8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. 9 Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.– Proverbs 31:8-9
In the past week, the current President Dr. Lazarus Chakwera and former President Dr. Bakili Muluzi participated in a few activities that causes me to pause and appreciate Malawi’s presidents.
Once in a while when they are not dissolving cabinet, flying around the world, delivering state of the art speeches written by a crafty speech-writer, or appointing a bucket-load of chairpersons, they come down their leadership ladder, become super-duper human and show the plebeians their humanity.
Listening to President Lazarus Chakwera’s cabinet swearing-in ceremony and his “I am the President…” speech, really had all the nuances of a return to the Kamuzu Banda days, as if the former Life President had resurrected from the dead. Of the new-look cabinet list, four prominent ousted persons are such persons as finance Minister Felix Mlusu, Roy Kachale Banda (former President Dr. Joyce Banda’s son), and others; but the biggest upset is the Vice President Dr. Saulos Chilima.
He is no longer a minister responsible for economic planning and development, he will be responsible for public sector reform.
The bickering and accusations continue to roll in from the four regions about central regionalism writ large. The counting that does not hold water, began. Such is the politics of Malawi. To quote Simon and Garfunkel: silence is golden.
In appreciating Malawi’s first leader, the Ngwazi, Life President of Malawi and Nkhoswe Number 1, he was my father’s chief mentor who advised him on his work as Malawi’s first envoy. In that role, whatever advice the first president had for my father, affected the first 20 years of my life.
Later as a co-ed at Chancellor College, the former president affected my schooling through his public lectures as the Chancellor.
I am strong-willed, resolute, and usually reach for the sky in all I do because that is what Kamuzu advised us to do. He usually added a caveat for female students to aspire to work as hard as male students.
This week former President Muluzi brought me to tears when he donated MK100,000 to former presidential photographer Dick Mlanzie. This is vintage Muluzi, the president who replied to every letter I ever wrote him. But it took me totally by surprise when the morning after my husband’s funeral, then-President Muluzi sent his aide de camp with a condolence envelope. From the first days in his presidency, Muluzi established himself as a president that will mourn or celebrate with you.
Of the many memorable presidential acts that are etched on Bingu wa Mutharika’s annals, is the fabulous 60th wedding anniversary party that the President and First Lady Callista Mutharika hosted for my mother and father at Sanjika Palace on August 10, 2010. At the event, four generations of 200+ from the Mutharika and Mbekeani family were treated to a ride down memory lane to August 12, 1950. Bingu told the crowd that he attended the ceremony and took the day’s event to encourage Malawians to emulate the example set by Mr. and Mrs. Mbekeani. This was an uplifting event.
Malawi’s first woman to rise to the post of President, Dr. Joyce Banda, is celebrated for the path she took to get to the Presidency. Her journey started as a personal assistant, operator of tailoring and bakery shops, forming the National Association of Business Women (NABW), winning the prestigious international Hunger Project Sustainable End to Hunger Award. From winning the Award, the NABW CEO established the Joyce Banda Foundation Secondary School, orphanages, and rural schools in Blantyre, Zomba, and other districts.
Joyce Banda run for and won a parliamentary seat and was appointed gender minister; she later scooped the foreign minister portfolio which led to Malawi signing diplomatic relations with China. She later was selected as Vice President in the 2009 Presidential elections and three years later became Malawi’s first female president, Africa’s second. It is an impressive journey. In her first year, President Joyce Banda met the Who’s Who on the international stage including Queen Elizabeth, US President Barak Obama (first black president), Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, and others.
Former President Peter Mutharika is to be appreciated for being a president that reads the news. One day he surprised me when at a diaspora meeting in New York, he told me: “I like what you write, you write very well, although I do not always agree with what you write.” There was one thing that he agreed with me, this was that what happens to a president is the concern of the citizens of Malawi; they have a right to know and must be informed about anything that happens to the president. The president made these remarks after he fell ill while on a trip to the US. While the government kept quiet and some government officials threatened jail for any speculations on the President’s health, I wrote that no one has a right to keep what happens to the president from the people of Malawi.
The president apparently agreed with my Friday These Freedoms column because by Sunday he returned to Malawi and voiced a similar viewpoint: what happens to the president is to be communicated to the people, they have a right to know. Recalling these two items always warms my heart.
Current president Dr. Lazarus Chakwera, the man who argued with God (spoiler alert, Chakwera lost, God won), this week sailed into corridors of magnanimous history (again) when appointed the largest number of women in the cabinet seven out of 23 and five out of 9 deputy ministers. These are 1/3 for full ministers and ½ for deputies. The new cabinet comes with Nancy Tembo, ever in the news breathing her ministerial fire on errant constituents in her ministry, risen to the foreign affairs ministry (the ministry that was embarrassed recently when diplomats stuck their tongues at the government recall notices that threw government and its international civil servants into court). She will get things sorted.
Chakwera also gave other women a chance to prove their metal at leadership. This is courageous of President Chakwera. We appreciate you President Chakwera!
But more uplifting and a moment of celebration for Malawians was watching their President welcoming to Kamuzu Palace, the country’s music maestro, legendary Gides Chalamanda to commemorate the musician’s 90th birthday. The invite to Kamuzu Palace of Chalamanda is a heart-warming gesture and in Bingu style.
Presidents can be self-assertive, presumptuous, obstinate, and stubborn; that comes with the territory of leadership, but once in a while, these leaders, come down their leadership pole, become human again, mingling with the plebeians.
Oh God, save our leaders, each and everyone, we pray!
