By Silvester Ayuba James
If I am to be brutally honest with you, no amount of rain has ever fallen in Lilongwe that could be enough to cause flooding.
In fact, in most of what you call flooding here that destroys houses it is people who have flooded to the rivers. Not just river banks.
They have flooded into the rivers, built their houses there, and when the water comes to peacefully pass in its path, someone’s house is soaked and you call it floods.
The rivers themselves, properly speaking, have not flooded.
And your city council will watch anyone dump heaps of waste on the river banks.
When the water is forced to divert its way because of the blockages, you call it floods.
Your politicians and the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) guys will also enjoy the visibility that comes with distributing some relief stuff while diverting a chunk of its budget into their pockets.
So, even if they will pretend to be concerned that people have built in wrong places, they will not take bold steps to chase them away or demolish their houses.
They fear the votes will go and, more importantly, there will be a reduced funding for disaster next year and the Vice President Everton Chimulirenji and his foot soldiers will not finish a mansion somewhere.
As for the roads, come to Lilongwe and see them. No drainage passages. All the money meant for drains will go sinking down the long pockets of your men at Capital Hill.
The drains that were supposed to be; the drains that appear on paper in the road designs will disappear on the ground and emerge elsewhere in form of mansions. You and I know them, the creators of our road floods.
They have planted mansions in Area 49 (New Gulliver), Area 43, 47 and the like.
But somehow, we keep thinking our floods are due to heavy rains.
One day, when our politicians are done plundering; when they have looted enough, maybe, they will let you know that we have never had natural floods in Lilongwe.
All we have is a lack of willingness among the politicians to destroy all those sharks built in the rivers and arrest everyone dumping even a banana peel on a river bank so as to clear the way for water when it comes.
All what you see as floods today are simply a product of two things: politics of appeasement and corruption.
I repeat to say: we have never had enough rains for Lilongwe to flood. Our floods are man made; a primary product of celebrated mediocrity saddling a self-bewitched poor nation.
…………….Views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the Publisher or the Editor of Maravi Post.
