If the late Kamuzu Banda had decoded his pronouncement “DemokalaseNdiNkhondo” to mean the much-revered public procurement activities (PPA) would become synonymous with public thieving opportunities (PTO) and the prime consideration on every public programme our quartet (Bakili Muluzi, Bingu WA Mutharika, Joyce Band and Peter Mutharika) would embark on would be the unjust self-enrichment of government functionaries and their masters (the politically well-connected, especially the presidents themselves), we would have given it the same dismissive attention but he would have been right on the mark!
I heard one barefaced partaker argue that they should be commended for killing-two-birds-with-one-stone but alas there is nothing of the sort where the odds disproportionately favour public thievery (1000:1) when the public interest is pitied against individual interest(s), at every opportunity and at all levels of the organs of the state in all their operations and in all exercise of all ‘public power’ by all public functionaries—meaning,ultimately,the benefits from ideas, projects and programmes thepublic may get (if any) will bean indistinct shadow of what they should have been, examples for this abound (all the gates under the sun: the infamous cash-gate thieving, the green belts’ tractor-gate, food security programmes involving farm input subsidies, the cashtransfer-gates and yes the maize-gates;the road-gates in Zomba; disaster-gates, trip-gates,jet-gates, MDF and MPS gear-gates, the MSB sell-gate, etc and the dysfunctional performance of the whole government machinery and supporting governance bodies)that have only served to benefit and unjustly self-enrich the government functionaries and their masters.
If we repressed the imperious thieving bestial urge, none of these programmes would have been undertaken (or at least not in their present form) or continued ad infinitum.Simply put, in new political dispensation, the prime consideration for undertaking a project or programme is its high thieving value or the high thieving opportunity it presents and not its high intrinsic public good.
If we tamed the imperious in appropriate self-enrichment bestial urge, it is extremely difficult to see how a Malawian, much less a Malawian leader, would advocate oil mining on Africa’s finest and undisputed timeless jewel,the Lake Malawi (this God’s providence—an ecological-scale loan programme to us valued at a zillion ecological dollars that is highly valued by the Malawi nation for its recreational, aesthetic, scenic, water-supply qualitiesand aquatic ecosystem functions;an important habitat and food resource for a diverse array of fish, aquatic life, and wildlife;and the immeasurable economic sustenance it provides for the nation!), fully aware of the potentially calamitous consequences of such activities or an academician worthy his name or salt who would pass the EISA for this or, indeed, a staid and ethical oil company that would show legitimate interest in such an unethical business venture!
Since in this new political dispensations, we have never seen fit to divorce inappropriate self-interest from public interest, we are,in earnest, salivating to consummate the undertaking whose only fruit will be to do irreparable harm to all that we rely on for our very survival (imagine a soupcon of oil in our water and beverages, a smidgen of oil in our beef, fish and poultry; a smidge of oil in all that we grow on our farmlandsthat rely on the lake’s waters and a sniff of oil in all our concreted or mortared or plastered building units touched by the oily water scourge) and bring to ecological oblivion this Africa’sundisputed timeless jewel.
If it is not the imperious bestial urge of inappropriateself-enrichment that goaded the late Binguwa Mutharika government to dig up from the belly of the earth uranium ore even before carefully considering questions of its waste-water disposal, then it must be terrifying ignorance of the highest order!
If we cordon off the imperious inappropriateself-enrichmentbestial urge, it is extremely difficult to see how a Malawian, much less a Malawian leader, would,in a frenzy of non-gluttonous greed, dismantle (from the comfort of Kamuzu palace’s dizzying opulence) a home-grown industrialization infrastructural framework Kamuzu Banda had worked so hard to cobble together (out of Gwelo’s dungeons) to ready the country for a home-grown industrialization that would have served the nation’s generations,only to replace it with a jumbled Asian-controlled, mafiasco economy feeding off all manner of poverty programmes (that are akin to investment in poverty on a grand scale to the tune of two-thirds of our annual national budget)and a bewildering web of corruption infrastructure and a devilishly warped ‘me-and-myself’ mindset that has become the lifeline and way-of-life for the nation.
In anotherseemingly choreographed act of unparalleled reckless insanity and unpatriotic gluttonous greed (surely, not to advance any public good),the quartetrazed (in less than half a generation) the mighty Viphya(or Chikangawa) forest from the face of Chikangawa to expose the baredhills that once proudly wore the universally admired andinarguablylargest man-made greenery on the face of the whole of Africa.
Here, a real leader with a demonstrable measure of vision and love for his country and its peoplehad matched his visionary thinking that had straddled the length and breadth of the country and touched all its citizenry with a giant deed (a giant idea and a giant programme on a generational scale which should epitomize any visionary leadership and should be the measure of the quality of any leadership and programmes we should be pining for as a country and that should be burdening and tasking our leaders’ minds).
A giant idea only rivalled by my idea ofselling and popularizing (in Malawi) the productionof timber from perennial grasses such as sugar-cane and sorghum instead of trees that take almost a generation to harvest for timber production! Companies that are already into sugar productionwould be incentivized to invest either in a stand-alone separation facility or an add-on to a current processing facility, and no licences for producing sugar only! A separation facility adjacent to a sugar mill could divide the cane into its various parts, supplying juice to the mill while the stalks could be shipped off to be used for timberproduction and the pith could be used for other products.The technology for this is already out there waiting for us to adopt and adapt as necessary!
A Malawian president once wrote “Democracy is all about good governance”.
A few decades later, Malawians’ generosity of spirit handed himthe opportunity to be in the driving seat to govern Malawi but lo he is ruling Malawi!It left me wondering if the fleeting flash of democratic thinking evident in hiswritten wordwasnot a ‘copy-and-paste’ job and needs decoding for the Malawi president?!Who knows it could be the Saul-Paul conversionthat stopsthe President (and his present and futuresuccessors) from persecuting the media, governance activists and critics!
We are confronted with an existential challenge requiring thinking outside the box and beyond our noses to survive beyond generations but we have a ‘leadership rot drowning in its own rot’ that will never allow that to happen. Our quartet is not leadership material, much less presidential material but our continued refusal to see them for what they are (by their commissions and omissions, they love and have loved this country and its people only for what they can and could steal from the country and the people) is comedic tragedy were it not touching on our very survival as a nation!