Stop campaigning, get down to work
GOVERNMENT, as one Bakili Muluzi famously observed, is serious business.
Indeed, being in government is not just about winning an election or planning how to win (or rig) the next one as some confusionists want us to believe. Being in government means hatching and executing policies that will make things move in the republic. Being in government is making sure we have the right civil service with right perks to translate those policies.
But it seems because we are so engrossed in politicking we have forgotten that governments are not just about elections. Look, instead of chiefs telling us how they will ensure that this year coupons for the famed fertiliser subsidy programme will not be abused, they are busy telling us why someone should succeed someone as if the 13.1 million of us have delegated them to think on our behalf.
Indeed, instead of ministers telling us what they intend to do to justify their being in cabinet they are busy queuing for the state microphones prematurely paying allegiance to some non-existent dynasty. (What ever happened to Bingu's mandatory monthly one-page ministerial performance appraisals?)
Look, a number of things are happening in government which begs the question whether we are really allocating enough time and resources to governance. Remember up to now no one has given us a plausible reason why Pres Bingu wa Mutharika appointed some people to various parastatal boards only to find them wanting even before they held their first meetings.
This may look trivial to some people but it is a damning statement on serious lapses obtaining in the system. I would like to believe that before the president appoints anyone to some job or approves some names to some assignments, there are serious consultations, vetting and background checks. How then, after months of such rigorous processes, can someone only last a week in office? Or am I being "ridiculously ignorant" of how things are done?
Another case in point is the much-touted youth development loans. Since the president contradicted himself by saying the loans are for all youths in Malawi but in the same breath gave the not-so-veiled instructions that DPP youths must be given priority I knew the scheme was destined for trouble.
Youth Minister Luscious Kanyumba and his then deputy Billy Kaunda did a good job criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country supervising preparatory courses on business plan formulation. When a long list of names was published in the media I thought the scheme was indeed not just some hot air campaign rhetoric.
Some imaginative businesses were outlined. If someone was opening an Internet cafe somewhere in Mphate, someone was proposing a piggery in Hewe. This was encouraging so much that it was quite a letdown to hear that the scheme was suspended. My good friend Nicholas Dausi gave no convincing reasons why the loan scheme was suspended.
But without a convincing explanation this—again--begs some uncomfortable questions. Was the pigmentation in the genes of the approved names found not to contain enough traces of blue? After all the Big Kahuna himself unabashedly said the money is for "blue" youths. Or maybe –again--I am suffering from the "little knowledge" syndrome?
Another worrying symptom that government may be running on remote control since everyone is out campaigning for 2014 is what is happening in the all-important Ministry of Education. After noticing the confusing calendars run by schools, government--rightly, I must hasten to add--did order that academic calendars be synchronised. This meant all schools, be they public, quasi-public or private, must follow the same calendar.
The synchronised academic calendar takes effect from tomorrow, meaning all classes must begin tomorrow. But the Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB) says Form 1s and 3s have at least one more month to wait before they return to class.
What happened to planning? I know marking and grading thousands of papers is no kid stuff. I, however, do not think when Capital Hill was planning the synchronisation of the academic calendar MANEB was not involved. They should have administered the Primary School Leaving Certificate and the Junior Certificate of Education examinations a little earlier to give themselves time to mark and grade.
Granted, some schools could have struggled to complete the syllabi but if told in time teachers are resourceful, most could have caught up.
By the way, why is it that year in, year out invigilators, markers and security officers always struggle to receive their duty allowances? MANEB draws its own calendar for the administration of various examinations. Why do they not prepare the money for the allowances before hand? I thought allowances are meant to be used in the field?
What's the use of allowances if one receives them three months after an assignment? What does MANEB think these security officers and teachers eat when posted to administrator these exams empty handed away from their bases? Where do they think they sleep? Can they expect optimum service in such circumstances? Should we really fault these officers if they succumb to bribes?
Still on education, government recently announced K5, 000 "hardship" allowances as an incentive for teachers posted to rural areas. A welcome initiative indeed for it is like some form of punishment to be posted to teach in some backwater corner of the country where there are no proper houses or social amenities.
But one would think before factoring this allowance in Ken Kandodo's 2010/11 budget Capital Hill had worked out the criteria. Why then do we seem not to know which one is a rural school and which one is not?
There are several things that are not going right in government simply because those who matter are not allowed professional latitude to dedicate themselves one-hundred per cent to the civil service. Ministers spend most of the time hero-worshipping instead of offering meaningful political leadership to their ministries. It is as if being in cabinet is some privilege, not a right.
Senior technocrats are harassed with unnecessary transfers to ministries outside their areas of competence if they are deemed not loyal enough. Women civil servants, who should be working from 7 to 5, are always on the road dancing for the new Ngwazi in the guise of Amai a Bingu M'boma. When will they find time to do the work they are paid to do?
We are getting it wrong as a nation because people we send to Capital Hill or Parliament to steer the ship that is Malawi Inc. do not seem to know when to work and when to be on the campaign trail. Because we lack confidence in our abilities we believe we are given cabinet portfolios or some other plum jobs in government as a token of thanks for our electioneering, not as an acknowledgement that we have something to offer.
Like Muluzi teased us, let us wake up and realise that government is serious business lest someone is justified to brand us a "failed state".
On the Ndirande suicides
Whatever entered these young men and women's heads? was the impromptu question almost everybody to a man asked after a family of five decided that the best way to exorcise a spell allegedly cast on them by their own parents was to toss themselves onto a ball of fire.
My friends and colleagues Cheu Mita, Dr. Chiwoza Bandawe and Dr. Charles Chilimampunga might find academic explanations on how this can possibly happen. But, as a layman on the workings of the human mind, I think the Tuesday "out-of-this-world' Ndirande events is a statement on how wretched our society is becoming.
The Mutharika administration must not just dismiss this as "one of those wacky things". A full-scale investigation must be launched. Extremist and fundamentalist doctrines and ideologies are fanned by several factors, chief among them poverty, depravation and ignorance.
Rev. Billy Gama, the presidential religious affairs guru, has his work cut out for him. We have freedom of worship alright but the opposition to the measles campaign had red lights flashing. Denying medication in the wake of an outbreak was "constructive" mass suicide that might need some diplomacy to address. But when grown up men and women fashion out a furnace and decide to braii themselves diplomacy may not be the best solution.
Muckracking on Sunday w/Raphael Tenthani had a part missing. We have reloaded the column, click here
MZUZU--A judge in Mzuzu has ruled that Jim Jumani Johansson--the 37-year-old man who fervently claims he is the son of former dictator Kamuzu Banda--can visit the business empire of the founder president but for business purposes only.
BLANTRE--The usual everyday politics took the back-seat in the Malawi media this week as gruesome religious rituals that led to a mass suicide attempt in the commercial capital, Blantyre, dominated the headlines.
ATLANTA U.S.--The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) based in New York in the United States has condemned Pres Bingu wa Mutharika's threats against Malawian newspapers which report critically about his government.