Mzati Nkolokosa

We Have Moved

2010-06-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

Great to have you here, dear reader because we need to move together. We are at mzatinkolokosa.com

You can get in touch on www.mzati@mzatinkolokosa.com

Write now.

All the posts here are on the move too. The new blog will be better and sweeter. You have the responsibility to drop me an e-mail to ask for articles. It is my duty.

So, let's go to www.mzatinkolokosa.com

Enjoy

Beauty of Grey Hair

2010-05-31T03:56:00.000-07:00

We live in a generation whose lifespan is half that of our fathers—and mothers, of course.

The poem is powerful.

We dared to think... that (he'd) live to comb grey hair. But like his
father, he had every gift but length of years.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats crafted this thought-provoking, all time relevant poem almost a century ago. Yet it remains powerful in our years, the 21st Century, confirming, again, that poetry lives across space and time.

We dared to think…that (he’d) live to comb grey hair. It is a lament for a friend, it seems, a model or a brilliant, important person who people wanted to live long, to share his knowledge for decades. Yet he died young.

The society in which Yeats lived held grey hair as some kind of honour, the ideal, and the norm—what everybody expects: that a person should live long and the visible symbol of old age being grey hair which is easy to comb; meaning that the abnormal is to die young before growing grey hair.

The man mourned in the poem, like his father, was talented and died young. Sad that people we want to live long, die young.

Long life is an honour not just to one person but to society because it benefits from wisdom that comes with age. Or put in Yeats’ language, the wisdom that comes with grey hair.
Isn’t the world full of people we wished to live long, to comb grey hair, so that we enjoy their talent for decades?

Consider Bright Nkhata, Allan Namoko, Daniel Kachamba, Robert Fumulani, Du Chisiza and, well, it is a long list, this one. But we can add Professor Kay Chiromo (that extraordinary artist), Nixon Khembo (that brilliant academic who died before completing his PhD), and Charles Severe (that broadcaster and drama guru).

Do you want us to add university professors who have died? We wish Professor John Chiphangwi was with us to see the growth of the University of Malawi's College of Medicine.

What about brilliant politicians who passed on, leaving behind unsolved puzzles? We wish they had lived long. We wish they had grown old to comb grey hair. We wish Du Chisiza had lived long to keep writing, directing and performing great plays.

We ask: If Du was living today, what play would he have written on homosexuality? If Bob Marley was living today, what songs would he have written about the war in Iraq? What would he have sung about the Tsunami that killed nearly half a million people in Asia? What would he have said about Africa?

We really wish they had lived long, grown old to comb grey hair. But life isn’t what we wish. Often, it is what we don’t wish to happen.

We wish all parents lived long to raise their children. But sometimes—perhaps often nowadays--it does not work that way. I have attended burials of young people in recent months, young men survived by wives and children. I have known about young men and women who have died, leaving children hopeless; children gazing at the sky, a symbol of nothingness, a blank future.

Now stories about life can never be impersonal for they are about all of us, about our parents, brothers and sisters and everybody else.

I feel blessed to have both my parents living. My father, Willias Nkolokosa, a great primary school teacher is 77 while my mother, Anne, is 74. They have lived to comb grey hair, to see their children grow up with the last born, yours truly, being 34.

My paternal grandparents died in old age. My grandfather, Desert Nkolokosa, was the first Malawian Seventh Day Adventist pastor, preaching in Makanjira, Mangochi, in 1939 after his missionary work in Zaire where my father and his elder brother, Stewart, were born.

My maternal grandmother died in January this year in real old age. The pastor who led the service challenged us all to live up to 90 years and we laughed in disbelief. We know we may not live that long because we are in days that long life is not fashionable.

You may have a similar story or a different one. Perhaps you lost parents long time ago and you don’t know how pleasant it is to have them grow old. It may be that you don’t know what it means to have a father or a mother because, as was the case with Harod Takomana, he was two years old when his father, 26, died in a road accident.

Such is the pain of life. It is not what we wish it to be, always. We dared to think... that (he'd) live to comb grey hair. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years.

Consider yourself lucky if your parents have grown old to comb grey hair. The honour you can give them is to comb their grey hair: buy them a comb. But they need one after a bath, so buy them soap and pails. Well, in the rural corners, they bath after lunch, so make sure they have food and blankets at night.

This is combing our old folks’ grey hair. It is easy, just as easy as combing the real grey hair. (I know how easy it is because dad used to ask me to comb his grey hair.) It is a source of blessings as well, one of which is long life for ourselves that we may live long to comb our grey heads.

Cost of Prosperity

2010-05-31T03:10:00.000-07:00

The wedding of two young men, Steven Monjeza and Tionge Chimbalanga in December last year was a foreign body in the cultural flesh of Malawi.

Some of us knew there was homosexuality in Malawi. Some of us chose not to talk about it because it largely happens in places that are kind of outside ordinary life: prisons and boarding secondary schools, especially those that are not co-education institutions.

We also knew, or somehow thought/believed, there are same sex relationships outside of prisons and schools. There is homosexuality in our towns and cities and villages.

What we never thought was that two people of the same sex could declare their love for one another in public. That wedding (engagement is a wedding, remember) has corrupted our society—and for a long time to come.

We have talked about homosexuality as being foreign, alien to Malawi’s culture. True. But we haven’t discussed one question: Why did Steve and Tionge come out in the open, knowing pretty well they would end up in prison?

Part of the answer lies in the enormous support the two have received from NGOs and international bodies, including United Nations whose Secretary General Ban Ki-moon came to Malawi on May 29, 2010, and resulted in President Bingu wa Mutharika’s pardon of the gay couple on “humanitarian grounds”.

Support for Steven and Tionge seemed well coordinated as if there was a central control centre. The kind of courage—or put correctly, arrogance—that Steve and Tionge showed by marrying each other cannot just come from within themselves.

It was from some people who hold power of some kind—economic, legal, cultural, religious or political. The international community is spreading a “global culture” and homosexuality is part of that exercise. Steven and Tionge were sent by some of those who supported them to instill this strange seed of same sex love among Malawians.

But why now? If at all there is a time people accept new ways of life, new cultures, it is when their economic status changes. Malawi’s economy has been growing at an average of 7 percent per year for the past five years.

Economic growth makes people, perhaps not accept, but view new appetites and new approaches to life differently. The international community has noted our prosperity and knows that if at all there was a time Malawi can begin to struggle with and somehow soften up to alien cultures, it is now.

Three things have happened to Malawi as a result of our prosperity. One is same sex love.

Two, the registration of the Association for Secular Humanism, a group that, in a nut shell, does not believe in the existence of God. This, too, is a symptom of beliefs that come to a growing economy. When people are full and do not worry about the next meal, they begin to trust secular approach to life.

Three is Urban Music, a genre that has come from almost nowhere and invaded the airwaves. Five years ago, there was no Phyzix, Theo Thomson, Tigris, Heart Beatz, Tay Grin and Mafunyeta. Yet they are household names today.

I drove by the French Cultural Centre (FCC) one Sunday afternoon at about 5 on my way to the office and met hundreds of young people walking out of the FCC. They were in large numbers, coming from an Urban Music Party.

This music has come to stay, at least for now. Urban music is about joy and happiness. It is not about sorrows and tears. It is a kind of music that can be enjoyed by people on a journey towards prosperity, people that are hopeful.

The young people of Malawi are living in hopeful days of a port at Nsanje, five universities on the cards, nice roads, DsTV, mobile phones, Facebook, and eating out.

What is more? Beliefs of some small sections of the world are being pushed across the globe, starting with prospering societies like Malawi, especially because we have a President that is a global figure as well.

These thorns in our cultural flesh are part of the of our prosperity.

Tough Questions

2010-05-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

These questions have bothered me of late. What is the function of the media in a developing country like Malawi? Are journalists participants in development or watchdogs of those in power?

Should we stick o the old adage that we doubt everything and trash all hopes that come with the first steps of a journey towards prosperity?

I intend to answer these and other questions in a piece I am working on.

Inside the Mind of Journalism

2010-03-14T23:09:00.003-07:00

The 21st Century question is: What should we expect and get from the mind of excellent journalism that meets our challenges and answers our questions? Where should Malawi go in the new Century and what role should journalism play? Mzati Nkolokosa is a journalist, an academic (part-time lecturing in the University of Malawi) and a fine writer. In his 5 year career, he has done a lot more than some journalists have done in 20 years of practice. His voice has become respected and people look up to him for an interpretation of issues, events and ideas. Talinda Mmora-Litby caught up with me for a one engaging hour interview towards the end of 2008.
Exceprts:

I put it to you Mzati that you are the greatest journalist that ever worked in Malawi.

No, no, Talinda. I am not great.

I prefer Linda.

Okay, Linda. I am not great. I am not rich. I am not a celebrity. I am not popular. But, above all, I have not written a book yet. How do you call a journalist who has not published a book great?

But I have heard comments from readers of your blog and newspapers in Malawi that you are great? That your writings are deep enough and well-researched to guide, provoke thoughts, and explain the complicated world of Malawi and the region.

I have heard those comments as well but sometimes I do think ‘well, I would like to see this particular Mzati they are over-praising, really it’s not me’. You see newspaper articles are not enough for me. After reporting for three years a journalist is supposed to publish a book on a topic to explain issues, events and ideas in detail. I have worked for five years and haven’t done that yet.

Well, not many journalists have done what you have done and that makes you great. Can you surely equate the success of a journalist to the measure of publishing a book only?

But why should I be satisfied with minimum achievements because the rest are not ambitious enough? Besides, writing a book means you have the intellectual muscles to digest and synthesise things at great length. It is like the final examination of a course, better still, like writing a defendable thesis for your doctorate studies. Above all, the daily newspaper is almost a passing voice because we easily throw away newspapers even in the name of keeping them. Writing a book means you are sowing your ideas in the endless fields of generations to come.

Endless fields of generations to come? Oh, you mean in the minds of generations.

You are reading my mind. That is exactly what I mean.

Ambitious enough? Is journalism in Malawi not that ambitious then?

That is too broad a question, Linda. Journalism has five functions: surveillance or information, linkage, entertainment, interpretation and transmission of values or socialisation. The first three are easy to satisfy. In fact, we do satisfy them. We inform, we entertain and we link people. But the last two which are the core of journalism are rarely satisfied in Malawi.

How is that?

Journalism is not about what happened only. People want to know how and why it happened. And what will happen next! This is the interpretation and socialisation function of journalism. Can I ask you a question?

Yes. As long as the interview doesn’t turn round.

When was the last time you saw an article that explained the whys in Malawi?

I have read that in your pieces but I understand you no longer write on Political Index. What happened?

I am no longer on the daily paper. I am now working on the Weekend Nation and I am doing more page-work than writing and, honestly, I hugely miss writing. But you can read my articles on my blog: www.mzatinkolokosa.blogspot.com

What is the problem with journalism that the two functions which are important should not be satisfied?

There are several factors. One, it is about our history. The education of the colonial days did not help us much. It did not develop critical thinkers. Then journalism was what the colonial masters said until nationalism gained momentum and journalism also became the fight for independence. During the Kamuzu era, journalism became what government said it was. There was no room for those called journalists to think critically and do the professional job.

Well...?

Sadly, this definition of journalism, that it is what others have said, is still with us. Journalists, so goes the belief, cannot think, cannot use their senses, and cannot shape opinion. They are mere reporters, repeating what others have said. So we ask questions on everything. Most of us can’t assess, observe and analyse. It is a pity. We aren’t doing enough to tell our own stories and explain our country to our people, let alone the outside world. This is our work, not the work of civil society leaders or government officials or politicians or anyone else, because they, too, need information and clues to puzzles of life. They need answers from us, not just the questions. But if you explain issues, events and ideas, some generation of journalists will say ‘this is not journalism’ simply because they are not brilliant enough to do that work.

So, it is about a generational gap?

Not only that. It is also an educational gap. You see we are fighting for media freedom. What we need is not media freedom. We need media education because that gives us freedom to think and do what is right. Freedom does not come from laws. It comes from education, from the mind.

Is there one thing you miss a lot in Malawi’s journalism?

Profiles.

Is that one word all for your answer?

Yes, profiles. Journalism is about stories, stories of people, our stories and we are not telling our stories. Just to give you two examples: I asked my students at Chancellor College: Who is the wife of David Bekham? They all answered, Victoria. Then I asked: Who is the wife of Kinnah Phiri? No answer. I don’t have an answer as well. This speaks volumes that we don’t write about ourselves because by now we were supposed to have read several profiles of Kinnah Phiri.

We have so many powerful stories untold. One reason we don’t have celebrities is that the media has not created any. I am not sure why? But I can tell you, profiles are powerful. They help answer questions about life. We know if this happened to him or her and it is happening to me, I can overcome the situation.

We need to know about Nyemba Mbekeyani, Aleke Banda, William Kamkwamba, Ernest Mtawali, Lawrence Waya, Edge Kanyongolo, Ethel Kamwendo Banda, Rose Chibambo and many others. Think of Ceceilia Kadzamira. What is she? Think of so many men and women, boys and girls who have done tremendous things; they are silent heroes. We need to know these people. But maybe it is a larger problem because the culture of biographies is dormant among us. People like talking but they don’t want to write. They even don’t want to engage someone to write about them.

But our friends make good use of the culture of biographies. Yes?

I will tell you what? One reason Nelson Mandela remains great is his book, Long Walk to Freedom. But he worked with an excellent writer on that book. Richard Stengel is Managing Editor of Time Magazine, the man in-charge of producing the US edition of Time, the world’s highest circulating magazine, selling four million copies a week in the US. That is why it is a great book.

You sound sad that we are not writing about ourselves. Any dangers?

What do we know about Kamuzu? Little. Who is there to tell us? Cecilia Kadzamira, John Tembo, Aleke Banda. If these people and others don’t write, that will be the dead end of history. Now that is dangerous. We cannot understand the present without knowledge of the past. And we can’t plan for the future without understanding the present. One reason we seem to be easily frustrated is that we don’t know where we are coming from and where we want to go. To be optimistic, you must have a longer view of both the past and the future. But we look at the present only and think we are hopeless.

Ends

And these are the comments that followed the publication of the interview on Maziko Times, an online publication that is no longer being updated.

Readers' Comments

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Feb 22, 2009 at 10:53:11

A very rare interview that shows a deeper understanding of issues affecting our society. When you are ready Mzati, take up the academic career on a full time basis so that you can directly contribute by developing future generations to understand that education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

Chingaipe
York, UK

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Jan 6, 2009 at 15:24:38

I think I am also intelligent because I noted the gem in Mzati when he was writing on politics. Fools despise these great thinkers. He has powerful metaphors. "When comes such another Mzati?"

Sitima-Ndau
Zomba, Malawi

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Nov 14, 2008 at 11:44:28

I have enjoyed the interview. It is so powerful and provocative. What Mzati is saying on profiles is true. There is need for editors in newspapers to think more about this: "Great minds talk about issues. Simple minds talk about people." Journalists need to be simple in their approach to stories. Profiles change one's way of thinking and life style. Reporting on current affairs is good, but it can not change the attitude of Malawians. Life is a great teacher. The young generation can borrow a leaf from the old timers. This can be achieved through profiles.

Kazembe Kayira
Balaka, Malawi

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Oct 24, 2008 at 10:16:08

What an interview. I did not know journalists could be this intelligent. I thought they don't really think, they just repeat what people have said. Mzati is intelligent and I am not surprised but I never thought he is this intelligent.

Abel Kapalamula Gama
Blantyre

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Our Turn Now

2010-03-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

It is Africa’s year. But more than that, it is turning out to be Africa’s century: that the continent will be the world’s greatest story after China, India, and Brazil and such other emerging economies.

This year’s African Cup of Nations was the most reported, with countries like Malawi sending reporters and the BBC camping there for months, doing special documentaries. Of course there was the shooting of the Togolese team in Cabinda, but that is not the only reason the tournament was widely reported.

Add to that, Fifa World Cup is being hosted in South Africa and the world’s attention is truly on Africa.

But football is not the sole reason the world is focusing on Africa. The world is realising that Africa is on course. No wonder TIME, Fortune and CNN will be hosting a three day global forum in Cape Town in June. The meeting, bringing together Fortune 500 CEOs, world leaders and members of TIME 100, is dubbed New Global Opportunity.

It is a double first: the first time Africa is hosting World Cup only, and the first time Africa is hosting the first-ever Fortune/TIME/CNN Global Forum. And the meeting’s theme is revealing: New Global Opportunity.

“This is the idea that global economic power is shifting to the developing world—to Africa and the Middle East, as well as to Asia—and that these markets are more than frontiers of growth; they are the sources of new ideas and models that can be applied everywhere,” says TIME Managing Editor, Richard Stengel, in his editorial of February 8.

Sources of new ideas that can be applied everywhere? TIME’s international editor Michael Elliott has the answer. “We have given the conference the title the New Global Opportunity because there’s a realization that we can’t go back to the old ways.”

The old ways were that ideas come from the West and Africa, for example, should listen. Now Africa is initiating projects like fertilizer subsidy and the West is looking with admiration. The old ways were that we were supposed to sell raw material. The new ways are that Africa should add value to its products. The old ways were that Africa should send its higher degree candidates to the West. The new way is that Africa is training its people up to PhDs. The old ways were that Africa should seek guidance from the West. The news way is that the West should learn from Africa, too.

This is not by accident. Most of Africa is democratic now or moving towards democratization. Still, there are civil wars and pockets of dictators, but that does not hide the rest of progress on the continent.

News about Africa’s economic growth is most tricky. How do we talk about growth when the majority of people are still living in poverty? Understandable. But every journey starts with the first step. We are moving but there is still a long way to go. We need to work hard to be there, at our destiny.

We need to make sure most people have food. We need to ensure our children go to school. We need to reward those who work hard and are exceptional. We need to prevent deaths of mothers and babies. We need to do so many things. So many things indeed, that the task seems impossible.

In this case, hope is an asset. Hope is free but not cheap. If we lose hope, we shall not move forward.

It is not this generation that shall enjoy the fruits of our hard work. If we really mean well for our children and their children, we need to sustain this growth and make true the observation that Africa is moving.

Let this be our century.

An Example of Bad Writing

2010-03-02T00:05:00.002-08:00

If you want to add your name to the list of bad writers in Malawi—and we have a long one, already—learn from Emily Mkamanga, a Nation on Sunday columnist.

She is a writer whose column proves that she lacks both substance and style; that she chanced over being recognised as a writer, not that she is one, for she does not write well nor does she perform the duties of a writer which are to entertain, educate, link people of similar or different ideas, interpret the world and socialise people or transmit values.

Beyond this, a writer analyses the present using the past and determines the future using the present—and, of course, the past.

Writing as Weaving

Every word, for me, is empty. Excellent writing is, therefore, a writer’s ability to arrange or, put creatively, weave into one long thread in a way that makes sense, in a way that makes meaning; meaning that makes sense across space and time. Emily Mkamanga’s pieces lack these basics of excellent writing skills.

First Sentence Matters

Emily Mkamanga’s language is largely poor, lacking in some of the basics an excellent writer should possess. Excellent writers mind the first sentence. Mkamanga often gets this wrong.
The first sentence matters because it is a reader’s entry into a body of ideas called an article. Take these first sentences by some people I think are excellent writers.

Tragedy has a way of visiting people who can bear it least.--Michael Elliott writing on the earthquake in Haiti.

He did it because he could.—Jon Meacham writing on Obama’s victory.

The pain of urban poverty is in its closeness to wealth.—Mzati Nkolokosa writing on poverty’s closeness to wealth in cities.

One common factor to these first sentences is that they are thought provoking and philosophical, leading a reader into the depth of our complicated world, not just the surface. Tragedy has a way of visiting people who can bear it least. It makes sense and compels the reader to ask, Why Haiti? Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. A country on its knees, as Michael Elliot says, was knocked down to its feet.

Or consider Meacham’s sentence (He did it because he could). He did it just because he could? Hey! Let me read on, one would say.

The last of our first sentences under consideration falls under this same type. The pain of urban poverty is in its closeness to wealth. Take the example of Zingwangwa and New Naperi, Mbayani and Nyambadwe, Ntopwa and Indian Quarters. At the end of the day, a reader is provoked into thought because the first sentence has opened a way into deeper thought, a place of questions and possible answers. Why are slums close to low density areas? It is a sociological question.

Now let us see Mkamanga’s first sentences. On Sunday, February 10, 2010 she wrote under the headline “Calling for Unity”. Her first sentence was: The importance of unity in a country cannot be overemphasized. True and obvious that this has become a cliché and excellent writers don’t think of clichés like a saint does hell.

Her first sentence on February 21 under the headline “Uncertain Future” was: There is an adage which says that when all else is lost the future still remains. This, in all fairness, is a powerful adage as she says. But her poor construction makes it weak. Who wants to be told that there is an adage that says this and that? All we care for is the adage itself. Excellent writing would have gone straight to the adage, and not spend time on weak construction like “There is an adage which says…” Really? This adage can be philosophised and problematised in a great first sentence.

On January 31, 2010, Mkamanga titled her column “Failing to Appreciate” and the first sentence was as follows: “It can be said without fear of contradiction that sycophancy is one of the behaviours that has (sic) been carried forward from the one party dictatorship.”

We can repeat what we have said about the first sentence of Sunday, February 10, 2010. But we can add that Mkamanga takes time before hitting the nail on the head and this is bad writing in all fairness.

Construction of Ideas

Excellent writers arrange words intelligently to produce brilliant articles. The arrangement of words results in great sentence construction and, for me, sentence construction is, essentially, construction of ideas.

Poor language use results into poor sentences and into poor construction of ideas. Mkamanga is poor at choosing words. As said above, words are empty in themselves. It is how a writer arranges them that matters. Mkamanga has a lot of what I call “passenger words” or “joy riders”: words that a sentence can do without to the extent that out of Mkamanga’s article of 800 words, an excellent writer can remove perhaps up to 150 words and make more sense than before.

An excellent writer uses short sentences, some with one word but also uses long, complex sentences, punctuated with commas, semi colons, colons and all other punctuation marks. An excellent writer is a master of punctuation. He or she, like a surgeon, tears apart a sentence, breaks it here and there, sometimes with a hyphen, yet remains in control of the beauty and sense of the sentence; words put together to load meaning in them.

MKamanga does not appreciate that a sentence should be active, that a sentence should have a subject, a verb and an object. Simple. Mkamanga does not enjoy variety of construction. She needs to go back to a Language Skills class.

Generalisation

There are words an excellent writer should avoid. Take this sentence from Mkamanga’s January 31, 2010, article.

For example, the government expects Malawians to be very excited about the eight percent growth that it has achieved as well as celebrate that the country received a debt relief from World Bank and IMF. In fact talking to the majority poor this can be an insult because the benefits from the debt relief and the economic growth are nowhere to be seen since people’s lives have not changed for the better. Some strong words here. Yet poor writing. Does the government expect people to be “very excited” with economic growth? Adverbs and adjectives can be tricky in writing. How do we determine that government expects people to be “very excited” with growth? Critics may easily conclude malice.

It seems Mkamanga is not just a poor writer, she is a dangerous writer too, whose ideas—or lack of them—can destroy a generation, making it hopeless.

She claims that for the majority poor “benefits from the debt relief and the economic growth are nowhere to be seen since people’s lives have not changed for the better”. She does not substantiate her claim. Therefore, it is empty. It is dangerous for a writer to use words like “nowhere”, because it is a writer’s duty to hunt for “somewhere”.

Benefits of debt relief are nowhere? No. They may not be everywhere, but they are everywhere as in where they are physically and socially. More HIV positive people are getting treatment and care. Government has allocated more money to the National AIDS Commission than before.

There are more roads: Ntchisi has a modern 30 km road constructed with money generated in Malawi, money that would have otherwise gone to paying back debt if it were not for the relief.

In early 1980s, I walked 10 km to and from school every day. Now my nephews and children walk 3 km to and from school because there is a primary school in my village constructed a couple of years ago. I crossed three streams to reach school. Those after me are not crossing any streams. Malawi has been able to feed itself partly because rains have been fair in past years, partly because of the subsidised fertiliser programme. An excellent writer runs away from this problem by use of words such as “some”, “perhaps”, “not much to show”, “either or….”

Now can Mkamanga claim benefits of debt relief are nowhere? I repeat: She is a dangerous writer whose thoughts can destroy a generation.

Punctuation

I want to say something on punctuation, not as an afterthought, but because it is a crucial element of writing, one that makes a difference between an excellent writer like Nancy Gibbs and a bad writer like Emily Mkamanga.

If you read Mkamanga’s column you find that the commonest punctuation is a full stop. She rarely uses commas even where it is obvious. Read again her sentence above: “In fact talking about…” After “in fact”, there is supposed to be a comma. But I suppose she is in a hurry when writing for she writes like a person shouting from an anthill and does not care about punctuation.

Conclusion

What is the role of a writer in our complicated world? It is to explain the world to people. The writer has to give hope where there is despair. The writer should research and know 10 times more than his or her readers. Mkamanga does not perform well on these areas. She does not research well.

This is my sixth year of teaching Features Writing at Chancellor College and the semester has just started. On the first meeting with my students on February 23, 2010, I started with the usual pleasantries. Then straight into business, this was the first sentence: If you want to add your name to the list of bad writers in Malawi—and we have a long one, already—learn from Emily Mkamanga, a Nation on Sunday columnist. It was nice.

Death at the Right Time

2010-01-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

I did not want my granny to die in 2010. But honestly, I would have been surprised if the mother of my mother would have lived beyond 2010.

At 34, I was lucky to have her alive. At 34, I realise that I don’t know her name because even when I was young, she was still old enough just be called agogo. I also don’t know how old she is, really.

But my mother is 74 and she is my granny’s first born. Perhaps my granny had her first child at 20, perhaps 25, even 18. I don’t know. But looking at her, and listening to her stories, she was well beyond 90 and she has lived a meaningful life, one taught by joys and pain, tears and victories.

She had 14 children but seven lived to grow up. The rest died in young age, at most in teenage. And that was long ago before HIV started killing young people.

Luckily, she has lived to see all her seven children until January 25, 2010, when she closed her eyes for good.

In her old age, she was unable to walk distances, meaning she did not go to church, the place she loved to be. Religious leaders came to her house to pray with her. She was using a wheelchair because she had grown so old that I am not mourning her, rather I am celebrating her life.

My granny is the mother of my mother. My mother is such a wonderful person and I can safely attribute most of her character to her mother, my granny. Her death is, therefore, not a time for me to mourn but to celebrate her life which I knew little about, unfortunately.

But the few times I spent with her, she was a great woman. I liked to visit her as often as possible. She told us the family tree, encouraged us all to live as one, never to allow anything separate our big extended family.

Her death too, is a source of inspiration. A man must grow old to comb gray hair. Ideally, we must not die young. But life is more complicated than we think and we die young, sometimes preventable deaths.

My granny’s death defines life in her times and life now. Her generation lives longer than us. In the past few weeks, I have buried young people of my age. They have left young children, some helpless. So sad.

The good news is that she has died at the right time. She live to comb gray hair.

December 23, 2009, Blantyre

2009-12-23T04:35:00.001-08:00

I was driving in Blantyre City Centre at about midday and hey! The town was loaded with people buying and selling for Christmas. No parking space, No walking space. No greetings. Everyone is busy.

Then, I drove to the Chichiri Shopping Mall. Here, too, there was no parking space. Cars are bashing one another during reverse and parking. I met people from Zomba. I am not sure what people are buying. There are long queues on all bank ATMs. Even in the banking halls. There are long queues. It is time to withdraw.

I am doing something different. I have been busy paying normal bills. I have been busy depositing money into my joint account with my love.

But it is all interesting. I will go round again tomorrow to see people in town.

Does Malawi Need Local Polls?

2009-12-23T01:10:00.001-08:00

Perhaps this is not a valid question because human rights activists have been hitting hard at President Bingu wa Mutharika, saying he is not showing interest in holding local government polls. Now the news is that Malawi will have local polls next year.

It is a game gone now. We shall have polls in 2010. But the question remains relevant: Does Malawi need ward councilors?

The answer, according to our cultural governance structures, is that Malawi does not need local polls because we have leadership from extended family to paramount chiefs. This is the best local governance structure but blindness to the local—and non-stop gaze at the alien—has made us think we need local polls when we already have governance structures that work better than assemblies.

The reason activists are giving is that the polls are constitutional, so must be held. Some add that councilors, elected in local polls, help in development. So, having councilors is a human right.

On the surface, it appears true. But looking deeper, Malawi does not need councilors, and the reason is cultural, not legal; it is practical, not theoretical.

Our legal setting, as per our Constitution, starts at an individual. Every person, says the Constitution. The individual is the centre of our freedoms. (I need my individual freedoms, of course; to decide what I want to do with my life so, long I don’t injure other people’s freedoms.)

Our social/cultural setting does not necessarily start at the individual level. It starts at family level. We are known by family names. Whose son/daughter is this? A question often asked when we do good or bad. Our identity, culturally and socially, is by our family. Next it is the extended family, from which come villages, headed by village heads.

And our governments recognise village heads. One piece of evidence is that they are on government payroll. The village heads work, and they keep society on a journey.

They know almost all families in a village. The heads know almost all people coming into and getting out of the village. My headwoman, for example, knows where I live (Blantyre), she knows where I work (TVM), and she knows my marital status. She knows the needs of people of the village because she is with them as her own. She talks with them daily.

The talking is informal and, honestly, informal meetings are the ones running the world. Why should we, therefore, have councilors when we have village heads who know their areas better than elected leaders?

Councilors have a term. Village heads work for life. What is it that councilors do that village heads cannot do in development?

Our challenge is that we have not studied our governance structures to make democracy flow in them freely. We don’t need to copy everything Western. Our cultural and social settings are very fertile to democracy. It is a question of accepting our ways of life.

But this is difficult when we have NGOs that make noise. Some—and I say some—of the civil society groups are headed by not se educated people who cannot understand the need for cultural identity in our governance systems.

The West needs councilors because they do not have villages the way we do here. Why should we have councilors? This is the question. Any answers?

Oh I Am Growing Old

2009-12-21T21:57:00.001-08:00

Years ago, I celebrated my birthdays with vigour. That is no longer the case. Now I have to face reality that I am growing old, turning 33 today, 22 December, 2009.

Childhood is a mystery. I wanted to grow up and old. I would say I will be 14 next year when people asked for my age. Now I refuse to calculate how old I am. Thirty three? It can be scaring. I begin to think of a PhD proposal. I begin to think about my future. I begin to think about my parents. I am lucky; both of them are living and I as a parent.

Life is more complicated than we think. I am thinking about what to do on this birthday anniversary. Two decades ago, I would have been jumping up and down. How life changes!

Dark Wednesday

2009-12-02T06:49:00.001-08:00

Malawi was all good news not long ago: a growing economy (the world's second fastest growing after Qatar), peaceful elections in May, 2009.

What else? We had our own problems but we never anticipated anything like the fuel shortage that is with us now. Let alone now when the subsidised fertiliser for this year has been done in time, a couple of months before first rains. We all relaxed.

Then, suddenly, power interuptions became common. Mobile phone networks elusive. Fuel dissappeared. This is Wednesday, 2 December, and the fuel situation is just bad. Vehicles are parked. People have no clue how they will travel tonight. It is all unbelievable. Not long ago, we could buy petrol or diesel any time, any quantity, knowing we would find the gas any other time we want it.

No more. This Wednesday is dark. But as we say, the darkest hour, the nearer the dawn. Let's all hope we will have fuel in the country on Thursday as the Petroleum Importers official has said in the media today.

Law and National Interest

2009-12-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Law is unfair by its nature, Dr Ngeyi Kanyongolo of University of Malawi's Faculty of Law once told me.

Not just unfair. Law is blind to national needs of Malawi. Take the shortage of foreign exchange, for example. We have no forex to import essential commodities. We know some of the economic causes of this forex dry spell. And we know the economic solutions.

One of them is to close forex bureaux that are not doing what economics demands for the growth of our country.

The result was a dilemma of law versus national interest. Even President Dr Bingu wa Mutharika cannot understand law (or lawyers as he said in a recent one hour interview with TVM). Why is law not for national development?

Perhaps this is an unfair questions. Law is for development. This is the reason our government has a Ministry of Justice. It is part of national development. No doubt about that.

The challenge comes in when individuals have to take the whole country into prosperity or poverty with their verdicts as happened last year when the courts reversed government closure of some forex bureaux.

“Last year, I said we should close bureaux to save the money but somebody in the courts said no. They said I am interfering with the Judiciary. I am saying the Judiciary is interfering with me. It does not make sense. It makes me mad. It makes me angry. In future, I will put stringent measures. I don’t care who says what. I am fed up,” said President Dr Bingu wa Mutharika.

Can the Judiciary interfere with something else aprt from its own professional interference (checks and balances)? The Judiciary is assumed the arm of government that does not make mistakes; one that does not need presssure from any sector of the world population.

But law is not the ultimate. Different parts of development work together. Law should respect solutions from outside itself. Law should learn to listen to other disciplines.

Shortage of Everything

2009-12-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

These are tough times. Everything—almost everything, indeed--seems to be going into the wrong direction.

Fuel is in acute shortage. Long queues as I have never seen in my life have become daily sight now. People just queue without knowing when fuel would be available. Call it faith—the belief in things unseen.

That is what I did today, sent a driver with a 180 litre prado to a service station where he spent the whole day and returned on an empty tank. No diesel has been delivered. A real crisis.

Power interruptions are order of the day—they are normal, actually. Mobile phone network is unreliable. Some cotton farmers still don’t know what to do with their crop. It has lost value and weight.

Foreign Exchange is not just there; no money to import essential commodities.

Tough times indeed! One wonders what is in second term for Mutharika. His first term in office was tough but a thorough analysis determines that the first term was tougher than this one. The challenges of the first term from 2004 to 2009 were local, and that is dangerous. Your own people are more dangerous than enemies from abroad. The problems now are international (although local to some understanding.)

The internal challenges needed internal solutions and that was tough. But the challenges facing Malawi now have got more to do with regional and international issues and one of them, least thought and which you might reject, is climate change.

What has climate change got to do with our challenges now? The first challenge Mutharika
inherited was food shortage, an acute one. We had erratic rains and hunger was part of life.

As a way forward, Mutharika introduced a subsidised fertilizer programme, hoping rains would come in time. Rains have generally been kind with us. Little did we think that erratic rains have more to do with climate change than anything else. So fertiliser depleted our hard earned forex and here we are without the scarce commodity.

Power interruptions can happen at three stages: at generation (hydro power stations), distribution and reception. Most of our interruptions are from low power generation, resulting into power rationing.

The main problem is with the water body that generates our electricity, the Shire River, which comes from Lake Malawi. (It is also important to know that 80 percent of rivers that feed Lake Malawi are from Mozambique and they are drying because of climate change.)

We have weeds that are a real nuisance to the Shire River. Once rains come and water washes weeds from Liwonde, down to Nkula, generation is hugely disturbed.

A thorough analysis can connect the weeds and unstable water levels to climate change. This is a weird theory, anyway, but climate change is responsible for the fast spread of HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS. It is up to you to read more. I just wanted to make a point.

We are all waiting for President Mutharika to address these issues. In the short term yes. But what about the long term? His conviction in managaing climate change is the answer. If the President can lead Malawi and the region in mitigating climate change, history shall remember him as someone who had a vision for this small yet beautiful country.

My Love

2009-10-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Tony Mita, the unsung journalism hero who rose to become Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Information, used to call me “my friend, Mzati” until months ago when everything changed, just like that—just like that indeed.

Now, he calls me bambo whose English equivalent is son, kind of, son as in son-in-law. This is the story.

Tony and his wife, Nalyss, have three grown up children: Cheulekene, my former colleague at Nation Publications Limited where she is Section Head of Nation on Sunday newspaper; Tendai, studying in the US, is the only son.

But this story is not about these two, no; it is about Khama, the last born of Tony and Nalyss. It is not about Khama only; it is also about me, the last born of Willians and Anne Nkolokosa.

I met Khama on a Saturday afternoon when she joined Cheu to NPL newsroom to babysit Matamando, Cheu’s firstborn son. I did not work on Saturdays and I do not really remember why I stopped by the office. Neither do I remember where I was driving to when I passed by my former office which I left on March 30, 2009, to join TVM on April 1, the day TVM was launched in 1999.

But I do remember that I got something on my desk. That was long time ago.

Not long ago, in April this year, I called Khama and we started what ended up into a love affair in July this year, just after my return from Egypt where I accompanied HE Dr Bingu wa Mutharika.

By the time I was going to Germany, two and a half weeks after returning from Egypt, she travelled from Lilongwe to see me off at the airport in Blantyre, letting me fly away, allowing distance to carry me away from her.

Khama is the lady I called my love in the entries I did while in Germany. Now you know her. My love is Khama Mita, an MPH candidate at the University of Malawi’s College of Medicine in Blantyre where she also works.

For years, Tony Mita called me friend. One August Saturday evening I walked into his house with Khama. He greeted me without the title “my friend”. Next time he called me bambo and he has called me so ever since.

Life can be beautiful.

Conflict of Emotions, Thursday, September 10, 2009

2009-09-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

All these days I wanted to go back home. Now, it feels bad to leave Germany.

Am I alright? Didn't I long for home? Didn't I long for my daughter and my love? What is happening to me? I have just been asking myself these questions. They are valid questions. Things we leave behind do not only cause happiness. They cause sorrow as well, even if it might be temporary sadness.

Why do good things come to an end? That same question by Nelly Furtado. Put rightly, Why do all things come to an end?

I was used to Charles, a Project Manager (Africa) at DW Academy. He is a wonderful, wise man. Carla was a lecturer who exercised our minds. Christiane was a wonderful help throughout our stay here. She was our guide and proved useful, partly because she studied a lot of history and art in college, partly because she has a good command of the English language.

Alexanderia was a hardworker, making sure our stay was comfortable. She carries a listening ear, too. Pamela was just wonderful. We were beginning to like each other, to understand that humanity is one (never mind skin colour).

Just as this sense of one global identity was sinking deep into us, enabling me to survive the weeks I have been away from home, here I am about to board an aeroplane to leave for Malawi.

It feels bad. The closing today was emotional. And very helpful. To be honest, this has been a powerful course, a take off for me into a management flight. The 11 participants shared information and we were becoming one big family from Africa.

Just at that time when we were getting on with each other, just when we were accepting that we are away from home, just then, time to go back home came.

I am happy to go back home, to my country. No doubt about that, but I am also sad that I am leaving Germany, a place that has been my home away from home for four weeks. Germany: Thank you for your kindness. I am going back home to my beloved country. But Germany know this: You shall remain in my heart, almost always.

Good bye.

Things We Leave behind, Sunday, September 6, 2009

2009-09-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

So, here I am. Sunday, September 6, 2009. Still counting down; no, counting days now. I am looking forward to the day I shall fly out of Germany.

No. I think the day I shall fly out of Germany is looking (staring is the right word I think) at me. And it feels bad, you know. Here I am. I have been longing for this day, haven't I? I was here bothering you that I was missing home.

Now it scares me to think of leaving Germany, a place that has been my home away from home for the past three weeks and this week, making it four weeks.

What is this we fear in things we leave behind? When I was flying out of Chileka, I was sad to leave Malawi behind me. And you know what Malawi means: the roads, the hills, the smiles, the markets, and everything else but first and above all, the people, and the loved one.

Now I don't know what is it that should make me feel sorry to leave Germany. Iguess it is human nature to feel sorry on parting with anything. Parting, as I am realising, can be a moment of two faces: one of happiness, another of sadness.

It is just human nature. Happiness because, in my case, I am going back home to see my country, my people, my life; sadness because, in my case too, I am leaving what was becoming part of me: the bed I have slept on for 19 days here in Berlin and eight days in other cities, the corridors I walked, the chair I sat on when working on my laptop, the meals I had, the friends from Africa I met, the friends from church who hugged me yesterday.

We spoke different languages but we got our comfort from serving one God, a God who does not respect skin colour, a God who has endowed us with wisdom to survive in this world.

And then the thought comes: As I am missing home, are people also missing me? Am I a source of happiness in my house? Or those who live with me are happy that I am away? Am I a good manager at work? Or colleagues in my department are happy that their head is away? Are they looking forward to the day I shall be back in the office?

Just thoughts.

It is hard to imagine the sorrow that we carry from things we leave behind. Yet some places cause less sorrow than others. I will feel sorry from leaving Germany, just for a moment. But the joy of going home is far greater than the sorry feeling of leaving Germany.

So I choose home. I choose Malawi, my home, my country.

Places In Between

2009-09-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

This was a tough week as well. We left Berlin on Wednesday for Bonn, a long journey on the road, a chance to see places in between.

It is enjoyable to fly from one city to another. But you miss a lot of things in between. I have spent over 40 hours on the roads of Germany and I have seen a lot, heard a lot and experienced a lot. I have seen Germany.

From Bonn, we went to Koeln and proceeded to Hamburg on Thursday from where we left for Berlin on Friday, 290 kilometres, the shortest of the journeys I have made in Germany.

Now back in Berlin, it feels like home, a kind of home away from home. The count down continues, and this week, I think will be the fastest. I am not spending another Saturday here in Berlin.

By this day next week, I will be home, rather at home, if you notice the difference. I will be with the familiar that never gets me tired.

I will be watching the blue skies, and enjoying the heat. I hear it is hot. It is cold here in Germany and I can't wait to go back home to enjoy summer. But most importantly, enjoy Malawian smiles.

Eight Days To Go

2009-09-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 3.

I will be in Malawi by September 12. I have all the reason to believe I will be there; why not? Yet, if for any reason, I am not there, well, so let it be.

But such thoughts cannot stop me from looking forward to being back in my country. I am living for the day I shall be back in my country. I am living for the day I shall see Chileka, descend in the blue skies and admire Nkula falls and the tiny houses whose occupants have a big social network of humanity unlike in these Western lands where each person, it seems to me, lives for themselves.

I can't wait to beback home. And to meet the one my heart longs for.

September 2, 2009

2009-09-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

This is Wednesday, just under 10 minutes before midnight. It has been a hectic day, just like Monday and Tuesday.

The difference is that I was on the road today. We travelled from Berlin to Bonn for some eight hours, including two 30 minute stops because by law a driver of any big car in Germany, must rest after three hours.

Straight in Bonn, there was no time to rest. We went into a visit of DW Radio. It is housed in a beautiful building adjacent to the UN office here.

Now I am in Koeln, some 20 kilometres from Bonn. I had 10 minutes between programmes. Tired, I opened my mailbox. And my love had written under the subject "Time for Prayer". This is an e-mail in which we share prayer items for everyday when we are away from each other.

She had bad news. Her cousin, Jennifer, has passed on in the UK. I should rather say our cousin because her relations are my relations first.

I called her up just before we left for dinner at the invitation of DW Academy (Africa Section). I called her up again after the dinner at about 10 pm. We had a wonderful chat of about 15 minutes. I told her that death is a coward. It takes those we love, thinking we shall not live without them.

But the weakness of death is that it teaches us to live without, to live without those we love. Death teaches us to love more, to take the place of those gone. This is my duty: to love my love the way her cousin would have loved her. It is my duty to fill the spaces left by those she grew up to see, especially because the cousin was my age.

I mourn with my love. Yet I admire my love's faith in the Lord. She told me the bad news in a rather familiar e-mail subject (Time for Prayer). She brought the strange through the familiar. She announced a thing that weakens our faith through an e-mail subject that strengthens our (my love and I) faith.

Such is joy brought by a wonderful lady into a man's life.

Invisible Walls

2009-08-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

One interesting aspect about Germany, especially obsersed in those above 30, is their memory about the boundary between former East Germany and former West Germany.

This was the boundary, they say at every opportunity. My conclusion is that the wall might have been demolished physically but it remains in the minds of the people. Even the levels of development are visibly different.

I have been on the roads in what was the East and seen the kind of buildings they have; it is clear, they were behind in terms of visible development projects.

Most roads are new, meaning they have been constructed after the fall of the wall. (There is a development tax for the development of the former East which is still being collected 20 years after reunion. This speaks vloumes of the work that has to be done to lift up the former East to the level of the former West.)

Today, Sunday, I was at the part of Berlin where the wall has been preserved. It is not the original wall because it is being reconstructed for generations to come.

I walked by the wall. This is something impossible during the separation of the two sides of the country. It is being kept for historical reasons. And I think this is good. But there is a debate on whether or not keep the wall or turn the area into something else.

There were two walls, both constructed by East Germany, mainly to prevent its citizens from goingto West Germany where life was better in almost all senses.

The space between the walls was filled with sand and soldiers. The sand was meant to betray people escaping to West Germany, so that their footsteps could be visible. You know sand. The plan was that a person could not jump over two walls before soldiers, who guarded the wall 24 hours, could catch up with them.

But a human being is clever. People had ways of getting to West Germany. And they did. It seems to me that people cannot be oppressed beyond the limit they allow to be oppressed. Survival shall be there, always.

Counting Down the Days, Sunday, August 30, '09

2009-08-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

This day marks half my stay in Germany. I am now at the peak of this long journey, kind of, you might say; I was climbing up, up, this mountain, this month-long mountain.

Now that I am at the peak, I can take a minute, relax and glance, no gaze, at the foot of the mountain, the journey. I can look down and count down the days to the day distance shall carry me back home. I can't wait. I am living for the day I shall go back home and meet the familiar faces, live the familiar weather, enjoy the familiar everything.

The strange here is becoming familiar. But it remains strange. This remains a foreign land and I am longing for home to see everything in the definition of home.

The count down has started and this is a source of joy, real joy, in my soul. You can join me in this count down, if you wish.

Mandela: Greatest Man Living Now

2009-08-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

I have had thoughts about Nelson Mandela these past hours that I had to fish out this article from my archive and post it here. It first appeared in The Nation of December 6, 2006.

Mandela: Greatest Man Living Now

Statesmen cannot be wished into existence. The world is longing for one to unite Iraq. And, as Iraqis are finding out, that man is not a citizen of the war torn country but a South African.

South Africa will, in the coming years, host two global events: the 2010 World Cup and the funeral of Nelson Mandela.

Both events will attract thousands of people, thousands of journalists. Across the earth’s 24 time zones, millions will interrupt their waking or sleeping schedules to gather around television sets.

The World Cup is held once in four years and might come back to South Africa in the next five decades. The funeral of Mandela will be once and that is all. Tens of thousands will stand along roads to say farewell as he will be driven the streets on his last journey to the resting place.

Powerful men and women of the world will be at the funeral. They are people who cannot go to a stadium to watch football: presidents like Hamid Karzai, George Bush and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi; brilliant minds like journalists Richard Stengel, Time Magazine managing editor who once worked with Mandela on his book Long Walk to Freedom, and Fareed Zakaria, former professor of political science at Harvard University, now editor of Newsweek International, who reports for and oversees weekly production of eight editions of the magazine.

These people will be on reserved seats because of protocol. But Mandela would have reserved the choicest seats for ordinary people because it was for such that he took the road of a freedom fighter.

Thoughts of a funeral are awkward to some. But life is a journey and it comes to an end. The world is now busy walking the journey of Mandela which everyone wants to go on and on and on. Sadly, nature demands that Mandela’s life, like all human beings, be over some day. At 88 [he is now 91], he is looking forward to that day.

“It would be very egotistical of me to say how I would like to be remembered,” he said in March 1997. “I would leave that entirely to South Africans. I would just like a simple stone on which is written ‘Mandela’.”

Mandela talks about his death. He does not talk about his funeral—that is up to South Africans. In fact, he spends time thinking about the after-life as he hinted in one interview. When he dies, he says, and once in the next world, “I will look for and join an ANC branch”.

Not that he is obsessed with party politics but the man is committed to freedom and justice and sees the ANC as the practical tool to fight oppression, for that is what he has been doing for most part of his life and perhaps can’t imagine a just life; he thinks he would have some battle to fight, always.

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, describes Mandela as “not just the greatest statesman but the greatest man now living”.

Brown was writing in a November 13 special edition celebrating 60 years of Time Atlantic, years the magazine has covered—or, put rightly, uncovered—heroes. Of the magazine’s 66 heroes, Mandela was the first and was given two pages. Space is scarce in print media and goes with the value of a story.

Of course, three others were given two pages: the Beatles, Mikhail Gorbachev and Princess Diana. But Mandela’s story was the first. The best comes first in almost all media. This, again, speaks volumes of the value placed on this great son of Africa.

Mandela had a reason to hate white South Africans. He had reason to call them strangers and violently chase them from South Africa.

But after 27 years of imprisonment at the hands of the apartheid government, Mandela chose truth and reconciliation, not revenge, but forgiveness. He had been separated from his wife, to whom he wrote lovely letters; he missed his children. He went through the pain of being unable to bury his mother and his first born son, Madiba Thembekile, deaths that made Mandela to look back at his younger self, to evaluate his life.

“Her [the mother’s] difficulties, her poverty, made me question once again whether I had taken the right path,” wrote Mandela in his book, Long Walk to Freedom. “For a long time, my mother had not understood my commitment to the struggle.”

In such times, some people put up a brave face as if they have survived shame and embarrassment, but it is the soul that is bruised; the heart, not the body.

This was the case with Mandela. Questions without answers can be more painful than physical torture. Mandela wondered, without any answer, why his family was put in such an awkward situation. For long he had advised people not to worry about things they could not control. “I was unable to take my own advice,” he says. “I had many sleepless nights.”

The separation from his family resulting from a court case using discriminatory laws was enough to warrant a revenge after his release on Sunday, February 11, 1990.

Yet there were more challenges after his release from prison. He realised he had gained his freedom but he was yet to fight for the freedom of his people. Once the Inkatha members secretly raided the Vaal township of Boipatong and killed 46 people. No arrests were made. It was as if some people had no state protection.

“Mandela, give us guns,” said placards carried by his supporters at one rally. “Victory through battle, not talk.”

He had been tested for too long to carry on the struggle peacefully. But he said “peace”.
“It was because of the greatness of Mandela—and, especially, his refusal to hate or become embittered—that a multiracial South Africa was born, not in further bloodshed and catastrophe, but in peace and democracy,” says Brown.

To understand the importance of Mandela, consider Iraq, that helpless, failed state where sectarian violence has more control than the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Hundreds are dying everyday. No one is safe, not even the Prime Minister.

Aparism Ghosh is Time senior correspondent who has been reporting from Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Ghosh knows life in the city. He has the experience of flying into Baghdad, too.

“I know what lies ahead,” he says of flights from Amman in Jordan to Baghdad.

It is an hour’s uneventful flying, followed by the world’s scariest landing—“a steep, corkscrewing plunge into what used to be Saddam Hussein International Airport”.

It is scariest because the pilot has to avoid being shot down by Iraqi insurgents. The plane stays at 30,000 feet until it is directly over Baghdad airport, then take a spiralling dive, straightening up yards from the runway.

“If you are looking out the window, it can feel as if the plane is in a free fall from which it can’t possibly pull out,” says Ghosh. “I have learned from experience to ask for an aisle seat.”
That is not all. The journey from the airport into Baghdad is a 14-kilometre drive on what is called the Highway of Death.

The Shiites and Sunnis are engaged in sectarian violence. In fact, sectarian violence is a political term. Iraq is in a civil war. Out-going United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called the violence “worse than a civil war” in a BBC interview on Monday.

Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlak has repeatedly told the press that Iraq’s political landscape has no giants.

“Not only that,” he said earlier this year, “but the political system we have created makes it impossible for such a figure to emerge.”

Politicians in Iraq have discovered that the easiest way to win votes is to appeal to sectarian chauvinism; they have little incentive to take the higher, more difficult road of liberal democracy which cherishes reason, liberty and freedom.

In July this year, al-Mutlak said Iraq could be united and the killings could come to an end. The country, he said, needed “an Iraqi Mandela”.

This is the gigantic size of Mandela. Even those in Iraq know the sectarian violence—or civil war, to be precise—can be ended by a leader of Mandela’s calibre; not George W Bush or Tony Blair, the so-called champions of democracy; not the Pope; but Nelson Mandela from South Africa, a two-hour flight from Blantyre in Malawi.

Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, and spent early childhood the traditional, old way in Mvezo, a tiny village on the banks of the Mbashe River in Umtata.

“From an early age, I spent most of my free time in the veld playing and fighting with the other boys of the village,” he writes in his autobiography.

Childhood lessons have a tendency to remain in people for life. They are lessons guarded by society which, sadly, are not cherished by the modern society of Malawi. Now socialisation or transmission of values is, in some cases, more from the electronic media (television, radio and internet) and housemaids than the family.

Children ought to play with toys, especially those them make by themselves. Children ought to play with clay to derive lessons from the natural world: let them run in the rain until it’s over (this does not cause malaria, the disease is caused by plasmodium transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito); let them play with clay and realise their skills.

In such engagement with nature, Mandela found virtues that make him. The statesmanship in Mandela can be traced back to about five years of age when he shared food and blanket with others.

He had become a herd-boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields where he learned hunting. One day, his turn came to ride a donkey and it bolted into a bush of thorns. He was embarrassed.

“I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonouring them,” he says.

You can see more from a mountain and from the perspective of years, says a brilliant journalist Jon Meacham. Mandela has climbed mountains and lived a long life.

He joined politics while studying in Johannesburg by joining the African National Congress in 1942. He has climbed mountains of books and time. He has been a life transformed from violence to peace. Yet he believes that when all channels of peaceful protest fail, violence is a practical option. This is what he did by leading Umkhonto we Sizwe, a military arm of the ANC.

Mandela has walked from the violent extreme of the world, balancing up on the way, and reached the peaceful end of life. He has shown that the end is more important than the beginning. Former president Bakili Muluzi missed that lesson. Fredrick Chiluba of Zambia missed the crucial aspect as well.

The years Mandela was locked up in his cell during daylight hours, deprived him of music and sunshine. He was denied things from outside. The familiar things we take for granted are what we miss most. But the character in him remained intact. The discipline is still in him.

He wakes up by 4: 30 am even if he went to bed late. He makes his bed—he still believes this is his duty, even when he was president. He exercises for one hour from 5 am and takes breakfast at 6: 30 am as he reads the days’ newspapers.

This daily timetable is changing now. Age is catching up and everything is becoming slower.
Yet his voice, weak and faint, is more important than ever. He prefers “we” to “I”. Thus he attributes all the honour given him to South Africans, saying that a man seen by all is standing on his people’s shoulders.

Mandela is now reflecting on his life and enjoying his childhood best moments—typical of old age. His greatest pleasure is watching the sun set with the music of Handel or Tchaikovsky playing.
He should really love that for he is the sun of the world, light for hidden, dark corners of poverty, disease, oppression and dictatorship.

It is now the turn of the world to enjoy watching the setting of Mandela’s life which is at the end of the horizon. He will go a happy man after leading the first South African multiracial government for five years, leaving the presidency at his peak—a lesson many have failed to learn.

Mandela worked with his immediate predecessor Fredrick de Klerk who was invited into a government of national unity. Further, Mandela has worked with his immediate successor President Thabo Mbeki.

The three formed a team that went to Fifa headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, to make South Africa’s case to host the 2010 World Cup.

South Africa is now gearing for the World Cup. The OR Tambo International Airport is being expanded and renovated. .

The fever is growing stronger every day. The economy benefits are visible. But the world does not know what will come first: the World Cup or the funeral of Mandela.

This Week

2009-08-29T02:07:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy week, too busy that I could not spare a moment to update my blog. I felt sorry.

Sorry because this is a social contract: that you log on or visit the blog with hope for something new. And I know how bad it feels to visit and be greeted by old articles. But there were good reasons.

It was all because of the training I am undergoing here in Germany. I was busy all day Sunday and Monday. Tuesday, we had to leave for Nunberg and travelled for six hours on the road, seeing the real Germany.

I saw maize farms. What do they do with the maize? I asked our course manager, Charles, a brilliant Ugandan who is a German now.

"They us it here," he said. But most of it, he added, is bought by government and kept for donations to people who may lack the cereal. I saw cattle as well and spent time admiring their countryside, which is not as country as in Malawi, but still countryside.

On the afternoon of Tusday we visited several old cathedrals of Nunberg, a largely Catholic area in Germany.

Catholicism, as I have been learning, is not adored here. Most young people go to church once a year on Christmas and they disagree a lot with the Pope, especially on use of condom and contraceptions.

Wednesday morning was for more visits, and the afternoon for more travelling, six hours, to Mainz, outside Frankfurt.

I was tired that it was refreshing to start Thursday with a visit to Gurtenbeg Museum, this man who, according to European history, invented printing. (You should also read Indian and African history and decide where printing as we know it today started.) We saw the bibles he printed, 40 of the 70. Some are in other parts of the world.

The afternoon was for more educational visits to TV stations, just like Friday morning, just before we had eight hours on the road back to Berlin.

It was like a journey back home, everyone of us was happy to be back to Berlin. This is the city where we came first. This is the city that we know best. We know where to eat, where to buy telephone cards, where to walk and all that.

The other cities we visited were just part of a journey. We checked in at a hotel on Tuesday afternoon and had to check out on Wednesday morning. Tiresome. But it is all part of learning management.

Now I am back in Berlin and can sit here, at the lobby of Motel One to browse and update my blog. Internet is free here but very expensive in the hotels of the cities we visited.

I am happy to be here, very happy.

Separated by Sky, Sunday, August 23, 2009

2009-08-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

This has been a good day yet tough. I have been indoors much of the time except for lunch and an undeground train ride.

I have spent time listening to some of my favourite music. I brought music from home: Kalambe River Jazz Band, Chikowa Band, Mike Kamwendo, Chechamba, MBC Band (the old one), Stonard Lungu, Tsoka Liyenda, Roots, and such music.

But I also spent time listening to music on Youtube. My favourite music from Michael Card, Steve Green and Fernando Ortega. All great musicians and great writers of music.

This train ride that took me to Alexander Platz was an experience. I went out and looked at the blue skies or what I want to be blue skies. And I saw a wide(less) space. The sky, I realised, can be wide, perhaps vast.

Then I felt a great loneliness. This sky swallowed me up from Malawi to Germany. Now it feels bad. This is my second week in Germany and I am missing my love so much.

It is tough because I am counting up to a third week before I start counting down to the day I shall see her. Four weeks can be a long time. I never knew the sky can separate people like this. I never thought the sky is this wide. I had never understood that the sky is this powerful. Perhaps some day I will write a poem (perhaps a long piece) on the sky.

But I have some joy. The sky does not take for good. I will overcome this and soon my joy and her joy will be full. We shall be together under a tree outside our house, looking into each others' eyes and smiling.

The sky can only separate. It is land that swallows for good. When we bury our friends and relatives, we know we shall not see them again, on the earth.

But the sky swallows to give back. The same sky that swallowed me at Chileka will take me back, down there, mid next month.

Saturday Afternoon

2009-08-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

This has been a wonderful day, restful yet hectic. I was lucky to find a congregation that meets in the morning.

The people were friendly. They smiled at me and hugged me. The service was in German but well at the end of the day, God is one. I think I was getting the sense that God is love, that He loves us all.

In the afternoon, I went round seeing God's creation. Our team, part of it, was off to Potsdam, a city near Berlin (you would think they are one). It was by underground from my hotel just outside Moritz, then by bus from Alexander on to Potsdam where we were on a ship for one and a half hours, appreciating the beauty of the German.

We were on Havel River. Then connected to several lakes, small, not comparable to our lakes in Malawi. The sight of castles and palaces, some as old as 300 years was a comfort.

Potsdam is different: more green than Berlin, less cars than Berlin. We met a few men in some traditional regalia and they said they were performing a last ritual for a boy before he marries. The groom is supposed to sell some small things and raise funds just a symbol of hard work not necessarily fund raising, they say.

On the ship, we met another team, of ladies with a bride doing almost the same as the groom was doing. But this groom and bride are not for each other.

"This is for rural parts," said our guide. "I would not do that." I understood her. Germany is a country with 70 percent of women single. Life, they say, is tough and marriage is scaring. You see few children (babies rather) on the streets.

Even the government is worried because this means the working class is growing old and there may not be enough young people to replace the labour force.

German young people say it is expensive to raise children here. True. But I don't think that is the whole reason. Perhaps young people just don't want responsibility. They want to enjoy and do what they want. (Life outside marriage responsibilities can be funny but not the best.)

Later in the afternoon, as we arrived back at our hotel, we met a demonstration, a huge one, with police guiding the demonstrators.

There are elections next month here and campaign is hot. This demonstration was against one party that, according to people, is not for their common good. There were over five thousand demonstrators. Each of them with a beer, most of them smoking, and I wondered if at all there is a German who does not smoke.

They were drinking and breaking bottles on the tarmac. There was loud music from vehicles, really loud. This was a loooooong snake of demonstrators that it took one hour for them to pass by our hotel. Anyway, each group would stop, sing, dance and do all kinds of things.

I saw this with my eyes.

Best Yet To Come

2009-08-22T00:06:00.001-07:00

Thoughts about my mother (77) and father (80) have come to me strongly of late. You are blessed to have both parents living at that old age, says my love.

I don't know why. But slowly, I am appreciating what they did to me. Now that I have made a name as a journalist and I have a stable income, I tend to think, "If it were not for mom and dad, what would have happened to me?" Honestly, I don't know. I would not know, after all.

I have friends who lost one or both parents. My best friend (he is as good as my brother) Bright Molande lost his mother about two decades ago. He wishes she were here to appreciate his loving wife, Naireti. (Bright, like many others, was touched by my entry on "Pain of a Loving Wife" that he wrote privately in appreciation.)

Near my home village in Balaka is Lucius Banda who has been open about the pain of poverty he experienced while young.

Lucius had what he calls a not so careful father. It was the mother who raised the children. Both Paul and Lucius (these are brothers) have sung about mothers in general, not necessarily their mother. But it also about their mother and Lucius is clear about that.

Lucius laments that this mother, who struggled to raise her children, died on the eve of his getting rich and getting a wife. He thinks his mother is hiding, hence he called his band Zembani Music Company.

This is the pain of being successful after the death of those who inspired us. It can be painful. This means those of us with living parents should be thankful and do all we can to make them and ourselves happy.

I went to primary school two decades ago. I walked 10 kilometres to school everyday. My mother, I remember, would stand there at times, gazing at me as I left home for school. Often, Iwould walk this distance alone because I was the only one from the neighbourhood going to school.

Mom, I think, was concerned with the bushes I had to pass through. Mom, I think, was worried with the rivers I had to cross, when it rained. Three of them: Mitengwe (a stone-throw away from home; Bondo; and Chimwalire (let it die) some four kilometrs to school.

Chimwalire! This is the river that killed ambitions of young people. They dropped out of school and started vegetable farming here.

But this river did not kill my ambitions. Thanks mom. Thanks dad. Thanks to all who encouraged me on the way, those I met on the via. They are many. (One day I shall list them in a separate article.)

Now I think mom was not looking at me as I walked to school. She was gazing at my distant future. Now that future is here. Zokoma ziri mtsogolo, she used to say, meaning the best is yet to come.

Now I have been educated and I am still educating myself. Now I have a job. Now I have been to places. Now I no longer walk, instead, I drive over the same distance of 10 kilometres to work, not primary school.

Now I am in Germany. Now I have a loving lady of my life. In short, I am enjoying. The good part of it is that mom and dad are here to see all this.

I don't know how I shall feel when they are gone. Kodi zokoma zija mayi ankati ziri mtsogolo ndi zimenezi kapena zikubwera? (Is this the best mom said would meet me or the best is yet to come?)

Saturday, 22 August, 2009

2009-08-22T00:04:00.000-07:00

It is 7:15 in the morning and I have just finished talking with my love. She called from Malawi. Wonderful, isn’t it?

I am a Seventh Day Adventist and my plan is to go to church this morning and appreciate God’s nature in the afternoon as part of worship, a praise to higher powers called God, the author and sustainer of life—all life on earth and elsewhere.

But as I am learning, the congregation I was supposed to join meets at 2 pm. My task is to hunt for one that meets in the morning.

After a week’s hard work, I need some rest; after an academically high week, I need to remember that I am a human being, created in the image of God. It is very important. We all worship, whatever and however.

The weather remains cloudy. Not sure if it is going to rain. But it is warm and I am enjoying every bit of my stay here. Yet I miss home.

Then how come I am enjoying at the same time missing home? Isn’t this contradictory? Well, the human mind is complicated enough to live a contradictory life just as I have been thinking about church yet reflecting on the call from Malawi.

I will be back on these pages soon, when I have issues to write.

Friday, August 21, 2009

2009-08-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

I wake up to thunder and look outside to see clouds for the first time since my arrival in Berlin. The past six days have been all sunny, with blue skies, though not as blue as the beautiful skies of Malawi.

This evening, I am looking back at the day. It has been hectic, as the rest of the days. The eleven of us from Africa are not here on vacation. The Germans can have tight schedules. We have classes from 9 am to 1 pm for a bried break before regrouping for an afternoon session that ends after 4.

Today, we knocked off a little earlier because we had to go round Berlin on the bus and underground train. It was interesting to be part of city life. We have been all over the shopping centres. But that is not very important. For me, it is Parliament where we found long queues of tourists waiting to get in and have a feel. The residence of the Chancellor is another important place and other historical sites.

The freedom to take ppictures even outside the palace amazed me again. I was reminded of the pictures I took the kings castle in Norway. Just so simple. I long for a day I shall be able to go to gardens of Parliament in Malawi, lie there and relax and take pictures.

Our guide is always mindful of the Germany's history and always talks with reference to the past.

I love that because you can't understand the present if you don't know the past and you cannot plan the future without understanding the present. I worry that history is dying in our secondary schools in Malawi. We are so much fixed on science as if science operates in a cultural/historical vacuum.

But this is a lone voice. Who is else sees things as I do? If you think history is important as Kamuzu believed, then drop me a line.

Otherwise, I am tired and need some rest. It is raining, somehow heavy and I need all the warmth my beddings can provide. I hope to update the blog in the next few hours.

20 August, 2009, Immediacy of Communication

2009-08-20T11:34:00.002-07:00

This afternoon, like the rest of my days here in Berllin, I was on yahoo! messenger, chatting up my love in Malawi.

For a moment, I was amazed with this immediacy of communication. I could see that she is writing but I could still feel a delay: Is she still writing? Why not just send what she has written so that I read?

Then I asked myself: Where has patience gone? Twenty years ago and before that, I would not have been sitting on a desk, punching keys on a laptop, talking with anyone in Malawi. The means of communication then was mail, a letter through the post office.

It would take a month for a letter to leave Germany and reach Malawi. For someone like me, staying a month, I would not have dared write a letter maybe. I would have known I will be home by the time it gets there.

The situation is different today. We can't imagine life without internet. Yet there was no internet a generation ago. This technology has become so much part of life that we can't imagine life without internet.

As we enjoy this technology that has brought immediacy of communication, we must not forget the basics of communication, even language skills.

Even more importantly, when I will be writing the story of my life, shall I get these yahoo! messenger chats to include in a biography? Do we still have the joys that were brought by letters written by hand?

Those of us who experienced free hand letters, in own handwriting, and are now in the internet age, how do w e feel about the letters through the post office?

How much will internet keep for me? Not just in terms of storage and archiving but in terms of how much goes into it as opposed to a letter? We put so much in a friendly letter, that we can't write while chatting up each other on yahoo! messenger.

Technology is good, but for a writer like me, it is also superficial, a stealth killer of creativity. Yet I am benefiting from it, anyway, because I will be on yahoo! messenger again tomorrow.

20 August, 2009

2009-08-20T11:34:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, August 18

2009-08-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

For Bright Molande,

The gods, this morning I saw things that must not hapen in Africa, our beautiful continent. I was on a train, this underground snake, and a young woman sat opposite me.

She was wearing a doubting face. She had a cup of hot coffee and was holding on to her bike which looked more important to her than human beings. I felt sorry for her. She was miserable. Not just because life is tough here, but because there is no soial fabric to sustain life. A man must care for himself.

The moment she got out of the train, she ran with her bike and jumped on it, as if rushing for nowhere. A companion is a bike, a dog, or a newspaper.

Life here is never enjoyable. This lady spoke with nobody on the train. Passengers were busy behind newspapers, novels, and nothing at all. This made me miss Africa, sweet home. In a train in Malawi, I would have been listening to a stranger telling me how he married his first wife and third wife.

All I mean is that in Africa I would have been engaged in some conversation, not just sitting there as if for no apparent reason.

Now that you and me know these thing and believe Malawi is best, let us shout to Malawians that our culture is the best.

Good bye for now.

2009-08-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Dawn

18 August 2009

It is 20 minutes to four at dawn. I am up on my hotel bed, thinking, writing and reflecting on my MA thesis, an indepth analysis of the dramartugical handling of the local and alien in the plays of Wole Soyinka and Dereck Walcott: Postcolonial Identities and Culture.

I am hungry and I love this because my favourite meal is breakfast and I will hammer it with all the energy and hunger.

Berllin has what the locals are calling the longest summer this year. I love it. And they love it too. Here, too, I begin to appreciate (again) some things we take for granted in Malawi. A typical example being the rising and setting sun as seen from most places in my home.

Here, in Berlin, you don’t see the sun rising or setting. This beauty of nature, the day star, is blocked by tall buildings as in all other cities I have been to: Oslo, Amsterdam, Washington and Jo’rburg; while Accra, Mombasa, Arusha, Nairobi and other African cities see the sun (and I speak as a witness), Malawi’s rising and setting sun is more inspiring for reasons I can’t explain.

Perhaps it is nature’s favour upon us. I will never forget the rising and setting sun in Cape Maclear. In the morning it rises up with energies as if being lifted from the waters of Monkeybay while in the evening, it is a weak star, drowning in the hills of Golomoti.

It is sweet and lovely. In Blantyre you see the sun rising, moving up slowly from behind some mountain, so too in most parts of Malawi. I miss this, I miss my love too.

The pain in my mouth is completely gone. The sores are healed. This is my disease. It attacks me when I am stressed up and the weeks before Germany were stressful.

But don’t you worry. I am fine and I will be fine throughout my stay here in Germany. Good to talk with you now. I will talk with you again, soon, especially as time and inspiration allow me to do so.

2009-08-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

Monday, 17 August, 2009

It is 10:08 PM. I am in my room marking examination scripts for my University of Malawi students. I teach two courses at Chancellor College (Introduction to Journalism and Writing Skills).

There is a picture of my love on the bed. She is looking at me and smiling. She looks really beautiful.

But beyond that, it is wonderful to discover that she has a beautiful character too: open, thoughtful, and working towards happiness, always. I am really proud to be associated with you, my love.

Here, I am also thinking how you and me will spend Christmas. Let this be a special Christmas because, for the first time in my working life, I am free on Christmas. It is strange but I must accept this and find what to do on the day.

The phrase is: “I am all yours, take me where you want.”

The day has been nice. Got to know Germany more and more. The people here don’t forget that Berlin was once divided into two: West and East. There was a wall that symbolised the boundary between two systems: Communism on the East and Capitalism on the West. But the wall fell down and the people are one, once more. Yet they are mindful of their history.

Our guide did something wonderful today. She took us in the morning and did almost that in the afternoon but left us midway and said here is a shopping centre, do what you want and ride a train back to the hotel.

I was with my Nigerian friend Atiku Akiru, a young person with a reasonable understanding of postcolonial societies. I am yet to ask how far he went with education. But I am well pleased with his understanding of these issues.

I am listening to an interesting song.

Don’t be afraid
To feel this way
Lord gonna make you understand
It’s called faith

I am enjoying it all. I hope you are enjoying yourself as well and that you are eagerly awaiting my coming.

I love you and you are the one I am waiting to see.

Keep well and stay in touch.

Germany Diary

2009-08-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday, 2:06 PM

Arrived safely this morning. It was nice from Blantyre to Jo’burg. Nice too from Jo’burg to Frankfurt Inter Aiport. This is where I had to walk a distance to gate A 16, a distance as if from Chilobwe to Zingwangwa to board a plane to Berlin.

By nine, I was at my hotel to be joined by six others later. As you know, I am tired and needed a hot shower and sleep. Yet that is not the case. I cannot check-in until three o’clock in the afternoon and you wonder at this service.

It’s the German way of doing things, says Christiane, our hostess. She has been to the US and was amazed with people’s willingness to help and quality of service.

Now I have just been eating at a restaurant outside the hotel. I was with my new found friend, for this period, Atiku Abubakar Akiru, from Kaduna in Northern Nigeria. I am back at the hotel, failing to connect my laptop to wireless internet and calling for more creativity into spending time and dozing on a chair. This is a test of pateince.

We have been given mobile phone cards with 10 Euores but some of us can’t call.

I can’t call, I can’t e-mail. I still don’t have a room, still haven’t had a shower 28 hours after my morning shower in Malawi. This is why I have just composed this piece of writing to be sent to you later.

I am writing and will write till I doze off. The pain in my mouth was so terrible this morning and it remains so. I have never had such pain from mouth ulcers. I can’t chew properly, can’t speak properly, my lips are dry and I have fever.

But I am well. Don’t worry about me. I will be well.

Power, Weakness of Distance

2009-08-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Distance is at once strong, at once weak.

It carries us away from our loved ones. It flies us into lands and places, new and familiar, far away from our homes. Distance carries us into places we have never been before.

Distance will carry me away from Malawi to Berlin in Germany this Sunday, August 16, 2009. I am going for a TV Station Management course lasting a month. It is a source of joy to travel, to see new places especially. Yet leaving the familiar, the everyday routine is also a source of sorrow.

I will miss my bedroom. I will miss my house. I will miss the road I drive on everyday, especially the delays caused by tracks on the Magalasi Road. I will miss my workmates.

But these are things and do not appeal to feelings and emotions. It is human beings who appeal to emotions and feelings. Human beings also appeal to reason and common sense. So my friends in Malawi will miss me just as I will miss plenty of them.

Still, as always, one person will be missed a lot more than everybody else. But at the end of one month, the same distance will carry me home from what was becoming familiar to the missed familiar, to the one I missed most.

Then, upon being welcomed by friends and relatives, I will prove that distance is a coward. It carries you away and brings you back to your place.

Story From My Heart

2009-08-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

Some day, perhaps soon, I will tell you a story from my heart.

This is a story that is very personal yet universal. It is a story about a meeting of two lives that are blending into one yet they remain separate. A mystery, isn't it? Well, love is a mystery by nature; it is difficult to understand love, hence love can better be experienced than explained.

What is it that makes a man like me appreciate a girl, one particular lady, not everybody else? This is a crucial question. But does it have an answer?

Some day, perhaps soon, perhaps long from now, I will write about how two lives met and agreed to form one life.

This will be an interesting story.

Best of Pain

2009-08-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

The most painful experiences of our lives, whatever they are, have potential to do two things; and this is universal.

Pain will either harden our hearts or soften them in which case we do not wish the same to happen to others. This is the choice I have made: to view every pain, every challenge with a critical, positive eye and get the best from it.

Years ago, I was listening to a BBC interview with Professor Chinua Achebe and he was asked whether or not he regretted the terrible accident which left him paralysed from the waist down.

No, he said. “If not me, who did I want it to be?” he asked. Good question. An accident, any accident, is bad news. No one wants it to happen to them. Here was a man, just like most others, enjoying a ride on the road until suddenly, in a twinkling of an eye, everything changes. He is injured, in pain, and his whole life changes, just in a fraction of a second.

Yet after months in hospital and coming out on a wheel chair, Achebe still carries a smile and accepts the accident had to happen to him. Rare. “If not me, who did I want it to be?”

But it is not easy to have a heart softened by pain, especially pain inflicted upon us by those who hate us. Yet the best weapon to fight our enemies—those who hate us for we must hate no one—is a smile. Hard. But it remains the best. Our smiles torture our enemies—again those who hate us, not those we hate for we must hate no one.

Life is supposed to be beautiful but pain disturbs our journey of joy. Worse than that, some pain is inflicted upon us by man. If we can learn to accept pain, natural or man inflicted, our hearts will be softened.

The world is looking for people with hearts that are softened by pain. Such people are rare but this generation needs more and more of such people. Are you ready to develop a soft heart from pain?

This is a question for you—and me too.

Pain of a Loving Wife

2009-08-07T04:27:00.000-07:00

It is the desire of every person to love and to be loved. But loving wives do not bring joy only, they bring sorrow as well.

I have come across Lulu’s song Kumalembe, in which the persona laments the death of his mother. As I am writing, I am listening to the song. I have been a happy person until this song when I started feeling for my mother. I am worried. The pain is caused by her happiness.

Mayi mudachoka kale
Kumalembe ndiribe nako mawu
Ndimafuna mukadaona apongozi
Makhalidwe monga munkachitira

The persona has married a very good, loving woman who reminds him his mother who died long time ago. He is supposed to be happy, but the loving wife is also a source of sorrow: the loving wife reminds him of his loving mother who did not see her daughter-in-law. I wish my mother had seen my wife, laments the persona.

This is the pain of it all. It is a deep subject well tackled by Lulu, our young musician. It is not that the persona wants a bad wife. But how does he reconcile the desire to have his mother and a good wife living side by side and the reality that he has a good wife who reminds him of his late mother? How does the loving wife fill the spaces left by his mother, the visible spaces, the absence he is feeling because of presence?

My mother knows how to prepare thobwa and vegetables and meat and tasty nsima. Her wish now is to see me in the hands of a loving wife who would love me, care for me; one who would be lovable because my mother taught me how to love.

Those of us with mothers living do not only have them as a source of happiness, but also sadness if we are not yet married?

My father, now I recall, turns out to be a good cook as well. He is good at meat, especially chicken. He can roast a chicken and you wonder at it. Still on my father, he used to press my school uniform in the morning and let me feel the warmth of the iron. In retrospect, I realise that warmth represented the warmth of his love.

So, too, mom. She had her way of keeping food warm. I used to walk 10 kilometres to and from school and coming back at about three in the afternoon, I would be hungry and tired.

But the food she kept for me was great, always. She kept it warm and fresh and wanted me to be happy. She would give food, and tell me to eat at table. “When you rest my son,” she would say, “you should go to the grocery or market."

So, my day would come to an end like that, with an evening of another meal, prayer and study. Mom was good at telling me to work hard in school. My son, she used to say, you are my last born, work hard in school. It seems to me she left blank spaces because now I think she meant that I was a weak boy because I was last born.

She knew my wealth was in my brain and had to nurture it academically which is what I have done. I have walked a long road, rough and painful at times.

But I never lost time really. I ended up in the University of Malawi where I read for a BA in Journalism and now finishing my MA in English Literature. I have a good job that cares for me and my old parents. I am able to give them the best health care and provide for their needs.

Yet my mom's death will haunt me if my wife will be as loving as my mom. Her death will haunt me, too, if my wife turns out to be bad, just bad.

But it seems to me these things are better experienced than explained. Love is more complicated than we think. It is a source of happiness, yet a source of sorrow, a kind of sorrow that comes from happiness and ends in happiness.

Hopefully you will comment on this subject and we discuss it more and more.

Reason, Common Sense Versus Feelings and Emotions

2009-08-07T03:34:00.001-07:00

The road from Blantyre to Zomba, if you know (or don’t know it), is small, bumpy, and winding, for whatever reason, like a man’s ways.

The bends are moments of feelings which can be powerful, the bumps like emotions which can be strong to the extent of taking man out of his way into something resembling the Blantyre-Zomba Road: bumps, corners and narrowness.

Can a man or woman, an adult like me, be excited with emotions and feelings and act foolishly? Yes. Can love make a person act on feelings and emotions, not reason and common sense? Yes.

But maybe it is not love in its real meaning. Perhaps this is not a valid question. The question should be: can love be rational, reasonable and based on common sense? These are difficult questions.

What is it that attracts a man to a woman? The answers could as many as there are men. But as for me, it is good height, firm breasts, flat tummy (no waistlines please), nice shape (can’t explain but I know what I mean), and the mysteries that attract me.

This is about appearances. But love is more than that; in fact, love is about something deeper than appearance. Hundreds of girls can fit into my definition of beauty. Is it that I can love anyone who looks as such? The answer is no. But I can, for a moment, be attracted to anyone who fits the description.

The difference—and this is an important difference—is that sexual love works on feelings and emotions. You see a woman and that sight leads to something else, even dangerous. This is the whole story: life has taught me that love must be based on reason and common sense, not on feelings and emotions. The difficult part of it is that common sense does not make sense.

So the immediate conclusion is that love can never be rational, reasonable and based on common sense. But this conclusion lacks common sense. This is the reason it is accepted by millions because wisdom from common sense is not common; it is wisdom that does not make sense and is rejected.

Why do you love the one you love? “Love does not make sense,” says Alfred Kanjere, a marketing executive in Blantyre. “The moment you know why you love someone, it is no longer love.” Perhaps it is business. Is it really that love does not make sense or common sense about love does not make sense?

Love should be based on reason and common sense. But this does not rule out physical attraction. It is very important. But most importantly, choice of a life partner must be a serious matter that takes effort. And for one to reason and apply common sense, they must know their prospective life partner. And knowing someone comes from talking, talking heart to heart: communication.

The challenge is that feelings and emotions are ruling over reason and common sense. People are in a hurry; weddings are in fashion. There is a wave of pressure on young people, especially girls, to marry within a given period. Beyond that there is fear they may become rejects.

The speed with which some relationships end into marriage assumes that the people involved work on feelings and emotions, not reason and common sense.

Reason and common sense realise that two people from different backgrounds need to talk over issues before commitment. Reason and common sense look at compatibility with the seriousness it deserves. Reason and common sense recognise that we do not marry an individual; instead, we marry a family, sometimes a village, even a country. Reason and common sense accept that marriage is about sweet days and sour, sometimes, bitter days. Reason and common sense appreciate that life is about weddings and funerals, safety and accidents, health and sickness, victories and tears. So, reason and common sense ask a person what diseases they suffer from. Reason and common sense discuss differences in faith, culture, and background.

Reason and common sense accept parting as a way to meet again because people who don’t part can’t meet again, anyway. So reason and common sense are at the realistic level, not at fantasy.

If you love a person’s personality long before physical attraction, just personality and nothing more or less, and nothing sure about it all, yet happy and confident, you are operating at the level of reason and common sense.

Back to what appeals to my sight (good height, flat tummy, firm breasts etc). If I meet a lady and love her before I see her breasts and tummy, how do you explain that?

Could I be cheating myself? Or operating at a higher level? The level of reason and common sense that put first things first. The things I like are part of physical beauty which can change with time and the danger is that if I stick to the qualities, I would want someone younger than what I have all the time. But the higher qualities (the personality) appreciated by reason and common sense are almost permanent.

Reason and common sense are important for the choice of a life partner (and indeed any friend) but also for the sustenance of a relationship.

We are living in a dot com age in which to be out of reach is as good as being dead. How do you feel when a person you want is out of reach? Angry? Yes, if you are on feelings and emotions. Reason and common will appreciate that technology can fail and that it does not cover all space and time. Patience results from reason and common sense, not feelings and emotions, not at all.
A person who accepts that a mobile phone can go off or can be out of reach, is applying reason and common sense.

Reason and common sense are crucial for our understanding that a person can be called into duty that prevents him or her from attending to something else. It is lack of reason and common sense that takes away patience. And the absence of patience is a source of trouble, great trouble that has put lives in real trouble. In fact, one can do a whole essay on lack of patience and its troubles.

Reason sounds unreasonable, common sense produces uncommon wisdom. But if you want to be different, operate at a higher level of reason and common sense, not feelings and emotions.

Coming Soon

2009-07-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

A seminal piece on feelings and emotions versus reason and common sense. How these opposing forces work on our minds, adults and young alike.

Emotions can be powerful, feelings strong. And no one should blame you for seemingly succumbing to these forces. But everyone wants you to overcome feelings and emotions--however powerful, however strong--with reason and common sense. Strangely common sense brings wisdom that is uncommon.

Yet it is wisdom that saves. See you in this article soon.

Best.

Window of Hope

2009-07-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

I have lost friends and relatives to AIDS. This condition has devastated us. AIDS has killed professionals who will never be replaced.

Those of us with some knowledge of the University of Malawi understand that AIDS has devastated the education sector. As students we could see a professor losing weight, his hair becoming pale, missing classes, or a course being missed by students because a professor (the only one who can teach that course in Malawi), is not well.

Hard times. In my village in Liwonde, people with money are gone. Business men who were flourishing in late 1980s and early 1990s, are all gone.

One reason trade centres like Ulongwe, Mpemba and Lunzu are dying is that great business men of these places have died. And of AIDS. Because every loose girl chased after them.

Now there is hope. Treatment is making parents llive longer and raise their chidlren, kids who would otherwie have been orphans. Awareness is also high. My generation is making brilliant choices. Prevalence is now at 12.5 percent in Malawi.

But the sweeter news is that in the age group 5 to 11, prevalence is one percent. This means that if we can raise this age group with meaningful education that helps them avoid AIDS, we can create an almost AIDS free generation for the future.

This is a window of hope, an opportunity but also a challenge. How do we protect this generation from catching HIV?

Make your suggestions known to me. Email me. I will combine all thoughts into a great piece which will influence policy.

Virtue Called Patience

2009-07-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

Those of us who travel the world have one challenge to tackle seriously: Impatience. It is a legitimate condition.

We see super highways, great airports, and shopping malls that have everything from cinema to chapels. And we want Malawi to turn into these in a day. That, too, is my wish. I was with Bonface Dulani the other day on the Masauko Chipembere Highway in Blantyre. Bon had returned home to do some research in Malawi, Zambia, Namibia and a few other countries.

He expressed dissatisfaction with the new road, saying it should have been eight lanes because we need to think the future. True.

But upon reflecting on that, I discovered every journey has a starting point. And four lanes is our point of departure. If it were not for his Europe and US visits, Bon would have been excited with the dual carriage highway being constructed in Blantyre.

This is not about Bon. It is about all of us who travel the world. I once wrote an article about my dissatisfaction with Chileka International Airport. But I did not demand Heathrow in Malawi. I just wanted decent terminals including clean toilets.

Chileka was renovated. It looks better than it was though not what we may want. But in a country that had food shortage, infrastructure was not a priority. People had to eat first. And you know hunger is a killer.

The US and Europe spent years building. We cannot build in decades when they built in centuries. But do we really have to wait for over a 100 years? No. We need to move with speed.

One challenge is that Malawi was neglected for sometime. Now we want to do all that was supposed to be done in 30 years in five years. Impossible.

It is also unfair to demand everything from President Bingu wa Mutharika or whoever comes in 2014. Let us move slowly, step by step.

I have come to realise that this is reality. Now that I am in Egypt, admiring this desert land that is well built and being made green, I can only hope we too will make it some day.

It takes patience. That is the pain of it.

Malawi In Egypt

2009-07-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

I am in Egypt. And it is hot, very hot, here in Sharm El-Sheikh Resort, a city on the Red Sea, Sinai Peninsula to be precise. Over 40 degrees celcius.

There is peace, unimaginable peace that I wonder why, just across the sea and the mountains, there is gun fire everyday between Israel and Palestines.

There are 45 heads of state and government here in Sharm El-Sheikh, three kings and several prime ministers and their delegations from the 118 member Non-Aligned Movement, with 53 members from Africa.

President Dr Bingu wa Mutharika is here, too, to attend the 15th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of NAM.

I have been talking to Egyptians in the two days I have been here and I will keep talking with them until I return to Malawi. They are nice people. They know about Malawi. Tea, we drink tea from Malawi, they tell me. We smoke tobacco from Malawi, they add.

And football. Great football in Malawi, they say.

I can talk with them in English because I don't speak Arabic. And few of them speak English. Those who speak English, cannot construct proper sentences but they are moving and developing, feeding themselves in a desert. I wonder why we were starving in Malawi when we have good soils and plenty water.

Back home in Malawi, we say he or she who has not passed English does not have a certificate. Why? English? A foreign language being a measure of our education standards?

I know this is a crucial language for our existence in a global world. But well, maybe, we have exagerated its importance.

What is important though is that Malawi is known among Egyptians. I am happy with this and I am working on a long travel piece which you will have before end of July. This article is a discussion of matters life in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Don't Hit That Carton

2009-07-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, this day, a friend was driving on the Robert Mugabe Highway (what was once called Midima Road) and branched off the road somewhere after Nguludi Turn Off to Phalombe.

It turned out to be a wide earth road, dusty and that, too, is the joy of driving in the rural corners of Malawi.

Just about a corner, somewhere, a boy of less than 10 years was playing on the road, pulling a carton and my friend slowed down; the boy ran away and left the carton on the road. My friend wanted to drive over it. (It was a carton, after all.) Then he thought otherwise, went aside and avoided it.

And something told him to look on his mirror. He saw that boy ran back to the road, bowed down and lifted up something from the carton.

My friend was interested. He parked on the dusty road and came out of the car. He was shocked and froze. To this day, my friend does not know the name of the boy, the village and the place because he did not have the courage to ask. He did not ask anything. He only listened to what a girl, a little older than the boy, said.

This is what happened. The little boy's mother had gone to the field, perhaps to harvest maize or something else. She left a baby with the boy of about 10. And this boy decided to put the baby in a carton and pull it on the road to make the baby enjoy, like riding a 'car' you might say.

The carton that my friend avoided had a baby in it. If he had hit it, he would have killed, I believe, the baby. He would have been lucky to avoid it completely or to have nothing of the car's under part scratch and kill the baby--if not the tyres.

Upon learning that there was a baby, my friend froze, hence he did not say anthing. He only heard a girl say the boy's mother had gone to the field and left the baby with this boy. By the time more women came to see what had happened or what had not happened, my friend had enough courage to drive away, thinking, yet failing to understand what had happened.

All he could say when we met was: Don't hit that carton. This is rule number one when driving. I hope you get the sense.

Corners of Malawi

2009-04-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

I am in the corners of Malawi talking with people on matters life, matters politics, matters religion and matters everything.

I will be posting some articles of my impressions and analysis in the corners of Malawi. The experience is wonderful and I hope the articles I will write will be as wonderful. So, dear readers, I appreciate your patience.

These are exciting times.

Kind regards.

Wisdom of Nature

2009-03-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

Shire is a wonderful river, one that flows out of Lake Malawi into the Zambezi River.

The river came to me this week as I thought about the idea of end of things which I discussed months ago on this column. You remember the discussion on Nelly Furtado’s song, All good things: Why do they come to an end?

The Shire starts in Mangochi. It flows out of Lake Malawi somewhere after the well-known lodges and resorts. The river flows on past Mangochi Township to the benefit of all residents, especially those of M’baluku, a densely populated village whose people leave taps and boreholes to do domestic chores on the river.

After the township, the Shire River flows down, like a giant elephant and suddenly it swells into a lake: big, vast body of water.

The river that was small turns into a lake, a source of livelihood for thousands who patronise fishing centres of Chimwala, Mtanga and others. Just after Lake Malombe, the Shire River gets back to its old-self, just a river and the troubles start. Namasupuni chokes the river from upland Mpale down to Liwonde.

This part of the Shire is a sorry story. It is the part that receives fertile silt from upland where erosion is rampant because of deforestation. This part is also the source of trouble for power generation. We all know what namasupuni is doing or undoing to power generation in Malawi.

But the Shire—and this is the beauty of rivers—flows on. It does not stop. Never. The Shire flows on and on and on down through Matope and Zalewa in this middle part of the river that turns small through the hills of Shire Highlands.

The mighty Shire that swells into Lake Malombe turns into a small body of water, falling over high ground. Gorges are also present on this part.

After the hills and the gorges and the turns over rocks, the Shire River turns wide in an area called Shire Valley (not the mistaken Lower Shire which has bad connotations). The Shire meanders and turns into a number of streams that form fishing grounds. This lazy part of the Shire is also a source of fish, a source of potatoes and vegetables.

Finally, the Shire River flows down, slowly, gently and lazily with some hopelessness. But it ends into a larger body of water: the Zambezi River.

This is a great lesson of life. Life, every life, is like a river. It ends into some body of water, larger than the river itself. The lesson is that no matter where a river passes through, no matter what life sails through, it shall end in something big. This is the nature of life.

The stones, the rocks, the bends, the falls, the namasupuni and everything else are all part of the journey into something big. Hold on onto your vision.

Of course, I am mindful that there is a river in Botswana which ends into sand of a desert, just like that, a whole river disaapearing into sand. Call it a sea of sand.

When the Zambezi flows into the Indian Ocean we know we shall have rains in Malawi because the winds that bring rains here come from the same ocean. So, the same water that came from the Shire comes back to Malawi as rain and flows down again into Zambezi and into the Indian Shire.

Perhaps the idea of an end sung by Nelly Furtado is an illusion. Perhaps the graveyard is an illusion of the end. The river does not exactly end in a sea, and that is why it never ceases flowing on its long journey from the mountains: the river will always return to the mountains after its rest in the sea.

The sun goes to another world beyond sunset, we sleep because the day has ended but the same sun wakes us up. We always return. But I cannot count the whole wisdom of nature.

Water is wise. It knows where to go. It is never told which direction to flow into, no. It is like wind. It blows into the direction of its choice. Wind goes high and comes down. Water climbs mountains and flows down. This, too, is the wisdom of life.

My plain view is that something called an event is about to happen. My other plain view is that it is better to come down naturally like wind or water than to be pulled down shamefully. I have spoken.

Moving to TVM

2009-03-30T05:28:00.001-07:00

Dear Visitors of the Blog,

I am moving to TVM as Controller of News and Current Affairs on April 1, 2009. This is time to face new challenges. As you know TVM, has challenges in this age of growing technology, when people can go to the internet, get entertainment from ipod etc.

I would like to be part of the team that is bringing a new life to the country's TV Station. Plans for a website are underway and you should access, I think sometime this year, pictures and sound on the net.

If you have any message for me, do not hestitate to write to the e-mail address above or mzatinews@yahoo.com

Kind regards.

A Beautiful Flame That Kills

2009-03-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

Author's Note: This story appeared in The Nation on July 16, 2007, but it is still on high circulation sometimes with changes to suit people's political biases. I hereby provide the original piece for your reading. If the story engages you in any way, feedbackis welcome at the e-mail address above or mzatinews@yahoo.com

He is so attractive, an irresistible, little flame that attracts moths. But it’s a flame that suffocates and all who don’t realise early enough, die.

Big Bullets (BB) seems to be a cursed football club. It had plans to go commercial, yet it has stayed three seasons without sponsorship, the very grease to roll the club to commercial levels.

Not long ago, BB was Bakili Bullets. It was the country’s richest team and the only club in recent years to spend a month training in the United Kingdom; visiting club houses and admiring their commercial status. Bakili Bullets wanted to go the same way. Then it seemed possible. Then it really did; not now, but then.

"Those were good, old days," recalls sports journalist Garry Chirwa. "I travelled with the team to the United Kingdom and we were booked in a four-star hotel in Birmingham. Every member of the 40-or-so delegation was getting a $50 daily allowance."

Such, says Garry, was the luxury and pomp that club chair Hassam Jussab had the cheek to arrange for a friendly match against crack English Premiership side Aston Villa.

The game failed but the players had something to cherish and Garry has fond memories.

"The players went to up-market shops where the likes of Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand buy expensive designer clothes. When we were returning home, the team raised eyebrows at Heathrow Airport because of our excess luggage that even British Airways staff doubted the team’s ability to pay for the baggage. The airline was surprised later on to learn that money wasn’t an issue at all. The excess baggage had been paid for in full," says Garry.

The romance between Muluzi and the Bullets started on May 25, 2003, a year before the 2004 General Elections and was meant to last five years. It was an attractive package, somehow, for a team that was desperate for a sponsor.

There was a K15 million sponsorship. This was not much but the former president also promised to construct a K15 to K25 million stadium for the club. And on the day the sponsorship was launched, BB supporters from the North used K200,000 donated by Muluzi to travel from Mzuzu to Blantyre.

The team participated in the Confederation of East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) tourney and showed, for once, what good sponsorship does to anything, even football. Bakili Bullets also carried the former president’s name into the Caf Championships.

That, however, was four years ago. Today the club is, perhaps, the poorest. Today the land near Soche Technical College meant for the club’s stadium lies idle, as it has been always. Today, Kinnah Phiri, the coach the team attracted from Swaziland has returned into foreign lands in search of greener pastures. Muluzi withdrew sponsorship a year and months after the 2004 elections. Perhaps he wanted to use BB for campaign and it worked.

Since then, the club is struggling for survival, not even bare existence.

The days the club travelled from city to city in the UK are over. The days the team took supporters to cities in the region to cheer the team when it joined Cecafa and Caf Championship are no more. The days Muluzi promised players K75,000 each for a win in a game against Zambia’s Zanaco in Cecafa are gone. The days BB played teams like Enyimba of Nigeria are fast being forgotten.

On July 1, 2004, Muluzi gave BB players K100,000 each for performing well in the Caf Championships. BB was among the last eight teams. That was July 1 and on July 31, 30 days later, came a different headline: ‘Bullets in financial woes’. The team was failing to pay its coaches for six months, failing to settle transfer fee balances for nine players and failing to pay rental for using BAT ground.

Muluzi had spent K60 million and perhaps was tired. By August 2004 headlines on BB had changed from ‘BB to camp in UK’ to ‘BB fail to camp’ and this was not in UK but Mulanje. The club could not afford to lodge in Mulanje.

The former president was becoming angry with club officials and threatening to withdraw sponsorship not only from BB but from the Bakili Muluzi Super League. The club was being haunted by debt collectors that by August it was asking the then Sports Minister Henry Chimunthu Banda for money to participate in Caf champions League.

Then followed chaos. Players firing club executive committee, a meeting with sponsor—or the former sponsor, because Muluzi was no longer bank-rolling the club—failing.

Saturday 25 December, 2004, was supposed to be a happy day: end of week, Christmas and about end of year. But the headline in Weekend Nation was bad news: ‘Total chaos in BB’. January, 2005, was biting hard and BB’s patience with Muluzi was wearing out. He wanted audited accounts. He promised a starter pack but nothing came forth. It was money from player sales that was running the club.

By April, BB had a K9 million debt and in July the club cut ties with Muluzi, who claimed to have been taken by surprise. In November 2006, the club was rebuffed by President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Some months ago, two twin brothers who graduated from the University of Malawi a couple of years ago decided to take over the club in a relationship that was full of doubts and sour moments.

Those who love education wondered why the Msiska twin-brothers could not donate the K5 million they spent on Bullets to the Polytechnic Library to purchase books. The Cifu group was forced out of the deal by the club’s executive that wanted to deal with Petroda, a petroleum company that promised a K20 million sponsorship.

And just last week, the deal with Petroda flopped. The club remains poor with an uncertain future. Or, put plainly, without a future at all.

Big Bullets is now like torn curtains. Who has finished the Big Bullets? Perhaps the right question is: What is in Muluzi that finishes those who work for him (not with him) as the BB did? The club is just one example of how Muluzi appears attractive like a beautiful flame at dusk, attracting all kinds of insects longing for light soon after sunset. Yet this flame kills insects. And Muluzi has worked like that flame, killing the political or professional life of people and institutions.

Chakufwa Chihana

This late icon who fought for democracy in 1992 was a giant until he worked for Muluzi. He died politically long before his physical death in 2006.

Once Muluzi got into government in 1994, Chihana’s Alliance for Democracy (Aford) formed an alliance with the Malawi Congress party (MCP) to oppose the United Democratic Front (UDF) within and without the National Assembly. It was a scaring alliance.

"They have a hidden agenda," said Muluzi who later on invited Chihana into an alliance with UDF. Chihana was made second vice-president. (He remains the only Malawian to hold this position and it seems it was created for him and him only.) Some Aford officials, too, were offered Cabinet positions.

The whole story is that the political marriage between Aford and UDF lasted 20 months and Chihana lost some of the cream of Aford. The two parties remarried in 2002 when Muluzi was campaigning for life presidency disguised as Open Terms Bill. When this and the Third Term Bill failed, Chihana was used to campaign for President Bingu wa Mutharika.

By the end of 2004 Chihana was a spent force, forgotten and vanishing from the memory of history. He had been used and almost dumped and by the time he died, it was simply physical death, politically he had already been killed by Muluzi—the beautiful flame that burns all who carelessly fly close to it.

Gwanda Chakuamba

Once he came out of prison in 1992, he was a rising star, even when he joined the MCP to work with first president Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

People had embraced multiparty democracy and forgiven the past in which Chakuamba worked. He was a revered opposition leader even as late as 2004 when he led Mgwirizano Coalition. That status changed when he formed an alliance with UDF soon after the elections.

That, then, seemed a noble cause especially when he became Minister of Agriculture in Bingu wa Mutharika’s administration.

But when Chakuamba was fired and begun to associate with Muluzi on impeachment, that became the first step on the last mile of Chakuamba’s political journey. Take note: the last mile started with associating with Muluzi, the beautiful flame that burns.

Now Chakuamba does not have political wings. They have been burnt by Muluzi. Now Chakuamba’s political mobility is on the shoulders of Muluzi.

Now Chakuamba is failing to make sense of the budget-Section 65 deadlock, two separate issues that the UDF and MCP are connecting. (It is also not wise to blame all opposition MPs as if they are talking nonsense on this: some, like Mark Katsonga, Justin Malewezi and Aleke Banda have offered sober thoughts on the impasse. These, too, are examples of people who worked with—not for—Muluzi and survived.)

The story is that once there was a politician called Gwanda Chakuamba. He worked with Kamuzu and remained strong. He worked with Mutharika and stayed above petty politics. He is working with Muluzi and has become a spent force.

Khwauli Msiska

Does anyone remember this name? He is remembered for one thing: that he moved the brazen Open Terms Bill in July 2002.

Immediately his name was in international media outlets and for a bad reason. He was, of course, rewarded with deputy minister position. But that was his end. He loved himself more than the country and Malawians know the place of such people: the political dustbin.

This is where he is now, forgotten and not remembered at all. He flew close to the beautiful flame that burns.

Lucius Banda

Malawi, like all countries, is a place of role models and bad examples. There are children born with a silver spoon in the mouth but who squandered all the money left by their parents, sold businesses and are now living on alms.

And there are those born in extreme poverty—like Lucius—who worked hard to become millionaires. (Do not be surprised, most of us are millionaires: just value your car, sofa, TV, beds and you will find they add to millions.) Lucius was a model not for people of Balaka only, but for all Malawians.

Once he joined politics, he was getting popular and Balaka had hope that one day a senior Cabinet minister will come from around Sosola.

What was wrong being a famous musician without an MSCE? He worked with Muluzi for years and later went a step ahead to work for Muluzi.

The flame had become too beautiful to be avoided. He had lost sight. There he was burnt. He needed an MSCE to contest for a parliamentary seat and the way to get it was not to sit (resit?) for the examinations, but to get a certificate with good grades.

Where is Lucius today? If he were not a musician who built a reputation for a decade, he would have been forgotten like Khwauli Msiska.

John Tembo

Fondly called JZU, Tembo is the longest serving MP in the Malawi National Assembly. This, though, seems to be the last term in Parliament for the veteran politician.

The reason is simple. He is working for Muluzi. Section 65 was there when Mutharika formed a coalition government with Republican Party. But Tembo didn’t make any noise. What has happened to Tembo that he should now want the Constitution followed?

He is working for Muluzi. Both Tembo and Muluzi are not happy with Mutharika’s performance. This is surprising because they were supposed to be happy so that they inherit a healthy economy in 2009 when they win as they claim.

The two were talking the same language at their rallies 10 days ago. This is not the first time Tembo has worked for Muluzi. The leader of opposition voted yes to the Open Term Bill. Muluzi had just bought pieces of cloth for the MCP women’s league. Now Tembo is working for Muluzi again to trouble the Mutharika administration.

It is funny because Mutharika has never had a peaceful time since he became President yet he has been performing. By fanning trouble on his government, the UDF and MCP are making Mutharika perform even better than before. Apart from the political turbulence, Mutharika had a sick wife for two years and he knew she was dying. But even then the office of the President was as functional as if everything was fine.

Does JZU believe Section 65 is the best weapon to make himself popular among Malawians? This is the faulty thinking of Muluzi.

There are those who believe Muluzi is a good public speaker. Right. But his actions scare away people. While he was president, he collided with the NGO community and Malawians. Thousands chanted against third term campaign.

The same people who were against Muluzi as president are against him as retired president. His policies remain for personal gain not for the people of Malawi. Tembo has fallen into this trap and is fast losing popularity—the end of a man who has been in politics for decades.

Conclusion

Muluzi is like a candle that is about to burn completely and he knows that; which is why he has become a beautiful flame to kill the political or professional life of hundreds before he is forgotten by the memory of history. It does not matter your profession. Be it a lawyer, journalist, football team, politician, institution—whatever, your life gets chocked once you work for Muluzi.

Big Bullets can testify. Or ask John Chikakwiya.

My Friends From the North

2009-03-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

This is a sensitive topic. But we have to talk about it, anyway, especially because I bring good news. This is about the northern region of Malawi.

I have many friends from the North: Muhlabase Mughogho, James and Ephraim Nyondo, Matthews Mtumbuka, Mthusani Zungu, Albert Harawa, Khumbo and Ellen Banda, Wanangwa and Wezi Kumwenda, Rabecca Kaonga, Chikumbusyo Kaonga, Dr Gift Banda, Dr Sam Kondwani, Dr Lughano Kalongolera, Dr Wanangwa Mkandawire, Willings Botha, Ucizi Mughogho, Emmanuel Ngwira, Damazio Mfune, Chomora Mikeka Mkandawire. It is a long list.

They are aged between 25 and 35. One thing we share in common is that we belong to a generation that is insensitive to regions, districts and tribes. It is a generation that looks at merit, not place which is tribal and religious. This is a real example of great news.

I come with good news from bad news. The Livingstonia Synod of the CCAP attacked President Bingu wa Mutharika for picking Joyce Banda of Zomba as running mate. The Synod wanted a running mate from the North, meaning the Synod values place more than merit.

I have been in touch with my generation on Joyce Banda and they have not grumbled. My generation does not care that Mutharika and Banda are from the South just as we don’t mind that Sports Minister Symon Vuwa Kaunda, Fam president Walter Nyamirandu, Fam CEO Charles Nyirenda, Fam administrative officer Sugzo Nyirenda and Flames coach Kinnah Phiri are from the North.

Whether they hold their meetings in Tumbuka or Tonga, my generation does not care. All we care is that they have delivered and continue to do so. They have turned the Flames from perpetual losers to winners. They are in their positions on merit, not based on place.

The leaders of the Livingstonia Synod belong to a generation that minds tribal boundaries. We need to understand this historically. Theirs is a generation that employs people on tribal and regional lines, not merit.

Now young CEOs are employing people from any region so long they are qualified. There is a positive trend going on and this is good news for Malawi. The best news is that there are people above 40 who are part of my generation in terms of ideas. So my generation is not defined by age, but ideas.

We are moving to a tribeless state, a country in which Malawi will be first. It takes time, of course, but we are going there and it is not a smooth journey, but still we are moving.

History offers hope. In the 1960s, people were arguing over whether black and white children should be going to the same schools in the US, whether African Americans and White Americans could jump into one bus or live in one area.

What was unthought-of 60 years ago, is reality today. The world can change. Things can change. It will not take us long before this country forgets regions and tribes. It is happening. The more our children go to school, the more they look at merit than regions.

In less that 20 years Malawi will host one of two great events. There is now a high likelihood that a woman may become President of Malawi. There is also a great likelihood that a person from the North will rule this country.

A star shall rise from the North and this and the coming generation—the generation of Livingstonia Synod leaders will be gone in terms of power and influence but will witness such changes—will agree that the best candidate is the one from the North.

We shall not ask where he or she comes from. We shall ask what he or she can do for Malawi. It is a change no one can think of now. But remember that not long ago, it was impossible for an African American to contest in the US, even just to think about this happening.

My plain view is that I don’t know who this President will be. May be Matthews Mtumbuka, perhaps Muhlabase Mughogho, or could be Debora Chipofya, James Nyondo. Or someone I don’t know. What I do know is that we are moving to social prosperity.

Counting the Years, Day and Night

2009-02-25T00:47:00.000-08:00

Now that we are 15 years old, it is proper to jump and celebrate this all important anniversary which, in a clear way, confirms our energies and number one position on the print media market.

On a cold July, 1993 afternoon, about five people were in a studio at the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)—there was one radio station, then—to record a promotion for The Nation, a new newspaper on the market.

"They are a mouthpiece of cassava growers," said one voice.

"Wrong," said another. "They are a mouthpiece of the poor."

"You are wrong," said yet another. "They are a mouthpiece of a political party."

"Wrong," said yet a fourth voice. "They are a mouthpiece of all."

There was one immediate dilemma. The promotion didn’t come to an agreeable conclusion. This, in part, meant the newspaper would be for all, which, I think, remains the case today. But there was a high mountain to climb. The market was already crowded with established media houses.

Some have suggested that there were over 30 newspapers in 1993.

Was there a market for a new newspaper? The immediate answer, perhaps the only one, was no. But the question is illegitimate.

There will never be a market for a new product, never. Every product must create a market. The counsel from a Spanish poet Antonio Machado (July 26, 1875-February 22,1939) is clear in his poem Pathwalker: "There is no path, You must make the path as you walk."

The new newspaper made its own path and walked on it; The Nation, coming out twice a week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, made its own market that has grown and today, 15 years later, Nation Publications Limited (NPL) is a proud owner of four products: The Nation, Weekend Nation, Nation on Sunday and Nation Online. We are on the streets seven days a week and online 24/7.

We boast of the highest—though not satisfactory—circulation and an assembly of a cream of journalists in the names of Peter Kanjere, Garry Chirwa, Gracian Tukula and Mabvuto Banda. This seems great and there is a tendency in such times to forget where we have come from.

"NPL grew from an idea—a seed," recalls chief executive officer Mbumba Achuthan. "An idea to come up with a paper that would disseminate truthful information at a time when information was a highly sort-after commodity."

Thus the genesis of NPL was like a small seed, a mustard seed perhaps, too small to make an impact on anything yet when it germinates, it grows big and offers shelter to people and animals.

Three people came together. Aleke Banda, Achuthan and Ken Lipenga and discussed the idea of a newspaper. Big things, as NPL confirms, start from ideas, not money. What we lack are ideas not money, because ideas bring money while money does not necessarily bring ideas.

Later, Lipenga brought in Alfred Ntonga from Blantyre Newspapers Limited (BNL). Achuthan roped in Billy Mphande, our area manager for the Centre, who retires later this year. Achuthan and Mphande met at The Monitor newspaper, a daily that died an artificial death.

Alfred Ntaula joined the team. He was from The UDF news. Bertha Masiku, the MP for Blantyre Blantyre City West was heading the advertising section. Mphande brought in for Masauko Chiomba, now business manager for our Mzuzu office. Finally, a messenger was employed.

It was a team of seven people, excluding Aleke, of course, who became chair of NPL. Humble resources too: a family car, a typewriter, a computer, some furniture. Lipenga brought his personal computer. Just like that. And a journey started with the first step.

"Nothing was impossible because we worked as a team," recalls Achuthan.

They could go anywhere, at any time, and do anything. Achuthan—then managing director, now chief executive officer—went on editorial assignments. Mphande did the same. Yet the two were not part of the newsroom.

How, then, did The Nation make its own market when newspapers were dying? One project that carved a place on the market for The Nation was the 1983 Mwanza murder stories. The small team of NPL staff cracked the idea of following up. They decided that if the people who killed the three ministers and one MP were to be found, The Nation, a biweekly, should be the paper to find them.

It worked by cooperation, of course. It was the chief accountant Mphande who pledged to provide a source who worked for the Police and was sent to take pictures at the "accident" place at Thambani.

He was called Mr X by the newspaper and worked with editor-in-chief Lipenga. The two formed a team. Mr X took Lipenga to a former PMF man who actually killed the three ministers Dick Matenje, Aaron Gadama, Twaibu Sangala and MP David Chiwanga for Chikwawa.

"The guy was tall, heavily built, short tampered, deeply suspicious and capable of killing a fellow human being," recalls Lipenga in a 1998, August, interview with The Nation.

Lipenga went to the killer’s home which remains anonymous up to now. The man was uncomfortable, says Lipenga, and in his drunken state, wanted to go away before the meeting was over.

Lipenga had to persuade him to stay by offering to buy Kachasu. When the illegal drink came, Lipenga had to partake to confirm the rapport between them. Now, Lipenga was not just another journalist on the street. He was editor-in-chief and a PhD, a man who would have been professor had he stayed on Chancellor College where he worked in the English Department.

This was a practical and theoretical journalism lesson: that sometimes we have to go down to the level of our sources to get information on behalf of people, information for a big story that can shake a country.

Once the story was out, The Nation became a giant of the streets. The Bakili Muluzi administration instituted a commission of inquiry and the result was the house arrest of first president Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and some of his close associates.

They were acquitted, of course, but the aim of The Nation was not to get anyone in prison. It was, as Achuthan says of the founding principle, to tell people the truth on issues of national importance.

Since then, NPL has remained the country’s number one media house. Saturday Nation (now Weekend Nation) followed, then came Nation on Line and, finally, Nation on Sunday. That is not all. NPL has a fully fledged design studio where advertisements are made. It is under
ImangiNation, a subsidiary of NPL, now becoming almost a group of companies.

Early Days

When there was Operation Bwezani, recalls Achuthan, "we all spread out into different parts of the country to get what we could [and] when it came to production time, we all worked together to put everything together. Some of us even went on delivery, served coffee and tea to people, sold adverts—did everything. It was a good training ground in writing, editing, designing, distribution—everything."

The lifeline of any private media house is advertising and even here NPL is leading the way. But it was, as usual, a humble beginning with few clients from the editorial front, most of them contacted as individual friends but in other cases contacted from a purely sales point of view. Achuthan remembers Maurice Newa well

"He was instrumental, while at Lever Brothers [now Unilever], in introducing big advertising as we know it today," says Achuthan. "He took that culture with him to BAT and then on to Sobo and it spread from those points. We also dealt mainly with Top Advertising and later organisations such as Marketpoint. Others came onto the scene."

Technology

Nation has grown technologically from one computer and one typewriter to state-of-the-art technology. We have perhaps the best machines in town.

Our computers are on local area network. We get Reuters copy electronically. This is unlike in the past when we used to go to Malawi News Agency (Mana) to get Reuters copy on paper, bring to office and typeset. Now everything has gone satellite.

Even printing has gone technology. In fact, in the early days, we used to print in Lilongwe from Blantyre for printing and distribute thereafter. Next our paper was printed at Blantyre Printing and Packaging (BP&P). But later we bought our machine, a web offset, from United Printers which we sold to Fattani Printers after acquiring a modern web printer.

In the early days, NPL developed ties with a Netherlands organisation that advises businesses in developing world.

"An elderly gentleman named Ben Romijn came thrice to work with us and help us set standards and benchmarks," says Achuttan. "He helped us with our first survey which set the direction for later surveys which we have consistently carried out to tell us our place on the market. He also helped us establish benchmarks in many areas of our operations, especially editorial."

The advantage was that NPL was able to send people to Holland to learn about newspaper operations and this helped us in setting and correcting our operations.

Process

Minutes after five in the afternoon on a Thursday, Roblee Mkamanga, the circulation manager, is busy in her office, making sure all subscribers and readers will get their paper the next day.
She is printing the circulation list, which her office does everyday, making sure it is accurate and up-to-date. Meanwhile, there is sound from the printing house, indicating work in progress.

They have just started printing the inside pages like features, business, leisure.

But the newsroom is not yet through with Friday’s newspaper, especially pages one, two, three and some sports pages, mainly the back page. Elizabeth Lisuntha Banda, the deputy editor responsible for current news, is busy reading stories and deciding with her editor Edward Chitsulo, which story leads.

By this time, most staff of NPL are at home. But as some staff get out of the gate, others are reporting for work in the print section. The newsroom is making last touches. Lizzie Lupiya, the designer of front page this evening, is receiving stories to start her work.

Aubrey Mchulu, the stonesub this evening, is waiting to read all the stories on pages one, two, three and sports pages. This is one way of making sure we have perfect text and pictures because the stories have already been read by two people.

As the newsroom finishes its work, the design studio gets busier making films that go to print. By this time, the advertising department is at home. They are through with adverts by about 3 pm. Films for advertisements were ready by five. Adverts for Weekend Nation and Friday’s The Nation have been done.

By 11 pm on Thursday night, printing of The Nation for Friday is over and it is being packed for Lilongwe and Mzuzu, so that circulation driver Charles Bonde should be in Lilongwe about dawn.

He stops over several places to leave newspapers on the way. By 3:30 am, he is in Lilongwe and some newspapers are leaving for Mzuzu, so that by 7:30 am people have the paper.

This, too, is the time some editorial staff are arriving at work on Friday for Weekend Nation and Nation on Sunday production. Staff who work on The Nation are on weekend, call it early weekend, because they work Sunday to Thursday, while those on Weekend Nation work Monday to Friday with Nation on Sunday staff working Tuesday to Saturday.

Ours is a place that is busy seven days a week throughout a year, hence we are counting the years, day and night.

Independence

NPL started in a house of a politician. Aleke had been released from Mikuyu Maximum Prison and joined the United Democratic Front (UDF), the original one which everybody describes as a team of dedicated politicians who wanted political change and development in Malawi.

Just when The Nation was launched Achuthan, recalls Lipenga, told Aleke: "You do realise, chief, that even if you took up a position in the new government, this paper would not always toe your line, don’t you?"

The result was a media house that has developed a reputation of honesty and balance. It is a media house that remains number one, partly because of its independence. Even when Aleke was in government, NPL did its work thoroughly, checking both the ruling and opposition parties.

Now that he president of Progressive Peoples Movement (PPM), NPL would have been championing the party. But that is not the case.

"Pressure from outside has always been there," says Achuthan. "AKB has withstood a lot of heat right from the time that NPL was established to now. His political colleagues have not always understood the role he has played in respecting the fact that if we are to do a good job, we should remain independent of him and his politics or any other politics for that matter.

"Some of his political colleagues have thought that he drives us to write certain stories or editorials. Some have even gone as far as to think he actually writes! Far from it. Many would be surprised to know that he reads and knows about the content of the newspaper at the same time that the rest of the readers do," she says.

This is so because of our editorial policy, our code of conduct and all other policies we have and the pride that we have in doing our work.

Everything else, as Achuthan understands, rests on editorial content, hence she "can confidently say that [Aleke] has trust in me and Alfred Ntonga’s leadership of the newsroom". Ntonga is deputy CEO and editor-in-chief.

Future

What NPL does Achuthan want to leave to the next CEO, whoever he or she shall be? "A stable, strong, forward-looking and respected NPL, a platform of excellence that creates opportunities for its clients, staff and shareholders in Malawi and beyond," she says.

These are wise words that go well with what the founding editor-in-chief Ken Lipenga said in 1998 when NPL celebrated five years.

Last word? Jika Nkolokosa, then editor of NPL, asked Lipenga. "Congratulations for turning five, and hope to be there when The Nation turns a hundred, which it will."

Indeed it will. But as for now, we are 15 and that is our limit of celebration. Yet that does not stop us from hoping for a bigger future, especially when we shall hit 100 in 2093. Lipenga, now Minister of Economic Development, just like most of us, will for sure not be there, physically. But our names shall remain in the history of NPL.

The advert recorded that cold afternoon in July 1993, will be played again in 2093, perhaps. Then people will marvel at NPL: that it started with seven people in a crowded industry, employed about 200 people in 2008 and will be leading the way in 2093. Happy birthday NPL!

One Foot Ahead of Another

2009-02-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why these thoughts have been coming to me lately, since four weeks ago to be precise. I was on a mental journey on the Masauko Chipembere Highway, the new double lane road.

I was walking, not riding any metal. I realised several truths or assumptions. One, that walking is the best means of transport. No tyre puncture, no engine jerks, no traffic police. You are sure of reaching your destination so long you are well.

Walking makes you meet people and see things, issues on the road. In a car, you are detached from the real world. You see a distant world.

On the ground, while walking, you meet people. You see magicians doing their work outside Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. You see people seeking help from the magicians or just passing time by watching them help or cheat people, often those desperate for a relief from some kind of pain.

Distance, I also realised, is best measured by time, not kilometres. It will take 20 minutes of walking from point A to point B. That gives a sense of distance in kilometres.

If it were not for the rocks, you would walk for 10 minutes. Thus we know the distance is short in length but there are so many obstacles on the road which is part of life. One can live briefly but suffer a lot during such times. I have seen children born with diseases that cause a lot of pain; children who live six or seven years of pain and die at eight.

These are lessons from life, journey of life in which we meet people on the via, on the way. All such thoughts came to me during my mental journey. But I still don’t know why these thoughts were puzzling me.

But one fundamental lesson I got during the walk is courage and being adventurous. We must never be afraid of changing lanes. Whether you are on the left or right, the journey remains one to Limbe or Blantyre. Life is bigger than one lane. Come on! Move from one lane to another.

That is life. To stick to one lane, one thing, one place, one destination, is not practical and not part of the journey to better life. The idea of sticking to one whatever is for those who are afraid of new destination.

All roads lead to one destination. Only that some roads are long, others short. Clever people, those who know what they are doing, walk on the possible short route, yet walking all journey, in its fullness. And fullness can be in turns, a circle kind of.

Another lesson is that it is not harmful to go back. It is a question of what you want to do when you go back that matters. An American man was saved from a hospital that was on fire and upon remembering that he had kept $1,000 in his pillow on the hospital bed, he went back to get the money. (This amount, in 1902, was a lot of money.) Now hear this: he became the only one to die in the fire accident.

A boy in Liberia once joined his friends running away from a rebel attack on their village. After about a 100 metres, he remembered he had forgotten his Bible. He went back home to carry it. Just then, all his friends who were running away were shot. He became the only one to survive and tell the story. He was left to tell.

Both the man and the boy went back. But one went back to salvation while the other went back to destruction. These choices are part of the journey of life, on whatever road you are walking.

You can go back and forward. Nothing wrong. But have a meaningful aim for going back. You can change lanes, nothing wrong but have a meaningful goal for doing so. You can run or jump.

Nothing wrong. But have a good goal for doing so. You can stop and talk to others on the way, the via. Nothing wrong, so long you are in a profitable talk. You can jump over a space. Nothing wrong, so long it is a necessary step on the journey towards your goal.

Such is life, a journey of questions and answers. Those who find answers to their questions move on, and they proceed. Those who don’t, well, I don’t know what happens to them. You can guess.

My plain view is that I don’t know why I am writing about these issues. I don’t know. May be they touch your soul, but still I don’t know why I am writing about these issues. I don’t know.

New Era of Politics

2009-02-20T06:34:00.000-08:00

President Bingu wa Mutharika is rewriting history to make history. But it takes a sober mind and terrific analysis to reach such a conclusion.

He has redefined politics and a new era of politics has dawned on Malawi. Or, said in straight terms, Mutharika has defined politics correctly as administration of state affairs, not addressing rallies, not buying opposition MPs, not unleashing violence on people with alternative views.

But it has been difficult for some to understand that Mutharika is a politician, so he has been called an economist.

Perhaps it is a question of balance: How should a President balance between party politics and state politics? But the most important re/definition Mutharika has ever done is, perhaps, his choice of Joyce Banda as running mate in the May 19 presidential polls.

Mutharika has introduced a new dimension to presidential politics. He might be old, but he is experimenting new methods that even younger politicians are afraid of trying.

The fundamental question asked by presidential candidates in the choice of a running mate is region or place. This has remained a fundamental question since multiparty was reintroduced in 1993. (Malawi was a multiparty state in 1964 until 1971 when the Malawi Congress Party decreed that it would be the only party in the country.)

Two major contestants in the May polls have running mates based on place. John Tembo has Brown Mpinganjira, so he can woo the Lomwe belt vote for the MCP candidate. Mpinganjira also wants to use his (declining) popularity among the Yao in the Eastern Region to add votes to the MCP.

Muluzi is targeting the Central, hence picking Clement Stambuli. Muluzi has ever targeted the Centre since 1994 when he paired with Justin Malewezi.

The practical choice for Mutharika, according to Malawian politics, should have been from the Central or the North, so he could appeal to a place, a region and a tribe. This is how politics works in Malawi and it was regarded as the way it shall work forever.

But Mutharika has thought about this political clue and found it wanting. Instead of a running mate from the Central or the North, he has picked from the South. He is not appealing to place. Mutharika is not targeting a tribe.

"It is surprising because given the realitie Malawi’s politics to date, one would have expected the DPP’s decision to reflect some kind of regional balancing that has been at the heart of Malawi’s politics," said political economist Blessings Chinsinga in Nation on Sunday this week. "The decision, perhaps, heralds a new era of politics, less beholden to regional considerations but rather driven by issues."

Yes, it does. Mutharika, the politician, has appealed to something greater than region, something greater than tribe. He has appealed to sex and gender which are universal unlike place, region and tribe which are particular.

The choice of Banda has made Mutharika and his running mate appeal to people of different tribes, people from all corners of Malawi.

Or, put it this way, by choosing a running mate from his own region, Mutharika is a sending a powerful lesson that time for tribal politics and politics of place is gone. Instead, this is time for universal issues of gender, development, hard work and visionary leadership.

But the great question is whether or not Mutharika is right to bring an end to politics of place. First President Hastings Kamuzu Banda came from Kasungu. Did the district benefit more than any other? Muluzi comes from Machinga. Did the district benefit more than any other. Mutharika comes from Thyolo. Is the district any better than the rest of Malawi?

Place does not offer anything tangible apart from an illusion of a sense of social and tribal security. Mutharika has gone above cheap politics of place or region and thought of national issues, even international commitments, on gender and development.

This choice is a test of place versus universality because gender is universal; it cuts across cultures, religions and lands while place is cultural, place is religious, place is particular, place is tribal,

Beyond this, the choice of Banda says a lot to a majority of voters who are between 18 and 35. Anyone who wants to win the May 19 elections must appeal to this age group.

It is an age group that does not take tribalism at heart. They are marrying across tribes. They do not believe in employing on tribal lines. Those stuck in tribalism are mainly above 40. This is not that there isn’t tribalism in people below 40, but the degree is not as strong as is the case in people above 40.

The history of revolutions, the story of new political eras, shows that it is the youth who bring such changes. It was so in France; it was so in Iran.

It will be so in Malawi. A new era has come and Mutharika has read the politics rightly.

Sharing Justice

2009-02-20T06:23:00.000-08:00

It is World Day of Justice, not just justice as in court of law but also as in accessing benefits from state resources, medicines being one of them.

Usisya in Nkhata Bay in the North of Malawi is a food secure area. There has not been relief distribution in the area for the past 10 or so years.

But people have problems with access to health facilities and, therefore, access to medicines because Usisya is a mountainous area. In fact, it is so mountainous that mobility is a big problem, according to Tonderai Manoto, programme manager for Temwa.

Temwa is a reproductive health organisation with administrative offices in Mzuzu and a field office in Usisya where it is running, among other programmes, a mobile voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) and home based care (HBC).

"Without the mobile VCT," says Manoto, "I don’t know what people of Usisya would have been doing to access health services."

There is one road from Mzuzu, teh capital of Northern Malawi, to Usisya and it is a bad road that needs 4x4s. And when the road’s condition moves from bad to worse, service providers have one option: water transport.

This means Manoto and his team have to board Illala at Nkhata Bay district headquarters and go to Usisya on a Sunday and return to Nkhata Bay eight days later, because they can’t spend on hired boats using project funds which must, as much as possible, be spent on beneficiaries.

The people of Usisya are lucky to have Temwa which goes about the place, following people in their homes and areas. People of Nsanje and parts of Thyolo that border Nsanje and Chikwawa in Southern Malawo are not so lucky. They are far from any health centre. They are far from the Holy Trinity Hospital at Muona, a Catholic health institution in Nsanje.

Transport is a problem on this part of the Shire Valley also called East Bank. Like in Usisya, it is 4x4s that are safe on the East Bank Road.

But people have to travel, especially to hospital. Luckily, somehow, the road has been rehabilitated but with rains it tends to get damaged. Added to that, floods and swelling rivers often cut off whole villages from health institutions like Holy Trinity.

Such people cut from health institutions are, in a way, being denied justice by natural causes, of course—but they are still being denied justice. There are two forms of justice, says Edge Kanyongolo, a respected law academic with the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College in Zomba.

The first is distributive justice which refers to distribution of advantages and disadvantages or benefits and burdens. Roads are benefits, meaning state resources towards construction of roads should be distributed equally in a country. So, too, medicines which are an example of a benefit or an advantage.

The second form of justice, says Kanyongolo, is corrective which is premised on the assumption that every society has equilibrium, some point of accepted norms and that when a person behaves differently, in a deviant way, he or she must be corrected and brought back to the accepted behaviours at the assumed equilibrium.

This is what happens when people are sent to reformatory centres like Chichiri Prison for adults and Mpemba Reformatory Centre for boys.

It is the first form of justice—distributive—that the Malawi Healthy Equity Network (MHEN) is concerned with and wants to highlight today on the World Day of Justice. The organisation is insisting on access to medicines as they relate to issue of equity and health rights.

MHEN is talking about essential medicines like co-trimoxazole for opportunistic infections in antiretroviral therapy (ART) clients and malaria treatment at a time the disease is the number one killer of children under the age of five.

This is from a background of a drug availability survey MHEN conducted with parliamentary committee for health and population in 2004, four years after the formation of MHEN.
"The findings formed the basis for the network’s advocacy and campaign for the availability of drugs in public health facilities at a time when drug [shortage] was the order of the day," says Martha Kwataine, MHEN national coordinator.

The target of the advocacy supported Oxfam is to gain equitable and improved access to medicines by 2010. And MHEN is not doing this out of the blue.

"This access to medicines campaign relates to Millennium Development Goals, especially those relating to maternal mortality, infant mortality and reversing the spread of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria," says Kwataine. "In Malawi, Congoma leads the Malawi Coalition on the Millennium Development Goals. MHEN, which is also a member of the civil society taskforce on MGDs in Malawi, will work with Congoma in launching and taking forward the access to medicines campaign in Malawi."

The launch was done in October last year. Now, MHEN is implementing its plans to benefit especially people in rural corners of Malawi. Even those in urban areas because there are thousands who can’t afford private health facilities and end up at government health centres.

Tereza Ramusa of Namonde Village, T/A Nkalo in Chiradzulu, Southern Malawi, is an 82-year-old woman widowed when her husband was killed gruesomely last month. She is now hopeless, in a way, except for government which should provide her access to medicines, among other needs.

The nearest health facility for her is Chonde Health Centre in Mulanje. But in case of a big hospital, she has to travel to Nguludi which is a paying hospital—of course, being a mission hospital it is cheap but she cannot afford. Otherwise, she has to travel to Mulanje District Hospital because Chiraduzlu District Hospital is far away from her home.

She is old and in need of help. She is not the only one. There are thousands like her who need access to medicines. And this is not just availability of drugs at government hospitals and health centres, but even travel: how do poor people, especially the old, travel from home to hospital?

This is a big question that may appear simple in the comfort of sofas and televisions and cups of tea/coffee and biscuits. But for the poor, it remains crucial in terms of access to medicines.

But it is important to acknowledge that there has been success in access to Aids, TB and malaria treatment and support services aimed at attaining MDGs relating to health. This is so because of Indian generic medicines.

"The concern is that increasing resistance to first line ARVs, SP as first line drug for malaria and the emergency of the multi-drug resistant strains of TB poses serious challenges," says Kwataine. "This has the potential to upward spiral of the cost of managing these conditions of public health significance when second line-patented drugs have to be used. Whilst ARVs may be relatively available, simple drugs to treat opportunistic infections linked to HIV and Aids like cotrimoxazole are often not readily available in most facilities."

Beyond this, there have been reasonable attempts at prevention of malaria, for example. Treated mosquito nets have been distributed to hundreds of women. Their proper use is another story.

What does Malawi need to do now? One, build and spread success to all parts of Malawi, sharing benefits. Two, increase medicines budgetary allocation, demands MHEN. People, says MHEN, must realise that health rights are human rights and essential medicines are, therefore, human rights.

Perhaps after realising this, people of Usisya in the North will begin to demand their fair distribution of justice in the form of access to health facilities and medicines.

That will be a rare moment for Malawi and a meaningful story to share on World Day of Justice in the next years.

Artistic View of Justice

2009-02-18T04:44:00.000-08:00

Edgar ndi Davis do not offer legal service at a fee always. They are also, knowingly or unknowingly, helping thousands with legal services through their songs.

Legal fees are expensive for a majority of Malawians whose priority is food and shelter or physical survival, not legal technicalities.

The cheapest rate as set by the chief justice is K7,000 per hour. This is the rate of beginners. It gets high and high as one moves the legal ladder, finally becoming senior counsels. These are hours of reading, representation in a court of law, consultation in the lawyer’s office.

And these men and women can read, and they are paid for reading. A senior counsel is even more expensive that to hire them is prohibitive for the majority poor. It is also important to note almost all lawyers offer free services sometimes. They volunteer to poor people and it is wrong to portray then as seekers of wealth all the time.

But two lawyers are offering free legal services, free legal advice and free legal lessons in style. They are Edgar ndi Davis, lawyers who are also musicians. Or are they musicians who are also lawyers? They have been in court for years and they have come to appreciate that law is, after all, unfair.

In their song Pakuopa, a persona accused of defilement fails to defend himself in a court of law for fear of stunning a court with obscenities which is uncultural.

Ndalephera kufotokoza
Pakuopa kulaula bwalo
Kuti sankayamwa chala
Ankayamwa...

It seems there is a dilemma of age and ability or maturity. The girl is young, less than 13, and cannot make an informed consent to sex. But the girl, according to the man, has mastered the art of sex that she cannot be described as young. This is justice according to the man. But he cannot explain this in court for fear of offending cultural logic.

So, in a way the man has two choices: offend cultural logic and get his freedom or respect cultural norms of communication and language, lose and get convicted.

The suspect chose respect for culture and was sentenced. And he laments that he is in jail yet he is innocent. So, what is the free legal lesson and service being offered here?

It is that law is, by its nature, unfair. In their work, Edgar ndi Davis, as lawyers, have defended or attempted to defend hundreds and they have come to appreciate the unfairness of law. Their song also seems to advocate for a traditional system of justice to take care of some issues because such would understand that the girl was not young just by use of a proverb.

The question they are raising is: why should a person lose just he cannot explain things in public? At the end of the day, they are saying not all convicted suspects are guilty. Some are convicted for failure to explain their side out of cultural respect, a respect of communication rules which are not written.

The song raises a difficult question area. What is justice? Is justice an event? Or is it a report of an event? Perhaps justice is the extent to which reality can be constructed or reconstructed in a court of law, meaning to be free or unfree is a question of how much a person reconstructs reality, hence the personal laments:

Mlandu wanga
sunayende bwino.

But perhaps this is not what the two meant when they wrote the song. Perhaps they have a different meaning. Who owns meaning of a work of art?

Lucius Banda helps the search for an answer. He has experimented and been successful with new forms of music. One area he tried in recent years is hiding meaning.

In his song, Amayi Inu, he sings and reaches a point where he simply hums—"yeleleeeeeeeee, iiiiiiiii, eeeiiii, one, two, three"—and then says something that listeners cannot comprehend. What is it that Lucius was saying?

"That was a mistake in the studio," he said this week. "I wanted to hum and failed [to hum the way I wanted], so I was telling the producer that we retake the [part] of the song."

But at the end of the day, the South African producer used software to manipulate the mistake and made it into what is today: a work of art.

Listeners to the song do not regard it as a mistake. In fact, it is no longer a mistake because it is now a work of art. Now that listeners know the part of the song as art, who generates meaning from it?

"Perhaps listeners should help us [make meaning], says Lucius. He is right. The answer is listeners. People make meaning from humming; listeners can generate understanding according to their experience. The goodness with gaps, silence and humming in music and any other work of art is that an audience has room to think critically, to take part in making meaning.

The song, for listeners, means that there is something Lucuis could not sing in literal terms and, to put across the message, he just hummed, kind of leaving a blank space for everyone to fill with their experience of a spouse who is not faithful.

And it works because whenever the song is played listeners tend to compete by filling the blank space. It is a way of engaging listeners in a dialogue with a work of art which in this song Lucius got right although from an accident. Perhaps there is no accident in art.

So, Edgar ndi Davis have no authority to dictate the meaning of their song, Pakuopa; listeners have that responsibility.

And by singing such a song they have become ambassadors of the poor; the musicians have become critics of law and justice. They are offering free legal services via music. That is the beauty of art, after all.

It Takes One To Build a Nation

2009-02-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

It was a speech for his country, the US. Yet it was also a speech for the world. What are the lessons?

The world was watching.

The moment had come on Tuesday, January 20. President Barack Obama placed one foot ahead of another, walked on, a step, another, seemed to check his posture, and took oath of office, becoming the 44th President of the United States of America.

Then 21 guns saluted the world’s newest president in a country that holds the illusion that its leader is the world’s most powerful man. Such a country’s chief justice messed a 35-word oath, and Obama corrected him with a smile.

It was a job well started. One of the first jobs of Obama is to correct the mistakes of George Bush whose presidency was not on reason and common sense, but fear and emotions. Just after the oath, a military aide stood near his commander-in-chief as he opened his heart, to speak to Americans and the world.

But before that, a poetess walked on and read forceful lines. It was refreshing. ‘Praise Song for the Day" was the title. It was not ‘Praise Song for Obama’. It was a praise song the day America did something great, a sense of collective work that was inspired by one person who never rose to claim credit because he realised he was standing on the shoulders of his fellow citizens.

Each day we go about our business,
Walking past each other,
Catching each others’ eyes or not,
About to speak or speaking.

This is typical American life: hard work, busy all time, hence people walk past each other, sometimes, in fact often, without noticing the presence of others. The way had been prepared by the poetess. The heart of the world audience was inspired and moved by the last lines

In today’s sharp sparkle,
this winter air,
anything can be made,
any sentence begun.
On the brink,
on the brim, on the cusp—
Praise song for
walking forward in that light.

This signalled hope, a point when America started anew. The podium had been prepared for Obama.

"My fellow citizens," he started. It was a fitting salutation. It showed the speech was meant for citizens of the US. Secondly, and most importantly, this salutation used by US presidents during inauguration and other state functions, confirms that the highest office in any country is that of a citizen, not a President, not a Prime Minister—but that of a citizen, the master who employs politicians to work for the betterment of a country.

The salutation indicates that at the citizen level, all are equal during state functions, hence no need to salute vice presidents, former presidents, cabinet secretaries.

This is different from Malawi where a President, upon inauguration, salutes positions, the honourables, starting with his vice, ministers, regional governors, and finally, after a long list, ladies and gentlemen—those that do not fall in any category of power, those that are ruled and don’t rule, those that are watched over by the powerful.

But this title of honourable kills the spirit of hard work and honesty because even thieves stealing public funds can be called honourable because they are holding an office that attracts such titles.

True honour does not come from the offices we hold. Honour comes from what we do for our country. This is a point we have missed and, as a result, we have diluted the real source of honour. Now it comes from political power when it should come from patriotism, hard work, honesty, and integrity.

"I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors," said Obama.

It was not a task before him, but "before us". He spoke of "we" throughout the speech, signalling that he was spearhearding the rebuilding of a nation bruised by a bitter campaign. Obama reached out to Republicans; he reached out to Democrats who opposed him vehemently and reached out to independents.

"Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms," he said.

He was true to the challenges facing the US today. But he did not talk in a hopeless way. He spoke as if challenging the economic crunch, that it is too small to dwarf American ideals.

"At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our [forefathers], and true to our founding documents," he said. "So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans."

There was an applause. America has carried on because of the people, not because of leaders? America has carried on because of its ideals. Leaders should not tell people what must be done. It is people that should write national manifestoes.

It is not President Bingu wa Mutharika who is constructing Masauko Chipembere Highway. It is the people of Malawi and the people of Japan. It is our development and noone should claim that his plan has been hijacked or not been followed because this belongs to all Malawians—green, blue, yellow, several mixtures or whatever.

The result is that Malawi has lost faith in itself. The population that labels anything Malawian as inferior is not declining as fast as it should have been 45 years after gaining independence.

Obama spoke of America as a child, saying "we remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things." It is time to leave childish thinking and reasoning—or lack of it—meaning, Malawi must grow up.

Political bickering is childish and must stop. Distributing subsidised fertiliser coupons to people of one party is childish and must stop. Overpraising Mutharika is childish and must come to an end. So too denying him any contribution to the development of this country. Police brutality is childish and must stop. Unnecessary opposition is childish and must stop. Evading tax is childish and must stop.

Littering is childish and must stop. Nepotism is childish and must go. Corruption is childish and must come to and an immediate end. Rape and defilement are childish and have to come and an end now.

Such vices come from childish thinking. Every child wants all to belong to itself, nothing for others. Tit for tat is a game of children, not for adults, not for leaders trusted with taking a country to greater heights in the new century.

This journey to prosperity is what Malawi has started and must continue. This is a season of work, time to devote long hours to real work that can develop this country. This idea goes well with Obama’s view of the world.

"And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds," said Obama.

The key word is work. America pledges to work with, not give aid to, poor nations. International relations is not new in the US. Foreign policy forms a great deal of their election campaign. Obama is not the first to talk in such terms.

Bush spoke in similar terms in 2004. The purpose of American foreign policy, said Bush, must be the expansion of liberty. It was not a new theme for an American president. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan all spoke in similar tones and terms.

But Obama has spoken in terms of hope. In poetic construction, short and powerful sentences, some just lines, not full sentences, Obama brought hope to an otherwise hopeless world. Bush declared: "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

But the gap between talk and reality in the Bush administration was striking. Vladimir Putin presided over a reversal of freedoms across the globe, only to be praised by Bush as a soulmate. So scandalously, Bush sided with Putin in the interpretation of the Chechen war as a defensive action against terrorists.

Now there is hope for a difference: that Obama has brought a reality that portrays real challenges and hopes to work for real solution on a difficult, long journey.

That day, when Obama spoke, he finished with an event that characterised the America’s birth, an event that created a generation.

"In the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: ‘Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it,’" recalled Obama.

And, then, in a powerful conclusion he said:

"America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

"Thank you," he said. "God bless you." There was a deafening applause. "And God bless the United States of America," he finished.

The world watched. Malawi too. Now that we are about to witness a hot campaign, the choice is ours to elect a person who will build or destroy Malawi.

Season of Rumours

2009-01-30T00:34:00.000-08:00

It is right to call this period a season of rumours. But Brown Mpinganjira must go on to accept that crucial political truths in Malawi start as rumours.

Brown Mpinganjira, the cleverest politician in Malawi according to Jack Mapanje, is good at communication. He knows words that are loaded with meaning, he speaks poetry, and he can confuse people, even journalists, who don’t follow him critically.

In what can safely be called beautiful interviews this week with Blantyre Newspapers Limited journalists, Mpinganjira denied that he is being considered as a running mate for the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president John Tembo in the May 19 presidential polls, saying this is a season of rumours.

He was clever, and right. Election times have been seasons of rumours since the 1994 polls. But one truth that Mpinganjira has not considered is that important crucial political truths start as rumours.

It was so with the coming of multiparty. Just a rumour, something from nowhere. It was so with the coming of Alliance for Democracy (Aford) into partnership with the United Democratic Front (UDF), just a rumour, something from crazy minds. Still, it was so with the divorce between Aford and UDF. Yet it was so with the open term and third term bids. It cannot be true, said Muluzi. Finally, it was so with the anointing of Bingu wa Mutharika as candidate for the UDF in 2004.

Even the birth of National Democratic Alliance, Mpinganjira’s own baby which he killed, started as a rumour. Yet in the face of such historical truths, Mpinganjira had the courage to tell The Daily Times of Monday (26/01/09) that he is not leaving the UDF.

"I am going to hold a press conference either on Tuesday or Wednesday to reiterate that I am yellow, yellow, yellow. The day I will leave the UDF, ask me about this and tear me apart on that decision," he told The Daily Times.

The following day, on Tuesday, he was in The Daily Times again, speaking poetry, using powerful construction, full of rhythm. He was speaking his mind on former president Bakili Muluzi who desires to contest in May.

"It would be naive to deny that there are problems there [in UDF], there are concerns stemming from the fact that there are a lot of rumours that ...Muluzi would not be allowed to stand. That he would be barred at the last minute; that he would be taken to court, all sorts of things. That is working on the minds of the UDF supporters," said Mpinganjira in visible poetry that can be re-arranged as follows:

It would be naive to deny
That there are problems there,
There are concerns
Stemming from the fact
That there are a lot of rumours
That...Muluzi would not be allowed to stand
That he would be barred at the last minute
That he would be taken to court.

It is interesting also that while Mpinganjira is calling this a season of rumours as a way of dismissing news that he is joining the MCP’s presidential ticket, he speaks his mind on Muluzi based on rumours as well: That there are a lot of rumours, that...Muluzi would not be allowed to stand, that he would be barred at the last minute and that he would be taken to court.

Why should Malawians disregard the rumour about the Mpinganjira-Tembo ticket but take seriously the rumour that Muluzi may be taken to court, that he may not be allowed to stand?

Mpinganjira is being selective. He is imposing one rumour on Malawians as truth and dismissing another as a product of a season of rumours. Aren’t both rumours a product of the same season of rumours? This is a question he is yet to answer. Or, perhaps, a question Mpinganjira, or BJ as he is called, is yet to be asked.

The most likely truth is that BJ is leaving the UDF or he is wooing the UDF to MCP. His assessment of the UDF alliance is honest and what people have said all along.

The parties that have partnered UDF do not necessarily bring numbers as in votes. All of them: from Kamlepo Kalua’s MDP, Uladi Mussa’s Maravi Peoples Party (MPP), Ralph Kasambara’s Congress of Democrats (Code), Amunandife Mkumba’s Malawi Democratic Union (MDU), with an exception of Gwanda Chakuamba’s New Republican Party (NRP) which may, perhaps, bring countable votes.

The challenge in UDF is that most people are afraid to speak. But not so with BJ. He does speak his mind. And so he has spoken, just short of Sam Mpasu’s hit: Muluzi can’t win.

Way back in the year 1999, there were rumours that Muluzi was supposed to pave way for BJ to stand on UDF ticket.

Just a year or so later, rumours were in town that BJ and Muluzi were not seeing eye-to-eye. Then BJ was Minister of Roads, Works and all the names that went with it. On the day Muluzi opened the Limbe-Thyolo-Mloza Road, Mpinganjira nearly knelt down, pledging his support to Muluzi and asking him to "remember me when you appoint your next Cabinet." This was at Luchenza on October 21, 2000.

"My loyalty to President Muluzi is unquestionable," said Mpinganjira, visibly angry at journalists who reported that he was harbouring presidential ambitions.

Next, BJ was fired from Cabinet, formed his NDA and was arrested, resulting into a court case that made him popular.

Just weeks ago, BJ repeated the Luchenza speech at Thawale Primary School in Mulanje. Mpinganjira reminded Muluzi that it was UDF’s Sapitwa region that first asked him to be candidate for UDF; that it was BJ who offered personal support for Muluzi; that the region has supported Muluzi throughout and that Sapitwa region of the UDF will support Muluzi to unseat Mutharika.

He spoke the tone of Luchenza when he pledged his allegiance to Muluzi. Now he has done the same. It seems likely that he will move out of UDF.

This is so despite his insistence that he is yellow, yellow, yellow. It is not the first time Mpinganjira has ever made such a claim. He did so just before the eve of the 2004 elections in which he was a presidential candidate.

Then, former editor of Focus on Africa and Network Africa, Robin White visited BJ at his Chitakale residence.
They became friends that whenever BJ went to London, he visited Bush House where the BBC is based and on one such trip, White, in an interview, suggested to Mpinganjira that Muluzi might invite him to UDF, meaning he should leave NDA and become UDF’s candidate in the elections in 2004.

The answer was interesting. BJ said he can "never, never, never, never, never, never, never"—seven times—join the UDF. (I used to record BBC programmes and still have the tape which I played to BJ the day we spent about seven hours together. He just laughed at my historical interest.)

Yet at the sunset of the 2004 elections, BJ dissolved NDA and joined the UDF, forgetting the never he said seven times on the BBC.

Now he claims he is "yellow, yellow, yellow" and that the day he leaves UDF he should be torn apart on this aspect. This invites one message for Mpinganjira, in some form of a letter, a brief one:

Dearest BJ,

You are right. This is a season of rumours because electoral rains have fallen and insects are singing. But some rumours, especially about Tembo and yourself, seem to be the kind that end into what was was rejected: truth.

In Search of One Person

2009-01-26T07:45:00.000-08:00

Life is a journey and we meet hundreds, even thousands, and millions if you are the Pope or Obama, on the way. They help us understand who we are because the definition of our identity becomes clear when we interact with others.

So, too, our country. We know who we are when we interact with other countries or when we see what they are doing. The week January 18-24 was marvellous. We all admired Barrack Obama when he took oath of office of the President of the US on Jan. 20. For a moment, some Malawians wished they were Americans.

I did not. In fact, I have never desired to leave Malawi and work elsewhere. The streets of Washington can be interesting. I have walked on them. I have lived them. But Malawi is my home and remains priority.

Which is why we must not stop at admiring Americans. We must do for our country some of the things they have done for their country. Or, put clearly, some of the things our forefathers did for America. Those who were captured into slavery.

Why should we admire another country as if we do not have our own? I believe it takes one person to build a nation, not that he or she does the work on his or her own, but he or she inspires hundreds who work hard to develop their country. At a time we are so divided on political, regional, religious and tribal lines, Malawi is searching for one person, just one, to lead this country to a higher level the country deserves.

We need one person to rise above petty politics, triabalism, religious divisions, and all such vices, and talk about Malawi first. We need one person to come and speak of a new vision that will take Malawi out of poverty of the mind. We need one person to speak in new tones about the future of this country. We need one person to set Malawi on fire, the fire of self-awareness, hard work, honesty, and integrity. These are ideals missing in our society at national level. There are those who have these qualities but this is at individual levels and such individuals have not been able to recharge the country, to put Malawi on fire and move the country forward.

Instead, we look at Malawi not as a country of one history, but divided history. The Kamuzu era and its development; the Muluzi era and its development programmes; and the Bingu era with its roads and subsidised fertiliser. The result is that we say this belongs to Kamuzu, that to Muluzi and that one to Bingu.

No. Everything belongs to Malawi. We need someone to put Malawi first, to demonstrate that Malawi is more important than all of us.

This is how Bingu wa Mutharika started when he delivered his inaugural speech. But on the journey of his leadership, on the way, on the via, he met selfish politicians who taught him to castigate opposition leaders at rallies. He met leaders who have no sense of leadership. He made appointments based on religion, region and such unimportant qualification, forgetting that merit is the best.

On the way he has become like any other president. Yet he remains different and still has a chance to prove that he can set the country on fire, the fire of patriotism, to make all Malawians feel to be part of the country.

But what do the rest of us do to make such a person? Our leaders do what we allow them to do. If we demand leadership, we can get it. But we all over-praise our leaders as if they were gods and we make them believe they are miracles to Malawi even when they are failing.

I was writing this piece while listening to News and Reports on MBC Radio One and Minister of Local Government George Chaponda was on radio. He started by saying: "This is what Ngwazi Dr Bingu wa Mutharika wants to see." He was talking about tree planting. Is this really something only Mutharika wants to see? Why didn’t Chaponda say "this is what Malawians want". This means Chaponda is serving Mutharika not Malawi.

I am searching for one person who shall rise above petty politics and build Malawi as one country. I am searching for one person who shall speak like a Malawian to all Malawians. But I am also looking for Malawians who can be masters of politicians and demand from them what we deserve.

My plain view is that this search will be long but will come to an end, anyway. It may take years, perhaps decades, but the search shall yield results. I am hopeful for my country, that someday, someone will become a change agent. I long for that day.

Feedback: mzatinews@yahoo.com

Search for Power

2009-01-21T03:28:00.001-08:00

The study of the story and history of power can be illuminating. What is power like and how do politicians use it?

On a warm May Monday afternoon in 2004, former president Bakili Muluzi witnessed the swearing-in of President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Parts of the country were witnessing violence in the aftermath of the elections because some people who considered themselves in majority, led by some members of the clergy, wanted Gwanda Chakuamba to win. Thus the victory of Mutharika was bad news, especially in Blantyre where a trigger-happy Police Mobile Service man killed a 10-year-old girl, Epiphania Bonjesi. The country was divided. It needed a uniting power.

At Chichiri Stadium, Muluzi spoke first. Typical of him, he was overjoyed, telling off opposition leaders to accept results because the clergy prayed to God, asking for a leader, and God answered by providing Mutharika.

Then Muluzi handed over power to Mutharika who, minutes earlier, had taken oath of office, ending with "So help me God."

Just then, a country that had one president, welcomed a President and a living ex-president. First President Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda died in 1997 and left Muluzi without an ex-president.

Even in 1994, Muluzi had an ex-president from a different party, one the UDF and its supporters opposed and pushed out of power.

It was reasonably easy for people, especially government departments, to understand that Kamuzu had lost power and Muluzi was at the State House. This was partly because Kamuzu understood that he was no longer in power; instead, someone else, Muluzi, was in control.

The 2004 case was different. Mutharika had an ex-president who had become his party’s national chairman and it did not take long for trouble to appear.

He handed over power to Mutharika but out of Chichiri Stadium, Muluzi rode with the new Mutharika in the presidential, open Land Rover which for UDF supporters was love: an ex-president taking a new President to State House. But for students of power, it was the ex-president’s failure to appreciate his new status, that his name had attained the prefix "ex".

Weeks later, Muluzi, as national chairperson of the UDF was on a journey to thank people for voting for Mutharika. The Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) was in a dilemma, whether or not to cover him live. Who was in power?

Power, as was the case in Malawi, can be understood in terms of command and control. "It is either the capacity to make others do as you wish (the command function) or to reorder the environment around you (the control function)," says a scholar of power, Jon Meacham.

Muluzi’s clinging to power showed that he was doing the command type because even after the State House, he wanted to enjoy some visible privileges exclusive to a President.

The command and control concepts of power became extremes. Mutharika was trying to reorder the environment around him (Malawi). There was a difference in the two people’s pursuit of power. Muluzi’s pursuit of power was for domination while Mutharika, it seemed, wanted to use power to make possible a journey towards paradise.

Some thoughts, as a result, became true. Decades ago, Machiavelli wrote: "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things."

It was difficult for Muluzi to carry out or initiate a new order of things after taking over from Kamuzu because such work requires leadership lessons which, it now appears in retrospect, Muluzi did not learn. He replaced the MCP Youth League with UDF’s Young Democrats who beat up people in full presence of a helpless Police.

Mutharika, on his part, attempted to do what Machiavelli called difficult and doubtful: change and initiate a new order of the state of affairs in Malawi.

Constructive evaluation of Mutharika and his DPP must consider the world in which he started his rule and formed his party. The DPP, in the thoughts of Machiavelli, is a party attempting to do what is "more difficult to carry out…more doubtful of success [and] more dangerous to handle", a point analysts miss.

This does not mean Mutharika is perfect. He is a visionary leader, good mostly, but with one strong weakness: he is running an administration without a reverse gear. It is a government that does not look back to reflect on what has gone wrong and take responsibility, a leader whose vocabulary does not contain the word "but" which in the study of power is a reverse gear.

The subsidised fertiliser programme cannot be 100 percent correct. Food security does not mean universal food availability of the staple. Reports show that some houses, and they are in thousands, do not have maize.

Information about hunger and scarcity of maize is everywhere yet this is one thing. It is another for Mutharika to accept reality and be proactive by defining hunger and famine, instead of reacting to shortage reports and refuting starvation.

He is failing to say "but", a reverse gear, to appreciate that the subsidised fertiliser programme and nature’s kindness that brings rains, but accept that some things went wrong somewhere and indeed hunger is biting hard some parts of the country.

Mutharika is yet to work on his communication strategy, which is largely a failure even in the presence of visible success. He fails to construct reality for people to accept.

Still, that May Monday afternoon, when Muluzi and Mutharika spoke at Chichiri Stadium, politician’s use of power for good or worse became visible.

Engaging, Creative Oldies

2009-01-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

Tsiku lina mwana wina akusewera
Ndi anzake adawauza, ine makolo anga nditawafunsa za sukulu
Akuti ukayambabe chaka cha mawa
Tsiku lina mwana wina akusewera
Ndi anzake adawauza ati ine mayi anga ndikawauza za sukulu
Akuti ukayambabe chaka chammawa

Chakudya amandipatsira pa ndekha
Chakudya amandipatsira ine pa ndekha
Kuwafunsa akuti palibe chifukwa
Nanga ndi chifukwa chiyani
Amandisiyanitsa ine ndi anzanga?

Anzake anamuuza si mayi ako
Mayi ako anamwalira
Pompo anayamba kulira
Anakauza atate ake
Mukanditule kwa mayi anga
Ndikakhale nawo.

It is a powerful song, beautiful and creative, too.

The four minute, 54 second song is titled Mwana wa Masiye. But throughout the three stanzas, Robert Fumulani does not mention the term mwana wa masiye (orphan). Yet even if one were listening to the song without knowing its title, they would still conclude that the persona is an orphan, lamenting lack of motherly care.

This kind of composition is creative and scarce. It makes music a journey of thoughts, at mental and physical levels. Fumulani sings through a child playing with friends who go to school and, most likely, ask him to join them at the nearest primary school as it is the beginning of a school year.

One day the child, not named in the song, reports back to friends that on asking parents about school, they say ‘wait until next year’. Fumulani does not say what the child’s friends say in response to the parents’ answer. But the child goes on to say he or she eats alone. When he or she asks the parents why this is so, they down play the discrimination.

Yet a question lingers on in the child’s mind: Why am I separated from my siblings?

It is a question whose answers the child can search and not find any time soon. The question raises a number of issues, too. One, that eating is a social event; people eat while talking and food earns its real meaning of sustaining life from dialogue and friendship.

Two, that food is one area that separates care given to different people. It happens all over, even at church and mosques where pastors and sheiks eat the best while ordinary members, whose contributions buy the best food, eat the least quality of food.

This is also a lesson that children, even the youngest, notice what goes on in families, hence they discuss the treatment experienced by one of their playmates. These are children under the age of 10 who have to go to school in Standard One.

One day, the persona gets an answer to his questions. Some of the playmates say something about the woman: She is not your mother, they say. Your mother died. There, the child cries and goes its father and asks to be guided to the mother to stay with her. This is where the song ends.

"It is a powerful song," says Pierson Ntata, a sociologist at Chancellor College in Zomba.

The song, he says, is probing the question of motherly love: Is it the biological mother only who can care for a child the way they should be treated? This is where Fumulani manages to set the agenda, which is what music is supposed to achieve.

Some songs are predictable. Listeners are told the whole story, even the conclusion. Such songs are closed and there is no room for deep thought. Fumulani and Alan Namoko and some musicians of their time, avoided such compositions. They treated music as poetry, not prose. Namoko, for example, has a song on orphans.

Ana amasiyewo,
Ana osiyidwa,
Opanda mayi awo,
Kodi kwalera kwake amatero?

Namoko does not say how they are being raised or not being raised but listeners are left to suggest that the child is in trouble following the death of a mother. "This is one strength of these musicians," says Ntata.

Asamaleni ana amasiye,
Musatemere mmanja ana amasiye.

This is almost the whole song. Namoko does not say much. He simply gives an example on food and asks a question: Is this the way to raise orphans? Namoko is not judgmental; he does not prescribe how children without parents should be treated. That is for listeners’ thought.

Both Fumulani and Namoko understand orphanhood as death of a mother, that even where a father is available, such children are orphans. This is a question of the value of a mother in the musicians’ societies.

Back to Robert Fumulani’s song. The child asks to be taken to its mother for it wants to stay with her. The child does not understand death, that the mother is no more. It is too small to understand death, the end of life which starts at birth. The child does not know really where the mother is gone to, that she is rotten in some grave within the area or far away and that the father married another woman.

This is where the song ends, with a request—to be taken to the mother, wherever. Fumulani does not tell his listeners the answer; the child is not told ‘no’, he is not told ‘yes’. Listeners sympathise with the lad but do not know what happens next.

Fumulani’s orphan does not know where the dead go: that at death they become cargo without value in terms of customs and immigration; that in real sense it is the vacuum they leave that becomes valueless in the lives of the young left alone without motherly love.

Fumulani’s orphan lacks parents who can bond with him; instead, the child finds bonding at the play ground. Fumulani’s persona is one who asks to be taken to its mother because the child is confused; it does not understand fate; it is asking itself ‘why me?’ as if there is someone it wanted it to be. The child does not see any better place than where the mother is gone.

A careful reading of the song reveals brilliant composition. The child asks to be taken to its mother—perhaps beyond the hills, across the river, or behind the forests—which is an impossibility. But this is a climax of a desire and Fumulani does not tamper with it. He leaves it as such; he leaves room for deep thought.

Anzake anamuuza si mayi ako
Mayi ako anamwalira
Pompo anayamba kulira
Anakauza atate ake
Mukanditule kwa mayi anga
Ndikakhale nawo.

The final image of the song is not an action but a request from the child to be guided to the mother. The child, practically, is waiting for an answer. The father is speechless. The listener is in deep thought—and there is a sense of a good future, room for the father to influence the stepmother to reconsider the child’s position in the family.

The conclusion is ambivalent, and holds out a bit of hope, just some hope, however faint. Little wonder such skills at composition are needed in the modern Malawi characterised by hopelessness resulting from puzzling challenges like poverty, violence and HIV.

Eyes Into Africa’s Bright Future

2009-01-15T07:47:00.001-08:00

The first wave of partnership in Africa was in the 1960s. But it was not for long. Coups, disease, hunger and wars became part of life. Now there is hope and Africa is moving forward to realise meaningful independence.

March 6, 1957, was a defining day in Africa’s history. Gold Coast, Ghana from this date, attained independence from Britain. The country’s founding President Kwame Nkrumah, speaking without a prepared speech or notes, was an inspiration to all Africa.

"The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked with the total liberation of Africa," he declared. It was a speech from the heart. And Nkrumah meant it, because a year later, he called African liberation leaders to Ghana to strategise the continent’s independence struggle.

The fruits were soon to be seen. Twenty African countries were independent by 1960. Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda was in Ghana and admired Nkrumah’s success. It was from Ghana that Banda flew to Malawi to lead the struggle for independence.

Why did Orton Chirwa and others invite Banda when there were other Malawians outside the country? The answer is simple. Banda—and other educated Africans—was motivated by Nkrumah and supported the struggle in Malawi.

Namibia’s founding President Sam Nujoma describes Nkrumah as a "progressive president, an accomplished academic, an incisive thinker, analyst and writer, and a legendary pan-African revolutionary." Indeed he was, at least seen with an understanding mind and smelled by scholarly nostrils.

Nkrumah knew the importance of industrialisation. In nine years, he established 68 state-owned factories. He listed some of them in his 1963 book, Africa Must Unite: a distillery, a coconut oil factory, a brewery, a milk-processing plant and a lorry and bicycle plant. There were agreements for a large, modern oil refinery, an iron and steel works, a flour mill, sugar, textile and cement factories.

The New African editor Baffour Ankomah says Nkrumah forgot factories for shoes, glass, meat, gold, fruit and tomato, chocolate and a radio and television assembly plant. This, says Ankomah, was in addition to building a huge hydroelectric plant at Akasombo—that major source of electricity studied in Malawi’s primary school geography, a motorway from Accra to Tema and free educational and medical services "that made Ghana a showcase for Africa."

Further, Ghana had a continental radio station broadcasting beyond Africa. The radio, say analysts, helped the African liberation struggle.

"For unless we attain economic freedom, our struggle for independence would have been in vain, and our plans for social and cultural advancement frustrated," says Nkrumah in his book.

But this progress did not last. Nkrumah was overthrown on February 24, 1966, while in Peking (now Beijing) on his way to Vietnam with plans to end the American war.

"It is difficult to imagine the greatly improved condition of the African people today if Nkrumah had continued in power in Ghana to lead the pan-African movement," says June Milne, Nkrumah’s research and editorial assistant.

"One of the most shocking incidents in Africa was the overthrow, in February 1966, of that great man. I don’t think we will ever recover from those events," writes Zambia’s founding President Kenneth Kaunda in the New African of February, 2006.

Nkrumah wanted and fought for a united Africa, one that could progress together. He thought a united Africa should have a one-word-name: Africa. "There is no time to waste. We must unite now or perish," said Nkrumah at the historic OAU meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1963.

"Kwame Nkrumah was [Ghana’s] leader, but he was our leader too, for he was an African leader," said Tanzania’s founding President Julius Nyerere in Accra in 1997 when Ghana celebrated 40 years of independence.

Scholars—and all critical minds—can only reflect at history with wonder. Major-General Henry Templer Alexander, the last British Chief of Defence Staff in Ghana dismissed by Nkrumah, had no kind words for the architect of one Africa. Nkrumah "is not a brave man...nowadays he keeps himself very much confined," says Alexander in his book Africa Tightrope.

Colonel Afrifa, who was part of the coup, says in The Ghana Coup, Nkrumah could have been a great man.
"He started well...and became...the symbol of emergent Africa. Somewhere down the line, however, he became ambitious... and ruthlessly used powers invested in him by his own constitution. He developed a strange love for absolute power," says Afrifa.

What went wrong in Ghana between 1957 and 1966? "It is likely that historians will be asking that question for many years to come," says The New Africans, a Reuters guide to the history of Africa’s founding leaders.

Indeed it’s a question that needs an answer because the link between Nkrumah’s end and the rise of dictatorships in Africa is becoming clear. Why did, for example, leaders like Banda and Kaunda, who were close to Nkrumah, turn to one-party politics? Nkrumah established a one party state and controlled his Convention People’s Party (CPP) and all the organs of state; dismissed security chiefs and judges at will.

Was Nkrumah just that bad to enjoy absolute power? Perhaps the challenges and the world of his presidency can help explain. He faced at least seven assassination attempts. But one was most apparent. On August 1, 1962, a grenade was thrown at a village of Kulungugu, in Northern Ghana, where he stopped on his way from meeting President Maurice Yameogo of Upper Volta.

Four people died, 56 injured, most of them seriously. Nkrumah escaped without any injuries but saw everything that happened. It was a dehumanising experience. He later wrote of how a cheering crowd turned into "a screaming mass of people, blood stained, limping [and] disfigured".

The incident was followed by others. But the Kulungugu attack disturbed him. He lost confidence in Ghana Police and organised a private army with Russian help on January 2, 1964. On this date, a constable named Ametewee chased Nkrumah, fired five shots at him, missed, but killed the chief presidential guard, Salifu Dagarti.

It was another disturbing and dehumanising incident but not the first, not the last. He had endured a lot which his friends—Kamuzu, Kaunda, Nyerere and others—heard. This is perhaps the reason Nkrumah turned into a dictator. He was pushed into a corner and had no choice but to protect his life and the interests of his people.
Some African leaders like Kamuzu, perhaps, became dictators, dealing with every opposition immediately, for fear of being the next Nkrumah, Africa’s model. Or they were afraid of being Nkrumaised.

The military coup that ended Nkrumah’s rule was organised by the CIA with support from London and carried out by local collaborators in Ghana, according to information released in recent years by the West. It is easy to blame the US and Britain. But the major culprits were Africans who collaborated with the West.
Since then Africa has mainly been a sad story. Portugal handed over power to Africans in Angola and Mozambique but civil wars followed immediately. Malawi was host to over a million Mozambican refugees in the 1980s until mid 1990s.

Some remained and have become Malawians just like that confirming perhaps one of Nkrumah’s dream that Africans must be one, have one passport and move freely in their continent which was to become a country.
There was war in Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Burundi, and trouble in Zaire. South Africa was struggling with apartheid. There was no peace in Ethiopia. People are still fighting in Somalia, Sudan, Ivory Coast and Uganda and many other counties. It has largely been a hopeless Africa, perhaps traced from Nkrumah’s troubles and fall.

But all that is changing now. Of course, Nkrumah’s fall was a setback because all African leaders were affected. And Kaunda was not exaggerating the effects when he suggested that Africa would not recover from the coup and its effects.

Yet there is light. Slowly Africa is moving and into the right direction. The wars in Mozambique, Angola, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone are over.

Mozambique and Angola are prospering. Liberia has a highly educated President, Ellen-Johnston Sirleaf, who is a symbol of a bright future for the war-torn country. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has made significant changes to bring lasting peace and economic boom to his country.

He was at the White House three years ago, talking to President George Bush, sharing a vision while their ministers were signing treaties to boost trade. Rwanda, with 50 percent women representation in Parliament and high positions, remains the world’s best example on women representation in decision making positions.
There are serious peace efforts in DR Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan and attempts at normalising Somalia. Nigeria, a country of coups and assassinations, has been at peace with a civilian president for close to a decade. That is an achievement and a pointer to a brighter future.

Africa shares its fears and hopes. Most countries have held elections yet that is not democracy. The main challenge facing emerging democracies is rushed elections assumed to bring liberty and, therefore, liberal democracy. The good news is that now there is willingness, even pressure from within, for liberation and that starts with liberalising the economy which leads to political liberalisation because liberalised economy leads to modernisation.

Dictatorships were brought down in the 1990s. The IMF, World Bank and donors were able to do this in Africa and elsewhere bringing hope that soon vanished because there was no meaningful replacement and countries were plundered in a way that is very difficult to reconstruct.

Still there is a real chance for Africa to move forward. British Chancellor of the Exchequer writing in The Guardian in January, 2006, challenged Africa, saying it is the continent’s time to move forward.
"A century ago," he said, "people talked of ‘what we could do to Africa’. Last century, it was ‘what can we do for Africa’. Now, in 2006, we must ask what the developing world, empowered, can do for itself."

Nkrumah, born September 21 in 1909, had a vision for Africa, for a big country to be called Africa, one that could take advantage of its natural resources—land, forests, fresh water and hard working people—to develop. Sadly he died on April 27, 1972, in exile in Guinea, without seeing that vision. Instead, Ghana and Africa had become a land of coups, wars, hunger and disease.

In Nkrumah’s words, these problems, coming after independence, forced Africa to make one step backward. Now, he said in a visionary statement in 1966, "we shall take two forward".

It is happening now. Africa is moving forward and it’s good news, sweet news. The sweeter news is that Malawi, with President Bingu wa Mutharika, is moving along with eyes fixed into Africa’s bright future. It is time to join Mutharika in serious, visionary thoughts about Malawi, a country in which we live, not for ourselves, but for our children and their children—from whom we have borrowed Malawi, a piece of land which we are expected to return better than we found it.

Why Endorse Candidates?

2009-01-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

It was a loooooong year. Yet 366 days of a leap year, as usual. What made the year long and eventful? The answer is yours. I cannot tell. But it is nice to be in the New Year, to be part of those who celebrated the New Year.

It was the year I learned that I need not symapthise with opposition leaders who usually survive on our sympathy. Muluzi did so when he was leading UDF as a pressure group. Gwanda Chakuamba survived on our sympathy when UDF Young Democrats burned an MCP Land Rover in Chiradzulu. Brown Mpinganjira appealed to our sympathy when he formed NDA. Now Bakili Muluzi wants our sympathy because he is leading an opposition party.

Is our work to sympathise with opposition parties? No. Our work is to do for Malawi what will develop our country. Opposition parties which have a majority in Parliament should not seek to buy our sympathy but make laws that are good for all of us.

But they will not because they want to abuse the state machinery when they get into power. Which is why you and me must never support politicians who work towards their personal benefit over national benefit. Let us make the year 2009 the year for Malawi.

One old question that has come from 2008 is on the media and endorsements of presidential candidates. Some media practioners have suggested that we should endorse candidates because—they have one reason only—it happens in the US. This to me sounds like Muluzi’s joke that he wants to contest the elections for one reason: to remove Bingu wa Mutharika from the State House.

Should we do something because it happens in the US? This sounds like the ban of matola in Malawi simply because we copied our laws from Britain where matola is banned but they have an effective public transport system which we don’t have here. We copy the spirit and leave the body.

There are questions that must be asked regarding endorsement of presidential candidates. They are questions of citizenship and professionalism. And this is where theory comes in because it answers the whys and the hows. The reality is that most journalists in Malawi value practice more than theory, yet there is no practice without theory. Without theory all one does are experiments and accidents.

What was the historical reasons for endorsing candidates in the US? Newspapers were owned by politicians or people with political connections, hence it was necessary and in their interest to endorse candidates. Why should we do the same in Malawi today?

Again there are issues of citizenship. This—citizenship—is the highest office in the country. We often think the highest office is that of a President. But it is not. The office of a citizen is the highest. Which is why we must leave citizens to make private decisions on who they want to hire for President. Voting is one of the most private duties. Let the citizens assess the candidates and make a private choice.

The issue of professionalism comes in as well. How can I be impartial in reporting about John Tembo on page two when I have endorsed Muluzi on page one? What we have to do is to report and write critically and leave citizens to make a choice; we need to assess the candidates and say on education, X says so which is better than what Y says. At the end of the day people will see who, in their judgment scores highest.

Endorsing candidates is not the call of journalism in the new century. Journalism in Malawi has challenges that need thorough debate, not talking about endorsing candidates. We have poor analytical skills, hence we describe every album as a bomb. We lack tools (theories) for meaning generation out of events, ideas, and issues. We lack writing skills. We lack education which is our greatest requirement.

People talk about media freedom. I don’t need freedom from laws really. I need from that comes from education. Freedom is the power to do what is right and this comes from education.

Above all our greatest need is to raise circulation whose low figures are not inspiring. If you buy a newspaper everyday at K100, you need K3,000 to buy a paper everyday for a month. And there are over a 100,000 Malawians who can afford this amount. Why do we sell a lot less than 100,000 copies? The reason is more in us journalists than it is with readers.

My plain view is that it is time to work on journalism, not waste time discussing whether or not we should be endorsing presidential candidates.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T07:07:00.000-08:00

There is not much sweeter than seeing the year 2008 come to an end and welcome the New Year of 2009. It has been a busy year at several levels.

Personally, I have grown to appreciate that my work is not to sympathise with anyone but to work for the good of Malawi and the world. I have grown to love the environment and want to see people care for our country. I do believe in the proverb that “We do not inherit the earth from our forefathers, we borrow it from our grandchildren.” This means we must leave the world better than we found it.

This is crucial because he who returns exactly what he got is cursed. Remember the parable of talents given to servants? It is our duty to use the environment to optimum productivity without degrading the environment. The environment, I am sure, is the biggest story of our time.

This blog will continue to serve you in the best way possible. This being an election year, I will do my professional best to give you great writing. I am committed to synthesis, analysis and reporting beyond imagination.

Thank you for visiting this blog. Thank you for your comments. Keep them coming. I need your comments. Let us walk into the New Year together. Happy New Year, dearest.

I Have Turned 32

2008-12-21T23:14:00.000-08:00

I have turned 32 today. Just remembered that I was born on December 22, 1976. So, for me it is not just end of year. It is also a birthday anniversary. Now averages. The average life expectancy for men in Malawi is at 37, meaning I have five more years to live. But this is just an average and I hope I am above average because I have 60 more years to live and 60 more years of writing.

Polytechnic Has a Casual Approach?

2008-12-21T23:08:00.000-08:00

I am happy Peter Mitunda, until December 4, Dr Peter Mitunda, did not teach me at any stage of my academic life. Mitunda left Malawi for University of Salford in Manchester where he was supposed to study for a PhD in journalism and something related to journalism but, according to an enquiry at Poly, his registration was cancelled because of nonpayment of fees.

So, the conclusion of the principal of Polytechnic, Dr Charles Mataya and his team, was that Mitunda did not complete his PhD. Now, this is a faulty conclusion. You cannot register before paying fees or at best the two happen together. Universities in the UK are not like in Malawi where you can negotiate. If he did not pay fees, it means he did not register and if he did not register he did not study an inch. So, there is no question of not completing his studies because he did not start the studies.

This means during the about 15 months he was away, which is too short for a credible PhD, Mitunda was absconding from work, yet he was being paid as if he was on study leave. I pay tax every month and almost everyday I pay surtax and this money, part of it, was used to pay Mitunda while he was absconding from work. His case is different from a person who attempts a PhD and does not complete successfully.

It is not for sure the reason for Mitunda’s failure to study was nonpayment of fees. One cannot tell until we are really sure. But all this raises serious questions about the Polytechnic in particular and the University of Malawi in general.

How come an academic institution like Poly accepted that he had a PhD before seeing his papers? Chancellor College does not recognise one as Dr or as holding an MA, MSc or M Phil before seeing the paper. Why was the case different at Poly? Beyond this, how did he get a job at Malawi Institute of Journalism on the basis of his PhD yet he did not have one? Every interview, even within the university system, requires one to bring their papers. Academic staff who want to become directors of centres within the University of Malawi bring their papers to interviews whose panel is full of colleagues. What happened to Mitunda and Poly?

Once Mitunda was back, he became president of Polytechnic academic staff committee on welfare (Pascaw). By then Pascaw was working towards a 200 percent salary increment that resulted into a long strike at a time government was working hard to keep students in college.

Of course, Mitunda was by then at MIJ but one thing is clear here: a person who returns with a PhD cannot rush into labour politics, instead a PhD holder rushes into academic politics, taking over crucial courses like research methods and being a departmental anchor. In case of Mitunda this was crucial because then he was supposed to be the only PhD in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS) at Polytechnic.

I have no reason to doubt that he has an MA in journalism but with the PhD saga, why should I believe he has an MA before I see one? The Polytechnic runs on tax money and the institution must be as transparent as it must be academic.

The Polytechnic made professional bodies like Media Council of Malawi to consult Mitunda on the basis of his PhD. What happens to all that work? Did it have to take The Story Workshop, an NGO, to discover Mitunda did not have a PhD? This means apparently the NGO is more serious than the University of Malawians in so far as academic qualifications are concerned! No wonder The Story Workshop has always impressed me.

The other day President Bingu wa Mutharika was castigating academic staff for demanding a 200 percent pay rise and we all sympathised with the men and women who teach and research. Mutharika said some of them are not qualified and we questioned the President for saying so when these men and women spend years learning and researching to become academics. Now one might begin to see the President had a point.

My plain view is that Dr Mataya has work to do. One fair assumption is that Mitunda’s issues is being treated with kid gloves because he is not the only one. As we say, if you live in a glass house don’t throw a stone.

Aleke Banda: His Seven Lessons of Leadership

2008-12-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

The first time I spoke with Aleke Banda was in August, 2007. I called him from Chancellor College in Zomba and expressed my fears that not so much of our history is being written.

In a minute, he was telling me his worries, too, and he graciously did so, knowing pretty well that I meant that his history too is fading with time and may be reclaimed but never reconstructed which is what most people with historical concern worry about.

Aleke, as he is popularly known, has been in politics from 1953 at the age of 14. Months before presidential and parliamentary elections on May 19, 2009, I think there is much that Aleke can teach political leaders in Malawi and beyond, and of course, all of us. I have thought of what you are about to read as Aleke’s Rules of Leadership and they are assembled together from his speeches, leadership and life—which has been and continues to be a struggle to make Malawi a better place.

If this story makes you want to know more about Aleke, then wait a bit more because his biography, belated though, will come out someday, according to Aleke himself. My speculation is that it may come out next year.

No. 1

Childhood lessons matter

Aleke is a politician who has proved that leadership does not really depend on age. He started politics in 1953, at a tender age of 14, as secretary of the Kwe Kwe branch of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) when the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was imposed by the British Government. How did such a boy handle a political job that needed competence and speed in communication?

"When asked who has inspired and influenced me in life I was ready with an answer," he says. "First and foremost Mr. James Mayendesa Dick Manyika and the Rev. Kenneth Maltus Smith, my headmasters at primary and secondary schools respectively."

The story is interesting. While in primary school, Mr Manyika asked Aleke’s parents for permission to live with the young boy. Here, recalls Aleke, he worked from dawn to early night—and remember that he was just a primary school boy! Mr Manyika gave Aleke a lot of work that people thought his father was careless by allowing the little boy suffer at the hands of his headmaster.

But in the course of that hard work and organised life, Aleke developed attributes that will never cease to amaze people who know his work ethic and love for decorum.

He remains a hard worker, people in every ministry he has headed say so. He was once Minister of Health and worked from 5 am to 9 pm in his office at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre where he spent days studying the ministry. "His work culture puzzled most of us," says Dr Lughano Kalongolera. "As students we learned a lot just by watching him from a distance."

Every ministry he has headed made a difference in his days. While Minister of Finance, Aleke introduced Cash Budget System. And finally in Agriculture, he started agricultural production investment programme (Apip), which was the starting point of bumper harvests after years of poor harvests.

It is this hard work culture that made Aleke a reasonably successful politician and businessman. He still commands a lot of respect which has almost doubled following his retirement in a country where politicians never retire.

"Working with Kamuzu was challenging and [an experience of] character building," says Aleke. "He taught me discipline, organisation, thoroughness and leadership. The whole experience broadened my vision, maturity and outlook."

All true. But Kamuzu worked with hundreds and some are lazy. The life of Aleke confirms that childhood lessons matter so much.

No. 2

Nothing replaces education

Aleke’s education life was just like of any other child of his time, yet different. He grew up in Zimbabwe where he started primary school and was fortunate to have a good headmaster who saw potential in him and taught him hard work, discipline and the love of books and also instilled in him leadership skills.

"When I went to Inyati, my secondary school, I was active in school activities and had the opportunity to develop myself in many ways. I was a prefect, secretary of the Debating Society, a Sunday school teacher, editor of the school magazine and secretary-general of the Southern Rhodesia African Students Association which I helped found," recalls Aleke.

But it is his story from prison that puts this rule in perspective. At Inyati, Aleke organised students from Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia into a political team disguised as the Bwafano (Unity) Photographic Club. Soon after the State of Emergency was declared in Nyasaland in March 1959, Aleke was detained at Khami Prison in Bulawayo. "I was the youngest detainee at 19 and the only student," he says.

Here, at Khami, he met men from Nyasaland; these were prominent Nyasas: Orton Chirwa, David Rubadiri, Willie Chokani, Augustine Bwanausi, Dr. Harry Bwanausi and Vincent Gondwe.

The men, as Rubadiri recalls, were in different rooms and knocking on walls was a means of communication. One night, there was a knock on Rubadiri’s door and he was surprised what message would come at such an odd hour, if at all prisons have odd hours. "Here is a young man, a student, for you," said a prison officer. "You are teachers, set up a school for him."

"That is how I prepared for my secondary school examinations [in prison not at home]," recalls Aleke.

Secondary school done, Aleke was deep into politics and did not go on for university education. In 1961, he accompanied Dr. Kamuzu Banda to Harvard University in the United States of America.

The professors at Harvard, including Prof. Robert Rotberg, offered Aleke a full scholarship to study any discipline of his choice "because they believed that I was suitable material for university education." But Dr Banda refused to let him go because the founding father and founder of Malawi felt that he could not afford to lose Aleke’s services at such a critical stage of nationalism.

"The scholarship was left open for me for four years but each time Dr. Banda would not release me. I, therefore, sacrificed my education in the interest of the liberation of our country," says Aleke.

The choice of the word sacrifice is not by accident. It means letting up something go, not out of will but for the sake of something else of equal importance. For Dr Banda, independence was important and he needed all the brilliant young people like Aleke. For Aleke, independence was crucial that, for the sake of the greater good of Malawi, he sacrificed his education which was also for the greater good of Malawi.

His use of the word sacrifice shows it was a question of time, not importance. If it were any other time apart from the climax of nationalism, Aleke would have gone to Harvard University to become, perhaps, the first Malawian to study there.

This feeling of sacrifice that haunts Aleke confirms his deeper conviction that education is all important and should only be missed for legitimate reasons. It is also important to note that rich as he is—Aleke is a multi-millionaire—he still misses university education, feeling it as an opportunity lost, the way the tongue feels space where a tooth has been removed.

No. 3

Every storm—no matter how strong—is temporary

After independence in 1964, Aleke rose steadily until the 1970s when he became almost Dr Banda’s number two.

The mistake was to be seen as such by people to the extent that in 1973, a Zambian newspaper, in Aleke’s words, "dared to report that I was a likely successor to Kamuzu." He was expelled from the party and sent to his home village in Tukombo, Nkhata Bay, where he spent a whole year out of circulation, to use media vocabulary.

But this was temporary because during the out-of-circulation period, he planned his future, hence he spent six years in business later. He was appointed to head Press Holdings Ltd, which has now grown into Press Corporation Ltd, the biggest conglomerate in Malawi.

These years of success were followed by detention without trial. He was at the usual suspected camp, Mikuyu. "Looking back," Aleke says, "I see how my training in early life served and saved me. At the time when I was arrested and put into detention, my conscience was clear. Having worked honestly and with integrity there was nothing negative that could be pinned on me."

The 12-and-a-half years in detention were a heavy storm but, as always, temporary. When Aleke got back his freedom, he rose again politically, becoming the first Finance Minister in the multiparty administration of Bakili Muluzi and going back into business, owning Nation Publications Limited (NPL) which has become the country’s number one print media house.

His success has now overshadowed the storms that could have drowned him. He is now a happy family man, a successful businessman and a retired politician.

"When asked about my attitude towards problems and adversaries I say that life is full of ups and downs and the character of a person is determined by his or her ability to survive in the face of adversity. I have been able to overcome all that has come my way because of the resilience developed over the years," he says.

No 4

Always aim high

How has Aleke been able to overcome storms in his life? And the storms seem to be in plenty. "My motto," he says, "comes from my early mentor, Mr Manyika: always aim high (AAH) and from a lesson that he taught me about humility and modesty."

This great teacher in Zimbabwe taught Aleke that the Zambezi River lies low, down in the valley, yet all rivers from the mountain flow into Zambezi making it the biggest among many.

Beyond the education from Mr Manyika, years in detention at Mikuyu and Mpyupyu strengthened his faith in God. The idea of sending people to detention was to break them, but Aleke took the attitude that there is God, and believed that no matter how long it takes, he would come out. "I never broke down, I never got despondent," he says.

"In those twelve-and-a-half-years, I got the opportunity to read the Bible thoroughly and to think about life," says Aleke. "It made me more resilient. The period was difficult but useful. With God’s grace, I came out of prison healthy—in spirit, mind and body. I came out with no bitterness."

He ended up joining the United Democratic Front (UDF) which he helped in its formative years, became its first vice president and once in government first Finance Minister after the 1994 general elections.

But the most visible AAH was his setting of NPL at a time the market was full of newspapers that had carved their place. Three people came together: Aleke Banda, his daughter Mbumba Achuthan and journalist Ken Lipenga and discussed the idea of a newspaper. Big things, as NPL confirms, start from ideas, not money. What we lack are ideas not money, because ideas bring money while money does not necessarily bring ideas.

Later, Lipenga brought in Alfred Ntonga from Blantyre Newspapers Limited (BNL). Achuthan roped in Billy Mphande, NPL’s Area Manager for the Centre who retired mid 2008. Alfred Ntaula joined the team. He was from The UDF news. Bertha Masiku, the MP for Blantyre City West was heading the Advertising Department. Mphande brought Masauko Chiomba, NPL’s former business manager for Mzuzu Bureau. Finally, a messenger was employed.

It was a team of seven people, excluding Aleke, of course, who became chair of NPL. Humble resources too: a family car, a typewriter, a computer, some furniture. Lipenga brought his personal computer. Just like that. And a journey started with the first step. Yet Aleke aimed high and hired the best editors: Lipenga, Ntonga, Jika Nkolokosa and Jonathan Kuntambira. If anyone doubts that names sell, the early years of NPL are evidence.

Now NPL is a giant employing over 200 people with about 50 university products. It is easy to forget that it was a small company of seven people. "NPL grew from an idea—a seed," recalls chief executive officer Achuthan. "An idea to come up with a paper that would disseminate truthful information at a time when information was a highly sought-after commodity."

Thus the genesis of NPL was like a small seed, a mustard seed perhaps, too small to make an impact on anything yet when it germinates, it grows big and offers shelter to people and animals. That was AAH at its best.

No. 5

Greatness is not fixed

There is a tendency—and a wrong one—in the media to classify political parties with some being called briefcase type, meaning they do not command large following.

Aleke was in UDF, a party that had majority support in Malawi. Here he grew and became a successful politician but one who lost in his constituency two times. Yet this was hidden by his success at national level until when Muluzi became a visible dictator. Aleke was once again in for rocky times with a President and had to re-develop a thick skin (yet again) to "weather all the ups and downs leading to my resignation in March, 2003."

The next step was that he joined PPM where he became party president. This is one of the parties journalists describe as the briefcase type. But Aleke has demonstrated that greatness is not fixed; his success was not fixed in UDF because he won Nkhata Bay South constituency on PPM ticket.

He was not in the Cabinet. He was not Leader of Opposition in Parliament as this position was for John Tembo, president of the Malawi Congress, a party that had majority in Parliament after the 2004 elections. Yet Aleke offered excellent contribution from the opposition benches at a time Parliament was rocked with trivia. During the most part of the budget talk in 2008, Aleke was in South Africa for treatment and people yearned for his sober voice when Parliament didn’t seem to make progress.

"If Aleke were here," said Devi Chitenje, "some of the stupid things would not have been happening in Parliament."

When he announced his retirement towards the end of this year, there was a lot of praise on him in the media. Greatness has followed Aleke everywhere. It is not static. Greatness is mobile.

No. 6

Appearances matter, substance too

Aleke, as all testify, is a smart man both in style and substance. He is the type that wakes up, takes a shower and puts on a suit and sit at home or do the day’s job.

He seems to understand that appearances matter. Of course, he is a Tonga and they are known for smartness. But I know some Tongas who are not as smart as Aleke. He is in a class of his own. He demonstrates that smartness of the body, the outward looks, represent the smartness of the mind. In the years I have followed his life, he has never appeared in public with unpleasant dressing, unshaven beard or uncombed hair.

But he also understands that substance matters. Aleke has been a man of substance everywhere. In Parliament, he was one of the few who were listened to with respect.

In fact, we can count people who command respect in Parliament: Louis Chimango, Goodall Gondwe and Aleke who has a rare kind of balance between style and substance which is what today’s politicians should learn.

No. 7

Quitting is leading too

In the history of Malawi, there have been only a handful of MPs who willingly stood down from office. Aleke is determined to set an example, a precedent for all to follow.

The Letters to the Editor that came after the retirement announcement were testimony that quitting is leading too. Honour does not come from being in office only, it also comes from leaving office at the best possible time. There are those who believe Aleke has not served this country to his best because he was supposed to be President of Malawi.

That is understandable. He, too, wanted to have influence from the presidency of vice presidency, hence he was Gwanda Chakuamba’s running mate in 2004.

But having failed to get the vice presidency because Chakuamba did not win, he served the country well by making meaningful contributions in Parliament. Now he has retired—and with honour. "I look forward to working on new projects, far away from hardcore politics, and [I] hope that I will have your support just like I have always had. I feel that after 50 solid years of public service, I have the experience to now put my hand to something different and give some of what I have been blessed with."

Ultimately, the key to understanding Aleke is the years he spent in prison. One question I wanted to ask Aleke was how different is the Aleke who started politics at 13 from the Aleke who retires at 69 after over 50 years in public service? But I need not ask the question because the answer is clear from his writings.

"In those twelve-and-a-half-years, I got the opportunity to read the Bible thoroughly and to think about life," says Aleke. "It made me more resilient. The period was difficult but useful. With God’s grace, I came out of prison healthy—in spirit, mind and body. I came out with no bitterness."

There is nothing so rare—or so valuable—for Malawi and the world, as a healthy person. Happy retirement Aleke.

Sharing Poverty --Part 2

2008-11-21T02:25:00.000-08:00

The song is powerful. It is philosophical, too.

Rich man, share the riches with the poor
Before they share the poverty with you
Man, share the riches with the poor
Before they share the poverty with you.

This song by Culture resonates well with umunthu philosophy which Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu likes to talk about: that you cannot be fully you if your neighbour is not fully himself or herself, meaning you cannot live a happy life and talk about balanced diet when your neighbour is sleeping on an empty stomach.

The world has enough for everyone, only if the resources were distributed each according to their need. The challenge, and it’s a real one, is that resources are distributed through chainstores, hence the poor cannot afford what they want while the rich can afford what they don’t need. The final danger is that if the rich do not share their riches, the poor share their poverty. Exactly what is happening in the world today.

How can the poor share their poverty with the rich in a world whose economy has been growing at about three percent every year? Of course, the economy of all countries—except Burma and Zimbabwe—has been growing. But the gap between the rich and the poor has also been growing. Here is how and why.
HIV and AIDS

One reason, perhaps the main one, HIV remains a threat is sexual relationships outside marriage by both men and women married and single.

If people were faithful to themselves before marriage and faithful to their partner in marriage, we would not have been talking about HIV at the grand scale we do. But this is not as simple as it reads here. Poverty has sent hundreds of girls and women into prostitution. They earn a living from selling sex to men who can afford such temporary pleasures.

The girls and women have poverty and their bodies. The men and boys have money and lust for sex. The result is that the two sides share poverty. They do not share wealth.

This is how poverty is shared from the poor woman to the rich man. The woman, let us consider, has HIV and to make more money she sells herself for sex (and unprotected sex for more money, hence she is HIV positive). This status does not stop her from selling raw sex (let us use this term for unprotected sex). Thus she passes on the virus to more men.

Now let us take one man who catches the virus from such a sex worker. He passes on the virus to his wife. For whatever reason the couple does not test until the woman is pregnant and loses energy to the extent that the pregnancy is a cause for worry. The rest is history. It is still surprising that in this day some people do not accept their HIV status to benefit from antiretroviral therapy. They choose to die.

What next? The man dies—for whatever reasons, the man is often the first to die. Next the woman goes and leaves children without parents, without any idea about the sources of income the parents had, without a sense of direction for the future. And you know how orphans are suffering in Malawi and elsewhere.

A lady greeted me in Blantyre recently. I could not remember her, really but she greeted me with confidence. I stopped and asked who she was. This is becoming necessary, especially now when I have lectured (part-time) for four years at Chancellor College and one year at Polytechnic.

They maybe my former students, I tell myself always. She was not any of those I taught. We once stayed in the same neighbourhood in Chimwankhunda in Blantyre. She must have been young and I did not notice really someone growing up over 10 houses away.

What are you doing? I asked.
She said this and that, this and that, finally she realised she said nothing.

But she greeted me, so I had the right to know about a person who knew me. Thus I insisted to know about her. Then she told me a story, a long one and I was kind to listen to it. She married in 2005, upon falling pregnant. (I left Chimwankhunda in 2000.) She has a three-year-old girl now. The marriage is over. The girls is with its grandmother in a small house in Chimwankhunda. The mother of three I met is working in a bar in Lunzu. In short, this is a story about poverty.

Now you have money to buy beer or sex or both. You will get her one of these days and when you build trust in each other, you will begin to have unprotected sex. If she has HIV, you will be at risk of catching the virus.
Have you tried business? I asked.

Yes, she said. I was selling soap from Mozambique.

So, what happened to the business?

I lost the capital.

How?

My daughter was sick and I blew up my capital on hospital expenses.

What else could she do? If she lost her capital (money), she has not lost all capital (her body). This is what she is selling now.

How much was the capital of your business? I asked.

I can do with anything between K4,000 and K6,000.

Would you go back into business if you had this capital?

Very much. Actually I want to raise some money but I am not sure this will be possible because I am getting very little.

We parted. But I kept on thinking about this experience. When children stretch their arms, asking for alms, are they really asking for alms or love? They ask for love, not money. We can avoid sharing the girls poverty if we give her K6,000 for her soap business. Just K6,000. I can afford that, but my money, in this modern world, is for myself. I cannot share it with the poor. The result is that they will share me their poverty.

Environment

Nkula in Blantyre is a source of two forms of power: hydro and charcoal. The two forms of power are competitors; they do not necessarily complement each other.

Nkula hydro-power station is one of three on Shire River. The other two being Tedzani, seven kilometres down the river from Nkula; and Kapichira in Majete Game Reserve in Chikwawa. The area around Nkula, or put clearly, the catchment area for Nkula, may loosely stretches from Blantyre to Mwanza.

Once, this catchment area was full of trees. Now it is growing bare. Charcoal makers are among major culprits. They are still cutting trees, even those that are not there.

The result is bad news for Escom’s Nkula Reservoir which has a volume of three and a half million cubic metres. The bad news is that half of the reservoir is taken by silt, one major problem haunting Escom. This silt comes from all over in the upper Shire River, even from Karonga and beyond. But most part of the silt comes from Nkula Reservoirs’s immediate catchment area.

While Escom struggles to remove the silt that takes up half the reservoir, people in Nkula and beyond, in the hills, struggle to make charcoal.

Both Escom and charcoal makers are serving the same customers—you and me, in Blantyre. We want electricity from Escom. We also want charcoal to help during blackouts. And because power goes out often, the demand for charcoal keeps on increasing, resulting into more trees being cut, and more soil being washed down into Nkula Reservoir.

It is a vicious cycle that seems unstoppable. Charcoal makers know they are harming Nkula catchment area and the environment. There are hundreds and hundreds of bags of charcoal coming into Blantyre everyday on bicycles and lorries and small cars, even saloons.

Davie Mpasu is a 21-year-old boy from Chapeta Village, T/A Mlauli in Neno. He is a guardian and breadwinner for himself and his two brothers—John 14 and George 17. Their father died in 2003 followed by their mother in 2005.

A whole world, recalls Davie, collapsed. Then, he was 18 and he had to care for his brothers. Yet he had nothing. He was just a typical Malawian first-born who inherited nothing—except land—from parents. It is common in Malawi. They had to start from a scratch. The immediate solution was charcoal making.

"Kupanga makala sikufuna, ndi kuzingwa. Making charcoal is not by choice. It’s out of desperation," says Davie. "If we had an alternative, we would jump on that."

Davie has not seen any charcoal maker whose life has improved. This is true. Mark Samson, 42, lives in Mchotseni Four Village where he has been making charcoal since 1986 but he remains as poor as he was 22 years ago; perhaps poorer. He has a small house of mud wall and a roof that leaks when it rains.

"This business is for mere survival," says Samson, shaking his head. Indeed. It is just bare existence. He had no shirt, his chest was bare. It was hot, of course. But does he have a shirt to wear at home?

Charcoal makers know they are doing a disservice to Malawi. But there is something strong and strange about poverty that makes people do what is bad for themselves and others. In a way, they share their poverty and all people become poor.

Poverty does not only attack pockets, it attacks the brain. What the charcoal makers need is not sale of their product but a redemption of their mind from the poverty that has attacked them.

Otherwise, charcoal makers don’t bother about electricity, so they share their darkness with everybody else because of siltation at Nkula Reservoir which results from soil erosion which, in the Nkula catchment area, comes from deforestation which mainly results from charcoal making using trees often cut carelessly.

We just need to help the charcoal makers find alternatives and manage the few that may remain in the business.

Conclusion

I can go on and on and on citing more areas in which the rich are failing to share their wealth with the poor and, as a result, the poor are sharing their poverty with the rich. This is an article still being written and it is long; perhaps it will turn into a book, perhaps a long essay, over 100 pages gathering dust on my shelf. Hopefully, it will come to a fullstop someday.

Sharing Poverty

2008-11-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

Nkula in Blantyre is a source of two forms of power: hydro and charcoal. The two forms of power are competitors; they do not necessarily complement each other.

Nkula hydro-power station is one of three on Shire River. The other two being Tedzani, seven kilometres down the river from Nkula; and Kapichira in Majete Game Reserve in Chikwawa. The area around Nkula, or put clearly, the catchment area for Nkula, may loosely stretches from Blantyre to Mwanza.

Once, this catchment area was full of trees. Now it is growing bare. Charcoal makers are among major culprits. They are still cutting trees, even those that are not there.

The result is bad news for Escom’s Nkula Reservoir which has a volume of three and a half million cubic metres. The bad news is that half of the reservoir is taken by silt, one major problem haunting Escom. This silt comes from all over in the upper Shire River, even from Karonga and beyond. But most part of the silt comes from Nkula Reservoir’s’s immediate catchment area.

While Escom struggles to remove the silt that takes up half the reservoir, people in Nkula and beyond, in the hills, struggle to make charcoal.

Both Escom and charcoal makers are serving the same customers—you and me, in Blantyre. We want electricity from Escom. We also want charcoal to help during blackouts. And because power goes out often, the demand for charcoal keeps on increasing, resulting into more trees being cut, and more soil being washed down into Nkula Reservoir.

It is a vicious cycle that seems unstoppable. Charcoal makers know they are harming Nkula catchment area and the environment. There are hundreds and hundreds of bags of charcoal coming into Blantyre everyday on bicycles and lorries and small cars, even saloons.

Davie Mpasu is a 21-year-old boy from Chapeta Village, T/A Mlauli in Neno. He is a guardian and breadwinner for himself and his two brothers—John 14 and George 17. Their father died in 2003 followed by their mother in 2005.

A whole world, recalls Davie, collapsed. Then, he was 18 and he had to care for his brothers. Yet he had nothing. He was just a typical Malawian first-born who inherited nothing—except land—from parents. It is common in Malawi. They had to start from a scratch. The immediate solution was charcoal making.

"Kupanga makala sikufuna, ndi kuzingwa. Making charcoal is not by choice. It’s out of desperation," says Davie.
There is an element of resignation in his eyes. He, for sure, knows charcoal is a culprit that is ending trees in Malawi. But that is not all. He knows charcoal business is not profitable. What can he do with K500 per bag retail price or K300 per bag wholesale price? (The wholesale business takes place right in the bush.)

He is often dirty, partly because handling charcoal results into dirt and partly because he does not have enough money to buy soap that can be used daily.

The work itself is tiresome. One has to cut a tree or trees, dig a tunnel, put the trees in that tunnel and burn them. It sounds easy and short. But it is not. Nkula and Mwanza are hot areas and cutting a tree is not an easy job; so, too, digging a tunnel, especially because every time a charcoal maker has to dig a new tunnel where pieces of wood have to be arranged systematically.

It is a process that takes two weeks to produce 10 bags, for example, and make K3,000 if sold by wholesale or K5,000 if sold by retail.

Consider that this is work that involves several people and some have to be paid from the same K5,000 or K3,000. At the end of the day, one walks away with K2,000 or K3,000 or something about such figures. This K2,000 is not enough to buy a bag of maize, hence the charcoal maker remains poor because in a month he makes between K4,000 and K5,000—out of hard labour.

"If we had an alternative, we would jump on that," says Davie, wearing a short trousers just like his two brothers.

It is hot, of course, but for them it is because they are saving the shirts they have. It appears easy when you have two or three or four or five or six shirts but there are people who have one shirt and when they wake up they have no choice, they know what to wear.

"I have not seen any charcoal maker whose life has improved," says Davie. This is true. Mark Samson, 42, lives in Mchotseni Four Village where he has been making charcoal since 1986 but he remains as poor as he was 22 years ago; perhaps poorer. He has a small house of mud wall and a roof that leaks when it rains.

"This business is for mere survival," says Samson, shaking his head. Indeed. He had no shirt, his chest was bare. It was hot, of course. But does he have a shirt to wear at home?

The charcoal made kilometres into the hills that make Kirk Range is sold on the road to Mwanza. Hundreds of bags are sold a couple of hundred metres from Kamuzu Bridge on Shire River at a place commonly called Zalewa.

But it is not charcoal only that is seen along the road from Lunzu to Mwanza. Now people are in quarry. They are spending hours in the sun turning big stones into small stones for the construction industry. They spend hours in the sun, using all sizes of hammers from the heaviest to the lightest.

At Mchotseni Four Village, there are bags of charcoal on one side of the road, and heaps of stones on the other side. People have cut trees to make charcoal. Now they are into quarry, breaking rocks and big stones into small stones. They have destroyed the home of birds and some reptiles that live in trees. Now they are destroying rocks, the home of reptiles and some insects.

The hills on the road to Mwanza are bare, with stones and rocks only. Trees were cut. Soon even the rocks and stones will disappear. Perhaps the hills will disappear in the long-range, so Nkula reservoir will disappear too because maybe Shire River will not be there. It sounds unimaginable but it is a possibility at the rate the environment is being destroyed.

There is a song by Culture titled ‘Share the Riches’. It is philosophical.

Rich man, share the riches with the poor
Before they share the poverty with you
Man, share the riches with the poor
Before they share the poverty with you.

This resonates well with umunthu philosophy which Bishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu likes to talk about: that you cannot be fully you if your neighbour is not fully himself or herself, meaning you cannot live a happy life and talk about balanced diet when your neighbour is sleeping on an empty stomach.

If the rich do not share their riches, the poor share their poverty. Exactly what is happening in Blantyre and Mwanza which form the wide catchment area of Nkula.

Charcoal makers know they are doing a disservice to Malawi. But there is something strong and strange about poverty that makes people do what is bad for themselves and others. In a way, they share their poverty and all people become poor.

Poverty does not only attack pockets, it attacks the brain. What the charcoal makers need is not sale of their product but a redemption of their mind from the poverty that has attacked them.

Otherwise, charcoal makers don’t bother about electricity, so they share their darkness with everybody else because of siltation at Nkula Reservoir which results from soil erosion which, in the Nkula catchment area, comes from deforestation which mainly results from charcoal making using trees often cut carelessly.

Note: A longer article of the same title will be pasted in a week’s time.

What the U.S. Got Right

2008-11-11T04:25:00.001-08:00

There aren’t so many things to learn from the U.S., at least for a postcolonial and cultural theory student like me. But the epic presidential election and its aftermath offers insights worth studying.

It was a grand victory, yet President-elect Barack Obama remained humble, using gracious words in his acceptance speech which was full of humility—and visionary, too.

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” he told 240,000 supporters in Chicago’s Grand Park. “I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he has fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor [Sarah] Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.”

When McCain called to congratulate Obama, he was humbled, saying, “I need your help.”

This is victory with humility. It is a lesson Nelson Mandela likes to teach: that we must defeat others with humility and lose with dignity.

It is a lesson Mandela learned in his boyhood when an animal he rode took him into thorns and left him ashamed. Since then, he made up his mind to win with humility and lose with dignity. This is African wisdom which our friends in the West have upheld over the years and we are abandoning carelessly.

McCain’s concession speech from the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Ariz., said the U.S. media, was everything it had to be—a generous, gracious reminder that when the campaign comes to a close what really matters is a shared enterprise as Americans.

“Sen. Obama and I argued our differences, and he has prevailed,” McCain said. “No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country. I pledge tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us with the many challenges we face. Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans... and believe me when I say: no association has ever meant more to me than that....”

This is patriotism—love of a country. McCain has fought so many battles, the most popular being the Vietnam War. He has won and lost. But it seems the battle of this election was his last and he lost—but with dignity.

Obama, on his part, accepted the victory in a new way, yet like any other U.S. president. He spoke like a world ruler, not a president confined to the U.S.

It was this acceptance of victory and defeat that Malawi may wish to learn from the U.S. The winner must do so with humility while the loser maintains his dignity.

But this U.S. election was not the first one to offer lessons for all of us. The 2000 election that ushered George W Bush into the White House, only to mess up US’s foreign policy, was also full of lessons.

The loser of that election, Al Gore, won the popular vote and he believes the election was somehow stolen from him. (It is a complicated story of the electoral system of the US.)

As a result, the former vice president fell “out of love with politics,” because he became the fourth man in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose a presidential election. But in the face of such disappointment, he showed admirable discipline—waking up every day knowing he came so close to victory, believing the Supreme Court was wrong to shut down the Florida recount but never, never, never talking about it publicly because he didn’t want Americans to lose faith in their system.

Lose faith in their system? Yes. Gore knew the Supreme Court robbed him victory. He had a right to complain all his life the way John Tembo or Gwanda Chakuamba do. But Gore knows such complaints take people’s confidence away from their systems.

How many Malawians have faith in the Malawi Electoral Commission? How many of us believe elections can ever be free and fair? How many of us will accept next year’s election results? The challenge we face is that since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1993, the 1994 presidential and parliamentary poll is the only one accepted as free and fair by the presidential candidates.

It was hugely because founding President Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, accepted results while votes were being counted and he left no room for anyone to complain.

In 1999, Gwanda Chakuamba cried foul. So, too, he did in 2004. Already some people are saying next year’s elections have been rigged. Yet we are five months away from elections. This is so because people love power a lot more than they love their country.

We need to help our people have faith in our systems, especially elections. We can achieve that if our politicians learn to accept polls.

Even when they know they have been robbed of victory as was the case with Al Gore, our politicians must learn the hard patriotism: to accept results and let life go on. In fact, the way to go is to work towards developing an effective electoral process, one that gives power to people. That is one lesson from the U.S.

Ngwazi Barack Obama

2008-11-09T23:39:00.000-08:00

The question was simple. Who is the wife of David Bekham? I asked my Chancellor College fourth year students. Victoria, they answered in unison.

The next question was equally simple. Who is the wife of Kinnah Phiri? I asked. There was some thinking, a slight laughter, and then sadness. Nobody knew the name of Kinnah Phiri’s wife. I told this story to Kinnah Phiri when we met for an interview recently.

"Bekham is a celebrity," he said. "I am not." Kinnah was, in essence, saying that nobody has made him a celebrity. Celebrities are made, they do not make themselves. They are made by the media. The challenge in Malawi is that we in the media have not gone far to make and sustain celebrities.

We do not cherish our great men and women, boys and girls. One reason is lack of skills to write and produce powerful profiles that build our skilled individuals. The other reason is envy.

Why should I make him great? We ask. Envy is an infection that has infiltrated all sectors of our country and we are fighting poverty, illiteracy and disease, leaving out envy which is a great enemy of development. But I want to know about Kinnah.

There are more things to learn from here than from the West. I really don’t admire Britain and US. I admire our rich ways of life.

But one thing we can learn from the US and Britain is how they make their own celebrities. The last time England won the World Cup was in 1964. Since then, the BBC lists England among the favourites to win the cup every time it is being played. Even two years ago, the BBC was busy saying England could win the cup.

Or think about this: Is David Bekham the world’s greatest player? No. Why, then, was he more popular than any other player in the world?

The reason is the media in Britain builds sons and daughters of the land. There are so many Malawians who have lived meaningful lives, whose stories can help us answer difficult, puzzling questions about life. Think of George Patridge, Rose Mkandawire, Matthews Chikaonda, DD Phiri—the man who introduced me to the art of writing in 1993/94, Rose Chibambo, Cecilia Kadzamira, T/A Chitera, Young Chimodzi, Jack Chamangwana, Lawrence Waya, and Ethel Kamwendo Banda—not apostles who give themselves the title Dr without reading for a PhD; these liars must have their stories buried because they are dangerous to Malawians.

Think of Ngwazi Kamuzu Banda. How many of us know him well? Who is there to tell us about him? Cecilia Kadzamira, John Tembo, Aleke Banda, Gwanda Chakuamba. But are these people telling us anything about the Ngwazi? No yet.

Perhaps the media in Malawi is not to blame. Lack of profiles in our newspapers and programmes is a reflection of lack of a biography writing culture. We can count biographies in Malawi. Professor Brown Chimphamba has one, Bishop James Tengatenga, Vera Chirwa, the late Kanyama Chiume and a few others have also written about themselves.

Aleke Banda, a man with over 50 years of public service, does not have a biography yet. But reading his brief piece in Weekend Nation recently puzzled thousands. The man has a story. It is a story that must be told, and beautifully, so.

But are we going to read about this story? Ask Aleke, not me. Then there is Edge Kanyongolo whose real first name is Fidelis. The story is that he was a very brilliant student and his professors used to say, ‘He has an edge over other students’ to the extent that Edge became his name.

To be honest, I don’t know whether or not this is true. He needs to tell us. But what I do know is that he was detained at Mikuyu while a college student. This, too, is a story that must be told.

Then there are professors who started as primary school teachers, going to evening secondary school classes and passed MSCE, went to teacher training college, finally Chancellor College. And there is a successful woman who was a cleaner at a health centre until she married a graduate who encouraged her to sit for MSCE, went to TTC, Domasi College and finally Chancellor College.

Or do you want me to tell you about my college mate who was a houseboy and was sent to evening classes by his master? He passed JC and MSCE and ended up in the University of Malawi. All these are wonderful stories that must be told in profiles and biographies.

Sadly, we are not telling each other our stories and we lose our history because a country’s history is in the stories of its people. Instead, our stories are told by outsiders. They come and write about the Ngwazi from their perspective.

Who is going to tell our story? We must tell our own story and redeem it from the hands of hijackers.
By the way, the past two years I have been saving for a Christmas holiday in Egypt (the Suez Canal), Greece and Spain. But I will not go for a good reason: the victory of Barack Obama. If you know the history of the US, you should know why Obama, the conqueror, maybe the face of a new America.

My plain view is that I will not spend my money on holiday. Instead, I will fund Inkosi ya Makosi M’mbelwa to witness the swearing-in of Obama on January 20. M’mbelwa will have one task: to crown Obama the Ngwazi of America—or is it the Ngwazi of the world?

I thought M’belwa enjoys giving out this title?

So Many PhDs

2008-11-09T23:35:00.001-08:00

There is something happening in our country. It is a craze for PhDs. Some people want to be called Dr this of Dr that and the way to get that title is to claim to have a PhD.

And there are those with honorary PhDs. Academically, a person with an honorary PhD is not called Dr this or Dr that. They can indicate that they have an honorary PhD, meaning they have performed, in some aspects of life, to the standards of a PhD.

But not in Malawi, even those with honorary PhDs want to be called Dr. Take the example of Muluzi, the man whose profile is not clear to most Malawians. (By the way, where was he born? What was his primary school? Where did he write JC?) He got an honorary PhD from whatever university and upon return he was called Dr Muluzi, ever since.

This is the first time I am calling him Dr Muluzi just for the sake of this article, otherwise I have no business calling a person who did not go as far as Form Four Dr.

Muluzi and others who have honorary PhDs are not supposed to be called Dr because this is an academic title reserved for those who have been to school, those who have studied for a bachelors, a masters and a doctorate. A PhD means a person can now start learning. A PhD means a person is able to look at the world using some kind of theory to understand issues, events and ideas.

A PhD means one has specialised in some area of study and they are an authority in that area. Now when we call honorary PhDs Dr, what area have they specialised?

The case of honorary PhDs is just one and not a big crime. There are people who don’t have PhDs but claim to have one. They went to the US, Britain or some country and came back claiming they have a PhD. So, they get good jobs, earn a lot of money while the bodies they work for sink down into underperformance. You talk to them and they don’t engage you intellectually and you begin to wonder whether or not they really have a PhD.

I hear even in some academic institutions of higher learning there are some who claim to have a PhD when they don’t. How do they beat the university system? I don’t know. My suspicion is that some people are peers and trust each other without any documentary evidence. If I went to college with Gracian Tukula and he is my principal or registrar, I would just tell him, "I am back with my PhD" and he would believe me, and treat me like a PhD.

The worst thing is that there is rumour—and most serious truths start as rumour—that one or two senior staff in some academic institutions have no masters degrees. They just disappeared for a year or two and came back to say ‘I have a masters’ and their bosses who are their friends believed and treated them as such.

I have a feeling that some members of the generation that is in 40s and 50s are cheating this country a lot in terms of qualifications. They pose as if they are qualified but some of them are not. They insist on experience but working for 25 years, which they call 25 years of experience, does not necessarily mean 25 years of ideas and brilliant performance. Malawi is looking for ideas, not experience which in Malawi is routine.

All over the world, people are realising that some members of the old generation, even those in 60s, are cheating and working as if they are dying tomorrow. They don’t care what happens to their institutions. (Read about the financial crisis in the West and you will begin to believe this.)

But the worst culprits are church leaders who claim to have PhDs when they do not have the papers. They are prominent apostles, or whatever they call themselves. Of course, this issue of PhDs is common to pentecostal churches, not the evangelicals or the traditional Christian denominations. The old, traditional churches—Catholic, CCAP, SDA and others—do not allow fake PhDs, hence we have genuine papers in these churches and they don’t insist on being called Dr.

There is Dr Bonface Tamani who doesn’t bother, so long you call him Father Tamani, that is alright. There is Dr Martin Mtumbuka, who is a genuine PhD but he does not bother about the title. There is Dr Sosten Mfune of the SDA church; he, too, does not really bother but he has a PhD that took him years.

But it is these apostles who are claiming to be Dr this or Dr that when they don’t even know what it means to read for a bachelor’s degree. They don’t know a thesis, don’t even think of a dissertation. But these men of God without shame claim to be apostle Dr this, apostle Dr that. Shame! Even genuine PhDs in these churches are silent. They respect the apostles, giving them the title Dr.

I have no respect for any man of God who claims the title Dr when they don’t have any paper. They are liars, not only that, they give an impression that a PhD is easy to get and their followers, especially young people, may think life is that easy.

As someone who loves young people, I want to see an old generation that cares, that guides, that leads by example, not an old generation that cheats and lies and destroys.

My plain view is that President Bingu wa Mutharika, being chancellor of some of our universities, must ask those who claim the title Dr, to bring out their papers. By being chancellor he is a custodian of academic qualifications in Malawi and they must be guarded most jealously. In fact, Mutharika must start by flying around his own PhD!

‘Our Success is Team Work'

2008-11-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

The Flames have made it into the final phase of qualifiers of Nations Cup and World Cup. Who is responsible for this success of a team that was turning into losers on the continent. I put this and other questions to national team coach Kinnah Phiri.

Me: It seems to me people are not sure who is responsible for the recent success of the Flames. Is it the coach? Players? Football Association of Malawi? Sports Council of Malawi? Or what is responsible for this success?
Kinnah: Good governance.

Me: I never expected that answer. What about good governance?

Kinnah: Good governance in general. [But] it starts with money. There is money to construct roads and bridges; there is money to pay me as coach and fund functions of the national team. Football is part of a national structure. When there is good governance along the structure, things work. I did not bring new players. I inherited a team that was losing time and again. What has changed?

Me: That is the question that should be answered.

Kinnah: It is the leadership. No leadership, no success. It starts with the President [Bingu wa Mutharika], the Sports Minister Mr Vuwa Kaunda, the Sports Council of Malawi where Mr [George] Jana is doing good job; then we come to Fam where Mr Walter Nyamilandu is doing things properly and then it comes to Kinnah Phiri running the national team properly. It is a joint effort. Success does not come from one person. There is no way you can fail to produce good results when the set-up is good.

Me: Where is players’ commitment?

Kinnah: It is about good leadership at all levels. Players can be committed when leadership is good. I have said that this team was called useless. I took over the same team and it is successful now.

Me: And juju, what is the place of juju in football?

Kinnah: We can believe in juju, but it does not work. Juju cannot score a goal. It works psychologically. In football, we talk about playing properly.

Me: In a recent interview, you said you do not fear big teams.

Kinnah: We don’t fear big teams. We will play normally. We will play as we play any other team.

Me: No specific way of playing?

Kinnah: I cannot go into particulars of tactics because our competitors will know our formulas.

Me: What about Didier Drogba?

Kinnah: He is playing in a big league. He is a good player but he can be marked properly.

Me: How?

Kinnah: He will be playing as a team, not as an individual. If you cut his services he won’t be a good player.

Me: Cut his services. How would that happen?

Kinnah: No, no, no. I am not saying anything tactical. We are going to prepare normally, no special preparations apart from what we have been doing.

Me: There are five groups, each with four teams. If we are among number one to three we will go to Angola for Cup of Nations in January 2010; if we are number one, we will go to South Africa for 2010 World Cup. What is your destination?

Kinnah: Our aim is to take the Flames to South Africa. Whatever happens, we want to be in South Africa.
And if I ask you how, you will say nothing tactical.
Kinnah: Of course.

Me: OK. Sept Blatter accused England of breaking a soccer cardinal law when it hired an Italian Fabio Capello as a national coach for the English side. Blatter said a national coach team must speak the same language with his players. Do you agree with Blatter?

Kinnah: I agree.

Me: Why?

Kinnah: Football is played in a culture. You can’t leave culture out of football. A coach needs to understand his players and that understanding comes from speaking the same language.

Let me say this, football is more than playing on the field. We do counselling. The players face challenges which some of us faced and we discuss those things. It is important that we understand their challenges in the context of [our] culture.

Me: What about coaching on the pitch and language?

Kinnah: Football players have an inborn talent that needs to be enhanced. Some may not be educated and we know if you are a Malawian and speak English, you must be educated. Now, should we keep out a player because he does not speak English? We can realise the full potential of players when they speak the same language with a coach.

Me: Is that all? Can a foreign coach really want the Flames to win all the time? Would he feel a loss the way you, being a Malawian, would? If he is from England, for example, and we are meeting England, in whatever cup, would he want Malawi to beat his home country?

Kinnah: A foreign coach is here for money [while] a local coach is here for love of the country. A foreign coach has to make money and enjoy in his home country. Have you ever seen a foreign coach who built a house here and made Malawi his home? But Malawi is my home and this is where I will invest.

Me: You can choose to invest outside Malawi. It is not automatic that you are a Malawian and you invest in Malawi.

Kinnah: No. Then I would have stayed on in South Africa. I love my country and I want to be part of those developing Malawi.

Me: You were a great player and now you are turning into a great coach. But I have never heard about any of your sons turning into great players. Are you worried?

Kinnah: I have three boys and all of them concentrated on education. Two are in the United kingdom; one is doing a masters in IT, the other is doing architecture. My first born, Foster, was a good player but had a serious injury while a student at MCA [Malawi College of Accountancy], and that stopped his rise [on the soccer ladder].

Me: Are you worried that your sons have not lived your soccer name?

Kinnah: No. They have their own future in what they are doing.

Me: What is your message to Malawians?

Kinnah: They must keep on wearing red. They must love their country by supporting the national team and they must come to games in large numbers.

Our Dying Languages

2008-10-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

Note:

This article was published over two years ago and was heavily quoted by Mr Joseph Mwanamvekha, chaiperson of the Muhlako wa Ahlomwe launch on October 25. It is nice the Lomwes have acted. I have maintained the Lomwe spelling, not Lhomwe, to show that this article was done long before the Lomwes came to promote their languages.

They often shout their mantra, Angoni satha onse (the Ngoni still exist), in Chichewa because Ngoni is almost a culture without a language.

"Ngoni, for all practical purposes, is a dead language," says Pascal Kishindo, a professor of linguistics at Chancellor College.

The reasons are historical. The Ngoni left Zululand, among other reasons running away from Shaka Zulu’s wars, and moved to Malawi in two groups, on different routes, waging wars, conquering on the way and, finally, settled in Mzimba and Ntcheu.

The majority of the people who came to Malawi, therefore, were those captured during wars and not necessarily the original Ngoni. Only the royal clan and a few others could speak Ngoni in Malawi.
As a result, Ngoni was not an everyday language, it was not passed on to future generations and became a second or third language.

"When a language is not used everyday, it’s on its way out," says Kishindo.

Indeed Ngoni is out because only chants remain. These are recited by old people on important occasions like initiation and installation of chiefs.

Such old people are at Mpherembe in Mzimba and around Inkosi ya Makosi Gomani’s area in Ntcheu. Now there are efforts to revive the language.

The Mzimba Heritage Association is running Ngoni classes throughout Mzimba, so that Ngoni culture should not die because in the first place, a culture is carried by a language.

This initiative was approved by Inkosi ya Makosi M’mbelwa and government. South Africa donated textbooks for the exercise a couple of years ago.

One of the people involved is Aupson Ndabazake Thole, who works for Mzuzu Museum. He says one real challenge is that few Ngoni words still in use have been mixed up with Chitumbuka.

Perhaps Ngoni is not so much of a worry because something is happening to resurrect it from the dead. It is languages still in use like Chilomwe and Chitonga that should be guarded against gradual death.

The danger, says Bright Molande of English Department at Chancellor College, is that a person can speak a language without owning it. Such people do not live their languages.

A 1966 population census showed that Lomwe was the country’s second largest spoken language. Chichewa was number one, Yao came third with Tumbuka on fourth.

Some have, as in every census, doubted the accuracy of the statistics, saying the enumerators simply asked the tribe of the respondents and assumed they could speak the language of their tribe.

The real challenge is that while Tumbuka, for example, is spoken in Blantyre, Chilomwe, a language close to the commercial city, is rarely spoken there.

While Chiyao becomes a language for a bus to Mangochi and Chisena for a bus to Nsanje, Chilomwe is never heard on public transport to Mulanje. "It was very difficult to find people who speak Lomwe very freely at a market, for example," says Kishindo of his 1999 study on Chilomwe in Thyolo and Mulanje.

One sad observation, says Kishindo, is that it was old people who were interested while "the young folks were annoyed".

History is part of the explanation. The Lomwe were the latest people to come to Malawi. Some as late as 1910. They ran away from oppressive rule of the Portuguese in neighbouring Mozambique and picked up humble jobs in tea estates in Thyolo and Mulanje, including Phalombe.

"It would be hypocritical of me if I don’t accept this," says Ken Lipenga, an ardent speaker and researcher in Lomwe semantics.

As a result, some Lomwe shied away from their ethnic identity and were reluctant to speak their language.

"It’s not surprising, therefore, that there has been a language shift from Chilomwe to Chichewa," says Gregory Kamwendo in his contribution to A Democracy of Chameleons, a 2002 book on politics and culture in new Malawi.

Lipenga accepts the shift but says Chilomwe is not developing characteristics of a dying language.

"Lomwes speak other languages in order to communicate with people outside the tribe," says Lipenga, adding that among themselves in Phalombe, for example, they speak Chilomwe.

But he realises the need to pass on the language to future generations, first by giving children Lomwe names.
"My two children have Lomwe names," says Lipenga.

Perhaps, the worst setback to all languages in independent Malawi was the Malawi Congress Party’s 1968 convention which resolved that Chichewa be a national language. The introduction of one language was partly good for the sake of national unity.

The problem was the selfish manner in which first President Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda imposed his language on the nation.

Despite the nationalisation of Chichewa, Livingstonia Synod of the CCAP has been a custodian of Chitumbuka, for instance. The Synod uses Chitumbuka for worship.

This has helped the Tumbuka language to thrive. But the Synod is not a custodian of Tumbuka culture which is supposed to be carried by the language.

It’s clear, therefore, that people, owners of a culture, can promote a culture through its language. That’s what the Lomwe and other tribes have to do.

Yet promoting a language requires a lot of political will and a number fanatics to despise all ridicule.
The first political will in recent years was the introduction of several languages on MBC Radio One. But this is not enough.

Still there are signs of hope. The suggested instruction of junior primary school pupils in the vernacular may help, confirms Alfred Mtenje, professor of linguistics at Chancellor College.

But Malawi has over 10 languages and it’s not yet known which ones will be used from the list of local languages which include Chichewa, Chiyao, Chitumbuka, Chisena, Chilomwe, Chingonde, Chinyakyusa, Chilambya, Chindali, Chisuku, Chinyika, Chitonga, Chisenga, Chingoni, Chimambwe and many more.
Some of these languages are spoken by a few hundreds of people and may not be a medium of instruction.

But for those that are on the danger of disappearing, there is need for a programme to collect information from old people because once they die it’s like a library has caught fire, books destroyed.

Any preservation of a language, however, should come from the people themselves because the Lomwe distinctiveness, for example, is very interesting to a linguist like Mtenje.

But his feeling is that the Lomwe themselves should be interested in their culture and tradition— folktales, rituals and initiation. A language, as we say, is a carrier of a culture. Therefore, to live a language is to live a culture.

The instruction of junior pupils in mother tongues is perhaps a good, but bumpy starting point. Our children, and all of us, should not only speak but live our languages to preserve our cultures.

This means Lomwe people should not only dance tchopa but should also sing Chilomwe songs. Likewise, Yao and their manganje, Ngoni and beni and so on.

When we live our languages we shall use them daily, pass them on to future generations and make them preferable to others.

That’s what all tribes in Malawi should be doing.

End of All Things

2008-10-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

The song is short: three minutes, 50 seconds. In fact, the song is too sweet to end.

Nelly Furtado is a musician who has seen all sides of life and she was right to ask the question: All good things, why do they come to an end? All good things: from love to wealth to life. But her song, though good, comes to an end as well. Of course you can replay, but it still comes to an end; you replay (again) but it still comes to an end.

A bottle of the sweetest drink comes to an end. It may be refilled but the taste may not the be same, not because the chemical make-up of the drink has changed, but because the circumstances of drinking are no longer the same. A good whistle is inspiring, but soon you get tired and cannot whistle any more. You try again, but you can’t whistle the way you did, the way it was—not as sweet.

Why do good things come to an end? Furtado is right to ask this question. But it is not good things only that come to and end. Bad things end as well and this is where we appreciate that it is good for things—good and bad—to come to an end.

The war in Mozambique was bad. In fact, there was something wrong in the way Portugal handed over power in its colonies because both Mozambique and Angola went into war soon after independence.
Malawi hosted about a million refugees from Mozambique. They settled in Balaka, Ntcheu, Dedza, Mulanje and other districts.

Hundreds of them married in Malawi and settled. Thousands returned to their country at the end of the war. But forests were depleted to create space for the refugees. The pain of the mercy to keep Mozambican refugees is still felt in Malawi. The pain of war in Mozambique is still prevalent not only in Mozambique but in the region.

Some have speculated that the first guns used in armed robbery in Malawi were from Mozambique. Others have gone to the extent of saying Mozambicans did not help matters as regards HIV prevalence.
Now that the war is over, Mozambique has picked up the pieces and its economy is bigger than that of Malawi in most senses. Mozambique feeds us when there is food shortage here.

Imagine the war in Mozambique did not come to an end. There would have been a war in Mozambique, chaos in Zimbabwe and the whole region would have been disaster.

So, it was nice the war came to an end. In fact, it is nice things—all things, good and bad—have an end for without one, the world would have been a bad place.

This is a world surviving one end of things. The sun does not move, it does not rise, it does not set, but the world talks about sunrise and sunset because one, nature has made this possible and, two, it is good that a day comes and ends to pave way for night and darkness: a sense of variety and forward moving.

One life has to come to an end for another to start. The death of one is the birth of another. The world needs some space for new borns.

Yet we mourn those who went before us. Malawi has never had anyone close to the late Du Chisiza jr, actor, playwright, producer and manager. Malawi is missing the skills of musicians like Deus and Bright Nkhata, Grey Ntila; players like Dixon Mbetewa, Harry Waya, and Frank Sinalo. We miss their skills, their talent. Kalimba and Makasu bands remain the best combination Malawi has ever had.

Why did their life come to an end? We ask the question because we miss them. The compensation is that memories about them soothe souls. Beyond that, we celebrate the passing of criminals. We also take end of life moments seriously.

In the final analysis, knowledge on this side of paradise is like that: we can’t understand everything; not now, but then, on the other side of paradise, we shall understand.

My plain view is that Nelly Furtado’s song and question "Why do good things come to an end?" is good and understandable it lacks depth. End of things is part of life and something the world has to live with because forever is too long to be enjoyed in this state.

Digesting UDF Brains

2008-10-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

The UDF is a party in the news. This week the Malawi Law Society spoke on the party’s presidential candidate and the risks that his candidature brings. I spoke spoke with UDF director of research Humphrey Mvula.

Me: So many voices but it seems the UDF is listening to itself, only.

Mvula: I disagree that the UDF is listening to its own voice only.

Me: That is what we are seeing?

Mvula: That is a wrong vision. The national conference elected Muluzi as its candidate for 2009. He was elected by representatives from all constituencies. People exercised their democratic right. Beyond that, the national executive committee has carried out adequate consultations in Malawi and abroad: QCs and others have been consulted. What comes out clearly is that there is no law that bars Muluzi from standing. The cardinal point is that he has been elected by the 2000 delegates from all over Malawi.

Me: True. The UDF is, so far, the only party to hold a convention prior to next year’s elections. But that was just an illusion because there was no level playing field. Muluzi had been campaigning for over a year. Should we be attributing that choice to people?

Mvula: I disagree with you. The convention had been cancelled several times over two years and anyone who was interested in standing for the UDF presidency had adequate time to sell himself to the electorate. Additionally, anyone who wants the presidency in any party must have long range planning done two or three years go. You should be able to distinguish Muluzi and the chairman of the party [from] Muluzi as the presidential candidate.

Me: How do we distinguish? They are one. Muluzi as national chairman, as presidential candidate, as financier of the party—these are one?

Mvula: No, no, no! They are not. That is a perception!

Me: And perceptions are more important than reality. In fact, perceptions reflect reality.

Mvula: In politics, leaders can be synonymous with party structures and command. This happens in the political industry. A leader becomes a persona of a party. Muluzi was able to market himself and the party did not bar anyone from showing interest or marketing themselves.

Me: But there must be something strong in UDF that stopped people like Friday Jumbe and Brown Mpinganjira from contesting because Muluzi was contesting.

Mvula: The strongest factor that stopped them was their conscious, and their respect for the elderly in African setting. Possibly personal understanding that we have been mentored by this same person, shall we be able to oust him? But beyond that, it is people that vote. For you to contest, you must have a body of people who can vote for you. Astute leaders assess themselves and decide whether to contest or not.

Me: Law, yes. There might be no law that stops Muluzi but morally, he is supposed to retire and let others in UDF run the affairs of the party.

Mvula: I don’t agree with you on that point. All over examples abound of people who have come back.

Me: But are these examples good enough to follow?

Mvula: In Pakistan, Spain and Italy, Israel. The issue of allowing a good leader to come back should not be attached to morality. There is nothing immoral about Muluzi coming back into the party. As long as people in UDF say this is the best candidate in this contest, it may not be correct for us to stop.

Another factor is that if President Bingu wa Mutharika was still in the UDF today, there would have been no talk of Muluzi now. Mutharika did not just dump UDF, he did two dangerous things. He denied the UDF the honour of supporting and electing a successful President. He also short-circuited the party’s succession plan. Some of the people in the succession plan were taken to the new party, meaning that the UDF has suffered a huge gap.

Me: But there are still more of you in UDF?

Mvula: No. Leaders are not picked from the street. They are developed, nurtured and become leaders, everywhere, in any industry. This is the story that you are not telling on behalf of UDF. It is a party that has suffered a succession crisis.

Me: But it was self-made.

Mvula: It was not self-made.

Me: The UDF did not create a conducive climate for the President. There was Fast Track, there was all this jabbing. How would a person stay?

Mvula: I don’t want to go into that because it involves a President who is in another party. It is not true that the UDF did not create an environment good enough for Mutharika. It is not true that anyone wanted to take away the honour of the President. The party was convinced and confident that within the first 10 years, we were to consolidate democracy and next [years] the economy. So the choice [of Mutharika] was in that sense.

Me: I am glad you say that because when we study new democracies the first decade or so is for democracy consolidation and the later years for economic growth. The tragedy is that the UDF candidate is campaigning on the consolidation of democracy when we are in a phase that emphasises on the creation of wealth because it is rich people who can demand freedoms.

Mvula: We have never campaigned on the premise of consolidating democracy.

Me: The UDF candidate is campaigning on that premise?

Mvula: No, no, no. The issue of democractisation, rule of law, human rights, power to the people, are enshrined in the Constitution. Whatever happens in a democracy should have a human face. What is happening today is dangerous. Section 65, the failure to hold local government elections—these are examples that we are rolling back to what we fought against. The leader who is coming in 2009 must safeguard the Constitution. Our manifesto never talks about one item. What you are doing is picking one item.

Me: Why is your candidate talking about democracy only?

Mvula: We have not rolled out our campaign. We will be doing that very soon and that is when you will see what we will do on agriculture, economy and other areas.

Me: It looks like people are still not sure and are looking back to UDF to correct the candidature of Muluzi. The party may be creating a crisis if Muluzi is refused to contest. If that happens, it will be a national tragedy. Why not prevent this now and be sure of the future?

Mvula: If you listen carefully and analsye these voices, how many of them are neutral? Our political competitors have talked about risks which we don’t see. What is it that in the current Constitution or PPE [Presidential and Parliamentary Elections Act] that stops Muluzi? I don’t see it.

Me: What if those who have authority to interpret the law say Muluzi cannot stand?

Mvula: I cannot say what we will do. But, obviously, I don’t think those who have authority, in this case the Electoral Commission, can come and say he cannot stand because they are not going to bring new laws. The laws that exist today allow Muluzi to stand. The mischief is that people are dragging Section 83 into this issue. The qualifications of a candidate are not in Section 83.

Me: The spirit of the constitutional conference was that a person should serve a maximum of two consecutive terms and retire and you were there, you know this. Why are you not abiding by the spirit of the Constitution?

Mvula: If the spirit was not translated into the Constitution, it is not the fault of anyone. All the spirit should have done was to remove the word consecutive. If they had done so, then that spirit would have been actualised into action.

Me: So the UDF is taking advantage of the loophole?

Mvula: It is not taking advantage. It is only complying. It has not been repealed. If there is somebody who feels nasty about it, they should demand that it be repealed. As long as it is not repealed, the issue of consecutive is simple English. This is about a sitting President. Why are we mesmerising ourselves? The best I can say is that there are individuals who are peddling a campaign against the strong candidate.

Me: How strong is Muluzi because his decade was not a period that people may wish to come back?

Mvula: I don’t agree with you.

Me: There was a lot of violence.

Mvula: You said the first 10 years are for stabilising democracy. By and large we had a lot of achievements, honestly.

Me: Why should I trust your judgment on the assessment of Muluzi because if you move to another party today, you will be talking different things?

Mvula: Judge me by ability to do what I do. Democracy brought a good Constitution but the Penal Code was old. But here was a leader who did not want to use a Penal Code that was from a one party system. That was from the personality of Muluzi. In terms of Muluzi as an individual, he would be a much much better President than anyone that will be contesting.

In terms of the economy, we inherited empty coffers but we achieved the first debt cancellation in 2000. We achieved and you were there marching with all Malawians. This happened in the UDF era and has never been attributed to the UDF.

Me: Assuming we have two candidates here, Muluzi and Mutharika, I know you will vote for Muluzi. But why should people vote for Muluzi and not Mutharika.

Mvula: This is a difficult question.

Me: But I need an answer.

Mvula: I would compare them in four [areas]. Four years within a democracy and being part of planning that process, and 10 years from a dictatorship, there have been few happenings now. Apart from macroeconomic fundamentals, individuals are poorer than they were. The value of the wage is no longer of any value. Delivery of services is poor. There are more blackouts than when the economy was wavering.

In terms of governance, the kind of Constitution we have is too democratic. It allows power to the people in form of councilors. That we have not had these in four years is serious. The third one is the way leadership is played. In a democracy leaders are servants, not masters.

Finally, adding value to our raw materials. Why should we sell our tobacco as raw materials. The adding of value should be able to bring more money. I can go on and on and on but I am the first to agree that there has been macroeconomic gains that have not translated into microeconomic, the downstream operations. The other thing is our adoption of structural adjustment programmes has been without coping mechanism in terms of people being fired if we are closing a company.

Me: Why is it that people become wiser once they are in opposition and they see what they didn’t see when in power?

Mvula: I don’t think that is correct?

Me: It is. If you were in power you would not be talking of coping mechanism and all that.

Mvula: No, no, no.

Me: You would be defending the system.

Mvula: No! Take it from me. Record this and put it in the newspaper. If I am part of a power system, I will always talk about what I am talking about.

Me: Are you sure?

I am saying record it for the sake of posterity.

Sharing the National Cake

2008-09-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

My life has been a journey. I sat for primary school leaving certificate examinations (PSLC) twice, hoping for selection to Balaka Secondary School, but I ended up at Ulongwe MCDE Centre on the road to Mangochi.

My MSCE in 1996 was wonderful. Being the second group to sit for MSCE at Ulongwe MCDE, people did not expect much, really. Studying using a chikoloboyi at night was trouble.

But I managed to get 26 points and this was not easy. But remember that the first time I saw a test-tube was in a biology practical examination in the laboratory of St Charles Lwanga MCDE Centre at Balaka. And the examination was after midnight, because we were waiting for the owners of the school and those from Phalula MCDE Centre to finish.

Now compare my situation with someone who was at Zomba Catholic Secondary School, a school with a library, qualified teachers, a laboratory and electricity. You cannot begin to compare, you can only contrast. Then the next step was to travel to Blantyre to sit for the university entrance examination (UEE). I had no idea how it would be.

No wonder I was not selected to go the University of Malawi. I had 58in mathematics, 64 in language skills and 54 in reasoning skills. My average was 58.6. The minimum average for selection was 50 but because a lot of people performed a lot better than me, I was not picked.

After close to three years in the city, I was able to prepare for UEE in 1999. My great friend Rodney Mpinganjira coached me in maths. I read a lot of books and improved my reasoning skills.

Come selection, I was picked. Why? I will tell you. The questions I met during UEE were for city people, and I had become one. Our examinations are formed on the assumption that we all grow up in cities with exposure to electricity and technology and media and ideas. If I was in the city, I would have been picked at the first attempt of UEE because I was intelligent in all senses only that circumstances worked against me.

The solution to my dilemma and that of other rural folks is quota system. If it were quota system then, the university would have said, “look here, there is this boy from Balaka who has qualified to be selected but there are many above him. Let us give this rural folk from an MCDE centre without electricity the opportunity to study in the university.”

After giving such an opportunity to 200 or 250 rural folks, the university committee would select the rest on competition. Remember that I qualified for selection only that more people scored better than me, not because I was less intelligent but because I was not exposed to similar circumstances as town folks.

My plain view is that Malawi is living in a number of illusions. One of them is that merit means getting the best without considering circumstances of our young people, especially those growing up and living in remote areas. We have condemned them to their small corners of the country. We are keeping the education national cake to town folks, those who know a bulb, a socket, a tap and a kettle.

Another illusion is the law that bans matola on the assumption that we have an effective public transport when the majority of our people depend on matola.

We need to think through our situation and use laws and systems that suit our development needs. Let us ease transport problems by allowing matola in those areas where there are no buses. Let us adopt quota system and give the boy and girl in Hewe, Chididi or Khola a chance to eat from the national cake.

Dedication

This piece is dedicated to my friend—well, he is my brother—Bright Molande who introduced me to Theory at MA level at Chancellor College. He is a great scholar whose reputation as a cultural theorist and postcolonial scholar is growing in Africa and Europe.

He left for Essex University, (outside London) for his Ph.D. This is where, years ago, he was the only African in a class of 49 and was the first to finish an MA programme meant for 12 months in nine months—and with a distinction! But now he will have to spend at least three years away. Bright, my heart goes with you. My heart remains with your family. I will be there when you come to take your family.

Wisdom of Africa

2008-09-23T05:33:00.000-07:00

Africa is a continent with unique philosophies that can make the world a better place. Malawi needs to tap from the past to answer some crucial questions of the present and the future.

Some 20 Mandinka boys of West Africa were about to become men, to pass through the last part of the rite of passage called initiation.

But the boys had to master the knowledge of their tribe. That was Africa of centuries ago. Some of the issues had to do with wealth, marriage, family and war. The story of Africa’s past titled Roots, in book and film, is powerful.

“On how many sides should you surround an enemy in war?” Asked the Kintango or initiation teacher. “Four,” answered one of the initiates. “Wrong,” said the teacher, adding: “Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped. The aim of war is to win, not to kill.”

This wisdom is unique to Africa. It is a kind of philosophy that US President George Bush and his friend Tony Blair have not mastered. The aim of war is to win, not to kill. But the war in Iraq is about killing, not winning.

The idea of killing as is the case in DR Congo, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Central African Republic and Darfur—the shame of the continent—is not African. These are conflicts that have a heavy alien influence that is using unpatriotic Africans. The challenge for Africa is that some people are willing to be used, even abused, to kill fellow Africans.

The Mandinka boys also learned that battles should start in late afternoon, so that any enemy, seeing defeat, could save face by retreating in the darkness.

The idea of long wars is not African. Almost all African wars—typical African wars—in history were brief. Wars lasted less than a week, no more than two weeks. This idea of a war that seems endless as is the case in Iraq is not African.

Often a war between African tribes lasted hours. The wars of Shaka Zulu were brief. The problem was that he fought so many wars and his army became tired. That wars should start in late afternoon and let the defeated enemy run away under the cover of darkness, with his dignity intact, is truly lacking in today’s world where people are defeated physically and psychologically in broad daylight.

Contact and dialogue is typical African. People used to talk to each other, often away from masses. Secrecy is typical African. Sensitive issues were kept in secret to keep concerned people’s dignity. All in all, the understanding was that even the defeated have dignity.
It is a lesson that Nelson Mandela got in his boyhood, that enemies should be defeated with their dignity.

“I learned my lesson one day from an unruly donkey. We had been taking turns climbing up and down its back and when my chance came I jumped on and the donkey bolted into a nearby thorn bush. It bent its head, trying to unseat me, which it did, but not before the thorns had pricked and scratched my face, embarrassing me in front of my friends. Like the people of the East, Africans have a highly developed sense of dignity, or what the Chinese call ‘face’. I had lost face among my friends. Even though it was a donkey that unseated me, I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonouring them,” writes Mandela in his book Long Walk to Freedom.

This wisdom is for the people of Africa and the East and this is what has made Mandela the world’s greatest man now living. Apartheid was evil in all senses. But when Mandela came to power, he did not embarrass the white South Africans who perpetrated apartheid.

He extended forgiveness to people who had just been oppressing him and his people. Mandela invited the whites into a government of national unity. This is one great thing that Mandela got right. It is a lesson that has stuck with him from childhood days, from playing with animals.

Which is why children should be left to play around with friends, even if it means away from home. The challenge is that today’s world is so unsafe that once children play away from home, parents fear they may be defiled.

This is wisdom that President Robert Mugabe missed. He has worked to embarrass his enemies, the white Zimbabweans who grabbed land from black Zimbabweans using untold force. The idea of getting back land was good. But the means were wrong. Mugabe should have asked for wisdom from Mandela. Evil for evil is not African. It is alien, strange among the people.

If Mugabe had been kind yet tactful like Mandela, Zimbabwe would not have been in the problems as is the case now. The eye-for-eye or tit-for-tat approach is working against him. What Mugabe forgot is that the whites are the owners of tit-for-tat and they have hit hard at Zimbabwe.

The tit-for-tat is bringing squabbles that seem to have no end. Saddam Hussein was evil but hanging him without dignity was also evil.

The US and Iraq should have learned from Africa of the past where capital punishment went with dignity. The story of Sikusinja ndi Gwenembe summaries it all. Once Sikusinja confessed that he had killed his younger brother, Gwenembe, the elders of the village ruled that Sikusinja was not fit to exist in society. He was to face death sentence, but with honour.

It was all normal, a day of hunting. All men went out into the bush and Gwenembe was among them. Then, an antelope appeared. One man hit at it.

Gwenembe ran to finish the animal. The few who knew the ‘plan’ ran to the other side. Two or three men ran together with Gwenembe and hit at him. He cried. Then silence. He was no more. The rest of the village heard that Gwenembe had gone missing while hunting. In their minds, he died a manly death, in the bush while hunting. That was dying with dignity; in secrecy, of course, which was typical African.
The same was for Nigeria where Ikemefuna, that boy captured in a short war, was to be killed. He was not hung like Saddam.

Ikemefuna was taken by elders into a forest where he was killed with a machete and life went on for the rest of the people.

Opening fire at people in public is not African. Keeping children without parents away from home, in their own places called orphanage is not African. In Africa one is never an orphan because there is always a family—what some call extended family system—that takes over the responsibility of looking after children whose parents died.

Announcing that ‘we have assisted so and so or orphans with this and that’ is not African. Fighting cultural practices like chokolo, kupita kufa and fisi in a way that brings shame to their custodians is not African. That is partly the reason the war against these is not successful enough to show results.

Longtime ago, when some 20 Mandinka boys were about to become men, to pass through the last stage of the right of passage called initiation, they learned wisdom of the people, wisdom of Africa.

This is the wisdom lacking in what are turning to be modernised societies. One real way of making Malawi a better place, especially in matters politics, is to go back to the wisdom of the people, wisdom of Africa.

“...when we are at our best, history and heroes enable us to look ahead, not backward,” says Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek.

History, true history of ourselves, is what Africa needs today.

Strategic Journalism

2008-09-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

Why are Malawian journalists often called partners—and not participants—in democracy or development?

The reason is simple and within the journalists themselves. Media practitioners in Malawi have stuck to reportarial (the he or she said type) as opposed to participatory journalism (research, analysis and interpretation of events, issues and opinions).

But it is not surprising. In fact, it is historical. The one-party era didn’t help matters. Journalists were as good as copy typists, repeating what the minister or government official says.

That is still in us, so much so that we don’t go beyond the surface. That is why there is so much of “Government has said this or that” reporting in the media in Malawi.

The journalist, in this case, is like a microphone, transmitting whatever the user has said. It’s journalism, of course. But a very small fraction of a journalist’s five functions.

The first three—surveillance or information, entertainment and linkage—are obvious. These functions demand reporting that that is often event-based.

Everyday, journalists inform people. The media—especially radio, television and internet—also entertain audiences. The last two functions of interpretation and transmission of values or socialisation are difficult to satisfy.

Newsweek Internation editor Fareed Zakaria calls the satisfaction of these two functions participatory journalism. A better term is strategic journalism.

Zakaria, a former professor of political science at Harvard University, sees journalism as “a participant in world affairs” and that it’s impossible to pretend to be aloof from everyday world tears and victories.

This calls for a satisfaction of interpretation and socialisation functions which require journalists to research, analyse and write powerfully in order to persuade, for example.

In short, journalists ought to become public intellectuals because a newspaper, radio or television is a street classroom. And a teacher who comes to a class simply to read from a book is not worth the job. So is a journalist who simply quotes people without an element of reasoning.

A good professor reads a lot, does a lot of research, thinks a lot and engages students in dialogue and reasoning.

That is what journalism ought to do. Why, for example, is domestic violence happening in a way we have never heard before? A journalist ought to research, not simply sit on a desk and call people and ask questions.

The people we call need answers as well. We often rush to officials to ask about domestic violence and they often give shallow answers that cannot move a nation.

A typical example is what NGOs said on Section 65, a lot of it lacking substance, no insights, no analysis. The Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) claimed President Bingu wa Mutharika is inviting civil unrest because of his actions over Section 65 and Parliament. Civil unrest?

Perhaps at gun point. Does anyone see Malawians going to the streets to demonstrate against proroguing of Parliament? Section 65 is not a matter of survival for Malawians. On the hierarchy of needs, it comes at things we can do without, meaning it is not a basic need.

Budget, on the other hand, is a basic need. It is a question of our nation’s stage on the way to its full lifespan.

But as journalists we have gone ahead to quote every NGO official without any question. That ought to change. Journalists need to read and take sources to task. A journalist who is a public intellectual would look at issues to do with Section 65 and social response to political changes.

Our newspapers need analysis and sythesis that can help change a person’s behaviour. The interpretation and socialisation functions can fight Aids and domestic violence.

That is not all. We shall also set the agenda. Agenda Setting Theory describes a very powerful influence of the media—the ability to tell people what issues are important.

This theory, better known as function, dates to as far back as 1922 when newspaper columnist Walter Lippman was concerned that the media had the power to present images to the public.

Then from 1960s Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw investigated United States presidential campaigns in 1968, 1972 and 1976.

In a research done in 1968 they focused on two elements: awareness and information. They attempted to assess the relationship between what voters in one community said were important issues and the actual content of the media messages used during the campaign.

McCombs and Shaw concluded that the mass media exerted a significant influence on what voters considered to be the major issues of the campaign.

Scholars assume that journalists do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it and concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

“The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers [and listeners] what to think about,” said Bernard Cohen in 1963.

One of America’s recent greatest article was Zakaria’s 7,000 word special report: “Why They Hate Us?” which appeared in Newsweek International three weeks after 9/11. The article suggested causal factors of terrorism and it remained the source of debate for weeks, even months.

This is what Malawian journalists were supposed to do with domestic violence and the Section 65/budget saga, to go beyond reporting cases and dig deep into society to find clues to this and, of course, other puzzles.

But it’s not every journalist who can interpret news or write powerfully to transmit values and set the agenda.

It seems journalists concentrate too much on media freedom which is a myth, after all. We need media freedom but more importantly education to free our minds and the minds of our audiences.

That way, says Plato in The Republic “our job ... [becomes] to compel the best minds to attain what we have called the highest form of knowledge, and to ascend to the vision of the good.”

Five Faces of Bingu wa Mutharika

2008-09-23T05:02:00.000-07:00

President Bingu wa Mutharika likes to be in the limelight. He likes to be in the lead, too. This was clear from his childhood at Kamoto Village in Thyolo, where he wrote his name on a baobab tree about six decades ago.

The tree stands where it stood. The name still visible, although the tree has grown and the letters have gone faint. That attempt to keep his name on a tree was a show-off, fun and power of childhood dreams. This is a surface interpretation. The depth of it was that Mutharika wanted to grow like a baobab which is what he has done.

His presidency which he assumed on May 24, 2004, is the culmination of his life, a journey that is showing five clear faces.

STRATEGIST

Mutharika wanted to become president of Malawi long before independence in 1964. “If he did not want the highest office,” says a source in Thyolo, “then he wanted something big. I suspect he thought he would be the second president of this country.” And as if he had forgotten, he continued. “Even the first. He was a boy with a big heart.”

So for four decades Mutharika was preparing for the highest office in Malawi and he did not keep this a secret. He told people he met while working outside Malawi.

A Blantyre woman in her 70s remembers meeting Mutharika in 1970s. “I knew that he wanted to be a president long before my last born [who was born in 1979],” she says. “Not because he wanted to get rich, but to develop Malawi.” No wonder in 2004, she advised her children and grandchildren to vote for Mutharika. “He has plans for this country,” she told her children who doubted the UDF candidate.

Those were his wishes and he had to strategise which he visibly did from 1998 when he announced that he would contest the 1999 elections on his United Party’s ticket. He came out last in the presidential race.

That, though, was not his end. He dissolved the party and joined the UDF. He worked with former president Bakili Muluzi and won his confidence. In the end, he was made presidential candidate. How did he manage to win Muluzi’s confidence?

Part of the answer is in what Ken Zikhale Ng’oma told the media in 2005 that Mutharika used to send sugar and other things to Muluzi’s mother at Kapoloma in Machinga. It might have been real sugar or something sweet like sugar.

The real test, though, was during the campaign when Mutharika played second fiddle to Muluzi. For records, Mutharika is more educated than Muluzi; Mutharika is older than Muluzi. But during the campaign, Mutharika taught people a lesson of humility which is a great lesson in life.

He spoke to please Muluzi. Mutharika was, in fact, given two minutes during which he had to say his plans for Malawi and thank Muluzi for developing this country.

The acceptance of this and the humility it carried were a strategy. Just that. Speaking to Chancellor College students two years ago, Mutharika said he has a formula to the highest office in the country. He did not elaborate but, most likely, he meant his strategy: How he has worked through the decades to get the presidency.

Yet his formula might not work again because circumstances may not allow. But still there are lessons from his strategies.

SEER

This term refers to someone who sees what will happen in the future, some kind of a prophet. But in case of Mutharika, he sees what others don’t see.

Throughout the decades, children in Malawi were taught that Malawi is a hinterland, a landlocked country away from the ocean. Mutharika came and said no. There are Shire and Zambezi rivers that connect Malawi to the Indian Ocean, he said and came up with Shire-Zambezi Waterway Project.

It is not yet done but it is a project that gives hope, a plan that opens eyes and shows that geography is not destiny as Napoleon said—he was wrong—but what people decide to do with their geography.

RADICAL

One academic staff from the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at Chancellor College says Mutharika is rewriting political science theories.

Once he won the presidency, his mentor, Muluzi, organised a coalition of parties to make a majority in Parliament, so that Mutharika could not have challenges with the budget, for example.

But Mutharika turned down the offer by leaving the UDF and choosing to work with a minority government which, some thought, would not work.

But he has survived for a full term—almost. There was Section 65, now forgotten. Malawi has survived although it appears it is Mutharika who has survived.

OPTIMIST

The feeling among Malawians, those who put Malawi first, is that “yes, we can!” There is a kind of confidence and pride that Mutharika has invoked in Malawians who love Malawi, not political parties.

He has given hope in the face of difficulty and uncertainty, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead, beyond the darkest years. He had an ailing wife. He had impeachment threats. He had a budget that was being troubled every year. But he kept ruling this country as if everything was fine. He took a longer view and not an immediate one which is often full of the present, the troubles, and not hope at all.

CULTURAL THEORIST

Mutharika has said things that were meant to provoke thinkers but, sadly, such speeches go unnoticed. The media goes for the ordinary political tones but not the theoretical depth. Speaking in Mzimba recently, Mutharika said our culture is superior to all foreign cultures. He even spoke of “our God” versus “their God”.

He meant to celebrate the African Synod of the Catholic Church. He meant to say Nyau is as good as Christianity only that Nyau has been demonised while Christianity has been over-praised. Mutharika meant to say Chipembedzo cha Makolo is equally powerful as Christianity.

By saying this, Mutharika was confirming that our ways of life are more important than the ways of the West and the East. This is in line with his thinking which has defied international advice.
Mutharika has implemented the fertiliser subsidy programme against advice from the West.

He meant to say our MPs can dress the Malawian way in the House. Mutharika meant to say that our Speaker, lawyers and judges can dress the Malawian way while on duty.

Sadly, the President said this while dressed in a suit like a white man. It would have carried weight if he said so while putting on something African. He would have sent a powerful message if he went to the UN General Assembly dressed the African way, not the English way.

LIKE OTHERS

The first four faces are good for Mutharika. They single him out of the two other presidents who have ruled Malawi: the Ngwazi with an iron fist and Muluzi in a free-for-all administration.

Right from his inaugural speech, Mutharika talked of being different, mainly from Muluzi. Mutharika knew Muluzi had failed Malawi and, being a strategist, Mutharika calculated how to win the support of Malawians who had denied him the vote having won with a mere 34 percent.

He spoke in new tones. He won wide support both national and international. He would have a Cabinet of about 20, appointed on merit. But by attempting to be different, Mutharika is becoming like any other president in Malawi.

One area Mutharika wanted to be different was the Cabinet. He promised a small Cabinet of technocrats. But now he has a Cabinet of 41 members. Faced with political challenges, Mutharika acted the way Muluzi did by blowing up his Cabinet to appease some politicians and have the illusion of winning support from their areas. But he has resisted the temptation to buy political loyalty visibly.

So, Mutharika may, after all, not be that different. He is just like any other president; somehow like Kamuzu, somehow like Muluzi. Yet different, in a way.

Reality of Fiction

2008-09-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

The world’s two most talked about people are John McCain III and Baraki Obama, men who have presented themselves to the US as potential White House tenants.

They are both authors of several books each, and they are almost equally good writers although Obama is better than McCain at pen.

Obama writes with ease and has both style and substance. Even when he speaks, style and substance are visibly present.

McCain is obsessed with heroism and honour which, in the US, come from a service in the army where McCain spent years as did his father John McCain Jnr II who died in 1981 and grandfather John McCain Snr.

McCain III books are usually about war heroes. No wonder in 2001, Jonathan Karp, then editor at Random House, asked Mark Salter for a book idea for McCain. Karp published Faith of My Fathers, McCain’s 1999 memoir, and it had been a critical and commercial success.

Karp asked whether McCain would answer the question: who are your heroes, and why? Heroes, McCain told Salter, who are my heroes? “And the first guy out of his mouth was Robert Jordan,” Salter recalls.

Now Jodarn is the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

“He’s fictional,” Salter replied.

“Yeah, I know,” McCain said, “but he was everything a man would want to be.”

He was everything a man would want to be? So, how real is fiction that a real man like McCain, someone as real as wanting to be in the White House, should want to be like a fictional character?

Hemingway’s Jordan is a college professor from Montana who goes to Spain as a freedom fighter in the war against the Fascists in 1937. He does his duty, falls in love and, at the climax of the novel, suffers a seemingly fatal wound from a shell.

In the last moments of his life, Jordan is left alone with his machine gun on a hill to die and waiting to kill a pursuing enemy before he himself succumbs. But in that moment he muses on love and fate and duty and death. “You have had much luck,” he thinks. “There are many worse things than this.... He looked down the hill slope again and he thought, I hate to leave it, is all. I hate to leave it very much and I hope I have done some good in it. I have tried to with what talent I had. Have, you mean. All right, have.”

Then comes the line McCain remembers best: “The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

“In talking about the book—which he does often—McCain seems to thrill to Jordan’s fatalism, the stoic acceptance of sacrifice in a larger cause, the image of a good man playing his part in the battles of his time, dying nobly in the knowledge that nothing on earth will ever be precisely the way we want it to be, but that we must fight on, for such is the lot of man,” says Jon Meacham, Newsweek editor, in an eight-page profile of McCain two weeks ago.

Jordan’s target, Lieutenant Berrendo, unaware that someone is lying in wait, is riding into range. “Robert Jordan lay behind the tree, holding onto himself very carefully and delicately to keep his hands steady,” Hemingway writes. “He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow.”

Jordan, at this point, prepares to take his shot—and the novel ends with these words: “He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”

This story ends in a tragic way, yet romantic too, because Hemingway leaves his hero alive, just for a moment, on the forest floor, preparing to do one last thing, noble thing for a soldier. McCain’s hero may hate to leave the world, but we do not see him do it: what we see, instead, is a good man hanging on, clinging to life, fighting on even at the point of death.

“He [Jordan] was everything a man would want to be,” says McCain of this hero depicted in his last moments of life, about to die, yet left alive.

No wonder McCain has been fighting for the White House for years. But perhaps the US is far away from Malawi and while it may ring social and economic bells, Kenya might do that better.

Matigari, the hero of Ngugi wa Thiongo’s 1986 novel of the same name, is through with his war with Settler Williams and the warrior is going home. It was 1986, and the fictional Matigari emerged from his hiding place and the pages of the novel.

“The real Kenyan police,” recalls literary scholar Frank Bures, “hunted the man people were whispering about, this Matigari who was roaming the country, escaping from prisons and mental hospitals, asking everyone where he could find truth and justice.”

The story is that Matigari taunted and challenged the paranoid regime of Kenya’s former president Daniel Arap Moi, and the president wanted Matigari stopped and arrested. But later, the police determined that Matigari was fiction and they seized all copies of the book so that people should not read this novel.

Why does fiction—an imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented—shake reality?

“It is because fiction is a reflection of reality,” says Bright Molande, a University of Malawi lecturer in a branch of literature called Literary Theory. “There can never be anything called fiction,” says Shemu Joya, author of Madam Diseh, a powerful short story that remains so decades later. (You are missing a lot if you haven’t read Madam Diseh in Namaluzi.)

Fiction is human imagination, says Joya, which comes from experience and experience is reality. “Fiction,” he says, is just another dimension of reality.

Fiction can be imagined. Yes. But can one imagine something out of nothing? Some artists will say yes. But a practical answer, as Joya says, is no. A cartoonist, for example, cannot necessarily imagine a face that does not exist. Take, the example of Amtchona. Isn’t there someone who looks like Amtchona?

Could it be that James Kazembe formed Amtchona out of nothing?

“In creating Amtchona, I was inspired by a man from home in Balaka,” says Kazembe. “He used to drink with his wife and sometimes they could fight, with the man winning today and the woman winning next time. The face is of that man. I just put in some exaggerations like the long neck, the jacket and the shoes.”

So, the conclusion of the matter is that fiction is created from reality and fiction reflects reality. In fact, fiction is just another dimension of reality, meaning fiction can solve real problems like HIV, Aids and violence.

“I would support that argument,” says Joya. “The way fiction does it is that it creates images in which people see themselves.”

The importance is that fiction points a finger at a person without necessarily pointing a finger at them. It would be evil to call someone a fool. But fiction can create a foolish character and people can identify themselves with such a character.

Chinua Achebe offers a practical example in Things Fall Apart. Ikemefuna is a boy given to Okonkwo by a neighbouring village which was defeated in a war. Ikemefuna lives in the hut of Okonkwo’s first wife and quickly becomes popular with Okonkwo’s children. He develops a close relationship with Nwoye, Okonkwo’s oldest son, who looks up to him.
Okonkwo, too, loves Ikemefuna, who calls him “father” and is a perfect clansman, but Okonkwo does not demonstrate his affection because he fears that doing so would make him look weak.

Now the oracle had decreed that Ikemefuna must die. Obierika, the wise man of Things Fall Apart advises his friend, Okonkwo, not to take part in the killing.

But Okonkwo, fearing fear, is the one who kills the boy when he runs for safety.

Obierika was not amused. But he did not call Okonkwo a fool. Instead, Obierika—who in a way represents the voice of Achebe—tells Okonkwo that the oracle had commanded the death and Ikemefuna was supposed to die. But did the oracle appoint you to be the killer? Obierika asks Okonkwo.

It’s a fine argument that can be used to fight practices like fisi, kupita kufa and chokolo, not the non-artistic ways NGOs are using. Some NGOs have mastered antagonising some cultural practices instead of working on the minds of those whop promotte the culures the way Obierika worked on Okonkwo.

“To a large extent, Western societies have changed because of literature,” says Joya. “Laws have changed because of literature or fiction.”

This is so because fiction has power. In fact, the whole world has changed because of fiction, a reflection of reality. Joya argues that Jesus, believed to be the son of God, used fiction to teach effectively. The parables are fiction, says Joya, and billions know the parable of the Good Samaritan, a powerful story that teaches love.

No wonder, Jon McCain loves a fiction character. No wonder former president Moi sent Kenyan police to arrest Matigari, a character in a novel, on the streets of Nairobi. This speaks a lot that fiction is not fiction at all. It is another dimension of reality.

Corporate Citizenship

2008-09-04T02:29:00.000-07:00

The story on Illovo which is posted here is an example of excellent journalism which I prefer to stories like ‘Illovo Donates to X or Y’, which unfortunately, companies in Malawi like, the media too.

I don’t write donation stories or similar stories because I want to do excellent journalism and I think the story on Illovo is an example of such kind of brilliant journalism. The genesis of the story was in January this year when I went to Shire Valley to assess the flood situation—this was a consultancy for World Vision Malawi—and I met people who had been displaced by floods and they told me the first help they had—shelter, food—was from Illovo.

This is a story, I thought. But for me, the story was not that Illovo had helped those affected by floods. Instead, the story was what Illovo is doing in Shire Valley, hence I had to visit the company and other areas for the story. (It is also important to say that I used my own car and my own time.)

I have worked for five years but during this period of excellent journalism, I have not met a company that is so committed to its social responsibilities as Illovo.

Still, as we say, there is a lot Illovo can do. But to what extent can it take its corporate citizenship? This is a good question because this year the company made a profit of K7 billion before tax. It came to K5 billion after tax, meaning Illovo paid K2 billion in taxes. This is a lot of money to government.

But K5 billion profit is also a lot of money, meaning Illovo can do more than it is doing. Yet we should remember the shareholders want profit. One thing I think Illovo should do is to establish a community radio station for Chikwawa and Nsanje.

Such a radio can help preserve songs of the area by way of recording them. The radio can entertain people after a day of work at Illovo and elsewhere. The radio can be an important tool to perform the surveillance function of journalism: to warn people of floods, for example. The radio can help with agriculture in the area. (Awareness on health and environment, agriculture—how to care for Illovo cane estates.) In short, the Shire Valley is unique: it has its own needs and requires its own radio station which can address the needs of the area while connecting people with the rest of the country and the world.

It is not an expensive venture. This is something Illovo can do. Otherwise, we should not demand too much from the company because it has done a lot in health and environment. But the room to do more in social responsibility is there, Illovo.

Finally, let it be known that Illovo is a model. The challenge is to remain a model and do better than it has done now. I hope some day, I will visit Dwangwa for a similar story.

Shire Valley Minus Illovo Equals Impossible

2008-09-04T01:31:00.000-07:00

How important are big companies to a country? The example of Illovo’s citizenship in the Shire Valley shows Malawi needs big investments. Here is the story.

The sugar starts at Kamuzu Bridge in Chikwawa. The roadblock and police shelter were donated by Illovo Sugar (Malawi) Limited whose corporate colours welcome road users on M1 to the Shire Valley.

The Illovo colours have two meanings: one, that you are entering an Illovo zone, which is true, of course; and, two, that the company is not for profit only. It has a social responsibility towards communities near its estates and the country as a whole.

Chikwawa is some 30 kilometres from Nchalo and the roadblock is a powerful notice of the Illovo zone because not long from here, the M1Road passes through sugarcane estates, green carpets that stretch hundreds of hectares. These are estates of Illovo, the country’s sole sugar producer with agricultural and milling assets at Nchalo and Dwangwa in Nkhotakota, and headquarters in Limbe, Blantyre.

Illovo’s strategy is clear: “To be welcomed in communities in which it operates because of what it does, how well it does it and be accepted as a progressive company by all communities.”

What would life have been in the Shire Valley without Illovo? “It would have been impossible,” says Frank Phiri, managing director of Mukukha Enterprises, a cane cutting contractor.

Phiri’s response is a fair assessment of the impact of Illovo on communities in the Shire Valley. The sugar company is sweetening people’s lives from business to health to agriculture. Illovo has one main clinic and six satellite clinics at Nchalo.

Dr Albert Mkumbwa is in charge of health services at Nchalo and has statistics at his lips. This is so because he spends one hour per clinic per week, meaning, people who use these clinics have access to a doctor. (Some districts in Malawi do not have doctors and the best people can get is an experienced clinical officer who turns out to be district health officer, positions reserved for doctors.)

“Our clinics serve between 35,000 and 40,000 people,” said
Mkumbwa. “We are also working together with Montfort [Mission Hospital] where we send clinicians once in a while.”

Illovo clinics at Nchalo are offering almost all services required of a district hospital in Malawi except for radiography. When there is need for such services, clients are sent to Montfort or Blantyre, in case Montfort does not have appropriate machines.

But the common problems like malaria, diarrhea and AIDS are handled at Nchalo. All staff members and their dependants get free services and Illovo is the largest single employer in Malawi with 5,500 permanent staff and offering 2,500 seasonal jobs.

Beyond this, services like cane cutting and weeding are outsourced from contractors and employees from such firms get free treatment from Illovo clinics which offer testing and counseling and CD 4 count. White blood cells are monitored and ARVs offered to those in need. As at now, the clinic has 575 people on its ARV programme. Of these, 176 are employees while 399 are dependants.

“We have ARV stocks to last for the next two years,” said Mkumbwa, pointing to cartons of the drug. Illovo clinics hold two HIV testing weeks every year, first during the July national week and, secondly, Illovo’s own week in December after World Aids Day.

“In July last year, we tested 881 people while in December we tested 939 people,” said Mkumbwa.

The main clinic at Nchalo is smart. The corridors are not filled with drug and detergent smells. People sit on clean benches, the floor is well mopped, almost always. Staff work throughout the day and there are a couple of staff members at night to attend to emergencies.

There is a morgue that can keep six bodies for as long as two weeks. The mortuary at Chikwawa District Hospital has no freezing equipment. It is simply air conditioned and can keep bodies for hours otherwise they would decompose.

On the Wednesday I visited the clinic, the body of Senior Chief Ngabu’s mother was in the mortuary of the Illovo Clinic. This confirmed the usefulness of Illovo to people of Shire Valley because the chief lives some 20 kilometres from Nchalo on the road to Nsanje.

Illovo is not in treatment only but also in primary health care, especially prevention. There is a public health office headed by Anaclet Lupiya, a product of the University of Malawi’s Environmental Health (EH) programme, running prevention initiatives on malaria and HIV, among others.

But not all people can come to Illovo clinics because not all are employees or dependants of Illovo staff. People from surrounding communities go to Montfort Hospital, a 120-bed Catholic Church institution within Nchalo Trading Centre.

Dr Symon Chiumia is medical officer for the hospital and he is here because his salary is sugar-coated by Illovo. The company also tops up salaries of hospital administrator and radiographer. Graduates from the College of Medicine often avoid Chikwawa and Nsanje and those working at Illovo and Montfort are often the only doctors in the districts.

“We have a good working relationship with Illovo,” said Chiumia. Illovo provides drugs valued at K135,000 to Montfort Hospital quarterly.

Illovo renovated the hospital’s labour ward, the radiography section and bought a new radiography machine and air conditioners to keep the rooms cool. Illovo supplies raw water to the hospital. This list is not yet over.

Illovo donated an X-ray machine valued at K3 million. Illovo renovated the X-ray room. Illovo donated air conditioners for a second doctor’s house. Illovo donated a laundry machine for the hospital. Illovo maintained the hospital’s laboratory. Illovo bought a new water pump when the old one was burnt down.

In short, Montfort Hospital lives on Illovo to a reasonable extent. The existence of the hospital at current standards would be almost impossible without Illovo. The mission hospital serves thousands of villagers who pay negligible fees.

“Illovo,” says the company’s guidance on social responsibility, “endeavours to coexist harmoniously with its surrounding communities by, among other things, operating a social responsibility fund which is used to support hospitals, schools, orphanages, donations to some important government and religious functions, HIV support groups, road and bridge maintenance mainly but not exclusively in communities surrounding the estates.”

After health care, so what? Illovo, it’s becoming clear, realises that an effective workforce comes from a pool of health people.

Nchalo estates and mills are the largest employer in Shire Valley, perhaps in Southern Region. Is there a bigger employer than Illovo? In addition, contractors that offer services to Illovo employ hundreds of people.

Unitrans Malawi Limited is Illovo’s biggest transport provider, moving 1.4 million tonnes of cargo a year. Unitrans employees between 700 and 800 people during sugarcane season which starts in April and ends in November. Piet Steyn is transport manager at Nchalo and knows well what Illovo has done to transporters. Illovo, he said, is a big customer and this is not the case with Unitrans only.

Farming and Engineering Services is also stationed at Nchalo to maintain Illovo fleet and machinery. The company, according to national services manager Nark Gallowey, employs 14 men and one woman at Nchalo.

Builders and carpenters are enjoying contracts from Illovo. Harry Amos is part of Tonse Building Contractors while Noel Chapola runs Umodzi Joinery Workshop. Both and their partners are earning a living from Illovo contracts.

Illovo, in case you didn’t know, once grew maize and government used the yield for seeds which were donated to poor families across the country as starter packs. The company is involved in afforestation as well and is leading by example.

But it is Frank Phiri of Mukukha Enterprises who is a typical example of Illovo’s impact on Shire Valley and Malawi. He is a product of Bunda College and worked with Illovo for 26 years from 1979, until he resigned after winning a five-year cane harvesting contract. He has done four years and hopes the contract will be renewed.

“Outsourcing is empowering people,” he said. “When I was an employee, I was contributing taxes to government but not that much. Now, I return taxes in excess of K4 million a year.” His firm employs about 500 people every harvesting season.

There are several townships and villages around Nchalo estates and Kalulu is one of them. Years ago, people had an open ground market. They were scorched by Shire Valley’s hot sun. Temperatures in Chikwawa and Nsanje reach 42 degrees Celsius at the peak of the dry season. People at the market suffered from rains as well.

Now Illovo constructed a market, fenced with brick walls. What is more? The company supplies water to the market. This is possible because Illovo has 11 water treatment plants at Nchalo.

John Falamenga is an operator at one water plant. He treats 380 cubic metres of water a day and hundreds benefit. Ndirande Village is by the water tank and people from here drink from taps outside the plant. If it were not for Illovo, people would have been drinking from Shire River, a couple of kilometres away, and risking their lives to crocodiles and unclean water.

The greatest news in Shire Valley is about Kasinthula cane growers limited where lives are changing, people are moving from poverty to wealth and learning to live decent lives. One challenge in the Shire Valley is that people have wealth—cattle and money—but still live like poor people.

The trust is changing all that. It has 282 farmers who produce 76,000 tonnes of sugarcane per year. The farmers have a ready market at Illovo. The company helps the farmers with procurement of inputs and, being big, has bargaining power.

“The main benefit of the farmers is that the scheme provides a ready market,” said Brian Namata, general manager of Kasinthula cane growers limited. The processes of how the farmers sell their sugarcane and get their money are all interesting. But the visible signs of the changes of their lives are even more interesting.

Chinangwa Village, some five kilometres from Chikwawa boma, is a shining example seen clearly through Bies Ellod, a 26-year-old man who has two-and-a-half hectares of sugarcane. His wife and son of two years, seven months were not at home when I visited them recently.

Ellod and his wife have built a three-bedroom house with a big sitting room, a kitchen and storeroom. It is a house that would fetch about K30,000 in Chimwankhunda Dam in Blantyre or Area 25 B in Lilongwe.

Wiring was done and the house is ready for electricity. In fact, Chinangwa Village has electricity almost ready. Most houses are just waiting for Escom. Power lines are all over the village. Escom is yet to procure metres.

The village has been transformed and thanks to sugarcane farming. Beyond that, the changes are because of Illovo. People of Shire Valley have been engaged in business and it is more profitable than growing cotton. The cane growers are assured of a minimum price that covers production costs and profit. It is called fair trade.

On the day Escom brings metres to Chinangwa Village and connects people to power, there shall be celebration. Ellod’s wife will no longer need firewood. She will cook using a hotplate. This will not only make her life easy, but forests will be saved; trees that are not there, anyway. Children will study at night and, most likely, school results will improve.

Electricity is just a plus because they already have borehole water and a clinic that is partly, perhaps mainly, serviced by Kasinthula cane growers limited.

This will be a model village, a real show how a socially responsible company like Illovo can transform lives. These are lives at national level because the company is the biggest single employer and works in a way that impacts directly on people.

Yet there is more than this. One major impact of Illovo on Shire Valley—Illovo management does not realise this, though—is that the high living standards of the staff at Nchalo are a motivation to the area’s young people.

The pupils and students of Nsanje, especially Chikwawa, see immediate benefits of education as they see men and women drive poshy cars to Blantyre and around Chikwawa and Nsanje. They see how people can turn sugarcane into sugar and this amazement encourages them—most of them—to work hard in school.

No wonder the Shire Valley has produced people like Bernad Thole, a chemist and dean of applied studies in the University of Malawi. This motivation is especially important in a country where musicians sing against higher education, where people think all educated people must be rich.

Illovo is most likely Escom’s biggest customer. The work at Nchalo makes this assumption believable even without checking with Escom. In an interview Escom’s public relations assistant Chikondi Chimala confirmed that Illovo is not only the biggest customer but also a responsible one; the company does production at night and thus does not congest Escom power distribution which is high during the day.

This means big companies get big companies and that if a country has several big, responsible companies, life would really change for the better in visible ways.

But there are challenges: more businesses mean more money in people’s pockets, including children’s pockets. As a result, they may not go to school. Money tends to prevent people from thinking and, in such circumstances, the spread of HIV rises. These are challenges at personal level. Illovo cannot follow people into dark corners.

Perhaps we need patience. Some day, Malawi shall be a fully developed country. It takes time. It also takes the efforts of the private sector and government to lift people from poverty.

Illovo is clear evidence. The sugar group is sweetening food and lives of Malawians, especially those in Chikwawa and Nsanje. The roadblock at Chikwawa is just an entry point into a great story, now told, in part though.