked Malawian societies first during the period.

Now, it appears we are living in the deep recesses of a dangerously sexualized society; a society that has put sex as the overriding passion of human survival. It is a society that has completely lost its values. Human wisdom has been utterly poisoned and those who advocate for a return to our roots lack all conviction.

You will be shocked to the core should you ‘accidentally’ bump into someone’s office without knocking. You will find them busy minimizing or simply cancelling a number of pornographic sites on their computer.

Instead of workers utilizing the internet to maximize the effectiveness of their respective jobs, most of them hunch over their computers staring at nude pictures of members of the opposite sex. One wonders what sort of citizens they are to be when they leave their workplaces and infiltrate into different societies.

In regards to morality, our humble nation, The Warm Heart of Africa, is heading towards a horrible ‘head-on collision’ unless change is effected immediately.

Most youths who visit cyber cafés have their sole intentions of viewing erotic images or movies from the web. They also desire to interact sexually with members of the opposite through the web.

Now there is Facebook. The social cite which connects people from different parts of the world has become a place where youths think they can express their sexual desires and meet people whom they can interact with sexually.

Steve Gallagher continues to explain: “For many, the powerful human drive for sex becomes the overriding passion of life. Kept in its proper place, sex is a marvelous means for a married couple to express their love to each other. However, when a person begins to indulge in some form of illicit sex, this passion can quickly get out of control.”

This is vindicated by different pornographic scandals that have taken place right here in Malawi. There are many examples of pornographic scandals that should obviously have caught the eye of stakeholders that advocate for high levels of morality only to be left underlying.

In most cases of pornography, men are the ones who mostly appear to ‘institute’ everything due to the Malawian tradition that a woman can rarely propose to a man. This is argued against the background of the fact that women are mostly the ones who entice and lure men. Coupled with the nude pictures of women which addicted men may view on their ‘screens’ is the skinny dressing of most contemporary women.

While a man will go out during hot weather putting on a short and a vest, a girl will find an opportunity of exposing herself by putting on ‘classy’ clothes like low-cut blouses which, as if the fact that they are low-cut is not enough harm already, do not even cover up the navel. They will also put on skimpy jeans or miniskirts that barely cover their thighs.

Nowadays, most young girls simply understand that if they have to be noticed (by men, of course) they have to be scantly dressed. Now, a man who might have spent a lot of time thinking of how to act out his lust will immediately ‘pounce’ on the scantly dressed girl who will rarely ‘protest’. Here, the man himself is to blame as much as is the girl after they succeed in sexualizing our culture for it really takes two to tangle.

To another extent, it appears sexual captivity has undoubtedly affected different socio-economic and ethnic groups in Malawi. The idea of a person engaging in illicit sex being an immoral human being is fast fading into oblivion. In fact, the very same people who are sexualizing our culture are accorded so much respect because they are seen to be ‘men or women enough’.

The duty of laws appears to be non-existent. The fact that there are no direct laws to govern issues of internet pornography also contributes towards the sexualizing of our culture.

The only clear laws that are there govern the distribution of pornographic materials not the ‘shooting’, hence it appears there are no defined punishments to mete on pornographic actors. This is the government’s worst undoing.

The obvious reason for the absence of the laws is that government never thought incidents of pornography would have Malawians themselves directly involved. And they had to wait at least for things to get out of hand, which is indeed happening now. No one knows which pornographic scandal is going to be let out next after the one which was reported in the Weekend Times of last Friday.

Uthenga woduka

2010-10-08T16:23:00.001+02:00

Chikondi chawo chitafika pamponda chimera, Chiwale ndi Maggie adayamba kumatumizirana timauthenga ta pa lamya todzidzimutsana komanso toyamba ngati tomvetsa kuwawa koma tokhala tachikondi chakumapeto kwake. Izi zidachitika kwa kanthawi, moti zidasuluka mphamvu yake.

Timauthenga take timakhala monga: “Pepa mzanga, ndati ndikudziwitse kuti ubwenzi wathu tiuyimitse kaye chikukwa ndapeza mkazi wina wokongola ngati dzuwa. Undikhulukire poti ndakutayitsa nthawi yako. Mkaziyo ndi iweyo.”

Naye mkazi samachepera koma kulemba wake uthenga. “Ndidalota ndili kunyanja ndipo tinasangalala monga sitinasangalalepo. Ndinali ndi mwamuna amene panona ndayamba kumukonda molapitsa. Ndagwa naye m’chikondi chosaneneka….mwamunayo ndi iweyo.”

Timauthengati tidasiya kutumizidwa awiriwo atakhazikika pachikondi chawo. Kwa iwo, ino sidali nthawi yomadzivutitsa ndi timauthenga topanda pake pamene amadziwa kale kuti amanga banja posachedwapa.

Kukonzekera konse kwa ukwati kudayamba kuchikita ndipo zinthu zimaoneka kuti zimayenda bwino. Posachedwapa awiriwo amayenera kukhala bambo ndi mayi Chiwale.

“Mwana wathu woyamba akadzakhala wamkazi tidzampatsa dzina loti Patricia,” adayankhula choncho Maggie akucheza ndi Chiwale.

“Sungandichinye. Woyamba adzakhala wamwamuna. Ndidzampatsa dzina langa. Adzakhala wanzeru, wa machawi komanso adzatha kusankha mkazi wa bwino ngati bambo wake,” adayankha Chiwale uku akuyisisita nthiti yake paphewa. “Wopeza mkazi wapeza chinthu chabwino. Ine ndapeza mkazi ndipo ndapeza chinthu chabwino. Mkazi wabwino angampeze ndani? Mkazi wabwino ndampeza ine.”

“Ine ndinyadira zedi poti ndapeza mwamuna. Mtima wanga ukudumphadumpha ndi chimwemwe ngati mwana wa ng’ombe mkhola,” nayense Maggie adabwekera.

Kudangotsala tsiku limodzi kuti Maggie ndi Chiwale akamange woyera mkachisi komwe atakalandireko madalitso komanso malangizo ochokera kwa mtumiki ma Ambuye. Mkwati ndi mkwatibwi adali chimwemwe chokhachokha podziwa kuti nthawi imene amayiyembekezera ija yafika.

Chisangalalocho chidampangitsa Chiwale kuti akumbukirenso timauthenga tachibwana timene amatumizirana ubwenzi wawo utangoyamba kumene ndipo iye adaganiza zotumiza uthenga winanso wa pa lamya kuti amudzidzimutse mkazi wake.

“Choyamba ndipepese kuti ndinakubisira chinthu chimodzi chofunika kwambiri. Ine ndili ndi mkazi ndipo ukwati wa pakati pa ine ndi iwe sungathe kupitilira. Undikhululukire poti mkazi ndikunenayo ndi iweyo nthiti yanga,” adalemba uthengawo ndi kuwutumiza.

Zidali zodabwitsa mawa lake tsiku la ukwati kuwona kuti Naggie sakutulukira. Anthu atatsegula chitseko cha chipinda chake, adadzadzidwa ndi mantha kupeza thupi lake lili lende pa chingwe chomwe adadzimangilira nacho.

Pampando womwe udali pafubi ndi kama wake padali lamya ya m’manja pomwe padali uthenga umene Chiwale adawutumiza koma uthengawo udali woduka. Udangosiyira poti undikhulukire.

On increasing cases of abortion

2010-10-08T16:22:00.003+02:00

Human life has for times without number been put to some fatal test by human beings. In many circumstances, we have found ourselves debating on issues that deal directly with human life; with the debate centering on whether at some point in time, such life which was always described as sacred by the late Pope John Paul II should be terminated or not.

One topic which has drawn mixed reactions from different individuals and stakeholders is abortion. Up to now, it appears it is very difficult for global dwellers to reach a consensus and agree on one thing regarding abortion: whether it should be legalized or not.

And right here in Malawi, cases of women or girls procuring abortions continue disturbing the country’s values. The perpetrators are arrested, yes, but why does their arrests fail to be a deterrent to others with similar thoughts? Perhaps, it is because most women do not really understand that procuring an abortion is as good as committing murder.

Abortion is defined as a human action carried with the chief aim of preventing the continuation of a human life. This implies that by all means, abortion results in death of some sort.

Professionals in biological science unanimously agree that any organism which exhibits the seven traits of life which include metabolism, excitability, conductivity, contractility, differentiation, growth, and reproduction is living, and is living according to its own kind.

During each stage of development within the mother's body, the zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo, and fetus all exhibit these traits of life. The mere fact that because the intra-uterine organism is in a process of development and is unseen does not warrant the view that it does not possess life; life in accord with its nature, in this case human life.

Since the zygote possesses all of the seven traits of life, all biological scientists agree that life begins at conception. They identify this already objective fact of when life begins.

In fact, there is no other point at which life can begin. Whatever the circumstance, there is never any non-life stage that finally develops into a life-stage during a pregnancy. Such a concept is completely foreign to biological life. That which has life now or any other time had time from the very beginning.

In other words, it is an established scientific fact and a logical one as well that there is no other developmental stage in which life begins other than the moment of conception.

Whatever one's spiritual or unspiritual presuppositions may be, these biological facts cannot be denied by any person of sound reason. Human life is not definable in terms of stages of development. At all stages of development, human life is present. Therefore, destroying it at any of the stages is to destroy a human life, a living person.

“The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple, straightforward matter – the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals,” Argues Dr. Watson Bowes of the University of Colorado. His view is corroborated by Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, a Research Associate at Harvard Medical School who notes that it is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”

“Each of us has a unique beginning, the moment of conception. Our entire being is contained in the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) in the very first moment of fertilization.” This is noted by Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Genetics Professor at Rene Descartes University of Paris.

However, on the other hand, it may be unreasonable to rush to conclude that abortion is always completely wrong. There are some women who feel they have a good cause for performing abortions, especially in cases where they might have fallen pregnant after being raped. But still here, it is still the case that human life (which has to be protected whatever the case) is there.

So in this case as well it may only be reasonable to preserve human life since the sovereignty of life supersedes any other factors which may inspire an abortion.

It is true that children, especially babies, are expensive. They need clothes, food, diapers and many other things. But still that does not outdo the value of human life.

It does not take God or religion to determine that, just basic rationality. Children have no control over the personal and social lives of their parents at the time of their conception; consequently, they should not have to pay the ultimate price for someone else’s mistakes.

A child conceived in rape is still a child. A baby with health challenges is still human. Perhaps those who feel like aborting a baby because they did not conceive it voluntarily should consider keeping it until deliverance when they can let it out for adoption.

Religiously, the bible teaches us not to commit murder. God Himself is the source of life. Thus, to reject life is to reject the source of life and is to reject God, who is the very source and author of life.

Let abortion remain illegal whatever the circumstance. Ron Paul a U.S. Politician, astutely believes that a fetus is a human life, and that a fetus deserves the same legal protections afforded to all human beings. He observes that human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.

And Peter Singer, a Professor of Philosophy strongly believes that a fetus is a human life, and that a fetus deserves the same legal protections as everyone else. Thus abortion should remain illegal, at least here in Malawi. Human life should not be out to test by human beings.

BOMA LIUNIKENSO NDENDE M’DZIKO LINO

2010-10-08T16:20:00.003+02:00

Ndi chinthu chodziwikiratu kuti cholinga cha ndende m’dziko muno ndi kuonetsetsa kuti anthu amene alakwira malamulo a dziko lino athandizidwe kuti athe kusintha kuti tsiku lina asadzabwerezenso kuphwanya malamulowo. Cholinga cha ndende chenicheni sikuzunza akayidi kapena kuwaonongera tsogolo, koma kuwaphunzitsa makhalidwe abwino amene angakomere iwo eni ake komanso anthu onse amene ali nawo pafupi, ngakhalenso akutali.

Cholinga chinanso cha ndende ndi choti omangidwawo akhale ngati phunziro kwa ena amene angakhale ndi maganizo ofuna kuchita zinthu zina zolakwira malamulo kuti asadzachite chimodzimodzi. Ndi chifukwa chake nthawi zambiri oweruza milandu amakonda kunena kuti apereka chilango chotere kwa wolakwayo kuti likhale phunziro kwa enanso a maganizo aupandu.

Zaka zam’mbuyomu, boma lidakhazikitsa ndondomeko yosintha m’mene ndende za m’dziko muno zimakhalira. Komabe potengera ndi m’mene malipoti osiyanasiyana a m’mene ndende za m’dziko lino zilili, zikuoneka kuti kusinthako sikudafike penipeni pofunikapo.

Mbali yokhayo imene boma lachitapo kwakukulu ndi ku nkhani ya maphunziro m’ndende. Koma mbali ya ukhondo, zipinda zogona komanso madyedwe ikuoneka kuti siyidaunikidwe mokwanira mpaka pano.

Chifukwa cha chimenechi, zikumapezeka kuti akayidi ambiri amene amaona kuti amazunzika kwambiri kundendeko amakhala ndi maganizo ofuna kuthawa.

Nthawi ina yake m’mbuyomu, ndidali ndi mwayi wochezako ndi mneneri wa ndende m’dziko muno a Evance Sambe Phiri ndipo iwo adandifotokozerapo zina mwa zifukwa zimene zimapangitsa akayidi kuti azithawa m’ndende za mdziko muno. Iwo adanena kuti chifukwa china ndi kuchepa kwa asilikali oyang’anira akayidiwo.

Pali ndende zazikuluzikulu m’dziko muno zimene zimasunganso akayidi ambiri kuphatikizapo omangidwa pa milandu ikuluikulu monga yakupha. Akayidi otere nthawi zambiri amakhala ouma mtima ndipo maganizo aupandu samawatalikira. M’ndende zoterezi mumafunika kuti mukhale asilikali okwanira.

Kumbali ya asilikali’yi, zikuoneka kuti zinthu zikuyendako pang’ono polingalira kuti boma laphunzitsa ntchito asilikali enanso angapo; choncho vutoli lachepako.

Kugawo linanso, zikuoneka kuti ngakhale akayidi ena amasiya khalidwe loyipa akachoka kundende, ena ndi pamene amaonongekeratu ndi kukhala zigawenga zenizeni ngakhale kuti mwina adalowa m’ndendemo pa mulandu waung’ono.

Izi zimakhala chonchi makamaka chifukwa choti kundende kuja zimatheka kuti akayidi aja amangosakanikirana chifukwa cha kuchepa kwa zipinda zogona. M’maganizo mwanga, ndimaona ngati akayidi amayenera kukhala ndi zipinda zogona malinga ndi milandu imene adapalamula. Sizimachita bwino m’kayidi yemwe adabwera kundende chifukwa choba nkhuku kumagona chipinda chimodzi ndi m’kayidi yemwe adathyola banki ndi kuba ma miliyoni ankhaninkhani.

Boma limayenera kuchitapo kanthu pa m’mene zinthu m’ndende za m’dziko lino zilili. Pamene boma lili pakalikiliki kukonza zinthu ku gawo la apolisi, pamayeneranso kuunikira kwambiri gawo la zandende. Panopa apolisi akutha kugwira ntchito yawo bwino, chifukwa mwa zina, adawaonjezera magalimoto komanso kupititsa patsogolo njira zina zogwirira ntchito. Izi zikumapangitsa kuti olakwira malamulo ambiri azitha kumangidwa mosavuta.

Kumangidwaku kukutanthauza kuti ogwira ntchito mundendenso akumakhala ndi chintchito chochuluka choyang’anira akayidi. Choncho kupititsa patsogolo ntchito za polisi kumayenera kutanthauza kupititsanso patsogolo ntchito za ndende. Kusatero kuli ngati kutunga madzi ambiri pamene migolo yosungiramo ndi yochepa.

M’ndende mumafunikanso kuti muzikhala alangizi osiyanasiyana othandiza akayidi m’njira zosiyanasiyananso. Ndi bwino kuti ndende za m’dziko muno zili ndi abusa othandiza akayidi pa miyoyo yawo ya uzimu. Koma, pamayeneranso kukhalanso akatswiri enanso monga amene amatha kusanthula komanso kuunikira m’mene maganizo a munthu amayendera amene pachingerezi amawatcha kuti ma psychologist. Awawa angathe kuwapatsa akayidi malangizo abwino owathandiza kuti asamakhale ndi maganizo oyipa.

Boma liyenera kuchitapo kanthu pa nkhani zimene zakambidwazi, kuphatikizapo zinanso zambiri zimene sizingathe kukhuthulidwa chifukwa cha malo. Litatero, ukayidi wa m’bwerezabwereza ukhoza kuchepa

A PEEP INTO PETER MUTHARIKA'S ENDORSEMENT

2010-10-08T16:20:00.000+02:00

Presidential candidates are seldom selected from an anthology of low-profile politicians, neither are they picked from a collection of those politicians whose political futures are in their twilights. Most of them have an easy anointing from their supporters or whoever might have the power to do so, when they have already blazed the trail. Nevertheless, sometimes presidential candidates are pulled from the scraps of what was never universally accepted as the ideal category of leaders-to-be.

Those candidates who are hauled from dormant states are made to be accepted by the majority as the ideal ones through rigorous campaigns which are only aimed at brainwashing doubters. And hard tasks are usually there when the presidential candidate has been carted from nothing in the wake of lack of a proper alternative. But in the face of numerous alternatives, the candidate can be easily but rigorously sold out to the masses within the shortest possible time.

Bingu wa Mutharika had been there in politics before he became the second democratically elected president of Malawi; but he had never been popular. In fact, during the 1999 presidential elections, he was the least performer, savaging 22 073 of 2 978 885 total votes representing less than one percent of the total number of votes cast.

Yet, only five years later, he became the most powerful and popular citizen of Malawi. There was nothing peculiar about Bingu's success; only that it came out a little alarmingly such that it was generally agreed that some men are really blessed with convincing tongues which can soften even the hardest hearts.

The man who sold out Mutharika was constantly described as a political engineer by himself and his admires. And, to date, some Malawians still believe that his eloquence remains without parallel. Yet, others still believe that everything was possible because he had all the financial muscle to move across the length and breadth of this country, manipulating the minds of voters who quickly changed their stands and voted for Mutharika.

The campaign period - the period when Bingu was to be sold out - was small; apparently, too small for one to change the minds of Malawians, but after the elections, the period was proved to have been enough. It was within it that most Malawians got to like a man they had only known very little about only some few weeks ago. It became the historical campaign period in Malawi politics.

And cries from the civil society and other concerned stakeholders that Muluzi had unnecessarily used government machinery in campaigning for Bingu just became faint cries of agony whose impact got diluted by the overwhelming power of the government that finally got the mantle of this country.

Even though, the same government got so much into the business of ensuring corruption was a notion of the past - a thing it embraces to this day - it never prosecuted Muluzi for ushering it into power using 'illegal' ways. Thus, it may be just to intimate that even the current government can use government machinery to campaign for whoever it loves without the fear of facing prosecution in the end, due to the conviction that once they get into power, the new leader would in no way shoot themselves in the foot.

Peter Mutharika has now been endorsed by all the three regions as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate for the 2014 general elections. Government might resort to using all means at its disposal to sell him to the masses so that he is finally 'integrated' into the minds of Malawians so that they can finally like him. In fact, it appears the selling has almost established its roots. A week barely passes without the president's brother beamed on the country's sole television station, MBC.

Well, his beaming, for argument's sake, might not mean that he is being sold out to Malawians so that they get familiar with him; but can we loudly intimate that he is being beamed on TVM now and then because he is the only 'hectic' minister who is trying his utmost to make sure his ministry is the most efficient in Malawi? Maybe.

After all, DPP regional governor for the south Noel Masangwi has this to say about Peter's publicity: “Both the state and private media cover him as Justice Minister like any other minister is covered by the press.”

“We have seen it; Peter is given more publicity than the Vice President, who, in ranking, is above him. While in certain instances, the Vice President is only beamed on TVM during replays, Peter is given full live coverage, a thing which is rare for a mere minister. This could be a deliberate move aimed at promoting him while suppressing Honourable Joyce Banda.

“We cannot keep pretending that the VP is not being slowly removed from the list of popular people. She is a victim of politics of elimination, only that hers is a little systematic, such that she remains there in her position while being outside in practical politics,” observes a political commentator who did not want to be named.

Bingu has all along found nothing wrong with his brother vying for presidency - of course, indeed, there is nothing wrong, for he is a bonafide citizen of Malawi, and qualifies without any speck of doubt to contest as president. But, perhaps the hurdle might be whether Malawians will embrace the notion of having a former president's brother as the next president.

Some people can argue - and I do so as well - that if Peter contests, he will do so as a Malawian. This is a valid argument, but the brotherhood aspect remains so and out of everything else, it is the only thing that cannot be erased. Malawians will always have in their minds that a president's brother is contesting; they will rarely consider the other true aspect - that he is also a native Malawian, who is constitutionally legitimate to contest for any position, just like Bingu pointed out sometime back.

“Any candidate in DPP will have government machinery at their disposal, even if it is Peter. They will be popularized using all possible ways, and chances that they will be one of the favourites cannot be underestimated. But, perhaps, if the president's brother is to stand, then another approach of 'popularizing' him might be needed,” says Joseph Manda, a Zomba-based political commentator.

Manda says he has published research papers on the viability of Malawi ever embracing what he calls “dynasty in political positions, particularly the presidency” and has noted several times that Malawians will just need someone else as a presidential candidate, even for their favourite political party, not the current president's brother. Yet, now the writing is clear on the wall that Peter is the next DPP candidate.

When Muluzi anointed Bingu against the wishes of most, if not all, UDF senior members, it became apparent that he thought he would rule Malawi indirectly, a thing which keeps haunting him to this day. He had an alternative: his son Atupele would have been his target, but it appears he had read Malawians and had concluded that they would not be ready for the Muluzi dynasty.

In fact, if Atupele became the next UDF presidential candidate, after his father, there wouldn't be a wide gap between the affairs of the two. Well, this might be theoretically proved wrong, but the practical part of it would, perhaps vindicate the assumption. But, still, perhaps Muluzi excluded Atupele from his considered potential candidates because he knew Malawians would take it with a lot of reservations.

But, Bingu sees things differently; he is not Muluzi and, of course, they have very little in common. He thinks his brother Peter can run for any position, including that of presidency. Well, the president never said Peter 'should' run for any position, but only clarified that he was at liberty to do so as a Malawian, not necessarily as his brother.

But, oftentimes, such kinds of sentiments need to be scrutinized more than once, especially when they follow hot on the heels of related scenarios which but have initially been condemned by the same announcer of the sentiments. In essence, before Bingu made it clear that his brother was free to run for any position, there had been the issue of some DPP top members positioning themselves as the party's presidential candidates for the 2014 presidential race.

And Bingu had come out in the open to bash the ambitious party gurus for failing to concentrate on more urgent issues to do with the development of this country. The president's bashing shut the mouths of many, and of course, informed them that he might not consider them as the right presidential candidates for the party come the year of remembrance.

“The bashing might have been aimed at creating room for his brother to be 'popularized' without any hurdle. He might have thought that if a number of top DPP members continued positioning themselves for 2014, then his brother might have very little room for being made popular among the majority of voters. Of course, we need to be mindful of the fact that the ruling party would eventually hold a convention where the party's 2014 torchbearer would be elected,” a political scientist who chose not to be named replied in a questionnaire.

But, if history is anything to go by, it may be said without fear of contradiction that if Muluzi endorsed Bingu at the expense of numerous 'potential' members who had tirelessly supported him throughout his tenure of office - who had gone to the extent of supporting the former president's infamous third term bill - then there is nothing that can stop those who want to endorse Peter from disappointing numerous members of the ruling DPP who might have all along thought they would be the next DPP presidential candidate.

After all, in politics, sometimes the best way of progressing is by ignoring the cries of some who might deem your policies to be unwise. And, Peter's supporters may finally employ this notion and endorse the law professor for the ruling party's presidential candidate for 2014.

Furthermore, if history is to be applied in the current political situation (or is it the future political scenario?) and inferring from her low publicity, we may be drawn to assuming that Joyce Banda cannot be the next presidential candidate for the ruling party for 2014.

In fact, this has been the case since we attained our multiparty democracy: Muluzi was totally unwilling to let Justin Malewezi be the next president of Malawi; and Bingu reached the point of saying that his first second, Cassim Chilumpha, had resigned from his position constructively, something which might have been due to the fact that there was a sour relationship between the two. And, we cannot sit down and pretend that there is a totally cordial relationship between the president and his vice now.

What more with her removal as Goodwill Ambassador for Safe Motherhood. It partly substantiates the assumption that she might just be a victim of the 'popularizing of another' theory. So, if Joyce Banda appears to be systematically missing on the list of potential DPP candidates for 2014 - where, in fact, other top members appear to be missing, too - then we may be forgiven for concluding that the only one who is being 'popularized' most is the one who is present on the list. And, here is where the name of Peter Mutharika stands out.

And recently, delivering a lecture on Human Rights in the Great Hall at Chancellor College, Peter said something that implied he is sure he is going to run for presidency come 2014 - or was it just aimed at testing the waters, so that he should be aware whether or not he may be the right candidate?

“Peter explicitly said that he has big dreams for Malawi which he wants to be fulfilled ten years from now. Of course, any other well-wishing Malawians, especially one with some political power, can have dreams for this country, but then he went further to point out that Barak Obama would not have become president in the absence of the support which he received from university students. This is where we may conclude that he wants to stand as a presidential candidate. And the likely party for him is DPP,” notes James Munyapa, a third year student at the college.

Perhaps, it is just a hasty conclusion to point out that Peter mutharika's 'popularizing' has an underlying motive. Maybe, there is nothing behind it other than that it is emanating from the point that he is a very hectic minister who always wants to transform the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs from its dormant state to one full of activity.

But, then, can we convincingly say that he is the only hectic minister in the whole administration who is hard working? Are most of the things that he does more important than those that other ministers do, that he alone should be frequently given public media coverage when other ministers remain sidelines somewhere in the mist of publicity? Maybe.

And suppose he indeed becomes the next DPP presidential candidate, will all those DPP top members who struggled relentlessly with Bingu during his first tenure of office when he was faced with stiff opposition from the opposition, take it with smiling faces? Will they gladly support him? Won't they detach themselves from the party and rally together to form a new party?

And if they form a new party, will DPP's membership remain the same? Won't their admirers join them, thereby reducing the number of the ruling party's supporters? Or perhaps nothing like what has been presented here will ever happen. The writing on the wall might just have been erroneously read; perhaps Peter will never be the next DPP presidential candidate.

Council stops students’ peaceful march

2010-10-08T16:18:00.002+02:00

Even though President Bingu wa Mutharika has already assented to the controversial bill which has necessitated the change of the national flag, Chancellor College students still feel their voice should be heard, and in line with this, they agreed to hold a peaceful demonstration to make their stand known.

“We know that the president has already assented to the bill, but still we feel that our stand should be known. We are against the change, and we know our voice will reach somewhere,” said James Munyapa, a third year student at the college.

During a General Assembly convened in the Great Hall on the 29th of last month, the students agreed to march peacefully from the campus to present a petition to Zomba City Council. But their request for the peaceful march was rejected by the council.

In a memo dated 30th July 2010 addressed to the Speaker of the Students Union of Chancellor College (SUCC), copied to the Officer-in-Charge of Zomba Police Station, the city council said that it would be impossible for the students to hold the peaceful march.

“The council regrets to inform you that permission has not been granted for you to conduct such a march. Such being the case, you may consider seeking other legitimate avenues rather than marching,” said the memo which was signed by a Mr. Mussa G. Mwale for the council’s Chief Executive.

Responding to the memo, the SUCC speaker Francil Kaduya said the students would use other alternatives like a Press Release in the local newspapers to make their stand known.

“To others, our stand may not make sense, but we feel that the president can listen to our voice and other numerous voices of Malawians and may finally withdraw the assented bill. It does not necessarily mean that because the bill has already been assented to, then we should sit down and let things be; no, our stand needs to be known,” said the SUCC Speaker.

Asked why the students have taken such a long time to protest against the flag change, Kaduya said it was because they had been on holiday and had only opened four weeks ago.

In some parts of the country, the flag has already been erected while in other areas the old flag is still being used, meaning there are two different national flags flying at the same time in one country.

Mpasu: Out of prison walls

2010-10-08T16:17:00.002+02:00

Lives of politicians are rarely short of paradoxes and contradictions. Promises are made and never fulfilled; mistakes are made and never corrected, yet their versatile tongues worm through the hard hearts of humanity and finally win them. That is why politicians hardly ever have permanent enemies. At least, such is the case in Malawi.

Yet, sometimes in life, you never find everything that you wanted to achieve, even if you are a politician. And many other times, you sometimes find yourself getting something that you never anticipated. Some things just happen automatically and you are left wondering whether you are one of the most blessed or just one of the most cursed dwellers of the universe.

Some people have found themselves fiscally established out of the blue while others continue basking in the agony of poverty, and this is where it makes sense to argue that nature is the best controller of human progress.

Some have found themselves in prison when they least expected they would ever step their feet in such a place while others have found themselves totally free when they expected that the least they would get if lady luck smiled at their face would be a 5-year jail term. Such is life.

Such is what fully describes it. It brings in its course the expected and the unexpected, sometimes to test our souls. And for Sam Mpasu, the second test, perhaps was to harden his soul further. He had passed the first one, and hard luck brought him the next. He took it and has just completed its contents.

The correctional facility is the last place any sane individual would ever dream of living in. It is a place where sometimes, life itself seems to be a very useless affair. Even a two-week jail term may seem like eternity. This is in virtue of the fact that the place itself – at least in Malawi – is mostly designed to punish law-breakers, not necessarily to reform them.

However, the most disturbing irony of justice is that not all those who rob banks, shed innocent blood or receive bribes find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Sometimes they are not even brought anywhere near trial.

Yet, still on the other hand, there are others who find themselves in untold anguish, not because they broke the law, but because they failed to convince the judge that they did not break the law. Just like one American politician said, poverty is imprisonment it is own kind or imprisonment waiting to happen.

But sometimes even the most compassionate nuns fail to have any feeling of empathy for certain individuals who brutally shed the blood of their fellow human kind. When it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that they indeed did the offence they are being accused of, empathy leaves even those who sometimes extol the virtues of not playing the “eye for eye” game.

But for Mpasu, it seems empathy would fail to convict only a few individuals – in all truth and faithfulness. Nevertheless, justice superseded mercy and became a symbol of tormenting the former Speaker of the National Assembly.

After having been incarcerated for two years during the Kamuzu era, he has just finished a three-year jail term at Chichiri Prison for his involvement in the Fieldyork notebook scandal. While at Chichiri Prison, Mpasu was almost completely forgotten on the political scene. Yet, this was the time when, some would argue, he needed moral support most.

He did not deserve to be forgotten because his name has to always stand out in the history of Malawi just as those of many other Malawians who fought relentlessly for the introduction of multi-party politics. And, many people sometimes fail to accept that Mpasu really deserved the kind of agony that he has just undergone.

If what D.D. Phiri wrote in October last year is anything to go by, Mpasu was never supposed to be where he is just coming out from. He might have indeed abused his position as the honorable magistrate who convicted him at first observed, but the circumstances in which that abuse was done should have been the overriding decider.

“In its 1994 manifesto, UDF pledged to introduce free primary education in Malawi. When he won the presidency, Bakili Muluzi appointed Sam Mpasu as Minister of Education…. The minister of education was more anxious than most people that exercise books and pencils be made available in time, otherwise the free primary schooling programme was going to fail,” wrote Phiri in The Nation of October 13, 2009.

Mpasu took that task of ordering the materials himself and was subjected to pressure salesmanship, such that finally the government was forced to pay for the writing materials from Fieldyork much more than it could have paid if a local supplier was involved. These are the circumstances which fourteen years later landed the former minister into the correctional facility.

Yet, according to reports on corruption which different independent organizations, both local and international, published, it became clear that many more individuals, had engaged in corrupt practices at one point in time in the Muluzi administration. But, so far, only a few have been brought to book.

“Let us face the truth here: there was a high level of corruption in the Muluzi era. it appears to be a mockery to justice to see that many high-profile politicians who were presented several times as corrupt still walk free while Mpasu who made that blunder while considering the situation in which the forthcoming free primary education would be, was fighting for his life day in, day out at Chichiri Prison,” said one commentator on an online publication, soon after Mpasu was set free a few days ago.

Mpasu did quite a lot for this country. Justice might have indeed taken its course, but perhaps we should also consider what he did to Mother Malawi with a few other individuals who brought for us the multiparty democracy that we are enjoying today. This is not to say that Mpasu was right in his actions, but to a greater extent, natural justice would have forgiven him.

“It really pains to see a brilliant individual like Mpasu going to rot in prison just because he hastened to do things, when he can do something great to this country,” a concerned citizen was quoted as saying in one of our daily papers soon after Mpasu’s sentencing in 2008.

The concerned citizen’s sentiments were echoed by Phiri two years later who wrote: “Mercy is often greater than justice. It is admitted that Mpasu’s handling of the exercise book programme was reckless and was an abuse of office. However, this bright man would be more useful to the country if he were pardoned for the big mistake he made.

“…Mpasu did not steal and did not accept bribes. He just failed to use normal channels of awarding contracts. Mpasu, the man of intellectual and literary gifts, deserves public forgiveness.”

But Mpasu was never pardoned; he finished his jail term which had initially been ‘pegged’ at six years, and got reduced to three years. During the time when he was in the correctional facility, prisoners were being pardoned, and finally walked to freedom, but be never did. His only hope was in life itself; life was going to be the most meaningful thing at the end of his painful journey.

Perhaps that is why Albert Einstein said that all of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. Yet, oftentimes, we fail to sit back and appreciate the fact that reason and honest good have little influence in the political field.

Who knows, so we think, maybe the bits of our reason and honest good will finally produce a bunch that will exert some influence in the political field. But, for Mpasu many people fought, only that the targeted ear chose not to listen.

Until his second incarceration, Mpasu was known to many as a very influential politician who never minced words where he thought some truth that needed to be known was being trumped beneath some deceitful desires of some individuals. Perhaps, this was because he started politics way back during his days at Chancellor College where he once served as chairman of the students union.

The former president, father and founder of Malawi, the late Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda saw him to be a threat, and subsequently incarcerated him for two years from 1975 to 1977. He was a political prisoner, and at least for him, such painful memories remain fresh in Political Prisoner 3/37, his prison autobiography in which he recapitulates life behind the bars.

In the book, he condemns his detention without trial where he writes: “Imprisonment-without-trial, in my view, was something which was so manifestly unjust that even primitive tribes did not use it. At least, no anthropologist had told me that there was a primitive tribe anywhere in the world which had prisons or used them to lock innocent people.”

And after being sent to prison in 2008, he still felt he was a political prisoner, because of his fervent opposition to Bingu wa Mutharika’s policies which he deemed not good. The only difference, to him, was that now it was imprisonment after trial.

“In 1975 I was a victim of imprisonment without trial. I am not surprised this time also. Every oppressive government uses state institutions to victimise its opponents. I am not the first politician to go to jail,” he was quoted as saying.

One ironic thing with Mpasu is that as he was serving as the UDF’s spokesman, a position which he last held before being sent into the jaws of agony, he was the centre of public attention when he was the first to point out that Muluzi’s chances of winning in the last general elections were very slim. This was a time when the former head of state was craving for another go despite having already served this country as the first citizen for the constitutional maximum period of two consecutive terms.

Mpasu could not mince words – and that is what he has always been known for. He had no time to play bootlicking politics. To him, the very truth had to be articulated the moment it was needful, without caring much about whether it would cost him anything.

Such is the man who has languished behind the bars of Chichiri Maximum Prison for three years.

There is another odd thing about Mpasu’s Fieldyork conviction and subsequent sentencing: only a few people appeared to sympathize with him. Even the party which he had been its spokesperson before he was stripped of the position, seemed not to commiserate with his welfare, perhaps because he had somehow turned against it in his pursuit for truth, justice and genuine democracy in the party.

His former boss Muluzi did not publicly express any sorrow at Mpasu’s conviction. Obviously, this was because when he was the spokesperson of the UDF, Mpasu made it clear that Malawi’s constitution barred Muluzi from standing as a presidential candidate since he had already served two terms in office.

“The constitution, specifically in Section 83, Subsection three, says that a president or a vice president will serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. There is no dispute about that because he serves a maximum of two consecutive terms, but the legal minds seem to have different interpretations of that,” Mpasu was quoted as saying by Voice of America.

That was obviously some sort of peculiar confidence, because it was a time when almost every top member of the UDF could not get the guts to utter anything that would displease the former head of state, because the party was being taken as his personal estate.

But then afterwards, no one seemed to appreciate Mpasu’s courage, such that after his conviction, his name almost got completely thrust in the mist of history. But now, he is back home; he is back where he belongs.

And amidst all questions which rock us, one stands out as it cries for a perfect answer: Was Mpasu and a few other individuals who got convicted the only ones from the Muluzi administration who were eligible of being convicted? Maybe, this question may not matter anymore now; perhaps, the greatest fight Mpasu has fought is to get out of prison. Anything else might be meaningless now.

mALAWI'S pITIFUL pROGRESS

2010-10-04T21:07:00.000+02:00

Praises lavished on the dead might not have any meaning apart from being the commonplace types of eulogies which most dead people receive. But in certain instances, it is impossible to avoid praising someone who has died.

Death brings foes together, and it even invites peculiar praises. This is a common phenomenon about it in general, but about extraordinary men, death only marks the inauguration of an era of remembrance.

There are individuals who continue being praised even though they have spent decades and decades in their graves. The mound of earth beneath which their bones lie might be negligible today, but their impacts among the human race continue being monumental.

Their short lives fail to be overshadowed by their long periods which they have been dead. And this is when death fails to have dominion.

Individuals like Mahatma Gandhi, Plato, Martin Luther Jnr (the politician), Martin Luther the theologian and many others continue having their impacts greatly felt in our lives today. Their wisdom has remained useful with the passage of time and their ideas continue shaping our lives in one way or another.

Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s first president is another individual who can never be removed from the list of remembrance.

“Dr. Banda is one such individual who is very central to the history of Malawi. His contributions will continue being felt as long as we live,” says Edison Njembe, a third year history student at Chancellor College.

Banda’s death was full of paradoxes and contradictions. It brought with it different explanations of his life which included both praises and rebukes, because he was a rare character. Perhaps, good men are those whose legacy should have such contradictions.

He passed on thirteen years ago, but a lot of information about him continues coming out. In his speech to members of the History Society of Chancellor College some time back, Kings Phiri, a professor of history, intimated that a lot of information regarding Dr. Banda’s life will remain hidden in the mist of time if those individuals who were so close to him, and obviously know something about the former leader which no one else might know, die without revealing what they know.

“There is a lot of information about Dr Banda that remains hidden somewhere because those who know it are unwilling to give it out,” said Phiri.

When it comes to Dr. Banda’s closest confidantes, the names of John Tembo and Mama Tamanda Kadzamira immediately invade the minds of many Malawians. These individuals somehow hold a good chunk of our history, and should they die without revealing it, ours will remain a country with a cloudy history.

It was known, or at least believed, among most Malawians that Dr. Banda never sired any child in his lifetime, even though he had the pleasure of living in sin with Kadzamira for the rest of his life after returning (or coming) to Malawi from Scotland.

And now one Jimu Jumani Johansson is in town claiming that Dr. Banda is his father and therefore he wants to change his name so that the name Kamuzu Banda should be reflected in it.

Well, it might indeed sound ridiculous that someone just springs from ‘nowhere’ and claims that he is the former dictator’s son. Yet, on the other hand, one fails to understand where the young man might have gotten all the courage from.

There is something that gives him confidence, and some people know it, only that they are just economical with the truth.

What more with Focus Gwede one of Dr Banda’s close confidante revealing that he saw the former president’s three children with one of them being Jumani.

Jumani’s ‘mother’ Mirriam Kaunda was recently reported to have bashed Jumani’s claims of being Kamuzu’s son. But, a relative of hers was also previously quoted as saying that in 1973, the year when Jumani was born, some strange things happened in the country to the extent that Kaunda had to go and live somewhere else for some time. There could be more to that than what the relative revealed.

A lot has been said about Jumani, with some people branding him someone out of his mind while others argue that there could be a speck of truth in his claims. But such issues like those of children’s paternity usually need something more than “mere tantrums and palliatives” (to borrow Hon. Nicholas Dausi’s cliché) to be solved.

Proof in such issues seldom comes from the justice that our courts of law offer. On the other hand, it can only be realized after a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) test is carried.

And since this is what Jumani is fighting for, why don’t we give him the benefit of the doubt so as to clear the mist. After all, the young man said that he is ready to sponsor the test. Should things fail to work to his expectations, he is going to be the loser and no one else. It appears he knows something, for such an issue cannot spring from nothingness.

“Jumani wants to trace his roots, and he is confident the former head of state is his father. He is ready for a DNA test, which can be the only proof of his roots. Let him do it, why deny him the chance?” said an anonymous citizen in this publication sometime back.

After all, why isn’t there his father’s name on his birth certificate? What is the explanation for his ‘mother’s’ absence in 1973 when he was born? If his father is indeed a Malawian of Indian descent as his ‘mother’ claims, why wasn’t the so-called father’s name reflected on the birth certificate?

Perhaps, the way things are progressing, the path towards discovering the truth will soon be found. Maybe, we will no longer be debating on whether or not Jumani is indeed Kamuzu’s son.

Yet, it appears clearing the mist regarding Jumani’s paternity will just be another gateway to more claims from more people that they are Dr Banda’s children.

“If what Focus Gwede said is anything to go by, more people are likely to come out claiming to be the former head of state’s children. This is a huge possibility,” said Joseph Manda, a Zomba-based political commentator.

But in the face of whatever happens after now, the fact remains that ours will remain a country with a blurred history until some individuals who possess information that would be very significant to the whole country come out in the open and declare what they know so that Malawi can have a clear shape.

And in the case of the confusion surrounding Jumani’s issue, it appears it is only a DNA test which can put the matter to rest, otherwise, it appears there can never be a convincing explanation of the truth. Such matters are seldom sorted out in courts of law.

nKHONYA yOBWEZERA

2010-10-04T21:04:00.001+02:00

Mphunzitsi wamkulu pa sukulu ya Chandimana atamuyitanira Penjani m’kachipinda komatako, iye adadziwiratu kuti patelera. M’kachipindamo simudali moti mwana wa sukulu kulowamo chisawawa. Penjani adayesa kusinkhasinkha kuti mwina ubongo wake ungathe kukumbukira tsiku limene adachita chinachake cholakwika koma sadathe kukumbukira.

Mkachipindamo mphunzitsi wa mkulu uja komanso mphunzitsi wina yemwe adali ndi udindo woonesetsa kuti ana pasekondale ya Chandimana amakhala a makhalidwe abwino nthawi zonse.

“Takuyitana muno ndi cholinga chimodzi ndipo tikukupempha kuti ukhale womasuka,” adayamba choncho mphunzitsi wa mkulu uja, nkhope yake ikunyezimira ndi ukali. “Tikufuna iwe ufotokoze mosabisa chimene ukudziwa pa nkhani yozunza ana a folomu wani.”

“Ine ndisaname, sindikudziwapo kanthu,” adayankha Penjani. “Ine chibwerereni pasukulu pano, sindidayambe ndazunzapo mwana wa folomu wani. Ndikudabwa kuti amene wakuuzaniyo amaganiza chiyani,” adadandaula Penjani.

“Ife sitidanene kuti umazunza ana ndiwe koma timangofuna kuti unene chimene ukudziwapo. Pano ndiye wangodzipachika wekha. Ukuona, palibe chinsinsi padziko la pansi. Ndiye ife titani poti waziyang’anitsa wekha ng’ombe ngolo? Tifunenso umboni wina?” adayankhula mtima uli zii.

Penjani adayesa umu ndi umo kuti afotokoze bwinobwino koma sadapatsidwe mwayi wotere. Zoyankhula zake zimangolowera khutu lina la mphunzitsi wamkuluyo n’kutulukira khutu lina.

Mphunzitsi wina uja adayesesa kumuuza mzakeyo kuti angompatsako mpata mwana wasukuluyo kuti afotokoze mbali yake koma mawu ake sadaphule kanthu. Adatemetsa nkhwangwa pamwala. Adali wolimba mtima ngati wofula agalu. Ndipo pomaliza penipeni, Penjani adalandira kalata yomudziwitsa kuti wachotsedwa sukulu.

“Koma mukadangondipatsa mpata woti ndifotokoze mbali yanga…” Penjani amadziwa kuti mwana akachotsedwa sukulu pa Chandimana, sizimatheka kuti abwererenso. Adakhetsa misozi ngati mwana wopsa ndi moto.

“Choka. Tuluka muno. Chitsiru chimaphwasula tsogolo lake ndi manja ake,” adanena monyogodola mphunzitsi wogwirizira udindo uja.

“Koma aphunzitsi, zoona mungangondichotsa sukulu popanda chifukwa chenicheni. Bwanji mukadandiuza mwana yemwe ndinamuzunza.”

Pasukulu ya Chandimana, boma lidalamula kuti mufolomu ina iliyonse musamapitirire ana makumi asanu ndi atatu. Ndipo mphunzitsi wamkuluyo amangochotsa ana pasukulupo pa milandu yosadziwika bwino. Akatero amabweretsa ena mwachinyengo.

Penjani ataganiza zoti akawauze makolo ake, mutu wake udakula ngati wa kadzidzi. Adagwidwa ndi mantha ngati fisi wocheredwa m’khola la mbuzi. Iye amadziwa kuti amayenera kuchitapo kanthu.

Ataganiza njira iyi ndi iyo yobwezera chipongwecho adangoganiza zopita ku ofesi ya wothandiza anthu olakwiridwa m’njira zosiyanasiyana. Nkhani yonse itaunikidwa, pamapeto pake mphunzitsi uja adapezeka wolakwa.

Mlandu wa mphunzitsiyo wamukuluyo udakazengedwa ku bwalo la milandu la Kanyenjere kumene woweruza adamulamula mphunzitsi wa ziphuphuyo kuti akakhale ku ndende zaka zisanu. Ntchoto yake idatheranso pompo pamene ana ochotsedwa mwachinyengo aja adabwezeretsedwa

aDAPHETSA mKAZI wAKE

2010-10-04T21:01:00.002+02:00

Pamaliropo padadza khwimbi la anthu malinga ndi kuti womwalirayo adali nthithi yake ya munthu amene adali atatchuka kotheratu kamba ka nzeru zake zozizwitsa zimene zidasintha zinthu zambiri za kayendetsedwe ka ndale ngakhale dziko limene. Mkuluyo amadziwika ndi dzina loti Nosisye. Iyeyo adafika m’dziko la Kadole zaka zisanu zapitazo kuchokera ku Ulaya komwe adakachita maphunziro ake a kayendetsedwe kabwino ka ndale.

Chinanso chimene chidapangitsa kuti pasiwapo padze chimunthu chotere chidali njira imene malemuyo adatsekera maso ake kwamuyaya. Ali moyo, adali mkazi woneneperako, wakuda mokongola muja, komanso nkhope yake nthawi zambiri imakhala yansangala. Palibe munthu ngakhale m’modzi yemwe akadatha kuganizira kuti m’zimayi wotereyo angathe kuganiza zochotsa moyo wake poganizira kuti m’banja mwake mumaoneka kuti mumanunkhira mtendere wokhawokha.

Anthu ambiri amayembekezera kuti Nosisye ndi amene angafotokoze zambiri popeza wotsamira mkonoyo adali mkazi wake ndipo iye amayenera kudziwa ngati panali vuto lina lililonse. Koma mwamuna woferedwayo naye amaoneka kuti adali mum’dima pankhani ya chomwe chidatsitsa dzaye. Amaoneka kuti samadziwapo kanthu pa imfa yadzidzidzi ya nthithi yakeyo.

Nawo ana ake awiri, mtsikana wa zaka khumi ndi mnyamata wa zaka zisanu ndi ziwiri amangokhetsa misodzi, osadziwa chifukwa chimene mayi wawo wokondedwa adaganiza zodzitengera yekha kulichete.

“Ndi chinthu chodabwitsa kwambiri. Ngati akudzikhwizinga anamageya anyezi amene anthu ambiri timawaona ngati ndi amene ali pamtendere wokwanira, kuli bwanji akapopa ngolo ife? Tidzimangirira mpaka kasanu konse,” mnyamata wina wake yemwe amaotha moto ndi mzake pangodya ya nyumba adayankhula kwa mzakeyo.

Mnyamatayo mano ake adali othimbirira ngati kuti adali atatha mvula zingapo osawathira madzi ndipo m’mutu mwake m’maoneka ngati kuti adali atathiramo dothi, kuli kuda.

“Choseketsa kapena kuti chodabwitsa ndi moyo wamunthu n’chonena kuti palibe ngakhale m’modzi yemwe angalote zobisika kuseri kwa mtima wam’zake. Mtima wa m’zako ndi tsidya lina. Iwe ndi ine timachezera limodzi, timadyera limodzi, timabera limodzi koma sindidziwa zakunsi kwa mtima wako, nawenso sudziwa za kuseri kwa mtima wanga. N’kutheka kuti timangopangira zinthu limodzi, osadziwa kuti tikusungirana kampeni kumphasa,” adapherapo mphongo mzakeyo yemwe amamwaza maso ake uku ndi uku kuopa kuti wina wake angamumvere zimene amakambazo.

Nthawi yoyika chitanda m’manda itakwana abusa adasendera pafupi ndi dzenjelo nati: “Pakuti choumbidwa chonse chidzapasuka tsiku lina, ino ndi nthawi yakupasuka kwa malemuwa. Ngakhale Paulo atalimbana nako kulimbana kwabwino, adadziwa kuti nthawi yakupasuka kwake yafika. Choncho ine ndinena kuti dothi ku dothi; fumbi ku fumbi. Woweruza ndiye Namalenga yekha amene ali wamphamvu zopanda malire. Mzimu wa malemu Mayi Nosisye uutse mum’tendere.” Atatero abusawo, adzukulu adakwilira dzenje lija mwamphamvu.

Mwambo wonse utatha, Nosisye pamodzi ndi ana ake awiri aja kuphatikizapo achibale komanso anthu ena adabwerera kusiwa kuja. Achibale ena adali atangofika kumene ndipo Nosisye amayenera kuwafotokozera ulendo umene udamufikitsa mkazi wake pamapeto pa moyo wake.

Atsibweni ake a malemu atamva m’mene mdzukulu wawo adatsekera chitseko cha moyo wake adali okhuzidwa kolapitsa ndipo sadaoneke kuti amamvetsa. “Mukuti basi mudangowapeza m’chipinda ali lende pachingwe?” adamufunsa Nosisye mosakhulupilira.

“Achipatala atsimikizadi kuti amwalira chifukwa cha chingwe chomwe chidampana pakhosi,” adayankha choncho mwamuna wamasiyeyo.

“Sadasiye uthenga wina uliwonse papepala?”

“Mwina n’kutheka kuti adausiya koma sindidauwone.” Pano zidangokhala ngati kuti nkhani yonse yasanduka mlandu womwe wozengedwa adali Nosisye pamene woweruza komanso wodandaula adali mtsibweni wa malemu uja.

Ataona kuti nkhani ikunka nakulirakulirabe, Nosisye adangoganiza zomulowetsa mpongozi wakeyo m’chipinda momwe nthithi yake idapumira mphweya wotsiriza. Atafika m’menemo mpongozi uja adamwaza maso ake m’chipinda chonse mpaka adaona pepala loyera lomwe lidalembedwa pafupifupi theka lake. Pepalalo lidali pamwamba pa mulu wamabuku ndipo ndi kusokonokera ndi imfa yadzidzidzi ya mkazi wake, Nosisye sakadatha kuliwona poyamba pompaja.

Adalitenga pepala lija nayamba kuwerenga motsitsa mawu. Papepalalo malemu Mayi Nosisye adaulula kuti adaganiza zochotsa moyo wake chifukwa kuchipatala komwe adapita kukayezetsa magazi adakampezako ndi kachirombo koyambitsa matenda a Edzi.

Ataganizira m’mene mkazi wake adatengera matendawo, Nosisye adakhetsa misozi mwakachetechete. Adaganizira za masiku osiyanasiyana omwe iyeyo adatanganidwa ndi misonkhano yandale mpaka kufika pamlingo wosagona kunyumba kwake kwa miyezi ingapo.

Adakumbukira nthawi imene mkazi wake adamuyimbira lamya kopitirira kasanu kumupempha kuti angopeza nthawi yochepa pang’ono kuti adzathe kuchezera limodzi monga banja. Adadziwa kuti ngakhale iyeyo mwini wake amadzisamalira kumene amapangitsa misonkhano yake, n’kutheka kuti mkazi wake amakanika kupilira.

Penapake, Nosisye adazidzudzula yekha kuti adatengapo gawo pa imfa ya mkazi wakeyo koma popeza madzi akatayika sawoleka, akadatani.

Adamfotokozera mpongozi wake zonse mosapsyatira mawu. “Mayo ine! Ndaphetsa mkazi wanga ine,” adafuula mokweza ndipo mpongozi wakeyo adangopukusa mutu wake wopanda nyanga akukhetsa misozi yosaneneka.

iN aN eRA oF sEXUAL iMMORALITY?

2010-10-04T21:00:00.000+02:00

In his book titled ‘At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry’, Steve Gallagher writes and I quote: “Unless you are at least 50-years-old you probably do not know what it is to live in a culture that isn’t obsessed with sex. Prior to the late 60’s, illicit sex was only confined to the seedy underworld or simply non-existent. It was rare for a man watching TV to come across anything racier than a couple kissing or a vague suggesting comment. Pornography addiction amounted to nothing more than a playboy magazine hidden under the bed.”

Steve wrote this with reference to the American society. However, if we are to apply this in the Malawi setting, we may say “at the beginning the second millennium” instead of “prior to the late 60’s” because issues of sex and pornography rocked Malawian societies first during the period.

Now, it appears we are living in the deep recesses of a dangerously sexualized society; a society that has put sex as the overriding passion of human survival. It is a society that has completely lost its values. Human wisdom has been utterly poisoned and those who advocate for a return to our roots lack all conviction.

You will be shocked to the core should you ‘accidentally’ bump into someone’s office without knocking. You will find them busy minimizing or simply cancelling a number of pornographic sites on their computer.

Instead of workers utilizing the internet to maximize the effectiveness of their respective jobs, most of them hunch over their computers staring at nude pictures of members of the opposite sex. One wonders what sort of citizens they are to be when they leave their workplaces and infiltrate into different societies.

In regards to morality, our humble nation, The Warm Heart of Africa, is heading towards a horrible ‘head-on collision’ unless change is effected immediately.

Most youths who visit cyber cafés have their sole intentions of viewing erotic images or movies from the web. They also desire to interact sexually with members of the opposite through the web.

Now there is Facebook. The social cite which connects people from different parts of the world has become a place where youths think they can express their sexual desires and meet people whom they can interact with sexually.

Steve Gallagher continues to explain: “For many, the powerful human drive for sex becomes the overriding passion of life. Kept in its proper place, sex is a marvelous means for a married couple to express their love to each other. However, when a person begins to indulge in some form of illicit sex, this passion can quickly get out of control.”

This is vindicated by different pornographic scandals that have taken place right here in Malawi. There are many examples of pornographic scandals that should obviously have caught the eye of stakeholders that advocate for high levels of morality only to be left underlying.

In most cases of pornography, men are the ones who mostly appear to ‘institute’ everything due to the Malawian tradition that a woman can rarely propose to a man. This is argued against the background of the fact that women are mostly the ones who entice and lure men. Coupled with the nude pictures of women which addicted men may view on their ‘screens’ is the skinny dressing of most contemporary women.

While a man will go out during hot weather putting on a short and a vest, a girl will find an opportunity of exposing herself by putting on ‘classy’ clothes like low-cut blouses which, as if the fact that they are low-cut is not enough harm already, do not even cover up the navel. They will also put on skimpy jeans or miniskirts that barely cover their thighs.

Nowadays, most young girls simply understand that if they have to be noticed (by men, of course) they have to be scantly dressed. Now, a man who might have spent a lot of time thinking of how to act out his lust will immediately ‘pounce’ on the scantly dressed girl who will rarely ‘protest’. Here, the man himself is to blame as much as is the girl after they succeed in sexualizing our culture for it really takes two to tangle.

To another extent, it appears sexual captivity has undoubtedly affected different socio-economic and ethnic groups in Malawi. The idea of a person engaging in illicit sex being an immoral human being is fast fading into oblivion. In fact, the very same people who are sexualizing our culture are accorded so much respect because they are seen to be ‘men or women enough’.

The duty of laws appears to be non-existent. The fact that there are no direct laws to govern issues of internet pornography also contributes towards the sexualizing of our culture.

The only clear laws that are there govern the distribution of pornographic materials not the ‘shooting’, hence it appears there are no defined punishments to mete on pornographic actors. This is the government’s worst undoing.

The obvious reason for the absence of the laws is that government never thought incidents of pornography would have Malawians themselves directly involved. And they had to wait at least for things to get out of hand, which is indeed happening now. No one knows which pornographic scandal is going to be let out next after the one which was reported in the Weekend Times of last Friday.

fOREIGNISM iN mALAWIAN lANGUAGES

2010-10-04T20:56:00.001+02:00

The process of translating texts from one language to another is something that gives headaches to all translators, whether amateurs of professionals. In Malawi, writers and broadcasters and all types of translators are mostly left with hard tasks of doing translations on their own and these tasks usually get even tougher in this age when technology is growing at an increasingly swift rate.

Searching for ‘very’ relevant translations usually becomes a hectic task and translators, especially those who do such a task impromptu, opt for whatever sort of translation even if it does not necessarily reflect the concept from the source language.

It is not only translators who face problems concerned with foreignism, but all native speakers of different languages. It beats any sound mind to think of how certain words that have been there from time immemorial continue bearing the foreign terminologies.

For instance, no Malawian language, not even the so-called national language, Chichewa, has native terminologies for English words like ‘degree’, ‘school’ and many more. It goes without saying that these words have been there for hundreds of years, yet we continue embracing them in their alien terminologies.

And one wonders why the superiority of our languages lies, if we continue embracing terminologies borrowed from foreign languages. Should we conclude that there is nothing that can be done about this “foreign language intrusion”?

It is however, understandable when it comes to certain scientific terms which continue being invented. But the fear is that if there are no terminologies for some of these words whose concepts have been and continue being applied in our local understanding, then there is nothing promising about the scientific terminologies.

When you listen to broadcasts in Chichewa and other local languages on the radio, you are assured of coming across words like ‘majisitiliti’ and suchlike. This substantiates the fact that English continues being a dominant language. And this becomes more unattractive when some terminologies which are being borrowed from English have their own respective translations in local languages.

On the other hand, this careless borrowing of words from other foreign languages into our native languages becomes a very big problem when the readers or those listening to broadcasts in the native languages do not know anything in the foreign language. They are left in suspense and subsequently fail to understand what is being said despite the fact that it is claimed to be in their (the audience’s) native language.

In countries like Tanzania, the department concerned with Language Research works tirelessly to come up with new terminologies for new inventions. Immediately a new word is effected, it is announced on the national radio and other media so that it can start being used. That is why in Kiswahili, Tanzania’s national language, you will find perfect translations for words like triangle, angle and suchlike.

This may show how serious the government of Tanzania and other governments that do the same thing are about their native languages. Of course, in Malawi there are too many languages, but Chichewa, being our national language needs to be looked into in terms of the use of foreign terminologies in it.

The centre for language research in Malawi can do something about the continuous use of foreign languages in our native languages, especially Chichewa. However, this will depend on whether or not it is adequately funded. It will also depend on the goodwill of those concerned. We need to be proud of our native languages.

wHY mOST cENTRAL gOVTS fEAR lOCAL pOLLS

2010-10-04T20:54:00.001+02:00

WHY MOST CENTRAL GOVTS FEAR LOCAL GOVTS

The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has finally announced that local polls will not be held on November 23, as initially planned, and the reasons given for the postponement might make sense. But, perhaps, there is something beyond all what is there on the surface. Maybe, there is something about Local Governments which most Central Governments fear, for it is not in Malawi alone where local polls have been treated such inconsiderately.

Malawi’s first democratic government showed some interest in local polls by strengthening local government institutions, but the elections were only held six years later. With the current administration, after the same six years, our final ray of hope was banked on the president and the Electoral Commission.

But, even if these local polls were to be held this year in November as per the earlier announcement, it seems their essence would be limited due to the little powers that the Local-Governments-to-be have finally been given.

Until towards the end of last year, there was little indication that Malawi would hold local elections, since there were no clear preparations for the costly event from concerned stakeholders. And the most peculiar thing remained that these stakeholders kept shifting the ball from one court into another, perhaps with the aim of letting others be held responsible for failure to hold the much needed elections, should they not be held – which they did.

And finally, the truth was told; the meaning of the unwillingness on the part of stakeholders clearly got vindicated by Parliament’s decision to pass an amended bill which now gives the president, in collaboration with the Electoral Commission, powers to decide on the date of the polls.

In line with the amended provision, the date was finally set and Malawians were eager to choose their local representatives. But now, it has been announced that the polls will not be there; and perhaps will never be there.

There is something peculiar about how Local Government elections are viewed in most African countries, Malawi inclusive. Most democratic governments in Africa are not utterly committed to holding these elections, and if at all they hold the elections, the state tries its utmost to suppress the powers of the Local Governments. And in the case of Malawi, since we attained our multiparty democracy some fifteen years ago or so, Local Government polls have only been held once – in 2000.

Asiyati Chiweza, a lecturer in Public and Administrative Studies at Chancellor College, writing in a book titled Government and Politics in Malawi, observes that: “Due to political changes that took place in 1994, the new Malawi government made the strengthening of Local Government institutions as a priority.”

But the fact that this first democratic government held the first elections in 2000 – six years later – implies that it, too, did not have the essence of the elections at heart, despite having shown initial interest.

And now, recently, Malawians were complaining that government should do something as soon as possible so that the essence of the local assemblies is not completely suppressed to such an extent that they may finally be universally considered to be less significant.

Until the amendment, there was a cloud of uncertainty hanging on the possibility of this country ever having the local polls again. Many individuals and stakeholders reached the point of announcing that government no longer considered local polls as a significant lot in democracy. And, with the date set, a sigh of relief was gladly heaved by Malawians, only to be disappointed again this time.

One significant thing to note is that in 2005, the polls were postponed indefinitely and there were myriad voices from NGOs and interested individuals blaming government for ignoring the ‘essence’ of Ward Councilors who, the NGOs and individuals argued, are usually very instrumental in development programmes especially at the local level.

The stark reality of the existence of Ward Councilors is that power is transferred from the state to the Local Government. Perhaps, this is why most governments appear to be non-committal as long as conducting local polls is concerned. Calling a spade by what its name, decentralization has an impact on the state: there is a risk of it becoming irrelevant in the long run.

But, this can usually be the case where a leader is not commanding support across the country; where most of their policies are being bashed by the majority of voters; where chances that the masses from some sections of the country may rally together and rebel against the state are high.

And at the moment, this appears to be the case with President Bingu wa Mutharika’s government which has come under fire from different individuals and stakeholders for some policies which are deemed to be not in the interest of the public at large. Perhaps, this is what might be compelling MEC to ignore Local Government polls.

Now, it is clear that the president is usually the one who has the final say on the possibility of having or not having the local polls, despite the ‘theoretical’ part of the amended provision that stipulates that the president shall decide on the date of the local polls in consultation with the Electoral Commission. Reading between the lines, the extension of the amended provision may be that if the president does not want the elections to take place, he can gladly do so without much as hard work.

However, of late, there wasn’t much silence on the local polls, although there wasn’t enough talk still, other than the theoretical date, which, but, was also not supported by tangible preparations. But, the fact that Goodall Gondwe some time back urged political parties to start campaigning for the elections was enough evidence for the conclusion that this was the year of the second Local Government polls since 1994.

But, the urge was not enough for the opposition MCP and UDF since they wanted something tangible; they wanted something which they would be sure will materialize. They are financially-challenged political parties, and, therefore, to them, starting to campaign then for the polls would be unwise, because anything could happen, including failure to have the elections altogether. And now, their fears have been vindicated.

After all, MCP spokesperson Nancy Tembo had this to say on the local polls: “Government does not want to commit itself and is not showing seriousness…. We do not know whether they (the local polls) will take place or not because we have been waiting since 2005.”

Tembo should be proved right now; there indeed will be no local polls this year; or maybe not even any other year from now, but wouldn’t this mean taking Malawians for granted? After, being tricked numerous times already, will Malawians accept to continue being in government without Ward Councilors?

They have already expressed their disappointment with most of their representatives in the National Assembly, who they argue, seldom visit them to solicit their views on matters of national interest.

Perhaps, this is one of the most compelling reasons why avoiding local polls this year was just impracticable; why November would have been the month of answers. Maybe, the Central Government has some fear for Local Governments.

“There is one important thing about local polls that has to be noted. Malawi, like many other modern states, is divided on a territorial basis between national and regional or local institutions. However the local institutions are barely functional, at least at the moment when there are no Ward Councilors, yet they are very significant if development is to trickle to the remotest part of the country,” observes a Master of Arts in Public Administration student at Chancellor College.

The student adds that as the situation is now, power is trickling from the state to the local institutions. “Essentially, Local Governments involve the distribution of functions at the local level between the levels of government, the means by which their personnel are appointed and recruited, and other administrative purposes. Now, in the absence of functional Local Governments, most of this is done by the state and it has absolute power over matters which would otherwise be handled by Local Government authorities.”

The implication is that in the presence of local assemblies, government’s power is limited. Perhaps this is why we only had local polls once during the Muluzi administration. Perhaps, again, this might be why we are not going to have local polls this year.

In most democratic states, within the leaders, there exists this fear of the state slowly becoming irrelevant and finally unpopular in the face of functional Local Governments. But, what matters most: the popularity of the state, or the welfare of the average citizen?

“With the local assemblies functioning fully, citizens are the ones who become more powerful. They unite behind their local authority and there is the likelihood of ‘defiance’ to the state. That is why many states hate Local Governments,” argues Joseph Manda, a political and social commentator based in Zomba.

One may argue that this has never been the case before, and there should be no need to surmise it now. To such an argument, Manda has this to say: “Well, that might be true, but we have to be aware that the more we penetrate into democracy, the more we learn new ideas concerning this system of government. Czechoslovakia got divided into Czech Republic and Slovakia because of the shift of power from the state to the people.”

Manda goes on to point out that as a matter of fact, decentralization to a certain extent weakens the effectiveness of a state on the international or global scene. “Such a state does not have sufficient machinery for entering into strategic alliances, and negotiating trade agreements. Of course, this cannot be the case in Malawi because as things are today, the Central Government will always be the most powerful,” he notes.

There are other people, still, who believe local polls are not that necessary in Malawi this time. They view them as an activity which will just drain government coffers when it has little impact on development.

“In the absence of this system, there is national unity. Central Government alone articulates the interests of the whole nation rather than those of sectional groups. Government addresses the common interests of the entire community. We are taken to be Malawians and our needs are duly addressed that way. So why should government spend millions of kwacha when we can do without these Local Governments?” argued a student at Chancellor College who did not want to be named.

Maybe this is just another reason why this government may never want local polls to be conducted. Perhaps, government put into consideration all these premises and discovered that the best thing to do is not to hold the elections. But, the question which will continue haunting the president together with the Electoral Commission is: why then don’t they come in the open and express their point so as to have a thorough analysis on the same from the public?

According to Chiweza, in the abstract of his Democratisation Conference 2009 paper titled Centralization and State Formation in Rural Malawi, “decentralisation is believed to contribute to state formation processes through the devolution of power to the lowest unit of society facilitating Local Government’s pursuit with the central state for a new shape of the state.” In this case, perhaps government is afraid of this devolution of power.

One important thing about Local Government is that it is more effective than Central Government in providing opportunities for citizens to participate in the political life of their community, just as Andrew Heywood observes in his Politics book.

He adds, “As power tends to corrupt, centralization threatens to turn government into a tyranny against the individual…. But decentralization comes in to redress the problem because it protects liberty by dispersing government power, thereby creating a network of checks and balances on the state as well as on itself.” Thus, it is only governments that want to clasp absolute power that tend to ignore local polls.

And, as Chancellor College political scientist Blessings Chinsinga notes: “It is well known that the country (Malawi) quickly degenerated into an authoritarian regime because it had weak or no constitutional safeguards to facilitate the development and entrenchment of the culture of constitutionalism.”

And, if local polls are not held as soon as possible, then Malawians may be forgiven for fearing that the country may finally degenerate into an authoritarian regime.

Above everything, it is a practical fact that decentralization results in the power of the state being limited, and this is what most governments in the world fear about this type of government. But to another extent, decentralization is the best way of governance for all people.

It is one way of incorporating every citizen in governance since their participation is duly considered from the grassroots all the way to the state. That is why we were upbeat that this year would not collapse without Malawians electing their Ward Councilors, their representatives in whom they can have the ultimate trust, since they will interact with them on a continuous and consistent basis.

After all, one of the arguments for the essence of local polls is that decentralization is effective for the reduction of poverty due to inherent opportunities for higher popular participation and increased efficiency in public service delivery. Yet, as analysts have observed before, the executive arm of government and Parliament may not be keen to have elected councilors for fear of competition for the legislators.

In fact, some time back, one legislator was quoted as saying: “Because councilors are in touch with the grassroots everyday, they may own development projects and may challenge MPs during general elections.”

Perhaps, this is just another of the numerous reasons why governments fear local assemblies, and would rather do without them or just tramp over them using unrealistic provisions.

Zodya mwana

2010-10-04T20:52:00.000+02:00

zodya mwana

Wolemba: ANANIYA ALICK PONJE

“Ndikuti mundibwezere mmera wanga umene mwana wanu Yohane’yu wathyolathyola kudimba. Ine sindingangovutika kutipula chinthaka chouma chija kuti mwana wanu wogonthayo adzandionongere chimanga changa chimene chinangotsala pang’ono kuyamba kubala,” adalalata choncho Mayi Magetsi.

Misheki, bambo wake wa Yohane adangoti kukamwa kakasi kosowa chokamba. Naye Yohane adali kucheza ndi anzake pakhonde moonetsa kusasamala ndi zomwe Mayi Magetsi amayankhula.

“Tadekhani mtima abale. Nanga amapanga choncho. Tandiuzeni chachitika n’chiyani?” adayankhula Misheki, kufuna kuwaziziritsa mtima Mayi Magetsi.

“Mukuti ndidekhe mtima? Kapena mwanayo munachita kumtuma. Nanga mpaka kufika ponena kuti ‘nanga amapanga choncho?’ Tandiuzani inuyo amapanga bwanji?” adakalipanso Mayi Magetsi uku akumasula nsalu yomwe adayimanga m’chiuno.

Yohane ataona kuti waayika bambo ake m’mavuto, adangozemba ndi kumakacheza ndi anzake kutali.

“Tandiuzani chatsitsa dzaye kuti njovu ithyoke nyanga.”

“Chabwino ndikuuzani popeza mukufuna kunamizira kuti simukudziwa,” adayankha Mayi Magetsi uku akumanganso nsalu yawo. “Nkhutukumve wanuyo analowa ndi anzake m’dimba langa la chimanga ndikuthyolathyola chimanga chambiri moti panopa m’dimbamo mwangokhala ngati munalowa njovu.”

Misheki adaoneka wokhuzidwa koopsa. Adapukusa mutu wake wopanda nyanga kusowa kuti akambanso chiyani choti chiwadekhetse mtima Mayi Magetsi omwe amaoneka kuti adali okonzeka kuchita chilichonse chomwe chingawathandize.

“Pepani kwambiri. Koma ana enawa….”

Mayi Magetsi adamudula Misheki asadamalize. “Ino si nthawi yomapepesana; ndi nthawi yoti choyipa chibwezeredwe ndi choyipa,” adatero Mayi Magetsi m’maso muli gwa.

Kenako adamukankha Misheki ndi kulowa m’nyumba momwe adayamba kuphwanya mbale zagalasi kuphatikizapo zikho.

Misheki adayesa kuwapepeza Mayi Magetsi koma amaoneka kuti atemetsa nkhwangwa pamwala moti adapitiriza kuchita chipongwecho kufika poti Misheki adapsa mtima. Adawakankha mayiwo omwe adakagwera poteropo ndi kuyamba kukuwa ngati mwana wothamangitsidwa ndi zinyawu.

Anthu ambiri adakhamukira kunyumba kwa Misheki komwe adamupeza Misheki akuyesayesa kuwakankhira panja Mayi Magetsi.

Mayi Magetsiwo atawona anthu, adayamba kulira momvetsa chisoni ndi kuwawuza anthuwo kuti Misheki amafuna kuwagwiririra. “Ine ndimabwera kudzadandaula kuti Yohane waononga mmera wanga kudimba, koma bambowa anandiuza kuti tikakambirane m’nyumba mwawo m’mene amafuna kundigwiririra.”

“Akunama amenewa. Zonsezi akamba mayiwa ndi bodza lamkunkhuniza…”

Misheki sadaloledwe kufotokoza mbali yake. Mwamuna wawo wa Mayi Magetsi adatchaya lamya kupolisi ndipo kwa mphindi zowerengeka, pakhomopo padafika galimoto la polisi lomwe lidamutenga Misheki.

“Milandu yogwiririra yafika ponyanya,” adayankhula choncho wapolisi wina akumuyang’ana Misheki.

Some road accidents are avoidable

2010-10-04T20:49:00.003+02:00

Some road accidents are avoidable

Death is life’s hardest reality. It saddens the hearts of the bereaved, yet on the other hand, it is a perfect tool for sharpening our understanding. It is a silent visitor that gropes into human affairs with no compassion and leaves us regretting, even in circumstances that were totally beyond our control. We typically think there was something that we would have done to save the deceased’s life – and sometimes, indeed such a possibility would have been there.

Death, surely, is for human beings, and therefore, all human beings must die. Nevertheless, its most disturbing irony is that it comes parked with all sorts of things that impel all sorts of explanations, even if it was expected; and even those that take others’ lives are in constant awe of death. That is why, for centuries, man has failed to understand death, because it does not change.

The death of a loved one is always painful – even if it is a hated loved one. No man in his normal sanity celebrates death. Even when a dangerous criminal is dying on the gallows, amidst shouts from witnesses, there always is that fear and pain of death, and you are then left concluding that only at this point, death has dominion.

The soaring rate of road accidents that are occurring on roads of Malawi is always giving Malawians ulcers. Travelers are in perfect fear of a darker future likely to dawn on them in the course of their journey. The pride of death is now complete and it has found numerous ways of visiting its victims. While in the past, deaths were very rare occurrences, now they are a dime a dozen. They have become common tragedies in human existence.

The most painful thing with most road accidents that take place on roads of Malawi is that they are a direct consequence of negligence and recklessness, habitually, on the part of drivers. How does a driver who spent his good time at a driving school enter a main road – or just any other road – without first checking whether or not a car is coming in either direction?

One thing that appears to be a very big problem that is contributing to road accidents, which could be avoided, is that most drivers who have the authority to take their vehicles to roads and streets are not competent enough to do such daring jobs. Driving has become one of the most ‘viable’ careers and nowadays, the majority of youths who finish their Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) desire to do driving.

And most of them acquire driving licenses even without having fully and competently finished their driving lessons. The corrupting influence of money is needlessly leading to loss of lives that would successfully contribute towards the development of this country.

Driving is both a theoretical and practical career, though most of its tenets may involve practice. Therefore, it is crucial that someone is certified a driver only after having satisfied all the requirements of driving.

It appears there is the tendency of taking driving as the easiest career among many Malawians, yet in actual sense, this is supposed to be the most involving profession because its application deals with human life. Every driver must be conscious of the fact that he is dealing with the irreplaceable thing that is only given out once. Thus, it makes sense that someone meditates thoroughly before joining the “driving profession”.

It goes without saying that most Malawian roads are in better conditions now due to constant renovations that are going on across the length and the breadth of the country, and road accidents were subsequently supposed to be the last thing to claim human life.

After all, statistics show that most road accidents in Malawi take place on roads that are in good conditions other than on those that are in dilapidated states. This is usually because of carelessness on the parts of most drivers. For instance, the numerous road accidents that take place on the well-constructed Chipembere Highway in Blantyre begs the question of what has gone wrong with drivers who use the road, all of a sudden.

Everyone, especially drivers, should take a leading responsibility in taming road accidents. With the ever-increasing rate of industrial development, traveling is inevitable among the average Malawian, and the easiest mode appears to be by road. Thus, all those who travel need to be guaranteed of their safety; otherwise, this dark future connected with road transport on Malawian roads is scaring.

Moreover, it appears, the current trend on these road accidents, indeed, portends a future that is likely to be darker than the present, with more and more threats on lives of Malawians.

TSOKA LIKALIMBA

2010-10-04T20:46:00.001+02:00

Tsoka likalimba

“Ndikuti mundibwezere mmera wanga umene mwana wanu Yohane’yu wathyolathyola kudimba. Ine sindingangovutika kutipula chinthaka chouma chija kuti mwana wanu wogonthayo adzandionongere chimanga changa chimene chinangotsala pang’ono kuyamba kubala,” adalalata choncho Mayi Magetsi.

Misheki, bambo wake wa Yohane adangoti kukamwa kakasi kosowa chokamba. Naye Yohane adali kucheza ndi anzake pakhonde moonetsa kusasamala ndi zomwe Mayi Magetsi amayankhula.

“Ine zondiyesa ndimadana nazo. Ndaononga makobiri ankhaninkhani kuti chimanga chimene chija chifike pamene paja, ndiye wina sangangobwera kudzangochiononga ngati chinamera chokha.”

“Tadekhani mtima abale. Nanga amapanga choncho. Zinthu zimatha ndi kukambirana. Tandiuzeni chachitika n’chiyani?” adayankhula Misheki, kufuna kuwaziziritsa mtima Mayi Magetsi omwe amayenda kulowera uku ndi uko ngati mwamuna wotibulidwa mowa uli m’mutu.

“Mukuti ndidekhe mtima? Kapena mwanayo munachita kumtuma. Nanga mpaka kufika ponena kuti ‘nanga amapanga choncho?’ Tandiuzani inuyo, amapanga bwanji?” adakalipanso Mayi Magetsi uku akumasula nsalu yomwe adayimanga m’chiuno.

Yohane ataona kuti waayika bambo ake m’mavuto, adangozemba ndi kumakacheza ndi anzake kutali.

“Tandiuzani chatsitsa dzaye kuti njovu ithyoke nyanga.”

“Chabwino ndikuuzani popeza mukufuna kunamizira kuti simukudziwa,” adayankha Mayi Magetsi uku akumanganso nsalu yawo. “Nkhutukumve wanuyo analowa ndi anzake m’dimba langa la chimanga ndikuthyolathyola chimanga chambiri moti panopa m’dimbamo mwangokhala ngati munalowa njovu.”

Misheki adaoneka wokhuzidwa koopsa. Adapukusa mutu wake wopanda nyanga kusowa kuti akambanso chiyani choti chiwadekhetse mtima Mayi Magetsi omwe amaoneka kuti adali okonzeka kuchita chilichonse chomwe chingawathandize.

“Pepani kwambiri. Sindimadziwa kuti Yohane angapange zimenezo. Koma ana enawa….”

Mayi Magetsi adamudula Misheki asadamalize. “Ino si nthawi yomapepesana; ndi nthawi yoti choyipa chibwezeredwe ndi choyipa,” adatero Mayi Magetsi m’maso muli gwa ngati wofula agalu.

Kenako adamukankha Misheki yemwe adayima pakhomo la nyumba yake ndi kulowa m’nyumbamo momwe adayamba kuphwanya mbale zagalasi kuphatikizapo zikho. Adagubuduzanso mipando komanso timagome tating’onoting’ono. Mayi magetsi amangochita zinthuzo monga angachitire munthu wosokonekera ubongo.

Misheki adayesa kuwapepeza mayiwo koma amaoneka kuti atemetsa nkhwangwa pamwala moti adapitiriza kuchita chipongwecho kufika poti Misheki adapsa mtima. Adawakankha mayiwo omwe adakagwera poteropo ndi kuyamba kukuwa ngati mwana wothamangitsidwa ndi zinyawu.

Anthu ambiri adakhamukira kunyumba kwa Misheki komwe adamupeza Misheki akuyesayesa kuwakankhira panja Mayi Magetsi.

“Chikuchitika n’chiyani pano?” adafunsa mwamuna wawo wa Mayi Magetsi.

“Bambo Misheki mukutani ndi mkazi wa mwini wake?” adafunsanso m’zimayi wina yemwe adali m’modzi wa anthu oyamba kufika pakhomo pa Misheki’po atamva kubangula kwa Mayi Magetsi.

Mayi Magetsi’wo atawona anthuwo, adayambanso kulira momvetsa chisoni ndi kuwawuza anthuwo kuti Misheki amafuna kuwagwiririra. “Ine ndimabwera kudzadandaula kuti Yohane waononga mmera wanga kudimba, koma bambowa anandiuza kuti tikakambirane m’nyumba mwawo m’mene amafuna kundigwiririra.”

“Akunama amenewa. Zonsezi akamba mayiwa ndi bodza lamkunkhuniza…”

Misheki sadaloledwe kufotokoza mbali yake. Mwamuna wawo wa Mayi Magetsi adatchaya lamya kupolisi ndipo kwa mphindi zowerengeka, pakhomopo padafika galimoto la polisi lomwe lidamutenga Misheki.

“Milandu yogwiririra yafika ponyanya,” adayankhula choncho wapolisi wina akumuyang’ana Misheki. “Kodi dziko lathu likupita kuti. Anthu ogwiririranu ndi ofunika kuti muzipatsidwa zilango zazikulu kuti ena azitengerapo phunziro.”

Mulandu wa Misheki udazengedwa ndipo adapezeka wolakwa pa mulandu wofuna wogwiririra komanso womenya Mayi Magetsi. Woweruza naye sadamve chisoni koma kumulamula Misheki kuti akakhale kundende zaka zinayi.

Atawuyamba ulendo wa kundende, Misheki adakhetsa misonzi mwakachetechete. “Zonsezi zachitika chifukwa cha Yohane. Akadangopanda kupitako kudimbako ndi kukaononga zinthu, si bwenzi pano ndikukagwira ukayidi munthu wosalakwane,” adadziyankhulira yekha Misheki.